Scientist Support path mostly done, just need the super weapons.
A multiclass Ship Captain/Super Pilot applies Super Robot upgrades to the battleship. Count only Super Pilot levels for determining which upgrades are available. The battleship automatically gains the "Transform" mecha property for free, allowing it to turn into a massive humanoid of the battleship's size as a swift action. In humanoid form, its natural armor is reduced by 2, its battleship flight speed is traded for the 30 mu base speed of a Super Robot, and it gains the two in-built melee weapons a base Super Robot would obtain. In this form, the Battleship can perform trips and grapples, but becomes vulnerable to them as well. If either the growth or miniaturization upgrades are taken, the character can choose for one of its transformed forms to have one of its previous sizes.
Size: huge by default. A captain may choose to start with a bigger battleship up to colossal size, but this won't grant any mechanical benefit besides [...]
Something that bugs me a bit with this is that a Ship Captain 1/Super Pilot 1 instantly gets a huge humanoid mecha at second level, which is normally only accessible at super pilot level 8. The humanoid mecha would be huge by default.
Ship Captain 1/Super Pilot 8 would be colossal. No sure giving such an early access to bigger mechas is a good idea. The ship being huge from the get go is sort of okay since its ship mecha weapons have their own damage progression anyway and none of them are melee.
Something that you seem to be missing is that a battleship has the Cubersome penalty that leaves you flat-footed against adjacent opponents and they also automatically threaten crits against it. And so does a multiclass Ship Captain/Super Robot. Yes, it can get bigger size faster, but remains highly vulnerable to high crit weapons when they get close and personal.
Machinery Warrior ;You Cannot Stop Me: At 3rd level 1/hour when the Machinery Warrior is mecha is dropped below half HP, he may use a Spirit he knows as a free action.
How does this work, exactly? It seems to be meant to allow the use of a spirit outside of turn, but a free action can only be done during one's own turn. The spirit seems meant to take effect after the damage is received rather than before, as well.
Added clause that it can use outside of turn. However the spirit's effect happening after the damage is resolved is intended.
No, I'll never forget Alpha Gaiden's "take me down in one shot or I'll Guts and Wall and Strike" bosses.
Machinery Weapons: At first level pick two weapons from the Mecha chosen for Machine Cells. The Machinery Warrior gains an enanchment bonus on attack and damage rolls with those two weapons equal to his Machinery Warrior level, up to +10.
Your games usually go with the rule that enhancement bonuses to weapons are accompanied by special weapon abilities of an equal enhancement bonus value, but I do not think it is meant to apply this time.
No, and that's why it isn't mentioned. Just raw numeric bonuses.
Absolute Barrier: Good nerfs. I read it again I can tell you right now that the chosen vulnerability will almost always be missiles. If only because there aren't all that many arsenal missile weapons and that most options are on real robots built-ins and I think all of them are ranged, unlike the beam weapons. Might as well make it vulnerable to both since missile weapons are so limited anyway.
Added a couple of missile options to every Arsenal tier. Deal a bit more base damage than even the volatile weapons, but low ammo, take high space, and none have the power or rending properties.
Later gonna add bio-missiles to the Einst Queen, already added bio-beams.
Also, were the arsenal options meant to have (melee?) anti-barriers? The function could also be added to another accessory, such as the +X insight to attacks accessories or as a radar option.
Ah, what the heck, just added a level I acessory for it. Yes, it'll work on even a fullpower Absolute Barrier, but it's still taking an Arsenal slot.
Photon Radar(V)
Its first two options still inflict penalties.
Fixed.
Lightwave Barrier (II)-Weapons without missile on their names or without deal only half [...]
Maybe the missing part is meant to be "Beam in their name". In which case it could be "All weapons except beam or missile weapons deal only half..."
Yes, beam is missing, no it cannot be a text that spawns discussinons about "machine guns are missile weapons! Swords too because they can be thrown! And spells! And breaths! Everything is a missile weapon, it's just a matter of perspective!"
Also, there is already Beam Coat at that arsenal level, in case you meant there to be only one barrier option per arsenal level.
That was the original plan, but since I already wrote Lightwaver barrier, meh.
Do you even sci-fi? Many people out there consider that getting a clone to carry your will is as good as immortality.
Cloning Gambit Expendable Clone
Aye, kind of in the same way people can think that doing an amazing deed will make them immortal by being remembered forever... which is pretty darn silly. Your name/deed/work may last for quite a while (all things come to an ultimate end in time anyway) but their own lives certainly do not last any longer. And when you're dead you no longer care. Usually this is mostly done in the way you leave a child behind to carry on your legacy, though with extra vanity as the child is exactly like you. Or more effectively by having their own mind transferred to the clone, getting rid of the clone's own sense of Self. Otherwise you indeed just die and someone else that is like you, but not you, goes on.
But it's not just a matter of the concept of immortality, but the legacy you leave. Most people out there clearly care a lot about how future generations will remember them, at least their own children. You claimed the zero state clones would readily turn against each other, but why not work together to overcome the current challenge and then see who draws the shortest straw or something more fair for deciding who gets to carry on their work?
This reminds me of a
movie that explores this kinda concept, where a stage magician uses a teslapunk machine to clone himself every night so the duplicate can be made to "disappear" on stage to awe the crowd. But he never knows who will be the expendale clone who dies and who will live to perform the next day, and still he keeps doing it all in the name of popularity and proving he's the superior stage magician to his main rival.
If people are willing to clone spam sacrifice for pure vanity, they're surely willing to do it for greater goals.
And then there are indeed plenty of fictional characters that consider it immortality. That you think they're being silly is secondary. They themselves do not, and for all pratical purposes Palpatine's clone is still as dangerous as the previous Palpatine.
Heck, Eclipse Phase appeared to be all the rage a few years ago and one of the central components was how players could be immortal by leaving behind "backup" memories to be transfered to fresh clones should something happen to the original.
Eve Online also uses it.
Since all clones aren't mind-linked in some way that does not apply, however. If you send a clone to adventure somewhere, the XP it gains are technically not shared with the one hidden at the base (I suppose since each clone have the same XP upon creation they can also leave a clone to spend XP on spells/item crafting, then be dismissed so that it doesn't affect the XP of the one to become the original. Might want to prevent that kind of stuff). Whatever it learns is not learned by the one hiding away unless they have a way to communicate. If the clone dies, the new original will know since his stats increase but would have to recover the copy's mecha's blackbox to check what happened. Assuming the wreck of the mecha copy does not disappear as well and so leave no blackbox, which is likely the case. Otherwise you can also dismiss their corpse/mecha wreckage, I suppose, unless destroyed/kill copies are instantly treated as dismissed. That isn't clear.
Good points. Added anti-exp spending clause, clarified dismissal in the case of death/destruction, clarified exp earning.
Sentient Support: The supporting still has the robot spend an immediate action to provide bonuses to the one currently piloting the robot... but he cannot spend actions while being piloted since it only gets actions while the pilot is out of it, which means that upgrade needs tricks to apply, such as piloting the robot while outside of like through Innovade.
Yeah, Supporting is more trouble than it's worth honestly, removed it.
Absolute Barrier: God nerfs. I read it again I can tell you right now that the chosen vulnerability will almost always be missiles. If only because there aren't all that many arsenal missile weapons and that most options are on real robots built-ins and I think all of them are ranged, unlike the beam weapons.
Yeah but for 1 Hard Point / Hyperdimensional Storage you can just pick up Beam Coat which isn't some kind of "wall". Then end outcome can be your defense arrays prevents 20% damage at the cost of energy but is weak against beams because only it prevents 50% damage for free.
Beam coat also costs energy, taking Hyperdimensional Storage means you're not taking Mysterious Power, and Absolute Barrier's anti-stacking does mention "and similar abilities". Which Beam Coat is pretty much the definition, particularly since it was the first stated up for this project. But since that wasn't enough for you to notice, added explicitly coat to the anti-stacking clause. The horror!
It also has a problem of being worse than a Wizard vs Sorcerer debate. At a few key levels, since you always generate energy at the start of your turn, you always ignore your opponent's barrier. In reverse, say the BBEG is one level higher, it becomes a nearly unwinnable fight as you have you deal with his reduction and he ignores yours unless you expressly use one of the many nova options I've talked about for glass cannon nuking because fights should be over in 1/10 someone's turn I guess.
BBEG's barrier being better than yours only happens at exactly levels 3, 7, 11 and 15, anywhere else an extra level won't buy you a superior Absolute Barrier. And energy-draining special weapons have existed forever for a reason, besides the new fresh Arsenal option. The unimagineable horror!
It's Free Action immunity is also is massively abusive. I'd call out Fireball but I'm sick of the totally fucking retarded bullshit comments that go with it, so pick any area effect that doesn't use an attack roll in any of his poorly written grotesquely more powerful than WotC's homebrew for example and use that instead. It's not an attack and so it doesn't cost energy and if it falls into one of the things it's basically ignored for free. It doesn't even scale with his Alien Alloy Upgrade. Spend one point for Resist 10 in one element that can never be changed vs the Barrier's "tertiary effect of another upgrade gives 100% protection with a free action to change to any element, and more, as you like."
Invisibility text disagress with you for what counts as an attack. So does Sanctuary since it specifically calls area attacks as bypassing it, which would be completely pointless if area effects didn't count as attacks. The horror unimabineable!
Zero State is getting better. Nope, still can't say that with a straight face but I tried. Zero State is punishing casters even more now but feel free to invent yet another broken Arsenal attack option. Like Linked Anti-Ship Swords for 3,925/rnd @lv12/30Str, it's so much damage you should just look into switching a bunch of them out to debuff the crap out of your opponent first using grenades & keywords like Pinning & Concussive. And Martial Adepts, err correction WotC's Martial Adepts are screwed in the rear but not Osl's Classes, Real/Super Pilots can still simply reenter their Stances and since they bypass Ready they can still use their Maneuvers when they don't use Circuit. Given Soul Melders and Binders are not limited in anyway either there is certainly some nich optimization in there for them too.
Essentia is a limited resource, and entering SRWd20 stances costs energy. You got me on Binders (why not truenamer spam since we're at it?), but you still have to explain how exactly you're pulling 1000+ energy for all the clones to swing. Heck even two clones stabbing with linked Anti-Ship Swords will cost 140 energy by themselves, which is doable but also already stretching the limit of what a level 12 super robot can do. Adding a third clone swinging will only work with Tek Reactor and drain all of your energy. Or it would, but you have no energy left for actually entering Brave Stance for linking the Anti-Ship Swords. Horror the!
