#MFZ

[jp-nichts]

The Takahe

Curious about the mech on the cover of Reactors & Romance?

The frame is called the Takahe. It's named after a flightless bird from New Zealand of the same name. Even though the mech's "tail feathers" are massive jump jets meant to get this thing soaring!

Lore wise, its a frame designed for mobility and exploration of both terrestrial and space environments. The cockpit is located in the chest, and has an expanded compartment to provide barebones living quarters for extended away missions. Since the pilot isn't located in the head, it's head packed with various sensors and long ranged coms. Perfect for surveying and keeping in contact with distant teammates. It might not have the versatility of arms to pick-up different weapons on the fly, but it's head mounted weapons have exceptional accuracy due to the dampeners in it's neck. These dampeners do have the unintended side effect of making the head bob like a pigeon or chicken when the frame is running pigeon

Like most of my mech designs this one originally started off as a Lego build of mine for the game Mobile Frame Zero. A table top wargame that uses Lego mechs as minis. It's a lot of fun by the way. You should check it out HERE (I think I still have some of my bird mechs featured on their website)

My Lego Takahe build is actually a larger version of my Kiwi mech. Which is very similar in design to the Takahe, just smaller and cuter. I love these little guys and have made so many of them over the years.

Like... sooooo many! I have a whole Pride collection of them with each one colored as a different pride flag.

Here is the first painting I did of the Takahe, which also inspired the color pallet for Reactors & Romance.

I also did some pixel art of the mech too. I was hoping to use for a Lancer game, but that didn't happened. I did get to include it as part of my NPC roster for a game of Celestial Bodies that I ran! The players did a great job completely obliterating my children 😂

[thehydromancer]

Building a collection of Lego ranged weapons for playing Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack; most would work for minifigures too. Tried to create a simplified but robust list of options using common/cheap bricks that new comers could copy/iterate on. In theory you could outfit any mobile frame squad/company with all the weapons shown and fill any combination of direct/indirect/SSRs/split weapons (including melee if you use an underslung chainsaw a la Gears of War lancer or the 'fusion edge'-definitely-not-a-lightsaber). Boomers and shortys are pretty straightforward. Mechanically there's no difference between the Colsten and Maxters, both filling the direct range variations. Flavor wise Colstens tend to be single shot or 3 round burst with smaller magazines and little in the way to inherently manage heat (save the finned version), while the Maxters tend to be burst or full auto with drum magazines and water cooled barrels (making them more ideal for vacuum combat). Originally the Maxter was going to be a gatling gun, might double back around to that flavor wise. The Colsten is the mobile frame evolution of the WW2 Sten and Polsten. They were originally a stop gap for UMFL/Colonial Espatiers, but has been mostly adapted by Free Colony Cells while better supported UMFL/CE have moved on to The MRS. The Maxter on the other hand is the preferred space combat option over the Colsten. Although the Maxter also has a longer/safer usage time in space than The MRS, the latter is formed from superior alloys that absorb vastly more heat before being impacted, and is usually preferred for the increased reliability and optional loadouts.

[yodawgiheardyoulikemecha]

Heavy Harness Lockon by Vitoria Faria

[malwarewolf-mocs]

Doggo mech: deployed

[30horsechariot]

The rank and file of the Minoan Federated States mobile frame force, the MHI Minotaur. Pictured here in its simplest format, the Minotaur is the frame that made the MFS what it is and has since been routinely maintained and produced since the Unification War. While it is a somewhat outdated machine, (especially compared to the Fleet’s Peregrine!) its sturdiness and simplicity have come to embody the practicality valued by the MFS’s people. Factory-new Minotaurs are rarely seen in any theater, as part of the Minotaur’s appeal is the ease of modification granted to it by said simplicity. The personalization possible and the well-known hardiness of these frames have made many MFS pilots reluctant to change. Here, this unit is performing a fire demonstration for a group of cadets. The weapon in use is the MHI Battle Carbine 11, the “standard” armament for these frames. The state-held Minos Heavy Industries was forced to design a powerful but not unbearably bulky firearm to compete with private manufacturers in recent years, and the reopening of the waygate has demonstrated that they succeeded. Unfortunately for this Minotaur’s pilot, none of those features are going to save them from the chewing out they will receive later for leaving the ballistic shield out of the drill.

[diamondregime]

[bunnylikesbricks]

#1. My first ever mech

This is my first ever humanoid robot. inspired by mobile frame zero and the amazing builds from its reddit.

i imagine the red barrel on her shoulder serves as an energy tank. powering the projector on the lower arm.

The energy projector has the ability to shoot low level energy beams (green), high power blasts (blue), and project a solid light scythe (gold)

For lack of a better name, why dont we call her RM-10

[bryanharryrombough]

Hi-Leg Gunner by Bryan Rombough Via Flickr: Based on [Soren]'s design. 23rd of June photosession. Not entirely satisfied with the results, will be revisiting later.

[alinopandino]

OAS Grace

A spaceship that can transport and deploy a mobile frame company of six.

4p scale.

[head-post]

EU court dismisses banks’ appeal against state aid to Madeira

The EU General Court on Wednesday rejected an appeal by Millennium BCP Participações and BCP África, upholding Brussels’ ruling that state aid was illegal in the Madeira Free Trade Zone (MFZ), Euractiv reports.

In a statement, the court rejected the companies’ claims, saying that the European Commission had correctly concluded that the state aid they received was illegal.

Court officials pointed out that both companies had failed to fulfil the requirement to create or retain jobs and did not fall under any exception to this condition of state aid.

On the other hand, the judgement rejected the claim that Brussels had breached the principle of protecting legitimate expectations and concluded that there had been no breach of the principle of legal certainty.

According to the judgement, the companies were authorised to operate in the MFZ in 1998 in the case of the pre-Millennium BCP company and in 1996 in the case of the pre-BCP Africa company.

Both companies ceased to be subject to Regime III on December 31, 2020 and their licences to operate in the MFZ were maintained until mid-2021. Neither company had any employees during the Regime III period.

GCUE has already rejected a number of Portuguese appeals against state aid in the MFZ. The Regional Aid III scheme was designed to attract investment and job creation in Madeira.

To ensure that the aid scheme would overcome the structural weaknesses of companies in these regions, the Commission’s approval decisions made it clear that aid should be granted to companies that generate economic activity and real jobs in the Madeira region.

In 2018, Brussels launched a formal investigation into Scheme III of this state aid to MFZs, as it had doubts about the application of tax incentives to income from activities actually and substantially carried out in Madeira and the link between the amount of aid and the creation or maintenance of real jobs in the region.

In 2020, he declared the aid scheme incompatible with the common market on the grounds that Portugal had applied it illegally. He demanded the immediate and effective recovery of aid from beneficiaries, the cancellation of the scheme and the cancellation of all outstanding aid payments. Portugal was given eight months to comply with the judgement.

According to the Court of Auditors’ opinion on the general public account (CGE) for 2023, published in October, the amount of contributions already paid by tax authorities to free zone companies found to have received illegal state aid is €525 million, but only €66 million has been paid.

Read more HERE

[thehydromancer]

Looks sick. I recommend checking out Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack for ideas, particularly the legp ruler system.

Lancer on a physical tabletop with Lego minis!

We finally did the thing! I roped my siblings into playtesting a game of Lancer using Legos and a physical tabletop. The sitrep was to destroy five buildings, marked in red, because the Karrakins were using the installation to track their mobile hidden base (our home campaign is a blatant ripoff of Deserts of Kharak).

Things that need improvement:

better way to measure tiles. We were doing 4cm/space and had to do a lot of multiplication. Going to try wood dowels with tiles marked + get some kind of grid underlay.

similarly, we need aoe templates

I used too much terrain, it got messy

should get status rings/tokens to mark lock-on, etc

Things that worked well:

it was sick as hell to be able to physically destroy Lego terrain and mechs as they fell

we used physical dice? For lancer?? And it turns out clicky clack math rocks continue to be inherently great.

witchdice works well on mobile devices for character sheets so not every PC had to have a full laptop

different height-terrain was fun, though it made movement costs tricky to calculate

I'm excited to keep trying out different setups. All the terrain and stuff I've collected is pretty modular (lego makes that easy) so it'll be fun to see how wide a range of map types is possible.

[jp-nichts]

I built a Lego MOC of my Lancer's Kobold "Gravitas Free Zone"

[thehydromancer]

Colonial Espatier Task Force Lan, assigned to protect the space colony of Umbral Keep. Umbral Keep, despite its vast potential to enrich the megacorp Krewstara and provide highly valuable resources to Sol, only rates the minimal Colonial Espatier investment given its isolated location and the competing need to protect the Aeralyn terraformer project in the same system. If it wasn't for the nearby transit gate and the previous Ijad invasion of the system, its possible The Powers That Be wouldn't have bothered at all. The PCL-01 Rookery class light carrier (inspired by the ARMD carrier from Robotech/Macross). The Fisher King is assigned to Taske Force Lan and the sister ship to the Angraal assigned to Task Force Kay tasked with guarding the Aeralyn terraformer colony. The Rookery class is a converted orbital platform popular with salvage and maintenance operations. Using the Fisher King as an example, the primary upgrades to the base craft are an integrated hangar with an elevator to the catapult, upgraded sensors and communications, and additional engines both for primary thrust and rapid maneuvering. The ships ability to rapidly change velocity is its primary defense as it is lightly armed and armored, completely dependent on its mobile frame company to defend it from aggressors. Multiple locations were reinforced for PDG installation, but the Fisher King has yet to receive this upgrade. In theory the Rookery class can transport a standard mobile frame company's entire 14 frame compliment, but it is only designed to launch and support up to a single augmented squad of 6 frames at a time during combat operations. The Angraal however is rumored to be undergoing upgrades to support an additional mobile frame squad during combat as well as additional defenses despite concerns on impacts to the ships overall speed.

Kobold frigates, based on the general purpose tug of the same name, are a slapdash, minimal cost answer to Colonial Espatier needs throughout the transit gate network. Kobolds are often present en masse around gates and space colonies, and are relatively cheap and easy enough to acquire that the local megacorp losing a few to stand up the local espatier chapter is of neglectable impact in exchange for the security provided. The two kobold examples provided are the Sylph, a missile boat, and the Salameid, a gun boat. Almost completely unarmored the kobold frigates rely on speed and distance, much like the Fisher King, to avoid enemy fire, although at least the Salameid is equipped with 4x PDGs for anti-frame defense.

[yodawgiheardyoulikemecha]

Denali Mini in Hanger by JP Nichts

[malwarewolf-mocs]

My brain is a machine that turns lego into tiny mechs

[30horsechariot]

The MFS Satyr was a response to the more nimble Peregrine of the Gloriana Fleet. An artifact of MFS design ethos keeps it from being a one to one production copy though, as the Peregrine was designed with space use in mind and the Satyr ground use. The Satyr is perfectly capable of being re-outfitted for space use, but factory new models are built for terrestrial maneuverability, and have design choices that focus on performance under gravity. This raises several questions as to the nature of the Minoan Federated States’ goals for the Satyr, as a direct response to their current enemy would have been a space model. Intent extrapolated from these choices could mean any number of things, perhaps the MFS expect a protracted ground war, perhaps it is cultural stubbornness in refusing to admit having been pushed to change. Either way, the Satyr’s development timeline is a hot-button issue within Fleet intelligence, as the earliest reports of Satyr deployment are sorties with pirates within the Lunar Shore, a full week before the rollout of Satyr models began within the MFS forces proper.