Post by Olive in Roughly when are pilot actions and Cascades going to be a thing?

Viewing post in Roughly when are pilot actions and Cascades going to be a thing?

Cascades are on the todo list (no time estimation; they’ve been low priority since they’re both somewhat niche and potentially a lot of work). Shutdown/boot up will be a lot more relevant once we have cascades so I expect we’ll add them together.

We made the call pretty early on to not include the mechanics for pilots. On the RP side, they’re too open ended and narrative for a direct computer adaptation. On the battle side, they present a few key problems:

are honestly pretty half-baked and while can result in cool moments (we once had a pilot sacrifice themselves by jockeying the boss Ace over a pit and doing an Ahab thing) require a lot of mechanical fiddling for a niche payoff that relies a lot on human storytelling that cpus can’t do.
they allow for any character to for-real die in any combat (rather than ejecting safely), which makes building narratives a lot more tricky. Castigate presents a similar problem but I think we’ll solve that by having named characters say “no” if you try to put them in a spicy manticore.

ThouArtSamSki34 days ago

Really enjoying the game so far, amazing job with everything from the music to the art. Everything below is from the context of someone who hasn't actually engaged with Lancer outside of reading the rules a few times, so take it with a huge grain of salt :3
While the Pilot mechanics are 100% lacking, I do think it could be really unique and worth including down the line if It were to be implemented, it definitely shouldn't be encouraged. Narratively I could see letting your Lancer, or a named NPC, outright die lead to a 'game over' or mission failure.

Having pilot mechanics definitely shouldn't be top of the priority list, as I think the attention is best served elsewhere, but down the line I could see them opening up a whole host of cool scenarios for either official of community missions. Even as a DLC if you're into those.

Like I said earlier, I don't know how these mechanics play out in actual gameplay most of the time, but I really like the idea of:
- You need to exit your mech to complete an objective, a la hacking or disabling something while your mech fights with your team outside
- You need to escape a building to get back to your mech in a facility crawling with 1/2 mechs
- Last ditch effort to escape from your mech while it self destructs in the last round of a capture mission

My favourite mech game by far is Titanfall 2, just because I love the dynamic between the Pilot and the Titan, I feel like that would add so much potential, especially with the option to customise your mech's dossier as your can with the Lancer.

Either way, keep up the phenomenal work, I look forward to see what you come up with. :3

Olive6 days ago(+2)

Hi! I think it’s very unlikely we’ll ever fully include pilot mechanics in the combat layer in LT. I know the Titanfall fantasy is strong, but Lancer as-written does not support it well (ie running it RAW with a computerized OPFOR would not be a good experience) & running it at the table requires a lot of human judgement calls and flexibility from the GM, which is why we decided to not take a swing at it.

As seen in the tutorial, there’s basic support for scripted interactions with pilots which map/mod makers can utilize on a case-by-case basis, but that’s the creator taking the player experience into their own hands.

ThouArtSamSki6 days ago

Oki, I thought that would be the response and it makes a lot of sense, better to prioritise what you know will work. I still just wanted to drop my sentiment in regardless. I trust whatever you choose to do to be in the best interest of the game and how it will eventually shape up, best of luck :)

itch.io

Viewing post in Roughly when are pilot actions and Cascades going to be a thing?