Mecha Ace: The Q&A Thread

Thank you for the answer :slight_smile: I’m curious, what was going through Hawkin’s mind when they decided to destroy the Lightbearer? I know they decided to destroy it due to their philosophy, but it seemed counterintuitive. Since the rebellion went kapputt afterwards and that goes against their philosophy of endless war. Then again, if we turned the Lightbearer on the Imperial Fleet, we go on to invade Earth. However, there had to been a better option than those two. What was going through Hawkin’s mind? It felt like they were ready to die going on that last mission, and wouldn’t that again be counterintuitive? You can’t get stronger when you’re dead.

Are any of these characters based on a historical figure? Or characters in general? Also, when writing, do you do the worldbuilding first then fill it with characters or the other way around? Has this changed over time? Thank you for everything!

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The way they saw it, while losing the wormhole would have been a major strategic loss for CoDEC, the rebellion would still be able to reconstitute its fleet and keep fighting, even if only as an insurgency. This meant that instead of being able to impose peace through the threat of total destruction (as the Empire would be able to do with Lightbearer), the Imperial Fleet would have to continue through the wormhole and keep fighting it out under more and more difficult circumstances (as they grow further from their bases of supply). As a result, it was possible that the Imperial offensive might lose momentum and a new equilibrium might form somewhere deeper in CoDEC space.

Hawkins wants to keep the war going, beyond all else, because as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Hawkins thinks like someone playing a game, and they want to find a way to see all the content, beat all the enemies, reach the level cap and unlock all the upgrades. To them, Lightbearer is a “shortcut” which will lead to one side or the other necessarily “blocking off” the rest of the “content” of the war, and to them, that’s an unacceptable loss.

There is one - if you can convince them of it.

I try to avoid one-to-one translations of historical figures to characters, but if there’s one thing I definitely based at least some of the naming schemes and plot points on, it’s the Peninsular War, which is why the initial CoDEC Combat Armatures are named after British army officers who served in that war, and the Imperial Fleet has a very Napoleonic French theme. Obviously, a lot of these references are skin-deep. There’s also bits of the American Revolutionary War, the Second World War, and other conflicts in there as well. The biggest influence, of course, remains Real Robot Anime, especially the Universal Century Mobile Suit Gundam continuity.

This actually depends.

Mecha Ace was intended as a one-off, and the media which inspires it often focuses more on individual personalities than grand scale “sociological” narrative. Yes, the world is still there, because these narratives usually demand there be a war on, and a war generally means at least two sides fighting for reasons they consider to be sound, but the focus of the narrative in this kind of setting remains on the people caught in that war, and the personal bonds they have with each other.

So while I did do a bit of worldbuilding to justify the premise in the first place (humanoid mecha are not practical without that sort of fictional scaffolding), most of it began with the characters. Funnily enough, my original pitch involved three separate PoVs (from the characters that would become Asadi, Watanabe, and the MC), as they experienced the war from the standpoint of a rookie pilot, a civilian, and an ace veteran respectively.

Naturally, that proved too impractical, so I focused on the one point of view which I thought was most interesting (partially because it’s the one this genre seems to cover the least).

When it comes to other work, I will shift focus from worldbuilding to characters as the genre requires. The Fledgling Realms (Kendrickstone and Hallowford) has a very “bottom-up” setting, where I set the plot and build the world to justify it. The Dragoon Saga (Sabres, Guns, and now Lords of Infinity) are very “top-down”: there’s a setting, things happen in it, and the characters choose how they respond.

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Those are somethings I haven’t thought about before. Good food for thought. I appreciate it

I’ve been wondering- do you have to successfully romance Hawkins to get her to join you for the Si Vis Pacem achievement? I tried doing a Presence run, and even with 5 presence she wouldn’t join me.

I think you do have to romance them, it’s the only way I remember them staying.

Turns out you DO have to romance her, otherwise it’s either the spare/kill options.

I actually had a question directly for you @Cataphrak , relating to the initial Manningham/Picton/Uxbridge you pilot: What happens to it when you take the Lionheart? Do you get to keep the old mecha after the war, as an obsolete souvenir?

To the previous Mecha we never know lol it’s something only the author knows far as i am aware for I have not seen any mention of it that I can recall.

Though I imagine it probably around as a back up or was given to a new pilot to use.

The first generation CoDEC combat armatures are already hopelessly outclassed by the time the story starts (which is why the rest of your lance flies second generation Grenzers and Reiters instead). Your MC’s been allowed to keep their first generation machine mostly because they’re a top-scoring ace and that gives them a lot of latitude in keeping a familiar armature.

After you switch to the Lionheart, it probably gets put into one of the Caliburn’s storage holds to be reserved as a museum piece or something after the war.

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I guess I had one more question. Ultimately the two “good” endings are forcing a ceasefire or destroying/threatening the fleet. In the later case, you end up commanding your own starship, with its own mecha and all. Would your mecha stats theoretically have anything to do with how you would perform as a captain?

For example, having 1 piloting would mean you are poor at moving your ship around quickly, while 5 perception would mean you either are great at long range bombardments or can catch details in opposing fleets more quickly (maybe both). Willpower might have to do with ship morale in combat, but so could presence. Just wanted to know your thoughts on it.

That’s more a epilogue kinda thing at that point the stats don’t really matter at least that’s how I view it.

Starship command is a whole different set of skills from piloting. If I were to write a story based on that, I’d have to move to a whole new stats system.

Unfortunately, both of the forces in the Mecha Ace universe employ a doctrine where the wing commander answers to the carrier captain, rather than the Principality of Zeon doctrine (where the captain is subordinate to the MS commander). Otherwise you could have it both ways.

These questions are a bit visual, but hey, I didn’t see much about them anywhere.

  1. How does Hawkins’ mask look if it’s fashioned like a knight’s visor? Is it a salet that fully covers their head in lieu of Char Aznable’s helmet or just an upper half of basinet? Does it go fully over their head and if it is fully blue, and if so, what hue of blue? I always imagined it ice blue or cerulean, a blue mixed with whites and silvers. Is it fashioned out of metal or light and durable plastic? Does it more resemble something that Char has worn or is it more similar to Zechs Merquise’s helmet?

  2. What mecha designs in other media did you (damn, this language does not have polite form of you) use as an inspiration for mechas? What would resemble, say, Hawkins’ Roland or Commanding Officer’s customized CODEC armature in terms of design in other medias? I assume the armature on the game’s boxart is Lionheart and the style kind of reminds me of Macross’ mechas, but it’s best to be sure.

  3. How do you see the future of Damocles Initiative? Is it a temporary solution that can easily start breaking down if two sides start believing forced peace no longer suits them, is it a single step to society without wars that requires more work and effort than a sacrifice at Lightbearer, is it a sign humanity will always strive for peace?

  4. If you were to pick a Char Clone that looks the most alike to the male version of Hawkins, who would he be? And the for female version, I suppose, just female Gundam characters, there is only one female Char Clone as of now. I always imagined a male version looking like Rau le Creuset from Gundam Seed and female one looking like Irma Beltorichka.

  5. What are the chances that CODEC will fall into the same pitfalls Empire did? How would they act after victory, when there is peacetime that brings different kind of challenges? Would former war pilots assume the roles Imperial armatures did? What of remnants of Imperial military and intelligence forces?

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It is very much more like Char’s mask than Zechs helmet-mask-thing. The main difference is that it’s articulated, so that Hawkins can slide the visor down ans necessary.

Honestly, I took a whole lot of inspiration from a whole lot of places, and a lot of it got jumbled because, honestly, I’m not a very good artist.

My general intention was to create a real robot setting, and I worked with the grunt Mobile Suits (the GM, Zaku, Jegan) as a starting point, but then deviated from that based on the institutional culture of the fighting forces involved. For example, Imperial Valliers are considerably more ornate, with curved armour pieces and filigreed cooling fins that make it resemble more of a science-fantasy style mecha (think Mortar Headds from Five Star Stories). Likewise, CoDEC Armatures, especially the first generation, are far blockier and more haphazard. I have an ink sketch of the CA-70 Picton somewhere with its exposed torso cage and blocks of ERA around the cockpit, and one of my friends dubbed it the “Space-Killdozer”. Battletech was a big visual inspiration there.

My main inspiration for the Damocles Initiative comes from the more idealistic end of real robot series endings, where the protagonists find some common ground with those of their antagonists still alive and try to build a better future.

Of course, in this case, the “better future” is still one enforced by a loaded gun, just as say, Londo Bell or the Republic of the Sphere (or even, if you squint very hard, the Titans) are still heavily armed security apparatuses which try to enforce that new status-quo through superior firepower. Of course, neither of those examples end up working out permanently in the end. Eventually, they fall to the same institutional corruption, decay, and infighting - or become an oppressive force in their own right.

Honestly, those are fine guesses. I generally try not to be too precise with these sorts of things so players can have some leeway to determine what they want the characters to look like - especially when it comes to ones they want to romance.

Honestly? The signs are already there.

The story doesn’t go into a lot of detail regarding how CoDEC is actually run, or who holds power, but there are enough hints to indicate that it’s more an alliance of convenience by individual colonial governments held together by an ad-hoc military-industrial elite than nothing else. The way (for example) Watanabe’s parents and the rest of the Vedrian Planetary Assembly flee the planet rather than stay behind kind of hints at the likelihood that they’re less in it for a common cause than to defend their own interests. Likewise, the way that WDI and Dr. Chatham are able to direct CoDEC military resources in pursuit of their pet projects hints that they have a lot more power over the Defence Committee (the effective executive body of the entire rebellion) than they really should.

And there’s CoDEC’s original reason for rebellion in the first place, which ties less into any kind of explicit repression or stripping of civil rights, and more over the Empire’s implementation of policies intended to keep the frontier from becoming politically or economically ascendant over the core.

Which is all to say that CoDEC might not become the precise sort of regime the Empire is, but it is already on the trajectory to becoming a different kind of oppressive regime.

One of my key inspirations for CoDEC were the rebels in the American War of Independence, and as I’ve probably mentioned before, I tend to have a rather jaded view when it comes to what the merchant princes of New England, the slave-merchants of Maryland, and the planter-aristocrats of Virginia were really fighting the British Crown over - and whatever you can say about the country that resulted from that rebellion, it certainly cannot be said that there are not millions of people which have suffered under it through the two and a half centuries which followed.

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Good day, here I come back again. Annual replays have left me several questions I would love to see answers to.

  1. Generally speaking, CODEC doesn’t seem to have an issue with romance in its ranks. Commanding Officer is free to engage in romance with their subordinate or people from a different chain of command. Was it done for Doylist or Watsonian reasons? If Watsonian, then how would CODEC treat romantic engagements between its forces?

  2. Imperial aristocracy usually trains its heirs from a fairly young age to take up arms in mecha combat. How would they condition their children to combat stress and get them used to warfare?

  3. Generally speaking, are there any differences in ways CODEC and Imperial officers approach romance? Is marriage and romance more of a tool for gaining political power and standing or a way to unite hearts that feel inclined towards it?

  4. How do all four of potential romantic interests for Commanding Officer perceive love and romance? Which of them would be interested in potential marriage?

  5. How far has the medicine advanced? What level of injuries is considered untreatable in comparison to our modern world?

Both.

The Doylist rationale is of course that you’re on a warship, and not being able to romance the other military personnel makes for very limited choices. The Watsonian explanation is that CoDEC’s military isn’t really a formal military yet. It’s got some of the trappings of one, but things like codes of discipline vary from battlegroup to battlegroup, and probably won’t be properly regularised until after the war ends.

Combat sports (especially martial arts), sparring, and a generally militarised education system which teaches them things like the basics of Armature Piloting from a relatively young age.

The Imperial Military is actually an interesting paradox: romance within the ranks is forbidden, but since the Empire prides itself on having a warrior-aristocracy, and aristocrats do what aristocrats do and marry each other to strengthen their respective houses, marriage isn’t. Which means there’s sort of a grey area where “acceptable” pairings (arranged matches between two noble families) are allowed, but “unacceptable ones” (ex: two enlisted soldiers hook up) aren’t and will be punished.

For all of them, the war will come first. Once that’s over, a more permanent relationship’s on the table for most of the ROs (Weaver especially). Watanabe’s the exception here. They’ll be older once the war ends, but they’ll still be at most in the early 20s, they’re still trying to figure things out, and they’re smart enough not to walk into something they’re not ready for.

Not very far. The Doylist explanation for that is the fact that I’m drawing on source material where technology and material culture very rarely advance beyond the creation date of the media itself (nobody in the UC 0070s has airpods, after all).

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Theoretically speaking, would Hawkins’ union with Commanding Officer be considered acceptable or not if they were on the same side? I don’t think that current relationship would be particularly accepted, given treason and defection to the other side.

If Hawkins started off as a CoDEC pilot, it would have probably been accepted, just for the sake of keeping two very high-scoring aces happy.

In the Imperial military, it would depend on whether the MC-equivalent was nobility or not, and whether their families had signed off on a match.

As it is, remember that most of CoDEC’s best forces are made up of imperial defectors. It’s not like they can afford to be choosy.

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How rare are the cases like MC, then? An ace that was able to be created within CODEC?

Both you and the other potential highest-scoring CoDEC pilot (Lancelot Jiang) are both “ground-up” CoDEC pilots, but something like three quarters of the lower-scoring aces are Imperial defectors.

The main thing though, is the fact that a lot of Imperial warships defected, along with most of their crews, including ambitious mid-rank officers like Artemisia Baelyn - which has given CoDEC a core of experienced naval commanders and combat-trained crews they wouldn’t have otherwise had.

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