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J: "Kasy? How come they're not attacking you?"
K: "You don't want to know. Let's find the reactor core and blow
this arena. And one thing Jimbo, if my mek starts to power down,
frag me. No questions.
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Bug Hunt
From the minds of people who spent tooooo much time watching Sigourny
Weaver movies:
A 10km by 10 km area of 50m x 50 m corridors, laid out in a labarynth
style with a few 200 x 200 rooms for good measure. No corridore
is more than 500m in length. Arena is ill lit, giving a -2 to
all rolls involving visibility, which means that VM's armed wth
spotlights are very popular here. Walls are all black metal covered
in tubing. Flight per sey is pretty much useless here, but hybrid
/ vehicle t-forms can sometimes be a good idea.
Games held in this arean come down to one of three basic types.
Endurance, Capture the flag, and last man standing. In endurance
games, each team is "on its own", so to speak. Even though multile
teams may be playign at the same time, each team is place in its
own arena. The point here is to garner as many points for killing
as many bugs as possible before all of your team is destroyed
/ captured. For these games only the death "penalty" points are
not applied, since death is inevitable. There is also a variation
on capture the flag based solely on this arena in which the flag
is guarded by the "bugs." The winner is determined by who takes
the least time to capture the flag while also taking the least
amount of damage.
The Bugs: Often your main enemy in this level, the bugs are taken straight
from the movie aliens, with one exception. These do not have acid
blood in them. The game designers wanted it, but play testing
revealed it to be to much of a ..ell..loodbath, to be blunt. One
room in the arena is always designated as the "hive", where the
queen resides. At the start of the game, there are 20 "bugs" who
start in the "hive, and them move outward randomly. These beasties
are telepathic, which is bad news for the players. Once they make
contact, well, things get ugly fast. Contact can be considered
being made when one of the "bugs" has line of sight on a players
Mek for a whole turn. If a bug sees a Mek, and lives till the
end of the turn, the whole hive knows where that person is. The
"Queen" will start hatching eggs equivalent to the number of VM's
that are known about per turn. All other bugs will start to move
twords that location as well. If more than one location is known,
bugs will move twords the closest VM. If by some quirk of fate
the players manage to blow up all the Bug's who can see them,
the bugs will move twords their last known location and then begin
to spread out randomly. As bugs are killed, the queen will hatch
more of them, equal to the number killed that turn. All "hatched"
bugs start at the hive and move normaly. It is possible to stop
these things, but the only way to do THAT is to kill the queen.
Once the queen is dead, no new bugs will be produced.
Bug Detection: The first few bugs will always engage in hidden movement, via
parallel passageways hidden in the floors / ceilings. This cuts
their MA by half, but really improves their stealth. The only
way to spot one of these bugs is when its moving. Mek sensors
include motion detectors with a range equal to their Sensor range
in hexes, Line of sight only. Roll vs a diff of 20 to detect them.
Once wholesale production of warriors begin, half of the bugs
will be "hiders" and half will move about normaly. Also, once
a bug has found a player, it will come out into the open and attack.
The only exception to this is if this is a VM the "hive" doesnt
know about yet, in which case a hidden Bug will lay doggo for
one turn to inform its mates as to where the Suck..err..Player
is before attacking. Undetected Hidden bugs who move to attack
a player who is NOT already in combat get a shot at surprise.
Special Attacks. If a Bug is in hand to hand combat with a VM and scores more
than 2 hits, the Pilot must make a mecha piloting (or mecha fighting,
whichever is greater) roll vs Diff 20. If this roll fails, the
bug has succeded in grabing the VM. The bug will then attempt
to carry the VM off. The player gets to roll each turn until he
is carried out of Line of sight of all team members. If the bug
succeedes, the player is considered captured and out of the game.
Once the player has been carried off, the cockpit just goes dead,
except for a message with ghastly green phosphorescent letters
on the screen "After suffering many things of which man was not
ment to know at the hands of the bugs, Death has mercifuly come
to set you free from your suffering." (Remember what happened
in the movies to those souls? Its not pretty. If the "death" penalty
applies in your game, asses the player for death and total distruction
of his VM)
(The full grown berserkers that don't show up on sensors would
be good for a hoot, too. They leave a pretty good crater when
you bag one. (Acidic self-destruct feature?)
Bugs are 1/1 scale 'Oids. Each 'Servo" is LW with M Str. Armor, superlight
sensors, a cold, supercharged PP, Xhvy servos. Arms and feet are
clawed. Bugs spit Acid, treat as an 8k incindiary projectile.
Each bug has enough acid for 20 shots, and can "recharge" at the
rate of 1 shot per turn. All relavant stats and skills are at
5. A bug dies only when head or torso kills reaches 0.
The Queen is Almost like other bugs. She is one tough lady, though. Treat
as MG Hvy servos and Armor, Relavant stats are 8, but skills are
at 5. All other things remain the same.
Power ups: There are only two powerups available in this arena, but there
are usually several of each scattered about.
Shield of Armanhammer: Gives player a 20sp alabative force field. The acid does not
cling to it, so the incidiary benifits of the acid attack is lost.
Holy Hand Grenade: A 3 shot special weapon. It has a 2 turn warm up time (during
which time the spiel from Monty Python and the Holy grail is piped
into everyone's cockpits). Once thrown, it will explode when it
hits something. Any bug in Line of sight of the grenade when it
detonates is utterly destroyed.
In both cases, one cannot aquire a second power up of the same
type until the first one has been expended.
Strategic notes: Find those powerups!!! you'll need them!! Get everyone one of
both if possible. Then find the queen. If you see a bug, Shoot
straight and shoot first. If he reports back to his mates, sooner
or later its game over. Try and stay in pairs if possible, that
way if one of you gets grabbed, there is a chance of saving them.
Using powerups. If your good enough, try to drop your HHG's in intersections.
This will clear out any bugs in those corridors waiting to attack
you. Try and keep one HHG for the "hive" room, if possible. It
gets messy otherwise.
Arena made by Star Ranger
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