Robot Warriors

Roger "Scotty" MacDermott















Base Pts: 150
Exp Required: 0
Total Exp Available: 0
Exp Unspent: 0
Total Character Cost: 137

There are one or two other PC-type robot pilots on the way, then a few aliens and collaborators and the like.

This would be a fun update to 6th, this and Super Agents

I never played Autoduel or Robot Warriors, I think that was before my time at GAS. I think if someone was to work up this book it could be popular, especially with updated artwork of mechs

I've set myself some challenges: basically, how far can I twist the Robot Warriors rules?

Smallest Piloted Mecha

Note that the pilot's seat and enclosure takes 2 Mass Units, and the pilot/gunner controls take another +3, for a minimum of 5. So… 8 Mass Units? .5 Mass Units for Chassis & Power Plant with Capacity 8, 1 Mass Unit for 10 DEF for a Size 1 mecha. .5 Mass Units for lifters with Capacity 8. We are up to 7 Mass Units. The tables for Movement Hardware and Weapons extend down into fractions of a Mass Unit. We could get movement and weaponry. No sensors though, unless we dip into Danger International. No Life Support either.

One Mass Unit, Total

A Chassis & Power Plant with capacity 4 is .25 Mass Units; Lifters with capacity 4 are likewise .25 Mass Units. We don't get any DEF, unless we extend the chart; .25 Mass Units is reasonable, giving us 8 DEF at Size Class 1. We're up to .75 Mass Units, leaving us .25 left for movement. Or a single weapon, but not both (unless we give it human scale weapons, which we can). Obviously not piloted. No sensors either, but see above under Smallest Piloted Mecha.

Smallest Functional Self Aware

If we eliminate DEF and Lifters from the One Mass Unit robot above, we're at .25 Mass Units. This is literally a Chassis & Power Plant with capacity 4, and nothing more; we could get up to .5 Mass Units with movement hardware. But, without extending any tables, we don't get Lifters, DEF, weapons, Sensors, etc.

Non-mecha Mecha

We have methods for building human-scale weapons and armor, which are the same as those for mecha only scaled down (RW p. 86). In particular, weapons are already considered to have the Carried (+1) Limitation built into them; body armor assumes the mecha armor table extends down to .25 Mass Units (or 25kg), which would be 8 DEF for a Size Class 1 character.

Weapons are assumed to have 9-16 charges, or a 0 point modifier on the Charges chart. Note that RW p. 17 has this to say about Charges: "Each charge gives a weapon one shot, gives armor one phase of protection, or gives one phase of movement." We could therefore build movement hardware for characters, using the same guidelines, and giving them Charges! A few things to remember: characters have their own base movement modes at Ground Scale 1; robot movement modes default to Ground Scale 4; robot movement modes require power (or Charges); robot movement modes would replace character movement rather than augment it.

(Here's another interesting tidbit: remember that capacity 4 Chassis & Power Plant? That's .25 Mass Units, or 25kg. Small enough for a human scale character to carry around with them!)

32 Charges would be a -1 Advantage, which for movement hardware means the minimum buy-in would be 2 hexes worth, for 1 actual hex of movement. For a 1 mass unit "robot", that comes to 0.12 Mass Units. Probably 0.125, so we'll call it that (12.5 kilograms). Or 0.06, if we add the power plant (25kg) and eliminate the Charges.

(Can we apply a +1 Limitation: Power Plant Only to the Chassis & Power Plant? GM says… sure. Drops the mass of the Chassis & Power Plant to 12.5kg. Still has capacity 4; this is the total mass that can be moved by any movement hardware attached to the Power Plant.)

Our wearer is going to be STR 20, because we want him to be able to have his own capacity of 4 Mass Units, which he'll need in order to carry all of this stuff. The Power Plant is backpack mounted; the flight hardware is… handwaved. Maybe built into the backpack as well. Definitely needs boots though…

We now have:

• Armor: 8 DEF. 25kg
  
• Power Plant: Capacity 4, 12.5kg. Powers flight hardware and any energy weapons.
  
• Flight: 2 hexes, 12.5kg. (We wanted more speed. 16 GS1 hexes, or 2 GS4 hexes, or 32 meters per Phase, with 2x Noncombat.)
  
• Whatever weapons our guy wants to carry.
  

Comms, sensors, and so on would be personal scale gear, which we'll draw from Danger International if we need to. Not counting any of this, and not counting weapons or other gear, he's up to 50kg. This is not a ridiculous amount for one combat oriented character to carry! Remember also that our guy himself is 100kg, or 1 Mass Unit, which means that while our guy might be able to carry another 3.5 Mass Units, his flight hardware and Power Plant will only allow another 2.5.

Pretty much everything in that post is something I've been curious about for years; I finally -- today -- decided to work it out. 😁