[b]The Setup:[/b] You are an Arms Corporation that has entered the bidding for a contract with the Military Complex. Your goal is to design and produce a Mecha prototype to participate in combat demonstrations that will take place in 90 days. Your prototype, if it survives the initial trials, will then be pitted against the competition. The last surviving Mech will be adopted by the Military Complex, and its designing corporation will win the bid for the contract.

The Military Complex has an upper bidding limit however. The more expensive your mech is to produce, the fewer the Complex will ultimately have your corporation manufacture, and the less money you will actually make.

You must therefore ensure your mech prototype is versatile, deadly, and as cheap as feasibly possible.

[center][s]888888888888[/s][/center]
For the purposes of this RP, I am considering implementing a point system to serve as a check on the variety/relative balance of each Corporation in play. That said, I am open to suggestions on the notion, and if enough people think it would be better to do without it I will probably let everyone make their corporation however they like and handle adjustments individually. I would appreciate it if I could at least get feedback on the point system I describe below though, since I've tried to handle it in a way that leaves creating your corporation as open as possible.

The central premise of MDC: Corporate Warfare is the interactions between all of the corporations during the 90 day bidding race. The below categories are only briefly described, and I have no problems with posters using them creatively for purposes not otherwise described (using Legal to steal R&D or budget from other corporations for example, which is normally the purview of Troubleshooting). 

[hider=Resource Allocation]Deficit spending is so last decade. You have already calculated the approximate upper boundaries of resource expenditure you can invest in this project before your net profit from winning the bid (IF you win the bid) becomes negligible. You have 40 points to distribute between seven categories (with a max score of 10 in each category) that will represent the scope of this project.[/hider]
[hider=Budget]How much money do you have to throw around? As the days tick by, various incidents can impact your category scores, potentially boosting or damaging them - and influencing the final product you submit for the Combat Trials. You can use your Budget in order to boost damaged scores back up to their original total (scores cannot be boosted above the original total using Budget). Budget is also used to for miscellaneous expenditures, such as bribery and litigation. Budget essentially exists to make problems go away. If you run out of money, you have to suck up your losses and keep going. A high budget score can help to accommodate, but not replace, the Legal and Security scores. Budget can also be stolen by hostile Troubleshooters.[/hider][hider=Logistics]In order to make a Mech, you need raw materials and personnel from here and there shipped to your center of operations. This score describes the shipping of materials and people to and from your holdings from various different, distant locations. The higher this score, the more places you can obtain materials from, and the faster your materials and personnel are moved around. Not only can a high logistics score help complete a project faster, it helps prevent shipment/convoy interception by hostile Troubleshooters. If your logistics score is too low, parts and personnel can take a week or more to arrive, leaving you with an unfinished project after the 90 day time allotment.[/hider][hider=Manufacturing]You can't make a mech without engineers and assembly lines. This score describes how sophisticated your construction process actually is. At its lowest, you probably have some guy with a Bachelor's Degree working in his garage. The higher the score, the faster work goes, and the more sophisticated your mech can be. While you can theoretically make a mech of extreme sophistication even using just the one guy, the time he would take to do so would exceed the 90 day time limit. Like Logistics, a low Manufacturing score can mean you might not finish your Mech in time if it is highly sophisticated (simpler Mech designs will not have this problem).[/hider][hider=R&D]This score describes the power of SCIENCE!!! The higher it is, the fancier and more sophisticated your mech can be. This does not define what technologies you use so much as the efficiency with which the design is implemented. A low R&D score can still produce big zappy science lasers for example, but the laser will be less effective/efficient than the death laser the other team with the better R&D score produced. R&D, like Budget, can be stolen by Troubleshooters.[/hider][hider=Legal]It turns out that making large death machines has a number of legal ramifications. The Legal Score has numerous purposes. It is used to reduce the costs of purchased materials, cover workplace accidents, prevent bribery, conceal internal conspiracies and incriminating events/evidence, attempt hostile takeovers of other companies, and so forth. A high legal score means you'll have a team of Paralegals on-call 24/7 to cover your ass if anything goes wrong during the bidding race, or else to pressure other corporations with red tape.[/hider][hider=Security]Every corporate entity needs to protect its interests. Security describes how difficult it is for your operations to be directly interfered with. A high security score will help protect against hostile Troubleshooting attempts, and in general will help to enforce workplace safety and deter pesky/inconvenient bystander interference (by ironically aggressive war protesters for example). Security is not just physical, but also digital - a high Security score will help to deter hacking and other forms of electronic treachery.[/hider][hider=Troubleshooting]You don't necessarily need to make a good Mech if you can somehow make sure all the other corporations submit complete crap. Troubleshooters are professionals who will head out into the world and directly interfere with/sabotage the efforts of competing corporations. Troubleshooters can disrupt logistics, assassinate key project personnel, sabotage critical components, steal R&D information, disrupt manufacturing, and dangle Paralegals out of 12th story windows. In addition, Troubleshooters can even attempt to rig the Live Combat Trials your mech (or other mechs) will go through at the end of the 90 day bidding race. Note that, if caught or killed, a Troubleshooter's activities can be traced back to you, which will likely have notable legal ramifications (amongst other things).[/hider]
Of course, it's not all corporate fun and games. At the end of the bidding race, we have some Mech action. How your mechs perform will be based primarily on how well you designed your mech, but other factors such as trial rigging and sabotage are still important factors.

[hider=Constructing Your Mech Prototype]The Military Complex is not picky about what design you use. How will your Mech operate? Will it be piloted, or run by an A.I.? Perhaps it is remote controlled via satellite uplink? Does it have legs or wheels, two or six? Does it hover? Can it navigate any kind of terrain? What weapons does it use? How durable is its chassis? 

Most importantly, how cheap is it?[/hider][hider=The Combat Trials]After 90 days, your mech will be subjected to a number of live-fire performance trials to determine that it meets the bare minimum requirements of the Complex. The mech will be expected to pass the following tests in order to win the bid - destruction of the mech results in failure and its elimination from the bid. The mech can be repaired between trials, but during the trial either makes it or breaks to pieces. Note that while more than one of the following trials allude to aerial performance, it is not a requirement for mechs to be able to fly - though it is advised that they have some means of attacking aerial combatants.

-Terrain Trial: Master of Sea, Land, Air. Stationary explosive hazards (mines) present.

-Speed Trial: Not a timed trial, but a test of maneuverability and breaking. How fast can you go without splattering against the walls? Hazards are limited to speed bumps and physical impediments.

-Stress Trial: Can you feel the burn? Push your mech's hardware and software far beyond their absolute stated limits, and see how long they last. Your only obstacle in this trial, is yourself.

-Infantry Trial: Pit your mech against an escalating series of foot soldier combatants equipped with a diverse arsenal. Hazards include small arms (rifles), grenades, flamethrowers, rockets, PEP weapons, and Human tenacity.

-Armor Trial: Pit your mech against an escalating series of armored vehicles. Hazards include high caliber machine guns, HEAT shells, MISV swarm missiles, high-yield energy weapons, and more.

-Aerial Trial: You've brushed away the brawn. Now you have to deal with the close air support. The final trial is a duel with an aerial gunship armed to the teeth. Its design is intimidating, its weapons terrifying, its tactics supreme. If your mech cannot defeat the gunship, it wouldn't have stood a chance in The Final Battle Anyway.[/hider][hider=The Final Battle]As long as at least two mechs passed all the trials, the surviving models are pitted against each other in a no-holds-barred free for all, last mech surviving wins. The Complex does not care about individual mechs being 'ganged up on,' or whether or not they spend the whole match skulking in the corner or else flying to the very top of the arena until everyone else is gone, or whether or not one mech 'cheated' by blocking another mech's satellite uplink and rendering it immobile. Any mech that made it this far already meets their requirements, the Final Battle is used to assess the 'mettle' of the winning model. Upset victories are to be expected.

Victory results in glory and winning the contract. Fame and accolades are yours. Loss results in nothing but wasted time, money, and crushed dreams. Also possibly crushed pilots if your mech had to be manned. Start scrambling to point blame and sack the people involved in the project.[/hider]
Corporation and Mechs sheet formats are pending.