Pioneers, Oh Pioneers
A "What If?" scenario? In my sci-fi??
I've been interested in Lancer since its first beta release back in 2019. I still have the 1.5 and 1.7 docs saved in my Lancer folder on the main computer. They're nifty little pieces of history, an amusing thought now that Lancer is around five years old.
I've only just gotten into the game and its systems. This thing is rad, and I appreciate the ethos at its heart of being a utopian vision that hasn't quite made its way to the end goal, yet. That's an interesting story to tell, and to subvert.
I've been playing tabletop games since wagons were crossing rivers and prairies to settle the west. I started back in the days of AD&D. Do you remember kits? I remember kits. I've made a lot of homebrew in that time.
This here Substack will be the online home for my Lancer HB. Welcome! Come in, come in. We're going to talk about some dumb ideas in this post, it's gonna be fun! Sit and enjoy some homebrew.
“I got a lot of good ideas. Trouble is, most of them suck.” -- George Carlin
I've been playing around with Lancer for a week or two now and I'm already brimming with themes I want to play with. I've found boundaries that I want to test. I'm a writer at heart and in soul, and tabletop games are a great way to express some of that.
Most and above all, I want to have fun. Gaming is meant to be play, an exercise in fun-having, learning, and expression. Pioneer Technologies is very much about fun.
I enjoy stupid ideas — when they’re intentionally stupid, and meant to be funny. That’s a large part of what animates my interest in Pioneer Technologies. I had a very dumb thought and things spiraled out from there. Here it is:
What if a company like Red Bull was a mech manufacturer?
I smile just thinking about it. That led to a couple of designs, which I worked out over a few hours while learning my way around Visual Studio Code a little bit and examining the internals of the .lcp files released on Massif Press’ itch.io page.
The end result, for the time being, is a new manufacturer, a new mech, a new weapon, and a new system. Enjoy!
Before we get to Pioneer, a word. These things that I produce are evolving documents. They will be done when I say they’re done, which might not be ever as I fiddle with things every so often. I’ll try to alert folks when a more material update drops, but you are encouraged to check in, I dunno, seasonally to look for new bits and bobs for your favorite HB files.
Pioneer Technologies is a speed and sport fan’s company staffed with sport and speed fans. Even the attorneys that write filings and represent Pioneer in galactic court are fans of must-go-fast. Pioneer is behind a lot of products and offerings in the wide sphere of entertainment, but nothing is as successful as the Union-wide video service CRaSHViD.
The company’s president, Lazlo Lafeyette II, is a former pro vid heavyweight wrestler that moved behind the camera to manage the Union Wrestling Association. His time in pro vid wrestling management helped him move into the c-suites, and from there he jockeyed his way up to the top.
In total, P-Tech owns 16 energy and sports drink brands, 370 varieties of snack food, 41 apparel companies (including MidknighT), two first-party gaming companies and several third-party ones, and many of the companies, products, and services orbiting around entertainment.
Pioneer moved into mech wrestling under Lazlo’s leadership. He’s also responsible for the push into mech manufacture that has dominated Pioneer’s internal R&D for more than two decades. Mech frame manufacture has been turning a profit for several years; a recent partnership with Galactic Mech Sports (owned by GMS) helped P-Tech’s mechs make a splash in the public consciousness, and the orders for personal units started pouring in.
Although Pioneer Technologies doesn’t make a habit of publicizing it, their production lines are used in military and security applications. The Steel Suns League consortium of trading planets has a contract with Pioneer subsidiary Anvil Production & Security to provide defense for their freighters — Pioneer mechs tend to be the lightest in their class.
In short, it has been a very good couple of decades to be a Pioneer.
So, what does Pioneer Technologies do, specifically? I’ve landed on two aspects that define Pio offerings. For one, Pioneer is a catch-all category for things that I make which don’t quite fit into other design categories. And, the other is fiddliness; I’d like for Pio mechs to be busy.
A prime example is the Pistolero that I’ve been working on for the past few days. It’s a squat, pistol-packing frame that runs on the ODG Revolver System, a set of revolvers tied into the mech’s heat solution. The hotter it gets, the more damage it can deal. While in the Danger Zone, it deals extra Burn damage based on its Heat. The Pistolero is designed around a specific play style: fire through your rounds, Stabilize to reload and dump your heat, then do it all over again.
These are the kinds of things that you’ll see under the P-Tech header. Mechs that have fiddly bits to keep track of. Big, damned weapons that are integral to how you play the mech (often literally). Things that are a joy to interact with in combat. That’s what I’m going for with Pioneer Technologies.