Alternate Man-powered Mech crews.

Medieval fantasy mechs powered by steam, magic, or the labor of a thousand slaves.

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Raptor
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Alternate Man-powered Mech crews.

Post by Raptor »

I'm doing some alternate designs for creatures other than your average humanoid, so I'm doing a system to figure equivalent power crews for other creatures. I'm using the carrying capacities as the most straight forward measure of work in the books. A medium humanoid with an average Str (10.5) has a max. heavy load 107.5 lbs. I simply divide the new creatures max. heavy load by 107.5 to determine the number of normal crew it can replace. A mech designed for a non-humanoid or non-medium is still the normal cost, but a conversion after design should be base cost modified by the Cost modifiers from the unusual armor chart.
Raptor
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An Example

Post by Raptor »

just to stimulate some thought (and hopefully response), a Permanenced Huge animated object, shaped as a quadraped, has a max. heavy load of 2400 lbs., which would allow it to replace 22 standard labor crewmembers, while only taking up 4 PU. Also as a construct, it never gets tired.
walrusjester
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Post by walrusjester »

I gave this one a lot of thought when we were doing the Mech Manual and Steam Warriors. If you use constructs (or undead or elementals or...), you can get more work-hours from less PU. This works very well for mechs that have minimal crew needs, like animated ones or necromechs. However, constructs and etc. aren't noted for their quick thinking. On a steam-driven mech, things will go wrong. Constantly. Even at the best of times, your (often experimental) steamtech will blow out, break down, or just fail to work. Add in the problems associated with combat, and you need a lot of your crew just to do troubleshooting and emergency engineering. It's like being on the bridge of a Star Trek spaceship with all its exploding consoles, except that you also have scalding clouds of steam.

Which is not to say you can't do it - just that it's not necessarily going to be worth the trade for a steam-driven or clockwork-driven mech. I've thought about using draft animals on a man-powered mech, but I can't recall if we worked out rules for that or not. It's an idea worth considering, at least. And if it did work, constructs (aside from the massive expense and trouble to create them) would be more pleasant company than a bunch of donkeys.
DragonMech line developer, freelance writer, tall guy named Matt.
Raptor
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Posts: 278
Joined: Sun Apr 17, 2005 4:48 pm
Location: Wichita, KS

Post by Raptor »

Well, I was thinking specifically of man-powered mech crews, ie the "rowers" who don't really need to make any decisions, which is why I based my replacement stats on weight loads.
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