u/TheAgingHipster

I recently posted here asking for advice on how to include mechs as Extras in my new game where the players are not pilots or soldiers, but techs and engineers. They won't be fighting (it's more M*A*S*H than Band of Brothers is how I keep describing it), but I do want their repairs and efforts in the bay to have meaning for battles and the war. Someone asked me how I was going to handle it, and I was like... I don't know actually.

Well, now I do. Here's a link to a PDF I drew up in LaTeX outlining what I call the sortie subsystem. It's intended to give the PCs opportunities to influence and ultimately determine the outcomes of battles, narrate them in small vignettes, and allocate any rewards or consequences that may result from the battle, without any of the tactical aspects of common mech games. I specifically intend for it to be used in my game, but I tried to design it so that it can be dropped without any changes into any game where the PCs are support staff, analysts, etc. who aren't expected to be fighting most of the time (or ever!).

I would really, really appreciate any feedback people want to give me about this. I'm open to changes if it can be improved.

And for the record: No, this was not done with AI. I just prefer writing in LaTeX, and I've been using em- and en-dashes for 25+ years. I'll be damned if I'm going to stop now.

EDIT: I should clarify that, per my response below (https://www.reddit.com/r/FATErpg/comments/1vj3ho3/comment/p2jxfd0/), the system is meant to give me a mechanical means of letting the players have a stronger hand in talking about what happens in the battles they support. I can always just scrap the system completely and go full GM fiat, or just make it a conversation with no mechanics whatsoever, and I'm willing to do those things if there is truly nothing salvageable here. But, I'd really love constructive feedback on how the system could be improved, what feels weird about it, etc., because I feel like "routine maintenance" and "post-battle repairs" feel very different from "you're prepping a Lance for combat", and I want the players to be able to see and dictate precisely *how* their rolls and scenes shaped the outcome.

Thanks in advance. :)

REVISIONS BEING CONSIDERED: I'll track a few things here that I'm taking away from any comments.

- Per u/Salt_Assistance_43, the Operation Scale stuff may need to be heavily tweaked or eliminated completely. I was thinking about the "economy of bonuses" that Core implies with invokes, and the OpScale could be considered like a free invoke for the GM unless the players spend their own invokes to counter it. But I see the spirit of their comment that it feels a bit too... I dunno... un-Fate-ish? Might be better to just say "The greater the scale of the operation, the more Aspects/Boosts the GM should create for the enemy." Something like that...?

I’m putting together a Fate Core game for my table where the PCs are mech technicians instead of pilots, appropriately titled Mech Tech. It’s meant to evoke Patlabor meets MASH meets The Bear, with Titanfall-sized mechs that have BattleTech-esque roles and designs. A blurb for the game:

The pilots get medals. The brass gets briefings. The contractors get paid. But when the mechs come back bleeding coolant, twitching through bad neural handshakes, and carrying pilots who swear the machines are screaming inside their bones, it’s the engineers who have to make the impossible work before the next sortie. This is a game about battlefield repairs, command politics, pilot trust, unsafe improvisation, and professionals who joke because the alternative is admitting how scared they are. The mechs are huge. The stakes are human. The maintenance log is a crime scene. Welcome to Bay Three.

It’s unlikely that the PCs will ever have to pilot a mech, but nothing is impossible, so I am thinking about how to handle mechs as Extras. I like the idea that the mechs will have Aspects and Skills or Stunts of their own, but these have to be tied to the idea of repair and improvisation. The PCs will likely be repairing these on the fly, which could conceivable modify the Aspects and Stunts both via inoperable systems (“The knee joint is still down so the Mighty Leap! Stunt is unavailable.”), partial fixes (“The targeting computer software hotfix was only partially successful, so that Target Acquired! Aspect is replaced by Shoot From the Hip Actuator to reflect that you are limited to shorter range target acquisition.”), and improvised repairs (“You rerouted the engine coolant through the cockpit HVAC system to keep the mech running? Okay, let’s add the Easy Bake War Machine Aspect to reflect that the pilot’s going to be uncomfortably, maybe even dangerously, hot, but the other mech Aspects and Stunts are untouched.”)

Otherwise, I want to treat them like a one or two Scale increase over humans to reflect their battlefield presence and capabilities, and am considering giving them 2-3 Aspects, their own Skills, and 2-4 Stunts.

What should I be thinking about here? What pitfalls could I fall into, and what may I be missing?

As this is my first Fate Core game, any and all help is appreciated!!