If [a targeted mobile frame] is within hand to hand range of a station, its owner can choose to have it ignore one damage and instead abandon its position, moving the mobile frame 1 ruler unit further away from the station.<\/p>P. 123, Mobile frame zero 001: Rapid Attack<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
This rule is in place for a couple of reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, stations cannot be destroyed. If you could destroy stations, the game would become a race to destroy everyone else\u2019s stations because stations can\u2019t defend themselves. They\u2019d be soft targets, a way to cost your opponent points without attacking something that can shoot back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Therefore, we\u2019ve ruled them indestructible components \u2014\u00a0the only such component in the game other than the table. And being indestructible should make them pretty great cover, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stations represent something that you\u2019re fighting over, something you agree to want as a player and something your company needs within the fiction and metaphors of the game.<\/strong> It might be an ammo depot, it might be a group of civilians or an important politician or a communications station. You particularly<\/em> don\u2019t want these things to take hits. So hiding behind them as cover defies the intuition about how you defend something <\/strong>\u2014 something that we\u2019ve now had to make indestructible to make it so it\u2019s not a game about shooting civilians and racing to the bottom of the scoreboard. We want you to generally be standing in front<\/em> of them. You\u2019re defending them from other players, who want to take them (or take them back).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, according to the current rules, the frame draws fire away from the station<\/em> because, per the rules and fiction of the game no one wants to destroy that station<\/em>. That means that the frame taking hits can look at the number of incoming hits \u2014 most often 1-3 \u2014\u00a0and decide if it\u2019s worth it to concede the strategic objective for the sake of fighting another round. The player might judge that no other frame is close enough to seize it this round (maybe taking a gamble that the frame with a green d8 isn\u2019t going to roll the 8 that they need to seize it before they can return), and so steps away from the wild shot from across the table, reducing the hit\u2019s value. Good move. Or maybe it\u2019s the toward the end of the game, and holding onto the strategic objective outweighs the value of the frame being heavily damaged. Perhaps they\u2019re in hand-to-hand combat, and if they concede it, they\u2019ll lose it, and the game. Or perhaps the scoreboard will shift either way, and the player judges that they\u2019d rather have the frame to fight with next round against a new table leader. These are choices the players can make, and we make them all the time in the game. It\u2019s why the floor underneath an MF\u00d8 table is always covered in little bits of chewed off fingernails. This is what we come here to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the principles of the game\u2019s rules is that you win by boldly implementing the tactics represented on the table<\/strong> that help you achieve your strategic objectives. The information on the table is a reliable representation of the tactical situation.<\/strong> The tactical situation is most emphatically not<\/em> hidden anywhere outside of the haze of the future on the other side of die rolls. The information you need to make those decisions is not hidden on character sheets or compendious rules that you competitively memorize. The rules exist to help the tabletop accurately represent the situation <\/strong>so that you can make your own best choices internally, relying on your imagination, intuition, and tactics to tell you what to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hey, chabber! If you\u2019re into in Mobile Frame Zero and its development, support this hutching Patreon!<\/a><\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
So what does my intuition say when I see a lone frame guarding two valuable, vulnerable stations? My intuition says that, if I attack that guy, that guy has to abandon the stations or face the consequence of holding them. But here, in the current rules as written we have an edge case:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The frame can step away from Hand-to-Hand range of the station and into Hand-to-Hand range of another<\/em>. <\/strong>That is, by hanging out between two stations, the frame now always takes one less die of damage.<\/em> Intuition tells us that a goalie guarding two goals should have a harder time, not an easier time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be sure, even in the current rules, it\u2019s a risk. On a game-theoretical level, I\u2019ve always been cool with the strategy. Because that defending frame might be more durable, but when one of those stations is captured, whoever captured them will probably get both of them. It\u2019s a bit of an all-in strategy, and there\u2019s no reason to rule those out. The game is very comfortable with players who want to play chicken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, when I imagine teaching a new player, and they\u2019re making their decisions about what move to make, the situation is precisely opposite of what\u2019s expected. The one frame guarding two stations is particularly durable<\/em>, not particularly vulnerable<\/em>. And it\u2019s the result of the earlier design decision to make stations \u2014 which are unable to defend themselves \u2014 indestructible to model the behavior of the pilots and their interests against the interests of the players. So we have to follow through on the decision to make stations indestructible, completing the behavioral modeling that we\u2019re doing by saying \u201cYour pilot would never shoot at that\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Therefore, the rule in the 2nd edition (and, I recommend, going forward in your games) is the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If [a targeted mobile frame] is within hand to hand range of a station, the frame\u2019s owner can choose to have it ignore one damage and instead abandon its claim, moving the mobile frame 1 ruler unit away so it does not control a station. If it can\u2019t get away from a station by moving 1 unit, the frame takes the hit as usual, instead.<\/p>2e draft rule<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
That is, if you place a frame between two stations, now you\u2019re painting a target on your own back. Maybe it\u2019s worth it to have another frame out front! That\u2019s up to you! But that defender\u2019s job is now difficult and vulnerable to attack, just like a goalie that has just been informed that they have to cover two goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Modular systems are a function of industrial society. But do people of The Fifth World still know how to agree to standards? With their acute interest in efficiency, I think they might have carried that lesson forward!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There aren\u2019t a whole lot of shady exploits in Mobile Frame Zero, but this article is about one of them: the Station Dance. For the second edition of Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack, I\u2019ll be rewording the rule that the Station Dance rocks and rolls to and I\u2019ll explain why I\u2019m changing it according to … Continue reading “Mobile Frame Zero: Dance, Magic Dance”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":10440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-set-of-all-sets-that-do-not-include-themselves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10436"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10445,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10436\/revisions\/10445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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