Major Changes 31/7/24

Putting this out a day early because I expect to be busy tomorrow. This is a big one folks. A significant number of new additions in the form of equipment, stances and actions, as well as a few new sections in the rules and a number of clarifications and small fixes. Most significant this update though are the changes to critical damage and to melee weapons. 

First up, crits! No longer will critical hits double the number of dice you roll. Instead, every weapon in the equipment list has its own critical damage statistic. For some weapons, it remains a simple double dice, but there's a lot more room to work with in there! Some weapons will have higher crit damage, scale better with crits (or worse!) and generally speaking this allows me and other game masters using this system a lot more wiggle room for interesting weapon design.

For melee weapons, I have finally decided to do away with "ignores shields". I don't think its very fun or conducive to a good game environment if there's a weapon type that ignores a major game system entirely. Instead, melee weapons will now do double damage to shields, so they are still a counter, but now actually engage with that part of the game. Melee is also now a counterpart to the new Incendiary damage type, which takes the way a few items used to work (like the incendiary grenade) and expands it to a full damage type used by explosives and fire, doing double damage to armour.

• Fixed ammo capacity on Kinetic weapons to only be used for Kinetic ammo
• Fixed missing information on Energy Turret I
• Reverted the numbers on critical hits to make more sense (1-6 > 1-5)
• Added a big title that says Killbots
• Added Charge Up (action)
• Added Track (stance)
• Added Watch for Weakness (stance)
• Added Charge Engines (stance)
• Added Bleed Defence I and II (hardware)
• Added Jump Systems (hardware)
• Added Self Immolation (hardware)
• Added DRCS (software)
• Added RDC (software)
• Added OCT (software)
• Added MLT (software)
• Added AWDS (software)
• Added Armour III heavy plating (defence)
• Added Heavy Energy Gun I (energy weapon)
• Added Ram I (special weapon)
• Added Ignitor I (special weapon)
• Added Grenade I oil (grenade)
• Added a Terrain Conditions section to the rules
• Added condition “ignited” for tiles
• Added Anti-Swarm Protocol (perk)
• Added a second type of Battery II (power)
• Added Kinetic Ammo III scrambler (ammunition)
• Added Shield III interference (defence)
• Added new damage type Incendiary with typical modifier double damage to armour
• Altered Bulwark Level 5 ability to include immunity to difficult terrain and clarify it does not apply to immobility
• Altered Grenade I incendiary to ignite oiled tiles
• Altered crafting rules to make it clearer upgrading is not limited to the equipment list
• Altered Battery II to be specialised
• Altered Missile Launcher I to no longer ignore shields
• Altered the Unarmed Attack Action to no longer ignore shields and instead have double effect vs shields
• Altered the wording on Oil Spray I to add condition “oiled” to tiles it targets
• Significantly altered critical damage. All weapons have unique critical damage. Bonus attacks from Laser and Energy Blade can’t crit
• Significantly altered melee weapons so they no longer ignore shields and instead do double damage to them. Additionally they no longer do half damage to armour
• Reworked Shield Charger restoration (1d10+X > Xd6) and buffed Shield Charger power (-10 > -5)
• Clarified the rules on Turret I
• Clarified the rules on cover re: flying units
• Modified a number of effects to use Incendiary damage, including
  • Missiles
  • Grenade I incendiary
• Tweaked the wording on the Weapon Weaknesses rules