Adding Frames and Licences

A frame is a manufacturer's argument about how to fight. Adding one well takes more than statistics.

The statistical shape

Frames sit in a narrow band, and the @Missing file is the centre of it: HP 10, armour 0, evasion 8, speed 4, sensors 10, e-defense 8, save target 10, SP 6, heat cap 6, repair cap 5, size 1.

A specialist frame trades. A defender buys armour and HP with speed and evasion; a striker buys speed and evasion with HP; an artillery frame buys sensors and SP with almost everything else. Armour never exceeds 4. Size 2 and 3 frames should be genuinely rare and should feel it.

Mounts define the build

Mounts constrain more than statistics do. A frame with one heavy mount and nothing else plays completely differently from one with three flexible mounts, at identical HP. Decide the mount layout before the numbers.

Traits and the core system

Two to three traits: always-on qualities that state the frame's thesis. They should be things a pilot notices every turn, not situational riders.

One core system, with a passive half that is always on and an active half costing 1 CORE POWER, used roughly once a mission. The active half should be a decision the player agonises over — if it is obviously always used on turn one, it is not doing its job.

Licences

Each frame belongs to a license file listing what each rank unlocks. Rank I is gear. Rank II is the frame itself. Rank III is the advanced gear. A pilot buys ranks in order.

The exception is @Missing file, which costs no ranks and is available to every pilot at every level, forever.

Manufacturer voice

The five manufacturers are distinguishable in prose before you reach the statistics, and new content should hold that:

• GMS — universal, unglamorous, unkillable. Reads like a service manual.
• IPS-N — heavy, close-quarters, built for boarding actions and hull breaches. Reads like a shipping company that solved piracy with violence.
• SSC — light, fast, expensive, artisan. Reads like couture.
• HORUS — paracausal, unexplained, faintly wrong. Reads like documentation trying to reassure you.
• HA — heaviest and most powerful, named after conquerors, entirely unembarrassed. Reads like a state.