Robot Stories #2: Bots of a Feather

We here are Zephyr Workshop are hard at work preparing for our upcoming Kickstarter for A.E.G.I.S. While we’re currently doing constant playtests and balancing to make sure we’re releasing the coolest robots we can, we also want to take a chance to look back at some of our original robot designs and what we’ve learned fighting them both with ourselves and with the fans. In our first Robot Stories we covered Assault Class robots, so now let’s take a look at their blue counterparts…

Evasive Robots: Flight and Unite

In A.E.G.I.S we have 10 Evasive Class Robots. These days, Evasive robots contain a mix of mobility and and evasion, but early on in A.E.G.I.S these robots were referred to as aErial robots and contained only flying units. Flight and Jet are still almost exclusively E class abilities, in fact, the only robot with flight in the core set that isn’t an E is the I-Class IDA series of robots! Today we’re going to take a look at the wide range of jets, bombers, and drones that E type robots can offer.

The EXL-100 is a fearsome robot piloted by Etwal and it has all the traits one could hope for from the Commander of E-Class robots. Boasting Jet 3 gives him an effective movement of 9 right off the bat, making him one of the most mobile level one units in the game while his Magnificence ability ensures your victory… Even if he’s the only one left alive to tell of it. EXL-100 also possesses a powerful X energy melee attack, quickly shredding those that get in your way.

Etwal was the third Commander we developed, after Ainer and Ixa. His flavor as a magnificent warrior who is always the last man standing led right into designing his Commander Ability “Magnificence“, which may as well read just like that. Etwal gets +1 Energy Production, Movement and Integrity for each destroyed ally unit, meaning that he can top out as a very powerful 7/7/7 if he’s the last robot standing. In our original alpha, we played with several unique attack ideas, one of them being an X-cost Melee move, which was intuitive and powerful enough that we decided to make it Etwal’s signature move moving forward. It is currently the only Melee attack on an E-Class robot.

While EJET-100 might not be quite as fast as it’s Commander, this faction locked robot is still quite capable of zipping around the map. Boasting fairly standard integrity, and energy production for an E-Class robot, EJET-100’s greatest ability lies in it’s attack, with a radius of one, it’s more than capable of shredding through grouped up foes, while it’s Self-Destruct ability ensures it will take someone with it.

In a story sense, EJET is the protypical “Jet” robot that makes up most of the Empyre’s forces, and is the Make that served as the foundation for Etwal’s much more powerful EXL-series. The Jet mechanic was designed as the Empyreal Realm faction’s signature ability, and was something “very E” that played up E-Class’ high movement and made up for the Class’ normally high energy consumption. Jet has the downside of having to move the robot each turn or its destroyed, and in this case that can be used to your advantage because of EJET having  Self Destruct, dealing damage to robots around it upon its demise.

The first thing you might notice about the ENDR-600 is the giant 10 energy cost on it’s attack. As mentioned before in our article about robot names -600 robots are always pushing the limits of their Make, the ENDR-600 is no exception. Taking the mobility and machine guns of ENDR Robots, and amping the standard machine gun to 11… Or 10 in this case… While not always practical, dropping the large number of dice required for it’s attack is always entertaining and is sure to leave whatever you pointed it at in ruins.

Developing a game with so many playable characters is hard for a number of reasons. It’s important for each one to stand out in their own way, and to supply enough options for every kind of player. This robot is an example of us wanting to develop something that read very clearly and distinctly: 10 is a huge number in this game, and this robot is the only one in the game that has a move with such a high cost attack. Endr-600 is meant to be very “build around”, meaning it isn’t good for every team, but amazing on the right ones. It also appeals to players who want to roll a LOT of dice.

The ESHA-100 has a very simply mission in life, quickly fly up to a group of opponents and then explode violently. The ESHA-100 possesses all the tools it needs for this simple purpose, namely a high base speed and it’s first ability, the Tsetse Class Detonation. This is a mechanically unique ability within the core set, dealing X damage to both the ESHA-100 and anything around it.

ESHAs are another experiment in pushing what E-Class robots can do.  They’re defined by high-consumption, high-movement, expendability, and multiple-target attacks. This robot covers all of those things, being a highly-mobile flying bomb. Its Signal ability was an experiment is abilities that passively affected the space around the user all the time, but this one proved to be mostly pointless, so it and another ability, Ensnare are being shelved for further expansions.

ELL robots are known for their radial bombing attacks alongside fairly high speed. The ELL-100’s main attack, the Ellfire Dual Missiles, are able to do huge damage to large groups of enemies with its 2 Radius, but the max range of 3 hexes means that it has to be careful or it will catch itself in the blast. To round out this powerful bomber, the Ellfire Carpet Bomb is an indirect-fire attack that boasts a massive radius of 5 hexes, easily the highest radial attack of any rank one robot.

ELL was the second E-Class robot created after ENDR. It was top-down designed to be a bomber, and is the origin of E-Class’ usage of indirect and splash-damage attacks.

Combine and Conquer:

Our Combined robots for today are upgrades to Etwal’s fearsome EXL-100, the Level two EXL-1000 and Level three EXL-GAN. While some may prefer to leave Etwal uncombined to make full use of Magnificence, his combinations are just as powerful, each possessing the same Magnificence ability. Each rank of EXL also maintains the powerful melee attack of the EXL-100, allowing you to dump your energy to attack anyone foolish enough to get into close quarters.

EXL-1000 is the first of these combinations, and adds the traditionally A Class ability of Crit to Etwal’s already fearsome abilities. This form keeps all the things that make the EXL-100 powerful, including it’s Jet and Evade 1 and its combine ability Blitz allows it to get into position easily upon creation.

EXL-GAN diverges from it’s predecessors in several ways. Forfeiting Jet for a higher base move speed and Flight might lower your maximum mobility, but it no longer suffers the weakness to attacks with Stun that normally destroy units with Jet. The EXL-GAN also possesses a very different ranged attack, with a large max range, Armor Piercing, and flat damage as opposed to a barrage of bullets at close range. Finally, the EXL-GAN replaces the Evade ability with a self-defensive buff that it takes from it’s GAN component.

EXL-GAN is flavorfully and statistically the most powerful robot in the game: if its allies have been destroyed, its stats are 9/9/9. It was designed to be the showcase of Etwal as a proud and powerful warrior and mechanically live up to his role as the main antagonistic force in the release set. It was this role that also led us to have him be the only Commander with a Level 3 robot in the core set.

Visually, Etwal’s robots do an important thing: establishing the visual progression from a low-tier robot to a high-tier robot. EXL-100 is a plane, EXL-1000 is a plane with arms, and EXL-GAN is a fully humanoid knight, matching Etwal’s character. This progression from plane to robot was also inspired by the mechs in the anime series Macross.

With Flying Colors:

There you have it, E types are a pretty varied bunch and that’s just the flying ones! Join us in next week’s Robot Stories where we’ll cover some classic G types.

Do you have feedback on any specific cards? Make sure to drop us some comments at zephyrworkshop@gmail.com!

Fight and Unite!