Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've been playing with the construction of a new 6mm D10 based system. Rulebook is getting close, at least just the text file. I've been adding some fluff. What I need is some input.

Background

The Confederation of Terran States
The Confederation of Terran States or CTS is now long gone but it was the first Interstellar Human Government. Originally a bright and shining example of coordination and man working together as one to reach towards the stars and create a better tomorrow. At least, that is was Terran Union propaganda would lead people to believe. In reality, the whole thing was born of blood and fire. As a major civil war erupted on Earth that lasted 12 years during which Terra forgot their brethren in space and fought over whatever they could get. So involved was this was that food shortages and plagues crossed from one continent to another. Fatigue more than anything brought peace. Earth quickly looked to how it could repair all the damage done. This was the reason for the birth of the CTS. Taxation of the outer colonies quickly escalated to Boston Tea Party levels where the outer colonies started rebelling and joining together to fight back. Within only a few years, war broke out again but this time between the CTS and what later would become the Border Worlds Confederation.

The Border Worlds Confederation
Humans always seem to gravitate towards wanting to govern themselves. The CTS felt oppressive and antagonistic from the first days that they reached out to regain control of all the border worlds. Dissatisfaction grew quickly and fear spread. The outer worlds did not have the technology or manufacturing abilities to compete with the CTS. The only advantage that they had was sheer numbers. Eight years of peace on Earth ended as war broke out between the CTS and the BWC. The war lasted for 4 years until the CTS finally brought the BWC to heel. A time of very uneasy peace ensued where the BWC was forced by the peace accords to limit their defensive fleets. Five years later another event that would forever change the heart of humanity occurred, First Contact.

The Bnarl Union
After 5 years of peace a merchant/mining ship from the BWC, while out looking for asteroids to mine, caught a glimpse of a distant battle. They were safe from view, being in the asteroid belt, but watched and recorded. The battle became a battle of attrition and both sides nearly perished. The ships were nothing like anything Humans had ever seen. In the aftermath the BWC ship cautiously approached. They found two small fleets that had torn each other to shreds for unknown reasons. Boarders were sent in and one of the ships was found to crewed by a strange humanoid race. The ship appeared to be strictly military in nature. Small numbers of crew were found alive. They had ridged skulls but were strong and militaristic. They had much in common with ancient Human Samurai warriors. After communication was established worrisome news was found. The other race was an aggressive and hyper militaristic races of reptilian monsters, otherwise known as the Kthorg.

The Kthorg Empire
The Kthorg are a reptilian race. They are aggressive to an extreme and have an emperor that rules with absolute power. His word is law. The fact that the Kthorg can reproduce at a prodigious rate is all that supports the growth of their empire. The Kthorg were actively trying to expand and conquer anything and everything in their way. The Bnarls had been at war with them for a long time, and were losing, badly. With the discovery of Humanity, new hope was brought into the hearts of the Bnarls, as they hoped that Humanity would side with them and enter into the fray. In less than 2 years the BWC ignores the peace accords with the CTS and starts a massive buildup of forces. The Bnarls sadly fight on slightly refreshed from the new supplies the BWC is providing them. The Bnarls also start to hire some Terran mercenaries to assist in the battle. Tensions rise between the BWC and the CTS but in the end it did not matter. In less than a year the Kthorgs learn of Humans and perform a pre-emptive strike and take several CTS worlds in the first wave alone. A major CTS planet was under attack when a BWC fleet arrives and lends assistance. Due to internal politics and war the CTS falls and is replaced with a new government more ready prepared to conduct a larger interstellar war with the Kthorgs.

The Terran Union
Out of the CTS the new Terran Union or TU was formed. The old senate and representatives by and large are put to death or jailed. It would still not be till 12 years later that the TU, BWC, and Bnarls for an accord to counter the Kthorg threat. It would still be another 20 years before the war with the Kthorgs would appear to come to an end.

The Cinturonian Councilship
The Cinturons are a very small Empire that also made contact with the Terran Union forces. They are a bird-like race that was also fighting the Kthorgs. Cinturon technology is quite advanced for such a small empire. They have an affinity, and almost sixth sense when it comes to engineering and able to quickly reverse engineer nearly anything they can get their claws on. They quickly joined the accords against the Kthorgs and were the final key needed to turn the war fully against the Kthorgs and bring about peace.

Nodal Gates
Hyperspace gates had, at this point, been in use for a very long time. More than 100 years prior the first Interstellar gate was found, frozen in a synchronous orbit on the far side of Neptune. The only way it could be seen was by a space faring vessel or a satellite passing by at just the right time. Hyperspace gates meant that travel that before would have taken centuries would be quick and efficient. Hyperspace was nearly impossible to navigate without navigation beacons in place to guide travelers from system to system. Scientists had long been at work trying to improve on the technology and somehow breach a new type of space. A way to travel further, faster and safer.

Years after the cessation of war with the Kthorgs a scientist within the Terran Union discovered Nodal Gate technology. The Nodal Gates needed tremendous amounts of energy in order to operate them. A few small scale test runs were made. Even those small tests required massive energy banks in order to not overload power grids and shut down entire cities. Only small tests were allowed at the Lawrence Livermore Labs in California. The first images to come through were often short lived as many of gates appeared to open up into the sky or just as often gates opened up into solid rock. A large number of gates even opened up into the vacuum of space. The few Probes that were sent though and seemed to malfunction as they passed through the gate. The experiments were thought to be a failure and the project, as with all things of this nature, was about to be shut down. Probes failed and nobody dared to send anyone through. A few animals had been sent through a few gates, never to return. When gates opened up into the air or ground, in the sealed lab, samples of some of the air and rock were taken. A noted geologist noticed that the rock properties, such as the ambient temperature of each sample taken, changed with every sample. Dr. Brown realized that the samples appeared to be coming from varying depths in the Earth. Dr. Rastogi refused to see his work go to waste and managed to convince two key Senators to let him up the stakes for a few last tests, this time in space. The thought was that the gates were opening up randomly into the ground or into the sky. If there was a way to control the height and distance, it was unknown. The actual gates themselves had no known way to control their destination but evidence showed that they did indeed go somewhere.
After spending millions of credits and the creation of a large gate near Mars, testing began. The gate was much larger, large enough for a small fighter or troop transport. Soon one of the scientists found a way to shield the probes that went through. Soon after animal and then on to human tests were performed.

To everyone’s surprise, even Dr. Rastogi, the leader of the scientific team, found that the gates not only opened into space some distance away, but also to some places that appeared to be like mirror images of known space. The first probes through found planets that had similar geography but the people were not the same.
The project quickly became a need to know project within the TU. The first few trips were made with a combination of stealth probes and small manned craft found many worlds that looked just like Earth and so many others but were wildly different. The exit points were discovered to be in what was thought to be alternate universes with alternate timelines. Most trips found nothing but planets devoid of life.

In time it was found that by modulating the energy precisely and frequencies of the machinery used, the gates would open in different alternate universes. Eventually the team was able to ensure that the gates would open near the outer edges of likely planetary systems. Opening the gates too far in to a system enhanced the risks that gates would open into a planetoid.

A small group of Senators within the Special Operations committee along with the President and other key personnel decided that the Earth would ensure its safety not only for the immediate future, but for all time. Never would anyone such as the Kthorgs be able to threaten the core worlds. A special task force was formed with the express goal of finding and stealing technology, resources and information from these alternate universes.

The first massive Nodal Gate went under construction near Mars. The Nodal Gate would allow what became known as “Raid” fleets to go through and obtain whatever they could from the nearest systems. Not all trips were successful. Some ended in a complete loss of entire fleets, but the results were enough to keep things going. Terra had now bowed to fear and Human nature, after hundreds of years without massive piracy over the Seven Seas of Earth, Humans again became some of the largest pirates around, but this time over the Black Sea and across different Universes.

Deployment Gates
A few years later after another scientist discovered how to open smaller gates over shorter distances, some 75 km, allowing gates to be opened from as low as the Mesosphere. All this using similar technology as the Nodal Gates. These became known as deployment gates. Gateships were built to accompany fleets, often in the place of troopships. Gateships were designed for carrying troops and contained very large power generators. The large power requirements was one of the limitations to the usage of Gateships. Troops could be dropped down with incredible precision onto areas near cities or fortifications and allow the Terran Union forces to attack through the deployment gates. Often Gateships carried the vanguard for larger assaults.

Introduction  Nodal Wars: Skirmish
Nodal Wars: Skirmish is a primarily 6mm wargame loosely based on many of the Anime cartoons from the mid 1980’s. The game takes care to allow players the flexibility to not only play games that are representative of what they had seen on TV and also in movies, but also open enough that they can adapt units from other genres and be able to mix and match forces and let the imagination run wild. Meant to be played with somewhere between 10 and 20 units per player it can easily be scaled up for larger battles.

The rules are based on an alternating activation system. Players will place their forces into squads and alternate with each other. Players will be able to choose how and when to maneuver their forces in order to try to outmaneuver and outperform each other. Players can try to pull each other out of positions where they can finish them off and obtain a win.

So does that mean my unit can shoot then shoot again? Then next turn that same unit can move then shoot or move twice instead? Sounds cool Mike. Good luck

Yes, you can sit put and fire twice, with a negative modifier to the second shot. Units designed to put out large volumes of fire like Destroids will have the "Focus Fire" ability and be able to make the second shot without the negative modifier.

So now a Defender can sit put and Rapid-Fire for free since they will also get Focus Fire.

I thought it unfair that a Tomahawk can fire twice yet a Defender has to pay for the second shot.

Also, additional shots will have a negative modifier for all units without Focus Fire. So your Female Power Armor can zoom in and unload everything BUT is less likely to hit. Thankfully she has a higher GN.

Ok, redid things for D10 and finished first pass on rules.

I tell you, getting rid of things like Dodge and Roll and changing DF to Target and Armor Ratings look like they may speed things up quite a bit. No more opposed rolls.

I need help looking things over and making tweaks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I know some things need to be worked out still, but point anything out that you see!

Update to 1.03

Update on a WIP

Forgot to rename it to 1.04....

Updated Rules and starting to work on some units for playtesting. Let me know if you are interested. I can convert stats over for any miniatures that you might have to test with.

oh, and the cheat sheet that is still a WIP, well, it's all a WIP


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I need to make a Token sheet to help you all out too I guess.

Some rules additions

Sample Army
In this example two players will each be making a small force including two squads and costing up to 200 points. One player chooses to make his army using the Earth Military Forces faction while the other decides to build his force using the Van faction.

The EMF player decides on one squad as his anvil and another, faster and more mobile squad to act as the hammer. The first squad will consist of pure ground forces. The player decides to choose an Excalibur piloted by an officer (Officer and 33 points) as well as an Excalibur piloted by a regular pilot (Common and 24 points). The squad will also have a Radar X piloted by a regular pilot (Common and 13 points) and a Gladiator with a regular pilot (Common and 19 points). That means the player will have 1 Officer and 3 Commons as well at a cost of 89 points. The player could make them veterans but if he does so ALL the units in the squadron must also be Veterans. That cost of making them Veterans would be an additional 13 points. He may wish to go back and add some upgrades or make them Veterans but first it would be better to work on the second squad.

The second squad is going to consist of a Falcon Leader and 2 Falcons. That would be 28 points for the Officer and 19 points for each wingman, who are also Standard units for a total of 66 points. So now the player has 2 Officers and 5 Standard units. Requiring at least 2 Standard units per Officer, the player does not violate any organization rules.

The player counts up his total and sees that he has spent 155 points. Since the players decided to use 200 points, that leaves him with 45 more points to spend.

The EMF player adds another pair of Standard Falcons for 19 points each. He now has 7 points left to spend. The player gives the Command Upgrade to the Excalibur Officer, leaving 3 more points. Using the last 3 points the player also upgrades the Gladiator with a Rifle Pod.

Hammer Squad
1 Falcon Officer
4 Falcon

Anvil Squad
1 Excalibur Officer with Command Upgrade
1 Excalibur
1 Gladiator with Rifle Pod Upgrade
1 Radar X

2 Officers and 7 Standard Units

The Van player will also choose his forces. Van units are typically cheaper and greater in number allowing them to surround and outmaneuver enemy forces. The player decides on choosing a Crab (Officer and 34 points) for his Officer along with 6 Ostriches (Standard and 5 points each for 30 points). To add to the Crab and Ostriches he decides to add a single Heavy Artillery Ostrich (Specialist and 16 points) as well as a pair of Light Artillery Ostriches (2 Specialist and 10 points each for 20 points). The player has not spent 100 points even. He now has one Officer, 6 Standard Units and 3 Specialists. The player has too many Specialists at the moment and will need to remedy that with the second squad.

The second squad will consist of another Crab (Officer and 34 points) along with 5 Power Armor (5 Standard and 60 points). The player has 6 points remaining. He uses 5 points to upgrade the missiles on the Heavy Artillery Ostrich.

Squad 1
Crab
6 Ostriches
2 Light Artillery Ostriches
1 Heavy Artillery Ostrich with missile upgrade

Squad 2
Crab
5 Power Armor

2 Officer, 3 Specialists and 11 Standard Units


Setting the Stage
Once all players have chosen their respective forces and organized them, they turn to setting up the table. In order to ensure fairness this can be done with each player taking turns placing a single feature of terrain onto the tabletop such as a hill, building, or river. This is done until the players have placed all the terrain they chose in the Selecting the Playing Surface segment.

Time for Battle!
Each player will now place his forces within his deployment zone depending upon the scenario chosen. Once all the units are set, play will begin. Some units may be set aside if the players choose to use rules for delayed arrival of reinforcements or under any special scenario rules.

There are 6 different types of deployments. For a more random and enjoyable game, players may wish to roll randomly to determine the type of deployment for each side. Simply choose on player to designate as the attacker, roll a single D6 each, and consult the deployment charts to see how the table should be set up.

Deployment Types
1. Head On
2. Approach
3. Face Off
4. Node Gate
5. Air/Orbital Drop
6. Beachhead

When a player gets a deployment that would allow him to start from either the left to the right side of the table such as in the case of a Face Off deployment, have that player roll D6. On a 1-3 he will set up his deployment area and deploy on the side to his left and on a 4-6 he will deploy on the right.

Node Gate Deployments
Node Gates deployments are only used by factions that have them. If a player is using a faction that does not have Node Gates simply use Face Off deployment for that player. If a player has Node Gates he or she will roll a single D10 and consult the following chart to see how many Node Gates they will be able to place on the table. The result is rounded up so that if a player rolled a 4 and had 13 units, he would be able to deploy up to 4 gates.
Number of Deployment Gates determination
1 to 3  1 gate per 3 units
4 to 7  1 gate per 4 units
8 to 9  1 gate per 5 units
10  1 gate per 6 units
Once a player determines how many gates he will be able to deploy they are placed on the table. The player will also designate what units are to exit what gates before gameplay begins. Once all units from a given gate have deployed, then the gate will close on the Opening Phase of the following turn. The player must also choose a single direction for all his gates to open towards. Once placed within the deployment area the player will then roll for scattering. For each gate roll two different colored D10 dice. One is used to determine the direction by using the upper corner as a direction counter and the other the distance of the scatter.
Distance of Deployment Gate Scattering
1 to 5  on target
6  1 inch
7  2 inches
8  3 inches
9  4 inches
10  5 inches.
Once the gates location has been determined place the gates at the appropriate spot with the gates all facing the same direction as chosen by the player. Gates can scatter outside the original deployment zone set up before play. Gate placement can be really important. Deployment Gates can be fired both into and out of. The opposite site of a gate also serves as a block for LOS and hard cover for units. Each turn a player can have up to three units move out of a single gate. If the gate is facing an enemy, a single additional unit can be placed “behind” the gate showing that he is at the opening and can fire and be fired upon. No cover is received from a gate when a unit is standing inside it. If a unit is behind a gate, then they can receive hard cover from the gate itself. The rear of a gate can be considered as a partial singularity that will block all weapons fire. Units pushed into the rear of a gate will take damage as if attacked by a medium sized singularity weapon. See singularity weapons for more details.
Gates take a tremendous amount of enegy to create and maintain so typically Deployment Gates are closed once deployment is complete unless the battle is turning bad for that faction. In those cases a player may wish to keep his gates open.

A few might recognize these from their childhood! We plan on making all the Megaforce Units.

Rules Update....I think I'm ready to do some CAV conversions for playtesting!

That is freaking huge.
84 pages?
Nice nod to many Battletech bits like troop capacity on a mech or vehicle.
Very much worth reading.
I could forward to my insane gaming friend, he would devour it in short order.

Pages 1-21 are the index and some fluff.

Been working on conversions so no more RRT except by request.

CAV conversions all done and up. Now the focus is to finish out Robotech the 1st Generation conversions and them write up some combat and play examples and possibly a video and then on to converting Battletech stuff.

Working on slimming rules by removing things I had added as placemarkers to advanced rules for later on down the line. Should post up this weekend.

some information I posted up on the FB page that you might find interesting.

For Example: A BattlePod/Ostrich is trying to hit a Falcon/VT with it's Heavy Particle Cannons. The Ostrich has a Gunnery of 2. The Falcon has a TR (Target Rating) of 7 in Battloid, 8 in Guardian, and 9 in Fighter mode. The Heavy Particle Cannons have a base range of 6.

At a range of 0-6 the attacker rolls D12 and needs a 7+ (The Target Rating in Battloid) in order to hit. 66% chance

at 7-12 he rolls a D10, 60% chance

at 13-18 he rolls a D8, 38% chance

at 19-24 he uses a D6, 33% chance

at 25-30 he uses a D4, if he rolls a 4 he can re-roll and add 1 of he rolls another 4. approximately 6% chance

If the Falcon was in Guardian mode it would have a Target Rating of 8.

D12 at 0-6, 58%

D10 at 7-12, 50%

D8 at 13-18, 37%

D6 at 19-24, 16%

D4 at 25-30, 2%

If the Falcon is in fighter mode he'd have a Target Rating of 9!

D12 at 0-6, 50%

D10 at 7-12, 40%

D8 at 13-18, 25%

D6 at 19-24, 3%

D4 at 25-30, .04%

So the faster and harder a unit is to hit, the closer and closer the attacker needs to be to have a good chance at doing some damage.

On the flipside immobile or slow targets may be able to be hit at pretty extremen ranges but if the target is heavily armored, the attack may not do any damage whatsoever.

So having a higher GN can be critical. Officers and Commanders are more important. Sniper units like FPA become even deadlier as they are hard to hit and have a higher GN than the average. Units like ones in Battletech with targeting computers can be very useful too as they not only have a better chance of hitting targets but may also have a better chance to hit at longer ranges than their counterparts.

Thanks, looks good, makes me think more critically of the other games out there.
I need to do some tabletop scenarios to try it out and see if it "feels right".
For a guy who normally crunches numbers and sample/lot statistics, gut feel for games lately I like to try out first before the math.

Been insane lately so the table experiment may not be till next week.
The editing of your "tome" I am sure is no small effort but is appreciated for my before bed reading.
It at least has displaced the "Bolt Action" rulebook.

cool (y)

Hmmm... "cheat sheet" is looking better as I read through this, but ALL games benefit from one.

is that cheat sheet PDF or PPT?

Two players decide to play out a small skirmish. One wants to use the CV universe units and the other a group of EMF. The players decide to play with a few squad each to get a good handle on the rules. They decide to get 100 points each to play the scenario out. The players one goes to choose his forces. The players decide against using any Officers or Veterans to keep things simple. When players use Veterans, all units in the squad must also be Veterans except the Officers.
The players want to keep things simple and use only a small amount of units. The first player decides pick a pair of Chieftain tanks for a total of 22 points, 11 each. He also pics a few Kraken fighters for another 30 points. Seeing that he has 48 points left he decides to look for a pair of mechs that cost 24 points each and decides upon a pair of Assassin mechs to round out his 100 points.
Player two needs to choose his EMF forces and wants something mobile and that can pick away at the CV forces. The player decides to make a combines force including destroids and a force of Falcons. An Excalibur will cost him 25 points leaving him with 75 more to spend. Standard Falcons cost 19 each. The player chooses 2 Falcons with the Nose Laser Upgrades for a total of 20 points each for a total of 65 points. He has 35 left. He chooses a 19 point Gladiator and spends the last 16 points on a Radar X, rounding out his forces.
CV Player
Chieftain MBT x2 (Standard) 22 Points
Kraken Fighter x2 (Standard) 30 Points
Assassin Mech x2 (Standard) 48 Points
Total
6 Standard
100 Points

EMF Player
Excalibur x1 (Standard) 25 Points
Falcon x2 (Standard) with Nose Laser Upgrade 40 Points
Gladiator x2 (Standard) 19 Points
Radar X x1 (Standard) 16 Points

Total
6 Standard
100 Points

Consolidating Files into a single spot
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0VSNzmthd1vVlVfU3BadVd2MVk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR39dO35g7w


Automatically Appended Next Post:
First of many videos

Video #2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoBaNFzkMHQ

First Gameplay Video.....still working on making these better and only have one camera. Will work on the next one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuL_0yJ-bj8


Automatically Appended Next Post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9cu6HONRS0

Part 2

https://youtu.be/gscSZTzkAas

https://youtu.be/5TVacoPoI1g

https://youtu.be/QpvYOvA_HIQ

Doing a step by step game for Nodal Wars using UEDF vs Masters forces. I know some of you don't like facebook, but if you want to help decide the fate of each side come and help. I'm taking in suggestions as to what side to move where and what to do for each activation.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1642366472704877/

Ok, playing out a game, slowly, while allowing strategy input from the watchers.

200 Point Game with Masters vs Earth Forces.....

Test Battle

Master's Forces

Green with Sled and Weapons Upgrade 36
2x Blue with Sled and Weapons Upgrade 17ea
70 Points

Green with Sled and Weapons Upgrade 36
2x Blue with Sled and Weapons Upgrade 17ea
70 Points

3x Veteran Blues with Sled 20ea
60 Points

200 Points



EMF Forces

Excalibur Officer 34
Excalibur 25
Gladiator with Rifle Pod 22
2x Defender 16ea
113 Points

Falcon Officer with Short Range Missiles 30
3x Falcon 19 ea
87 Points

200 Points

Turn 1.....

Leadership points....2 for the EMF and 4 for the Masters.

Initiative was a 4 for the EMF and an 8 for the Masters.

The Masters could go for a strike or attempt to draw fire from the EMF or let the EMF take the first move and either attack with some Veritechs with missiles or risk the EMF having the Destroids entrench some by finding some cover and going on overwatch.

Since blues have three actions and the greens four.... they use two to zoom up 24 inches along the edge. The blues hold one action in reserve in case they need Anti-missile vs the fighters and the Green does the same. He uses his fourth point to go on overwatch. That will allow him to take a shot when something comes into range.