The Basics of Basics

Construction Points

Rather than spending credits, Mektons and other vehicles are built using Construction Points (CP (It was a more innocent time)). Either the GM builds suits for everyone ahead of time (fuck that) or they set a CP budget for the players. They suggest a set of tiers for different purposes.

• 10-100: Mass Produced Grunts. Your Zakus, GMs, and Patlabors.
• 101-300: Mass Produced Specials. For officers and specialists. Your Char's Zaku and GM Snipers.
• 301-400: The "Giants" of Mekton. They don't elaborate on what this means, but I'm guessing it's the basic version of Protagonist Suits. Your RX-78 Gundam, Gurren, or Lancelot.
• 401+: These are the special fancy suits. Your Unicorn, EVA Unit 13, or Nirvash Spec 3

Now you might think, "Wait a minute there Twinkee, those last examples have weird powers and those weren't covered in character creation."
CORRECT! However, a later book (Mekton Zeta Plus) introduced Psionics. Will I be covering that? Who knows.

Kills

Mekton Zeta is built using the Interlock System (Of Cyberpunk fame) and it was intended to be usable with other Interlock games.

Spaces

This is a nice and easy way to determine how much and where you can equip things to your Mekton. Each part has a number of spaces and each system and weapon takes up a number of spaces. Easy peasy.
Some bits (Like thrusters) can be split up into the Spaces of different parts, so you have some redundancy if a part is destroyed.
You can also reduce the Kills of a part to increase the amount of Space in it.

Weight

Most, if not all of your bits and pieces have a weight. Weight affects your Movement, how much thrust you need to fly, and what can carry you (We'll get to building your Mekton a skateboard in a different post).

Frame

The core of your Mekton. You can choose from four body forms (Later books added more); Humanoid, Mechabeast (Zoids), Mechatank (Ground Vehicles), Mechafighters (Jets and Spaceships). Each gets different bonuses, but they they're too minor to bother mentioning.

The restrictions on how you build them are minor. Humanoid needs to be bipedal and have arms (You can have as many as you can afford), Mechabeasts can go nuts, Mechatanks need to use treads, wheels, or hover for movement, Mechafighters just need to be able to fly.

You can build a transforming Mekton. You just start with a humanoid, and choose transformations after you've finished everything else.

Torso

This bit is especially important, you can use any parts with it up to one level above it. So no Superlight torsos with Mega Heavy limbs, but a Mega Heavy Torso with Super Light Arms are fine (Legs still have to be at least one level below Torso if you want to be able to walk). This is also where your power plant is installed and sometime the cockpit.

Arms

They're arms, they do arm things. You've got a choice of hands or you can skip hands because they each take up a space.

Legs

Feet are not optional, but basic feet are free. You can choose to install wheels, treads, or hover thrusters later to change up your movement.

Head

It's a head. Throw a cockpit in there, mount some sensors, call it a day.

Wings

These are required for atmospheric Mechafighters (you could take these instead of arms). If they're two levels under your torso or higher, they give a bonus to movement.
They do have space, meaning even if you don't have flight, you can use them to mount systems and weapons.

Tails

A melee limb. They recommend using these as tentacles, which is a fun note for them to include.

Pods

These give extra space to install systems. The downside is that if they're destroyed, the damage carries over to your torso.

Armor

Armor reduces the damage taken. Because this system uses hit locations, you choose armor for each part of the frame, up to two levels higher than the part.

Now for the first of the things I hate, Staged Penetration. Every time a part is hit, you reduce its armor by 1.
Let's say you're the GM. You brought in 6 NPC grunts. That means you're now tracking at least 36 individual armor scores and a matching amount of Kills (Damage Capacity, using the same word for damage and hitpoints gets confusing). This is the kinda subsystem that works better in a video game than in a tabletop game.

Subassemblies

Sensors

Your eyes and ears. If these get destroyed, all of your attacks suffer -4 (-2 with an exposed cockpit). You've got a choice of Main Sensors (7km/140 hex range) and back Backups (1km/20hexes). Sensors also double as a cap for your maximum range. If you're all melee, you can save yourself some cp and space by sticking with a backup.

Cockpit

First one's free. Stick in the head or torso, choose open or closed. If you've got a passenger, they can sit in your lap and you suffer -1 to all rolls or you can add a second cockpit with optional controls.

Weapons

Nothing much of note here. You've got an assortment of basic weapon types. They can be installed in parts or handheld.
Handheld weapons can't exceed the space of the arm(s) wielding it and they get a free way to store it (clamps, racks, sling, etc.) If you have multiples of the same weapon in the same part, you can link them for a multi-attack.

Options

There's a mix of flavor and mechanical items in here. Anti-theft device, ejection seats, stereos, that sort of thing.

Final Weight

Add up all the weight from your various parts, you'll need it for the next bit.

Propulsion

We've got two choices here, Thrusters for flight or Ground Effect System (GES) for hovering. They also tucked in an optional rule for fuel, but who gives a shit.

To be able to fly, you need Thrusters with an MA of at least 8. Anything less is a rocket jump. To figure out how much CP it'll cost, you'll have to break out the calculator or give yourself a migraine. The cost for Thrusters is your Final Weight x 0.0375 per 1 MA (See the Thruster Lift Point Table above for the kinda numbers you'll be working with).
Once you've figured out the cost, you need to assign them to spaces. It's 1 CP of Thrust to 1 Space. It's important to track where all of your thrusters are, if the part they're installed in is destroyed, you lose that amount of Thrust MA.

GES works the same way, but it's Weight x 0.025 and you can only hover at ground level. This can be handy for certain terrains or just exceeding your walking MA.

They did include calculations for converting MA to actual speed measurements. I included the Speedlines table so that you can see the kinda math these nerds enjoyed.

Transformations

So you've built your humanoid Mekton and now you're ready to apply a transformation. All you do is note down the bonuses and restrictions for your alt-form and then apply the appropriate cost. Uh oh! You've gone over your point limit.

Welcome to Cost Multipliers, the math that you should do at the start of construction, but they have you do at the end.
Cost Multipliers are exactly what they sound like. Add up your total CP cost and then multiply it. If you have more than one multiplier, add them up first and then multiply.
So before you even start construction, you need to figure out what your cost multiplier is, then use this formula to solve for x.
(x * y) + x = z
Where y is your cost multiplier and z is your cost limit. That'll give you your maximum CP budget with multipliers.

Yeah bitch, I can struggle to do math too.

Power Plant

Everyone gets a cold power plant for free. For a -0.1 cost multiplier, you can get a hot plant with a 50% chance of exploding when it's damaged. Absolutely worth the cost, don't run the math on that.

Final Stats

This is just some final calculations to figure out your movement numbers and your Maneuver Pool (Luck for mechs). If you're heavy, you're slow.

And that's how you build a Mekton.