Mekton Zeta mech building help

so me and my friends have been using Mecha system for our gundam game. issue of it is, when u get to a certain point you have to end the game or things get stupid and personal combat is a little bit of a joke. so we went looking for a new system and we found mekton Zeta. most did character creation and we are held up at mecha creation. im currently trying to understand it know to help the gm and the other players.

so i know the first step is pick the Form beast, human, vehicle, etc. thats not the hard part.

currently im stuck at Servos. how many Servos can a mech have? like if you wanted 2 torsos, 6 arms, 4 legs, and 2 heads, 3 tails, 6 wings? ((this is a extreme custom example like drastic but it accoplishes most of the servos in the book)). could you do that? what limits # of servos? is it the torso space?

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Originally Posted by lord4571

currently im stuck at Servos. how many Servos can a mech have? like if you wanted 2 torsos, 6 arms, 4 legs, and 2 heads, 3 tails, 6 wings? ((this is a extreme custom example like drastic but it accoplishes most of the servos in the book)). could you do that? what limits # of servos? is it the torso space?

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Mekton Zeta Plus Technical Manual, page 19:

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All mecha have a torso, if nothing else. This is the component to which all other servos are attached - the normal limit is 12 servomodules, and no servo may be more than one classification level above the torso.

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The book doesn't explicitly say, but the intent is that you have one and only one torso and as many as you want of the others, up to the 12 total limit. As an obvious example, Mecha-King Ghidorah would have one torso, three heads, two wings, two legs, and two tails.

ok thank you. im probably going to keep posting here as i try to create my own mech. i did see the limit of 12 just wasnt sure exactly what it was referring to. especial being in a different book. i do understand the 2 goes together just wished it was a bit more organized then it is. though its not the worst organization.

When buying wings do u have to buy 2 wings? or is buying 1 a set?
also reading about wings. i thought servos cant be more then 1 level lower then the torso. so why does wings say they can be 2 levels lower or more.

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Originally Posted by lord4571

When buying wings do u have to buy 2 wings? or is buying 1 a set?
also reading about wings. i thought servos cant be more then 1 level lower then the torso. so why does wings say they can be 2 levels lower or more.

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Wings are bought separately. You could have an odd number of wings, but you get bonuses for having a pair of wings within 2 size classes of your torso.

Servos generally can be as tiny as you want, but Leg servos have some restrictions (p.20) and you don't get the +2 MA bonus if your Wing servos are too small.

I'm going to inject an opinion here, as a former mecha RPG player. The Mekton Technical system (across multiple editions) is a complex mess. It's RPG Sudoku; you'll spend a lot of time doing a lot of math for very little benefit. The system used in Heavy Gear/Jovian Chronicles, where you just pick your mech's final stats and plug those into a formula that tells you how expensive the mech is, shortcuts a lot of the tedium. On the other hand, the attendant combat system is simpler, so YMMV.

A question about building mechas. I noticed there were different forms available and it affected their land MA. If you use thrusters of greater value then your land MA, what advantages would these other forms have?

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Originally Posted by Sponicus

A question about building mechas. I noticed there were different forms available and it affected their land MA. If you use thrusters of greater value then your land MA, what advantages would these other forms have?

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It depends on what the Flight MA represent. In the full MTS, you have to choose Ground Effect, Hydrojets, Thrusters or Gravitics, each of which has their own quirks and limitations. The obvious one for thrusters is they require fuel, but that assumes your setting tracks that or cares. It's basically fluff considerations.

I will caution you not to expect the MTS to give you combat-balanced or cost-effective designs; it doesn't. It's intended to give you gameable stats for the props in a roleplaying game, not act as a unit constructor for a wargame.

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Originally Posted by daniel_ream

I will caution you not to expect the MTS to give you combat-balanced or cost-effective designs; it doesn't.

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your talking about the example mechs correct? cuz i was about to ask about (PG. 71, Mekton ZETA) mekton beast: KRAKEN and whats the purpose of the legs if 7 space in each is being unused? it seems there could be a lot more added to this mech (unless its a cost restiction, which im not currently worrying about in my example build until the end.)

also hey sponcius didnt know gm gave u the link to this lol (he is one of the players, same as me)

also why is its kick dmg (4+2= 6k)? is it just trying to total up the number of legs/feet in a weird way?

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Originally Posted by lord4571

your talking about the example mechs correct? cuz i was about to ask about (PG. 71, Mekton ZETA) mekton beast: KRAKEN and whats the purpose of the legs if 7 space in each is being unused?

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They look cool.

Seriously, it's not a balanced system. Nothing about the mecha genre is realistic.

If you're looking to do a Gundam campaign specifically, you might want to look at Jovian Chronicles. It's explicitly Gundam with the serial numbers filed off, and you get tons of prefab mech designs so you don't have to wrestle with the construction system.

What Gundam timeline does the campaign take place in? your design will vary based on setting. Also I can confirm that Jovian Chronicles is awesome, I'm running a campaign right now and the vehicle creation system is quite streamlined and robust.

Goof morning,

I m a french player of Mekton Z, and currently in Italia without my book, and needing to create a Mecha, i m here for a little help with the mecha walking speed.
If i remember well, it depends only on the weight, but i need a resume of the walking speed table.

Thanks in advance for your help.