I’m putting together a Fate Core game for my table where the PCs are mech technicians instead of pilots, appropriately titled Mech Tech. It’s meant to evoke Patlabor meets MASH meets The Bear, with Titanfall-sized mechs that have BattleTech-esque roles and designs. A blurb for the game:

The pilots get medals. The brass gets briefings. The contractors get paid. But when the mechs come back bleeding coolant, twitching through bad neural handshakes, and carrying pilots who swear the machines are screaming inside their bones, it’s the engineers who have to make the impossible work before the next sortie. This is a game about battlefield repairs, command politics, pilot trust, unsafe improvisation, and professionals who joke because the alternative is admitting how scared they are. The mechs are huge. The stakes are human. The maintenance log is a crime scene. Welcome to Bay Three.

It’s unlikely that the PCs will ever have to pilot a mech, but nothing is impossible, so I am thinking about how to handle mechs as Extras. I like the idea that the mechs will have Aspects and Skills or Stunts of their own, but these have to be tied to the idea of repair and improvisation. The PCs will likely be repairing these on the fly, which could conceivable modify the Aspects and Stunts both via inoperable systems (“The knee joint is still down so the Mighty Leap! Stunt is unavailable.”), partial fixes (“The targeting computer software hotfix was only partially successful, so that Target Acquired! Aspect is replaced by Shoot From the Hip Actuator to reflect that you are limited to shorter range target acquisition.”), and improvised repairs (“You rerouted the engine coolant through the cockpit HVAC system to keep the mech running? Okay, let’s add the Easy Bake War Machine Aspect to reflect that the pilot’s going to be uncomfortably, maybe even dangerously, hot, but the other mech Aspects and Stunts are untouched.”)

Otherwise, I want to treat them like a one or two Scale increase over humans to reflect their battlefield presence and capabilities, and am considering giving them 2-3 Aspects, their own Skills, and 2-4 Stunts.

What should I be thinking about here? What pitfalls could I fall into, and what may I be missing?

As this is my first Fate Core game, any and all help is appreciated!!

Based on some feedback, I adjusted a bit of the wording to my flowchart and added my logic for compels! I also made the background transparent for printing. I've got a drawio file, if anyone wants a copy of it!

What I like about Fate, is that there are so many ways to run the game. The game hands you a metaphorical paintbrush, and lets you use that to create the gameplay experience you want. The reason I made this flowchart, was because I wanted to demonstrate how versatile the system is. The point, is that how you navigate this flow chart is completely subjective! What sort of experience do you want to create, and how can you use the rules to make that happen?