The missing mechs of Mass Effect (+ d6 missions)

With Mass Effect Legendary edition out, and seeing how Once More Into The Void is Kickstarting, I got to thinking about how I would re-wire the Mass Effect main plot if I was going to run it. d6 missions at the end. Massive spoilers for throughout the trilogy ahead, ye have been warned.

No kidding, spoilers ahoy.

To open, I am a massive fan of the series, I got great mileage out of it at a slightly oblique angle to what most people did from what I read and hear. There were a couple of things I loved that I would have liked to have seen more of:
- things like time mattering in certain places - that missions would be unavailable if you did not go after them before certain intervals.
- the use of multiple people in the finale of Mass Effect 2 - the 'right tool for the right job' element, where some people can achieve certain things only at a cost, others can get it done and emerge unscathed because they were expert in that thing.
- the ability in Mass Effect 1 for you to come across a nest of villains in your armoured vehicle at range - and pound them to rubble from a distance.

My main sticking point on the whole thing was the sheer ridiculous scale of the reapers. I could buy ME 1 with a single reaper getting stunned by its avatar being killed then getting punked out by a fleet. I was fully onboard with the bad-guys in ME2, reaper cultists up to no good is the perfect foe for a quasi-rogue frigate captain and his motley crew.

Then ME 3 ... well. The big pitch we get in ME3 is - "the only chance is to unify" - and it was portrayed in bits of Prothean lore that if they had gotten their act together in time they might have been able to stave off the reapers. So we have a message for 'unify the galaxy, all the ships can bring victory' but instead we end up dumping the last ditch resources of a galaxy into an untried mega-mcguffin of unclear function (up to the point you flip the switch, you do not *know* what the damn thing will do, you only have some weird entitys word).

So I would propose a re-tool, continuing to run with the "death by a thousand cuts" approach instead. The fleet-level story makes sense - we see that the biggest ships can take on the big reapers. We see, and do, the toe-to-toe fighting where reaper ground troops can be met with tanks and bullets. However there is simply nothing in the weight class of the destroyer reapers on the defenders side; there is a gap in the kaiju-class of combat. Just by invoking the name, I think you can see where I am going with this.

So, for the I Cannot Believe Its Not Mass Effect (ICBIN-ME) campaign, the back third gets unscrewed and replaced with a series of missions to bring the fight to the reapers on a weight-class by weight-class basis.
- we keep the 'marshalling the allies' missions, those made sense, welding together the alliance necessary to direct all resources against the invaders
- we probably want to retain the 'hunt the enemy within' style stuff of taking down traitors, spies and co-opted agents
- we add a whole block of archaeology diving, tech-cracking and kaiju-recruiting missions to build a mid-weight response to the reaper-destroyers.
- we could add in a bunch of 'bait the reapers into traps' missions where light fleet elements like the Normandy or whatever the players are driving get to peel off Reapers

I am going to mine Stellaris here for ideas having cheerfully used kaiju invasion fleets to great effect there;
- first you want to try and harness natural hazards - bait the reapers into mine-fields, black-holes, blow up suns, etc.
- second you want to recruit the galactic native kaiju. Ain't nothing like a power-armoured godzilla to ruin a reapers day.
- third, chuck in mechs. Maybe 40k Titan scale, maybe just Assault-class Battletech style or Macross agile Veritechs. Steal the Robotech logic of 'the enemy is big, we need a big solution'. Maybe we want to go super old school and bring Bolos or OGREs. That could be lots of fun - especially since Bolos as written could hit and kill orbiting invaders.

Best thing about doing this as an RPG is that once the players unlock their hangar of titans or veritechs, if they choose to abuse them by going massive overkill on missions that could be solved by a squad in an APC then you can do that. Shame about the other missions lost elsewhere with the squandered resources but you would at least get that fun kick over overkill like when you rail-gun a building while hull down behind a hill in Mass Effect 1.

Of course, once you have your hangar full of mecha, there are plenty of sources our there to plumb for session ideas to break up the heavy-metal combat ranging from Mechwarrior through Robotech out to Power Rangers depending on where on the spectrum between grizzled mercenary to gene-engineered school-kid you want your pilots.

Anyway - as a Joesky tax - d6 ICBIN-ME Missions
1. The Aces - the first of the new titans are rolling off the lines but the major powers are not convinced their combat performance justifies diverting the resources. Take a squadron into battle and win glorious to convince the doubters. Better learn how to fly them first.
2. The suicide fleet - irradiated by a rogue pulsar, there is a decent sized if old fleet of ships that needs to be brought back into the fray. Find crews - either penal legions, synthetics, suicide squads, whatever it takes - and get them into the fight.
3. The hunt - An infiltrator has made off with the locations for the major anti-reaper weapons plants, if that gets out, all is lost. Some members of the alliance are advocating glassing the city the spy is known to be within to be sure of silencing them. Millions of lives are at stake, find the spy and silence them.
4. The dragon-rider - the first kaiju has been transported to a planet under reaper invasion - protect it while it gets to the ground then guide it to make maximum difference while surviving. We need it to convince its fellows back home that the threat is real and they need to help us fight.
5. Planet-cracker - a high speed asteroid is passing through a system under reaper invasion. They have concentrated force to assault the fortress moon above the system gas giant. Enter the system without detection and nudge the asteroid onto a collision course with the moon, the guard fortress will keep them distracted.
6. Tomb-diving - we have evidence of a prothean factory ship - we want the war-machine design templates in its memory cores. A galactic faction is already on its way, wanting to hoard them for their own profit - get there first, extract the design files, restart the ship, manufacture what you need to defend yourself and hold them off until reinforcements arrive.