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I've seen folks say nice things about the game (especially the rules) over the years and was wondering why it failed. I followed it for a time (mainly for the dropships that never materialized in production although I heard a few limited copies got out into the wild) but never got into it myself. I really didn't like the way the human figs looked (both the MI and the robots). I know they were trying to make them true to the (equally horrible looking) CGI cartoon at the time but I would have preferred a look more in tune with what was mentioned in the book or barring that something that was in the movie (which they did at the end with metal figs). I liked the bugs but not enough to make a whole army of them. Did it simply not get the critical mass of players? Did the company fold because of external unrelated issues like with Warzone and Prince August? A combo of both like with Vor the Maelstrom? Licensing issues or the followup movies and show bombing like with the B5 game? Just curious if someone could fill in the gaps that followed the death spiral closely.

For what it's worth, I liked the Roughnecks CGI and the power suit infantry.

But, you are correct - within the last year of it's life they released the light infantry from the films (and the Klendathu Invasion campaign supplement), but also released the mobile infantry from the book. You could literally have three models versus a hundred bugs, and have a balanced and fun game.

It became pretty successful - it launched with a bang, winning a fistful of awards and Origins best game awards, Andy Chambers pimping his magnum opus ruleset, there were tournaments all over the place. every store in my area carried it; I joined Mongoose Infantry and ran demos and tournaments locally, played it weekly with the other players. I'd say it got to about as big as Bolt Action is now. A dozen plastic kits when like only GW released plastic and only for a few of their models. Huge expansion, new releases constantly flowing, new books, awesome concepts and works-in-progress of dropships and tac fighters and new big bugs, etc.

Then Mongoose released prepainted plastic Battlefield Evolution, decided to switch SST all over to prepainted plastics, and then shortly after the announcement to do so (which pissed off like everyone ever), then Sony, for license cost renegotiations, raised the price like ten times because they were going to make Starship Troopers 3 (and at that time, was going to be a much bigger budget movie).

So Mongoose had to cancel producing items for their flagship game. It was a distaster that took years and years and years to recover from and Mongoose is nowhere near as large as they were during that time (in fact all miniatures production is outsourced and distributed through Warlord now, for Judge Dredd, etc)


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actually, Matt Sprange commented on dakka a few years ago about SST, lemme see if I can find it.


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Here you go, from three years ago

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/60/474984.page#4756979

It's actually a very good game system (not the watered-down Evo version, though). MI and Arachnids are each quite different in how they play and it creates a lovely tactical game.

Mongoose has historically been terrible at miniatures. I'm glad that Warlord has taken over the production side (even though their casting is not the best).

Would love to have played this. Heard from more than one bod that the rules set was originally supposed to be a new version of 40k but was rejected bizarrely. Alas...

And they did release a few of the Skyhooks

They released them after the license was pulled. As directly only, forum sales.

Gosh if those ships had made it in plastic they would have revolutionized the gaming industry.

I have a vague memory that mongoose had plans to change the rules and move from metal to prepainted plastics and when that didn't go anywhere the licence was dropped

You can still play it...

 n815e wrote:
You can still play it...

You can also still play betamax videos and 8 track tapes but that doesn't mean much.


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 judgedoug wrote:

But, you are correct - within the last year of it's life they released the light infantry from the films (and the Klendathu Invasion campaign supplement), but also released the mobile infantry from the book. You could literally have three models versus a hundred bugs, and have a balanced and fun game.

It became pretty successful - it launched with a bang, winning a fistful of awards and Origins best game awards, Andy Chambers pimping his magnum opus ruleset, there were tournaments all over the place. every store in my area carried it; I joined Mongoose Infantry and ran demos and tournaments locally, played it weekly with the other players. I'd say it got to about as big as Bolt Action is now. A dozen plastic kits when like only GW released plastic and only for a few of their models. Huge expansion, new releases constantly flowing, new books, awesome concepts and works-in-progress of dropships and tac fighters and new big bugs, etc.

Then Mongoose released prepainted plastic Battlefield Evolution, decided to switch SST all over to prepainted plastics, and then shortly after the announcement to do so (which pissed off like everyone ever), then Sony, for license cost renegotiations, raised the price like ten times because they were going to make Starship Troopers 3 (and at that time, was going to be a much bigger budget movie).

So Mongoose had to cancel producing items for their flagship game. It was a distaster that took years and years and years to recover from and Mongoose is nowhere near as large as they were during that time (in fact all miniatures production is outsourced and distributed through Warlord now, for Judge Dredd, etc)

Thanks for the explanation. I forgot about the battlefield evo debacle. I remember they advertising that and then waiting something like a year and then just seeing one or two packs of US and Chinese soldiers at the store... and that was it. I didn't realize they were switching over to PPP for SST as well. Was the Rackham implosion before or after that? If it was before, you'd think they'd have learned something from the massive failure of a company across the Channel tried to do the same thing with Confrontation with the same results (pissed off fans and failure). I also didn't hear about the bump in the licensing costs which sucks for them and was out of their control. I saw SST 3 when it came out direct to DVD and even considered buying it (for the giant robot mech it came with, not the actual movie) and that turd of a film was not worth increased licensing costs.

It sounds like they just had a string of bad luck (re: Mongoose). First SST, then B5 with the same license cost increase (but without the sales to justify it), then D&D 4e with the much stricter d20 license that cut out that portion of their business, etc.


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 judgedoug wrote:

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actually, Matt Sprange commented on dakka a few years ago about SST, lemme see if I can find it.


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Here you go, from three years ago

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/60/474984.page#4756979

Some interesting prescient things you posted in that thread years ago...

Nothing makes someone skeptical and ultimate turns them off to a company that says one thing and does another. It doesn't matter the excuse.

*SNIP*

Mongoose was a small company before SST and when it exploded they literally didn't know how to handle it, as far as I can tell. When you've got so many people interested, when you say "coming April" you've now got thousands of people expecting an April release for something.

My gaming group, to this day, still makes fun of SST as the greatest missed opportunity in the history of gaming.

Does that sound like a more recent kickstarted project we've both familiar with?

As far as i remember in that time when internet was not that prevalent yet, is that most those game had distribution issues.

warboss wrote:I know they were trying to make them true to the (equally horrible looking) CGI cartoon at the time

Philistine!

You can also still play betamax videos and 8 track tapes but that doesn't mean much.

I know what you mean, but at the same time it's such a bad analogy and such a... hobby hostage mindset, that I can only just twist my head to understand it. I'd'a hoped that "dead game - can't find at least three dozen previously-existing players in a five mile radius baaaw..." thing might at least partially evaporate when a body moved beyond GW, but I guess consumerist licenses and brands make it cling on like a rabid terrier. More and more I think gaming could use a revival of the project/'intro' game to counteract it.

Granted, it might be a bit difficult with 'offishul' SST minis and rules, but it's like the betamax and 8 track thing you brought up - if you still have 'em, why not use them? What's wrong with that? Old minis and rulebooks have a much better chance of 'working' these days, too.

And looky looky. Some relatively essential plastics missing, if you're dead-set on the look of the movie arachnids or the CGI MI (though from the sound of things... ) but I still think that's a pretty good lineup of some of the old minis.

Much as I thought there was some mishandling of the game, I agree it was well-made and I've been reluctant to sell or chuck my copies of the rulebook and the MI army book. I'm starting to think I should dust them off again, pay a visit to Rebel Minis and some other suitable producers. (Khurasan's parasachnids would suit me fine) Or go 6mm with a few suits of powered armour and a lot of GZG bugs. Or Epic termagants. Or plastic ants. Maybe even decide to use some other set of rules for the MI and the bugs. I'll stick on my 8-tracks while I paint them all up, too.

TL;DR: it means as much as you want it to mean.

Ground Zero Games do (did?) an assortment of big insecty aliens that would work well, in 25 and/or 15mm.

One thing that put a good number of people off was how long it took to assemble the dozens of bugs you needed. My copy is still in the box; I got as far as assembling one MI trooper, one M8 Ape suit and one bug.

I wonder how the rules stand up. The reaction rules were pretty unique (in "mass market" SF games, at least) at the time, but now Infinity, Force On Force and Tomorrow's War do the same thing, as do a few others.

Absolutely love your idea of using the Antenociti Komodo in SST Judgedoug

 warboss wrote:

 n815e wrote:
You can still play it...

You can also still play betamax videos and 8 track tapes but that doesn't mean much.

To be fair, you do get a lot more playing of older/out of production systems in historical groups. Not so much recently but it wasn't entirely unknown for me to see photo-copies of typed (rather than computer printed!) rulesets in use at a local club - I guess probably from the 80's or even earlier! If there is a good system, people tend to stick with it, and conversely there is much less of a desire to pick up a new ruleset that has been released just because its new.

A lot of historical gamers seem to have been put of by the new FoG for instance, which was previously very popular (very few conventions/game shows in the UK that didn't have FoG tournaments running in some form), I think in part because of what is generally seen as an un-necessary upgrade and high price of the new rules.

So I think for games like SST, as people do with some of the GW classics also, if you've got an amicable gaming group get those minis out and having a bash!

 warboss wrote:
Was the Rackham implosion before or after that? If it was before, you'd think they'd have learned something from the massive failure of a company across the Channel tried to do the same thing with Confrontation with the same results (pissed off fans and failure).

I don't remember how the timing compared, but they were quite different situations.

Rackham's switch to prepaints failed, as far as I could gather, because their models appealed more to painters than to people interested in actually playing their game.

Mongoose's attempt failed because the hyped it up into something revolutionary and amazing, and the end product was absolute rubbish. They got burnt by their painters, and burnt bad.

Yeah, the business side of things really let it down, which is a pity because the game is great, and so much more 'complete' than 40k, including rules for deployments, force size, fortifications, suppression, grenades, etc. I'm very glad I bought the book, and in fact it was buying GW Space Marines and Tyranids instead of the Mongoose miniatures that got me back into 40k.

 insaniak wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Was the Rackham implosion before or after that? If it was before, you'd think they'd have learned something from the massive failure of a company across the Channel tried to do the same thing with Confrontation with the same results (pissed off fans and failure).

I don't remember how the timing compared, but they were quite different situations.

Rackham's switch to prepaints failed, as far as I could gather, because their models appealed more to painters than to people interested in actually playing their game.

Mongoose's attempt failed because the hyped it up into something revolutionary and amazing, and the end product was absolute rubbish. They got burnt by their painters, and burnt bad.

Didn't the minis change accompany a rules change as well just like with Mongoose/SST as judgedoug mentioned? That's why I brought them up as a comparison.

edit: Looks like I remembered correctly. The PPP were accompanied by a new edition of the rules "Confrontation Age of Ragnarok".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confrontation_%28Rackham%29


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 Vermis wrote:

I know what you mean, but at the same time it's such a bad analogy and such a... hobby hostage mindset, that I can only just twist my head to understand it. I'd'a hoped that "dead game - can't find at least three dozen previously-existing players in a five mile radius baaaw..." thing might at least partially evaporate when a body moved beyond GW, but I guess consumerist licenses and brands make it cling on like a rabid terrier. More and more I think gaming could use a revival of the project/'intro' game to counteract it.

Granted, it might be a bit difficult with 'offishul' SST minis and rules, but it's like the betamax and 8 track thing you brought up - if you still have 'em, why not use them? What's wrong with that? Old minis and rulebooks have a much better chance of 'working' these days, too.

It's more of a realization that it's easier to NOT spit into the wind. For alot of folks, getting others to try (let alone buy into) games outside of the ICV2 top 5 is difficult enough. If you add in spotty product availablity due to years of being OOP and zero chance of future official support, that job gets alot tougher. Neither Mongoose nor GW nor WOTC will come to your house and pry the old dead editions of rules out of your hands but that doesn't mean you'll get much use out of them either. You may have the greatest song ever recorded on 8 track but your friends won't bother borrowing it if they don't have a player to listen to it on. You need someone else to enjoy a game with. That becomes harder and harder the longer a game is dead... and I say that as someone who brings with me 1-2 dead or dying games every time I go to the FLGS on the hopes that someone will try one.

 warboss wrote:

 n815e wrote:
You can still play it...

You can also still play betamax videos and 8 track tapes but that doesn't mean much.

LOL.

Of course, rules-technology doesn't become obsolete and you don't need an official line of miniatures to enjoy it.
As it is, there is a complete package of rules and supplements covering everything from the show, movie and book. There's really a lot of gaming in there and it is good.
Pick a scale, collect whichever miniatures you want and have fun with it. (I know, CRAZY-TALK, right?)

For alot of folks, getting others to try (let alone buy into) games outside of the ICV2 top 5 is difficult enough. If you add in spotty product availablity due to years of being OOP and zero chance of future official support, that job gets alot tougher.

To me, that needs a cultural shift. My current miniatures gaming group is club-oriented rather than tournament/competitive oriented. I love playing with those guys, they have huge collections and it is a club atmosphere. If you want to play something, collect it and throw a game on for your friends. There's none of this "I buy my x point cost force and you buy yours and we play a stock scenario". Instead it is "I like this, I'll collect it and we'll play out custom made scenarios." It turns out to be a lot more fun this way to me, the focus is on enjoying the experience of playing and collecting what you like, rather than what will win. Nobody is struggling to get others to sign on because one or two people provide all the miniatures to play with.

I do have a friend I love playing games with that refuses to just come over and play a game unless it is something "at the shop." I don't really understand his refusal to try something different, but the end result is we don't play miniatures games together anymore.

 warboss wrote:

Thanks for the explanation. I forgot about the battlefield evo debacle. I remember they advertising that and then waiting something like a year and then just seeing one or two packs of US and Chinese soldiers at the store... and that was it. I didn't realize they were switching over to PPP for SST as well. Was the Rackham implosion before or after that? If it was before, you'd think they'd have learned something from the massive failure of a company across the Channel tried to do the same thing with Confrontation with the same results (pissed off fans and failure). I also didn't hear about the bump in the licensing costs which sucks for them and was out of their control. I saw SST 3 when it came out direct to DVD and even considered buying it (for the giant robot mech it came with, not the actual movie) and that turd of a film was not worth increased licensing costs.

It sounds like they just had a string of bad luck (re: Mongoose). First SST, then B5 with the same license cost increase (but without the sales to justify it), then D&D 4e with the much stricter d20 license that cut out that portion of their business, etc.

actually Battlefield Evolution had quite a large number of releases... sixteen total:
USMC: M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank, Marine Infantry Squad, Shadow RST-V Squad, Force Recon Team
PLA: Type 99 Main Battle Tank, PLA Infantry Squad, WZ-551 Infantry Fighting Vehicle, Command Squad & FAV
UK: Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank, British Army Infantry Section, British Army Command Section and Warrior IFV, British Army SAS Section
PLA: Toyota Hilux Trucks, Insurgent Infantry Squad, Fedayeen Squad, 2S6 Tunguska

as for Starship Troopers, I don't think there was a substantial push for a 2nd edition or anything. The prepainted thing literally just came out of the blue.

Rackham was several years later. AT-43 and Confrontation were both commercial successes - the idea that it was a failure came from the small vocal minority that wanted Rackham to stay a small boutique company. Don't forget that the Confrontation AoR sculptors were the same sculptors they always used - and CAoR produced some of the best sculpts Rackham has ever released - many unmatched to this day - and the prepaints are still better than most gamers can do (I get compliments on my Kings of War Lion of Alahan army, and then I have to say, well, they came prepainted... I just glued them on regiment bases). Rackham Entertainment went bust when the investment company decided to divest itself of the company, and sold all of it's assets to various people. There's a lot more involved in the Rackham story than that, but I'm at work and this is a SST thread...

In the six months since the wife and I dropped 40k cold-turkey, we have played nothing but Kings of War 2nd Ed, Frostgrave, Strange Aeons, Dropzone, and other niche games... and I can say without a doubt every single one has been a better experience than the game we once played at even the nicest FLGS.

I hate to say it, but I was one of those people who wouldn't play a game that didn't have an active, local playerbase, and then I realized all I was doing was maintaining the bad-game-stranglehold we have around here.

As a gaming culture, ESPECIALLY in the US, I think we need to explore more, and be more open to enjoying the act of play, rather than just continuing to be good consumers. FLGS' and clubs are so rare sometimes, in parts of the country, that it feels like we just get held hostage by whatever games they happen to play.

 insaniak wrote:
Mongoose's attempt failed because the hyped it up into something revolutionary and amazing, and the end product was absolute rubbish. They got burnt by their painters, and burnt bad.

I had no real interest in Battlefield Evoltuion but the prepaints were quite good. Most people who have not seen them in person don't realize they are, in fact, 1/60 scale - 25mm. The fact that the Chinese factory were about to put on so many colors and keep a low price (25 bucks for a squad of prepainted guys is insanely cheap). A quick wash in Army Painter strong tone makes the models look quite nice.

Size comparison photos



As you can see, they are quite a bit smaller/lither/truerscale

n815e wrote:To me, that needs a cultural shift. My current miniatures gaming group is club-oriented rather than tournament/competitive oriented. I love playing with those guys, they have huge collections and it is a club atmosphere. If you want to play something, collect it and throw a game on for your friends. There's none of this "I buy my x point cost force and you buy yours and we play a stock scenario". Instead it is "I like this, I'll collect it and we'll play out custom made scenarios." It turns out to be a lot more fun this way to me, the focus is on enjoying the experience of playing and collecting what you like, rather than what will win. Nobody is struggling to get others to sign on because one or two people provide all the miniatures to play with.

Yes. This. QFT. I'm not saying Warboss has to be the lone voice in the wilderness, but this cultural shift has to start with someone harping on and collecting two wee armies/gangs/whatever. I've long thought that it'd be some minor, first-world tragedy that with WFB dying and 40K dwindling, people would just blindly hop onto the next thing (on the ICV2 list or whatever) and stubbornly cling to it, not because it's good (it may well be) but because it's the thing with the most marketing hype, the thing with a prepackaged rules/minis/fluff box, the thing that the next guy over has decided to stubbornly cling to. Even with good games I'd debate whether that's better for the gamer or better for the businesses.

And not to say there's no room for that approach, but it seems to leave quite a few people somewhat dissatisfied, and there could be a lot more room for the other.

Remember, if people enjoy a game after borrowing a friend's stuff, they'll want to collect their own gaming stuff, and if they can't it's going to annoy them.

 Vermis wrote:

Yes. This. QFT. I'm not saying Warboss has to be the lone voice in the wilderness, but this cultural shift has to start with someone harping on and collecting two wee armies/gangs/whatever.

I would like to point out that I said I bring 1-2 (soon to be 3) dead or dying games with me every time I go to the store. I've got a figure case of nothing but that I bring in the hopes of getting a game (with the figs/armies specifically chosen from a larger collection to be both usable as a single force and able to be split into two demo forces). I bring that in the hopes of getting a game in addition to 40k as the "backup" likely to get a game choice. Although, in recent years, that 40k backup has become unreliable due to relative waning popularity. What I'm unlikely to do is add ANOTHER game to my unplayed dead game pile.

that with WFB dying and 40K dwindling, people would just blindly hop onto the next thing (on the ICV2 list or whatever) and stubbornly cling to it, not because it's good (it may well be) but because it's the thing with the most marketing hype, the thing with a prepackaged rules/minis/fluff box, the thing that the next guy over has decided to stubbornly cling to.

The friend I mentioned above is in this situation. Now that WFB is "dead" he is moving to Warmachine and wanted to know if I would join him. In the past I was interested in Warmachine as a game and tried to get him interested (seeing as it is one of those "hot" type games he restricts himself to). He didn't want to try it out, though.
So I asked him why he is moving to WM now. "Everybody else is doing it."

I told him if he collects two WM forces I'll play with him.

Remember, if people enjoy a game after borrowing a friend's stuff, they'll want to collect their own gaming stuff, and if they can't it's going to annoy them.

That's a good point and does present a concern. With most game systems, though, you are not *really* tied to any line of miniatures. This is part of breaking the trend: Convincing people to Collect what they want. The idea that a set of rules MUST be played with some official miniatures is actually pretty limiting. It's an idea that GW drilled into people's heads to sell more models. In the case of "dead" games it's even less important as you don't feel like you need to support the guys that are making this stuff. They've already moved on.

I don't just game sci-fi, most of my gaming is actually historical. The idea that you cannot use any manufacturer to play a game is counter-intuitive. Warlord makes great WWII models, but so do other companies. I doubt you will ever hear anyone (including Warlord) say "don't use those guys with Bolt Action unless they are from Warlord."

In the case of Starship Troopers (since this is a thread about that game), the official models are largely available for purchase. The ebay prices for most of it aren't too bad and Rebel is slowly bringing back the line in a different name.
That said, there's no reason at all why you can't use any miniatures that take your fancy to play the game, in any scale you like. I've seen people on line play this game in 15mm and 6mm. I even have a small 6mm collection for it that I'm planning to expand in the future.

I would like to point out that I said I bring 1-2 (soon to be 3) dead or dying games with me every time I go to the store.

Have you tried instead to set up a specific night to play any of those games? Or invite people to join you in a scenario you've set up? Or have a game night at your house where the atmosphere is different? Not everyone is going to be receptive to this idea, you may need to find the right people. It's not easy, but it's doable and the more people that do it, the more the followers will join in.

Think of it like playing board games or role playing games, in that not everyone needs to own the stuff to play.

Good luck in your endeavors.

 n815e wrote:

Have you tried instead to set up a specific night to play any of those games? Or invite people to join you in a scenario you've set up? Or have a game night at your house where the atmosphere is different? Not everyone is going to be receptive to this idea, you may need to find the right people. It's not easy, but it's doable and the more people that do it, the more the followers will join in.
*snip*
Good luck in your endeavors.

Yup (lots), Yup (tons), nope (prefer store gaming personally). People are invested in the games they already play (both in the fluff, monetarily in the minis, and intellectually in the rules) and overcoming that outside of specific settings is difficult. I used to go to Gencon every year and I made it a point to try out for a full session at least one game every year (and multiple others in the demo hall in the quicky 20-30min demos). I have to admit that since I stopped going, my "new" game experience has dwindled. If someone is doing a demo of a game that I at least accept visually at the FLGS, I always jump in but even that doesn't happen too often. I'd definitely play a game of SST (to bring the topic back to its focus) if I saw an open spot or just watch if not based on the recommendations presented here but I don't think I'd collect any minis (although I'd be fine with using my hamfisted melonhead existing figs with it if I liked it).

So, judgedoug, if Terminator Genysis, Starship Troopers, and the Mantic scifi game of your choosing all entered the gladatorial arena and only one ruleset (ruleset only, not counting figs/sculpting/availability/etc) could survive in your gaming collection, which one would it be?

I do hope with the death of WHFB, and slow decline of 40k people try more systems than just auto-moving over to WM/Hordes. I enjoy those games, but there are so many other deserving games out there.

I've seen it myself though. As the next-biggest, supported miniatures game, WM has seen a huge uptick in local play.

I have heard really good things about SST, however I know nothing about the game play. Can someone enlighten me?

It's the coolest thing you can possibly imagine. Basically this in wargaming form:



Seriously though, it was a pretty basic IGOUGO mechanic, where units have multiple operations (example move and shoot, charge or react) - the key point I remember being really cool was the reaction whereby if something activated near you, you could then react in turn (by shooting, advancing etc.) What this meant in practice was your troopers shooting desparately at the bugs as they run in, but was a lot of fun. Although one negative thing I remember was a ridiculously complex grenade/grenade launcher rule!

But it played pretty fast. Would be interesting to imagine how we might have ended up these days if GW had gone with the game as their 40k 4th edition ruleset, rather than telling Andy Chambers to f*** off (paraphrasing a bit there )

What makes the game stand out is its tactical nature. Each force in the game plays out differently. Broadly, the MI rely on mobility and superior firepower, while the bugs rely on numbers and hidden movement. The bugs have a more flexible command structure, while the MI have more flexible units. There is an element of bluffing the other players, particularly on the side of the bugs. The game is about maneuvering and trying to push your opponent into making mistakes in where s/he moves units so that you can take advantage of your strengths. The game uses three dimensional environments better than most, as players will be competing on the ground, in the air and in subterranean tunnels. The back-and-forth interaction between sides due to the reaction mechanic means that you will be constantly engaged.

It's one of the most tactically interesting games I've played.

Were the rules ever available as a free pdf download?

edit: Nevermind. I picked up a used hardcover online for half the price of the pdf download. I'm not sure if the hardcover is the "complete" version of the rules or the most modern (did they have various editions?).

Hardcover is good. The Mongoose site still has a the Signs and Portents articles including faqs.