Release Notes

7 November 2009

Converted the main mecha information into a format that can be printed off and used as actual mecha sheets.

29 October 2009

Finished converting the Colony War Core Handbook to the range system.

28 October 2009

Ranges are now abstract, using terms like adjacent and medium instead of specific numbers. These ranges can be expanded into specific values. The ranges are:

Adjacent
Close
Medium
Long
Extreme

"At-Will" traits are renamed to "Skill" traits. They both do the same thing anyway.
Changed the Angsty Military edition of the Player's Handbook into the Colony War Core Handbook, and partially converted it to the new range system. Quite a bit to go.

11 October 2009

After taking some time off and looking at the system from a higher level, I've decided to expand the documents in a way that should make it easier to create books in the future. I've added the Gunwave Rule System, a focused listing of the rules in an easy-to-reference format.

11 June 2009

More new stuff, thanks to playtesting.

Ranged attacks now target a square, not a mecha. Because...
Turns are now resolved simultaneously. Everyone decides on their actions, and move simultaneously. All attacks are then resolved.
Added a new pilot rank, which starts at 1. As you complete campaigns, your pilot rank increases. This becomes important in melee combat...
...because melee combat is now far more deadly. Melee weapons deal 5-10 dice of damage. However, the defender rolls a number of dice equal to their pilot rank; any success are subtracted from melee hits.

14 April 2009

A major update to the system. Gunwave moved from alpha to beta in this release.

Simplified attributes to three: Body, Brains, and Charisma.
You now put dice into skills, instead of automatically having a lot of them.
Created a handful of pregenerated characters.
Added archetypes, commonly-encountered character profiles that can be used to quickly create a character.
Personal combat is now resolved very differently. Instead of tracking health, you are hit and stunned. If you are stunned a number of times equal to your Body attribute, you're knocked unconscious.
The Player's Handbook is now specific to the Angsty Military setting. I'll have to create separate handbooks for each setting (using the same rules, but different mecha, archetypes, and universe).

6 November 2008

Added an optional rule letting you target a weapon (you take -2 to dice pools for every five squares distant).
Added an optional rule in which you gain 1 point in a skill after failing 10 skill checks in that skill.

6 September 2008 – 17 September 2008

Changed "dice stacks" to "dice pools." Frankly, I was mainly worried that White Wolf would sue me if I used the term "dice pool," but have since relealized it's a standard industry term. I still like the term "stack" better, but in the interests of quick understanding for players, I'll use "pool" instead.
Revised the unfamiliar mecha piloting rules to be less Draconian. You now take a penalty of 2 dice (minus your Mecha Intuition skill) during your first encounter piloting an unfamiliar mecha, and a penalty of 1 die (minus Mecha Intuition) for the second and third encounter only.
Noted in the skills section that skill points exist to tell you how trained you are in that skill. You only have to roll a skill check if it's not obvious whether you'd succeed based on your trained skill level.

23 August 2008 – 5 September 2008

Punched up Super Human powers to be more useful.
Punched up a bunch of racial encounter and daily powers.
Swapped the mecha sections of the Player's Handbook with the character creation sections, so you choose your mecha first. This just makes more sense to me. I also cleaned up the index, removing duplicate entries and such.
Added a "Lucky Shot" encounter power to the Converting Fighter. Trying to think of useful alternate modes for the Converting Fighter.
Replaced the Penetrator's "Slip Out of Danger" power with "Transmit Brain Frequency," which subtracts -2 dice from all Augmented and all Cyborg enemies for 2 turns.
Added 6 boats (water vessels), 3 general-purpose spacecraft (tugs, space yachts, Millenium Falcons), 2 Walkers, and 2 Armageddon Machines to the Vehicle Compenium.
Renamed the "Athletics" skill to "Tougness," which I think is more descriptive.
Added rules on what happens when you climb into a mecha you're not trained to pilot. Basically, you subtract a number of dice equal to 4 minus your Mecha Intuition skill from all your attack dice stacks on your next encounter, then 3 minus Mecha Intuition on your next encounter, then 2, then 1.
Added a section on "How to Play a Role," for new players.
Added an optional Steroid Boost rule, letting you use a syringe of steroids that gives you better die rolls for a few turns, then worse die rolls for a few turns. Also gives you 3 temporary Health.
Added a rule stating that your mothership can remotely cancel your self-destruct at any time, if so desired.
Increased every mecha's energy by 10 points, and fixed Converting Fighter to have a reasonable amount of energy.
Clarified Target Lock rules.
Added a section to the GM Guide about creating a villain, with suggestions for creating a powerful mecha.

14 August 2008 – 22 August 2008

I fixed the stats on all the mecha listings to correctly follow the new system (so nothing has 100 Energy any more). I also created a few Combiner units.
It now takes energy to move (1 point per square).
Added dual-wielding rules! It's a skill. You subtract a few dice from your dice stack on the second weapon attack. The more training in the skill, the fewer dice you subtract.
You now start with 5 points to spread among your attributes (instead of 7), and they each max out at 4.
Energy weapons now use up twice as much energy as they used to.
Using a power now consumes energy, equal to the damage dealt.
You can now have a Converting Fighter which transforms into a tank, using a Transforming Plasma Cannon Arm as its tank cannon.
The vibro knife now uses 5 energy.
Ammunition now does much more damage; 1 more die than before, and if you hit you deal an extra point of damage.
Added a new mecha type: Drone Swarm Commander, which has 6 drones that can be moved and fired independently of the mecha.
Added a Jamming Field Generator, which uses 3 energy per turn while engaged and reduces the effectiveness of attacks using missiles or against subsystems, and cancels target locks.
The machine gun now has a range of 3.
Powers have been beefed up, where appropriate.
Genetic Type is now Race.
The Sniper can now take one 3 or 4 as a hit when using a rifle, as long as the Sniper rolled at least one 5 or 6 in the attack. This instead of the extra 2 dice in the dice stack, which was over-increasing the number of dice in the stack.
Quad Shock Missiles now do 4 damage, every time (but you can only use them twice per encounter).
Scavengers and Heavy Missile Platforms can perform a repair operation as a minor action. More tweaks to the Heavy Missile Platform to make it more like a BattleMech; they're all equipped with Quad Shock Missiles, which can be used three times per encounter, for example.
Added a "Freewheeling Mercenaries" setting, which is basically Outlaw Star. Lots of stuff going on there.
Added a Vehicle Compendium, with descriptions of various pilotable vehicles (hovertankks, fighters, VTOLs, walkers, and regular tanks). Includes a description and a couple examples of each type.
Clarified Combiner rules: any damage is repaired when the combiner combines.
Added a handheld personal rocket launcher which does serious damage to mecha.

10 August 2008 – 13 August 2008

Complete rewrite of the attack dice system. Instead of using D&D's d20 attack roll, then dealing damage using different dice, I'm now using a modified World of Darkness system. You attack using a dice stack of six-sided dice, usually three to six of them (depending on your weapon and attributes). You do damage to your opponent equal to the number of dice that roll a 5 or 6. Now to playtest....
Added the Bio Armor mecha type (an Evangelion, basically).
I've marked several rules as "Optional" — multiple ballistic attacks, targeting subsystems, grabbing, Action Points, and Take 10. Note that we'll playtest with all optional rules.
Changes to skills: I've removed Communications Equipment (never used), Healing (also never used), Repair (also never used), and Intimidate (too close to Diplomacy). I added Martial Arts (strength-based) and Ship Schematics (intelligence-based). I changed Athletics to be strength-based.
All mecha except Bio Armors now have a "Ship Scan" attack power, which let them do massive damage against ships.
Ships now have half the Armor they used to have, and Strikers do more damage to them.
Added an Energy Backpack, an optional mecha item, which adds 20 Energy but cuts Speed in half.
A lot of attack powers didn't have explicit ranges, or were otherwise unclear on whether you could perform a regular attack in addition to using the power. This has been corrected.
The Energy Whip now does the same damage a pistol does, and drains 4 Energy per round into your mecha. Can sustain as an attack/heal action.
Added an optional Target Lock rule. You can spend one entire round getting a lock on an enemy mecha. You then get +2 on attack rolls against the mecha.
Removed the Striker's Jump Jets power, and expanded the description of it as an optional mecha addition.
Added an optional rule for difficult terrain, which subtracts from your Speed while moving through it.
There are now 3 mecha for the Hulking War Machines setting. I also expanded the description of the Mighty Warrior setting, so it's now about as detailed as it needs to be. In fact, all the settings are pretty solid now.
Fleshed out introduction to be more friendly to new tabletop RPG players.
Changed the Scavenger's At-Will powers. Scrapyard Dog's Reflexes has been replaced with Superior Repair Experience (sacrifice a repair operation so an ally can regain armor), and Scavenger's Senses has been renamed Scrapyard Dog's Senses. Scavengers also start with an extra repair operation.
The human's "Sacrifice For Another" power is now "No Rest for the Weary," which is more accurate.
Re-arranged the ordering of things in the Player's Handbook. Playtesters were getting confused about creating a mecha vs picking one from a list. So, I moved the list into the main Mecha Types section, and added a separate section for creationg a mecha from scratch. I also put each mecha type on its own set of facing pages.
Re-arranged the character and mecha sheets to work with the new dice stack system. Also, the back of each sheet is now devoted to powers.
Updated the mecha listed in the Settings document to use the new dice stack system.

7 August 2008 – 9 August 2008

Mecha Power has been renamed to Energy and now works completely differently. Each weapon consumes Energy for every turn it's active, and ranged energy weapons consume extra Energy when fired.
"Healing Surges" are now "Healing Rests".
Man-Machine Interface has been changed to Cyborg.
You can now "grab" enemy mecha (grappling), as an attack. A grabbed enemy cannot move or fire, but neither can you. You can attempt to drag a grabbed enemy up to half your speed. All allies gain +4 on attack rolls against a mecha you've grabbed, but you take 1d4 damage every time it's hit.
Most subsystems now take only 1 hit to disable.
Added the following subsystems:

Cockpit — Deals 1d6+4 personal damage per hit; after 3 hits, pilot is reduced to 0 Health
Thrusters — Target cannot fly or move in space
Hip Joint — Target cannot walk on the ground

Daily powers are now more powerful (where appropriate).
Standard rounds, heavy rounds, and tack grenades now do 1 extra point of damage.
Mecha can now carry only 20 rounds, and grenade launchers come with 4 grenades. Heavy Missile Platforms can carry 40 rounds.
When firing a ballistic weapon in space, if you miss, you can continue attacking with that bullet in a straight line, taking -2 to your attack roll for each 3 squares beyond your weapon's range.
When firing a ballistic weapon in gravity, and miss, you can also attack 1 other mecha up to 5 squares behind the enemy you miss, taking -3 to your attack roll.
Scavengers can now repair subsystems much more easily than other specialties.
The Squad Leader now has an Encounter power that lets him/her throw an adjacent, allied mecha.
Heavy Missile Platforms can now ask nearby allied ships to attack an enemy mecha.
There's now more variation in ranges of ranged weapons.
Snipers now gain +3 to the range of any rifle they use.
Changed the Striker's "Slip to the Side" power to an At-Will Power that lets it evade an attack, but uses up its next attack/heal action.
Striker has a new Daily power, Infamous Strike, that lets it attack everything in 4 squares.
Fighters are now weaker, less powerful, and have to keep moving.
Wanton self-destruction now carries penalties, as explained in the GM guide.
Specific enemy mecha have been created for both the Angsty Military and Epic Space Action settings. I've also expanded most of the settings. The Epic Space Action setting now contains the Vezar Invasion, the Hulking War Machine setting's High Houses are now described in some detail, and I've described the factions of the Powered Armor setting in more detail (including about 30 planet names).
Various minor tweaks and improvements to the character and mecha sheets.