The Dark Series gears were all just upgraded (and stealthed up) Northern and Southern gears. The Claw series were all experimental Paxton gears introduced in "Black Talons: Mission to Caprice" that were re-named, given a stealth coating and crammed into the 'all new' Black Talon army for Blitz.
Black Talons were horrible to play against. They had 3-4 dice for offense and defense and often you couldn't even shoot them because of Stealth, and most of them were carrying one-hit-kill weapons thanks to superior fire control, accuracy and the many, many dice they could throw. Due to the Priority system they weren't unbeatable - elite armies had MORE objectives to fulfill than lesser armies, but that usually meant your tactics vs Black Talons was "fulfill one objective then run and hide the rest of the game".
Hopefully the changes in the rules (especially Stealth) make them more tolerable to play against. They'll never go into plastics, though, they're far too low volume an army (half the units of anything else).
bound for glory wrote: I was thinking of taking advantage of the great prices on Amazon, ATM.
Can't beat those with a stick. Mean to say, I was going to buy a few sets to use as some sort(not thought too deeply into it as yet)ofpowered armor units in GRUNTZ.
But then i got to thinking I could use them for Heavy Gear
Thanks for the pointer! I might actually buy something! ___
$15-ish squads?
I might just get those Armadillos and Frames after all.
John Prins wrote: The Dark Series gears were all just upgraded (and stealthed up) Northern and Southern gears. The Claw series were all experimental Paxton gears introduced in "Black Talons: Mission to Caprice" that were re-named, given a stealth coating and crammed into the 'all new' Black Talon army for Blitz.
Black Talons were horrible to play against. They had 3-4 dice for offense and defense and often you couldn't even shoot them because of Stealth, and most of them were carrying one-hit-kill weapons thanks to superior fire control, accuracy and the many, many dice they could throw. Due to the Priority system they weren't unbeatable - elite armies had MORE objectives to fulfill than lesser armies, but that usually meant your tactics vs Black Talons was "fulfill one objective then run and hide the rest of the game".
Hopefully the changes in the rules (especially Stealth) make them more tolerable to play against. They'll never go into plastics, though, they're far too low volume an army (half the units of anything else).
Believe it or not, they were not much fun to play with either. Imagine playing an army where you are out numbered 2 or even 3 to 1, that's incredibly difficult to lose a model, but if you do, you are . And any enemy model you wanted to kill? You could pretty much easily kill. It was like you were playing a totally different game then your opponent. It was an army that either won big, or lost big, with nothing in the middle. It won far more then it lost unless your opponent tailored a list or was really, really good.
Amazon has a fire sail going on the old metal stuff, eh? Hmm...
John Prins wrote: The Dark Series gears were all just upgraded (and stealthed up) Northern and Southern gears. The Claw series were all experimental Paxton gears introduced in "Black Talons: Mission to Caprice" that were re-named, given a stealth coating and crammed into the 'all new' Black Talon army for Blitz.
Black Talons were horrible to play against. They had 3-4 dice for offense and defense and often you couldn't even shoot them because of Stealth, and most of them were carrying one-hit-kill weapons thanks to superior fire control, accuracy and the many, many dice they could throw. Due to the Priority system they weren't unbeatable - elite armies had MORE objectives to fulfill than lesser armies, but that usually meant your tactics vs Black Talons was "fulfill one objective then run and hide the rest of the game".
Hopefully the changes in the rules (especially Stealth) make them more tolerable to play against. They'll never go into plastics, though, they're far too low volume an army (half the units of anything else).
Agree completely. The only thing I might add is that their achilles heel (multiple super recon gears like weasels plus lots of indirect fire) made them not very fun to play with because they suddenly lost half their abilites (namely stealth). It was very much a rock paper scissors game in that you'd (given normal dice rolls) likely know the outcome of a game just from looking at the armies. If the talons faced a normal force, they easily won. If the other player had the $$ to build a decidedly anti-talon force with minmaxed recon gears then the talons usually lost. The whole premise of an elite army of invisible super gears piloted by the best of the best of the best (because the BOTB was already a TN planet faction thing!) whose abilities consisted of multiple gamebreaking mechanics to ensure your opponent's models literally couldn't do ANYTHING is great for RPG or story fiction... but sucks as a tabletop gameplay mechanic. I had a talon army that I played twice... once against in a demo (the guy was frankly a TFG new talon player who picked up a few models at gencon who refused to acknowledge the "fanzine" gear up points cost boosts because it had the word optional in the article) with a balanced southern force... and the talons won but at least I put up a fight. I then said lets play another with mirrored forces and I absolutely creamed him and asked him if he thought that was a fair matchup. Needless to say I never heard from him again. I would also point out that you could achieve in all fairness almost Talon levels of unfun games by taking multiple stealth squads in polar factions as well (especially the south).
As you said, balance is better now by virtue of the stealth rules not being completely stupidly broken but the talons IMO still aren't very balanced. When I looked at like for like models (as close as I could at least) like the Snakeye Mamba vs Dark Mamba comparison. For 1pt, you get an MRP, 1" reach on your vibroblade, autopilot, and an extra hull point. Each one of those is easily a 1pt upgrade each for other factions but talons get each of them for 75% off. The sniper panther vs dark jaguar sniper variant is another. The North version gets a HRF instead of a MRF.. but the talon gets autopilot, extra hull, 1" range on the vibroblade and a 1pt discount compared with the northern gear. I'd easily given the option ALWAYS take the talon versions of those gears instead of the polar ones. The point values for the other talons including claw series are spitballed as well (no real VCS in nublitz to ignore like was the case in normal blitz for paxton and nucoal) so in all likelihood have the same discounts factored in as well. It's not as bad as in blitz but the trend does continue.
Believe it or not, they were not much fun to play with either.
I generally found people went with Black Talons because it required the minimum number of models to paint. It was extremely inexpensive to get started with BT, but it's the exact wrong army for a starter to play. Someone who knew what they were doing with BT was really unpleasant to play against.
Believe it or not, they were not much fun to play with either.
I generally found people went with Black Talons because it required the minimum number of models to paint. It was extremely inexpensive to get started with BT, but it's the exact wrong army for a starter to play. Someone who knew what they were doing with BT was really unpleasant to play against.
That's why I picked it up as a opfor for my primary (at the time) southern force. Low model count, easy paint job, great fluff, different tactics... but still the gears that I loved. Even for a relatively veteran player (in terms of years a fan not necessarily in person blitz games sadly), it wasn't the right army to play in demos or anything other than the flying pink unicorn rarity of a HG tourney.
A bit off topic but a few years ago, there was an interesting article about an experiment watching two robosellers. Basically, the sellers would see what the cost was of an item on amazon including shipping and list it for a few bucks more. They basically programmed their algorithm to account for the possibility (the author postulated) of *BUYING* it from a cheaper seller when someone actually bought it from them at a higher price and then recycling it back to the end consumer. This process was likely automated by a program. It was interesting because there apparently in this case were only two "sellers" of a particular used out of print text book, both of whom were robosellers. One was apparently set to match the price to a buck or two under the next lowest competition and the other was roboset to sell it at several dollars above the highest.
The second seller would, for example, see the book at $15 so would charge $5 more at $20. The first seller's program was set to for example sell at $2 under the next lowest and later that hour raise the price to $18.. which in turn would cause the second seller to increase to $23... ad nauseum. With the two programs alternately increasing each price, the book went from a price in the teens to several thousand dollars with no purchases nor likely any human interaction. Please not that I used the term robo so this aside is totally on topic for a robotech thread.
FWIW, that's how prices get set for rare comic books, stamps and baseball cards... The numbers are meaningless, because they almost never get sold as a one-off to a consumer. And when they do, it's part of a big retail cross-trade of "like for like", where the values can be set to anything both sides agree on.
For the price delta, you could probably pay to have it shipped to the US.
If you're outside the US of A, it will certainly be much cheaper than trying to buy directly from DP9, anyways.
This exchange is pretty telling:
Stuart Tonge wrote:Guys I just got a mail asking for $109 in postage for this - is that accurate? I am presuming it's in CAD but it's still £63. I was thinking more a tenner or fifteen tops.
It's almost have the price of backing the kickstarter.. is it accurate?
Stuart Tonge wrote:I can see from reading the immediate comments that the likely answer is yes and.. just wow. To say I'm unbelievably disappointing is just way way beyond how I feel right now. Half the price of the game in shipping? You guys saw me coming or what?
The Robster wrote:@ Stuart. Sadly we can't control the Canadian dollar exchange rate or the insane international shipping costs from Canada or the USA once the packages go over 4 lbs the shipping costs go up a lot. A single Core Starter Set weights 2.77 lbs so goes as 3 lbs and costs $53 CAD to ship internationally.
Well.... I guess they saved the backers the VAT costs? Shame about the shipping, though, but it is still kind of baffling to see those kind of quotes for shipping compared with many, many other Kickstarters. Probably having an approximate amount written on the KS from the start might have assuaged some aggravation, but of course it might also have resulted in lower numbers of international backers...
JohnHwangDD wrote: FWIW, that's how prices get set for rare comic books, stamps and baseball cards... The numbers are meaningless, because they almost never get sold as a one-off to a consumer. And when they do, it's part of a big retail cross-trade of "like for like", where the values can be set to anything both sides agree on.
For the price delta, you could probably pay to have it shipped to the US.
Despite the little flag, I am indeed Canadian, and shipping from the US usually amounts to "Sure. Bend over first."
Another reason Black Talons kind of wound up in a weird place as a popular starter army, is that up until recently anyone who remembered Heavy Gear most likely remembered it from the game starring said specop birdies, so who wouldn't want them?
Firebreak wrote: ]Despite the little flag, I am indeed Canadian, and shipping from the US usually amounts to "Sure. Bend over first."
The only place it's remotely fair to ship to Canada from is the UK, thanks to Royal Mail and Canada Post being all buddy-buddy (ask to see if they'll ship Royal Mail). If they use USPS ground from the USA it's not super-duper horrible, but it's still "You want how much?" expensive. Anything with FedEx, UPS or the like is robbery-at-gunpoint expensive.
What with customs and VAT and the price of international shipping, it's a small wonder anyone orders anything international.
Firebreak wrote: ]Despite the little flag, I am indeed Canadian, and shipping from the US usually amounts to "Sure. Bend over first."
The only place it's remotely fair to ship to Canada from is the UK, thanks to Royal Mail and Canada Post being all buddy-buddy (ask to see if they'll ship Royal Mail). If they use USPS ground from the USA it's not super-duper horrible, but it's still "You want how much?" expensive. Anything with FedEx, UPS or the like is robbery-at-gunpoint expensive.
Not so much even to the UK, it appears, as the exchange quoted was specifically talking in pounds, so at least in this instance it also was on a "making stones bleed" level.
What with customs and VAT and the price of international shipping, it's a small wonder anyone orders anything international.
Sometimes, you just don't have any other choice. Except just not buying what you wanted, that is.
Not so much even to the UK, it appears, as the exchange quoted was specifically talking in pounds, so at least in this instance it also was on a "making stones bleed" level.
What with customs and VAT and the price of international shipping, it's a small wonder anyone orders anything international.
Sometimes, you just don't have any other choice. Except just not buying what you wanted, that is.
I just did some shipping quotes on Canada Post's website, and yeah, those prices seem pretty legit. I did notice that the volume seems to have a much bigger effect on shipping price than weight. A small 4 pound box was $26 to ship, while a 12" cube (same weight!) was $96. Geez.
Did the original pledges promise to include everything in the final retail packaging? I thought in all the quotes above that would come later. If anything, if it were up to me and possible (just spitballing here), I'd offer to ship it without the retail box in a smaller format if it fits and saves everyone money. I at least offer that to folks who buy stuff from me in the Swap Shop that comes in a big empty box.
warboss wrote: Did the original pledges promise to include everything in the final retail packaging? I thought in all the quotes above that would come later. If anything, if it were up to me and possible (just spitballing here), I'd offer to ship it without the retail box in a smaller format if it fits and saves everyone money. I at least offer that to folks who buy stuff from me in the Swap Shop that comes in a big empty box.
KS backers aren't getting the retail packaging (99% sure on that). That might save 25% of the volume on a core starter. The RTT starter had what, 34 minis? The sprues for HG are more compact but I think we're talking comparable bulk. I'm guessing based on the quote that the guy had a double core, which is what I based my 12" cube box on, though the weight is just a wild guess on my part.
warboss wrote: Did the original pledges promise to include everything in the final retail packaging? I thought in all the quotes above that would come later. If anything, if it were up to me and possible (just spitballing here), I'd offer to ship it without the retail box in a smaller format if it fits and saves everyone money. I at least offer that to folks who buy stuff from me in the Swap Shop that comes in a big empty box.
KS backers aren't getting the retail packaging (99% sure on that). That might save 25% of the volume on a core starter. The RTT starter had what, 34 minis? The sprues for HG are more compact but I think we're talking comparable bulk. I'm guessing based on the quote that the guy had a double core, which is what I based my 12" cube box on, though the weight is just a wild guess on my part.
Honestly speaking, I would need to actually see the sprues in the flesh. So far, most of the Gears' sprues look similar in size to GW's character sprues (that is to say, I actually have no real idea how big they are).
I do know though that come october I will be getting two full Conan Boardgame King pledges, with the full retail packaging plus the full King Pledge packaging, plus a full load of add ons, for $50 shipping (included multiple shipping waves for the add ons), from the USA.
I still think that the problem is that DP9 didn't give even an approximate shipping costs quote during the KS, so a lot of people was expecting way less than what they're expected to pay now.
As a last note, they were supposed to be sending all UK/EU pledges in bulk to an UK distributor, so individual bulk should not be an issue as far as the canadian mail is concerned, only the overall bulk for all pledges.
I suspect companies got tired of paying for their own mistakes and missteps resulting in 12+ month delays during which their shipping costs increased which is why we saw free shipping and flat rat subsidized shipping fall out of favor instead for nebulous TBD future "actual" shipping. Even if DP9 isn't profiting off of the shipping, they did a poor job of managing expectations of the shipping during the KS. I suppose actually putting realistic shipping rates per pound to various sample countries (say one on each continent) for an estimated weight even at 2014 prices might have cost them some pledges. After seeing what happened with this KS (even if it isn't a direct fault of DP9's), I don't think I'd ever pledge for a kickstarter with a completely open ended future shipping cost. Luckily, as a disgruntled Robotech backer watching the kickstarter platform do absolutely nothing to even declare the KS the partial failure it absolutely is, I won't be crowdfunding anything soon.
warboss wrote: At 1/500 or roughly about a third the size of a current gear, they're probably not going to work for what I had intended (namely a 6mm epic 40k style travel heavy gear mass battle game variant).
It does make them the right scale for a Heavy Gear/Jovian Chronicles crossover, though.
Can you link me to where The Pod screwed people ot of gears?
In a nutshell, the canadian dollar's value tanked after the kickstarter. DP9 watched it tank for months and did nothing (like moving it into US currency). Because their kickstarted funds lost roughly 15-20% of their value, they rolled back two funded stretch goals (one mini each) and did NOT replace them with the metal models at the same price as they promised in their kickstarter campaign or (iirc but not 100% sure) offer refunds but instead just offered them at a discount still above what the kickstarter charged or allowed folks to shift funds to other models. They "made it up" to backers by including extra bits (which would have been on the sprue anyways because the alternative was... what?... empty space?) and tweaked the Caprice sprue to get in another model iirc (again... they would have done that anyways unless they wanted obviously barren sprues). Google heavy gear kickstarter and look for the updates roughly late last year for the direct quotes.
In the end, it was IMO a regrettable blunder 90% their fault but not a deal breaker partly because they were timely in telling us and open about it (unlike Palladium). YMMV and other(s) certainly viewed it in a worse light.
You know, I was very pro pod just a few months ago, because, well, I'm getting old(near 50, sad to say) and I remember the fun I had buying first the big RAFM figures(which, again saddly, I sold, because I liked the new scale, when they went to almost 10mm) then the newer 10mm stuff(going to my flgs and buying the singles was fun).
When you get older, you remember things differently. There was a flgs that just went out of business. Long story short, it was part of me growing up. Heck, I was 12 years old when I first took a long bus ride with a friend to check the joint out.
It was amazing. They had a hell of alot in 1979! We took the long bus ride nearly every saturday for over 2 years, it was that good.
Anyway, I hav'nt been to the place in 20 years. In fact, the last time I was there, I had just gotten my first car)a Datson 1973 240z) and I went to just see the old place. At that point in my life, I had girlfriends, and well, gaming was not on my agenda, if you know what I mean...
So I went in and they had sold all the miniatures and gaming stuff. They had a little corner with what was left. I remember I bought one of those awesome TRAP books)I can't for the life of me rememder the name of that series. But the had really cool traps for RPG's) just to buy something.
Anyway I know, TL;DR, but the place just went out of business after being there for 40 years. I told my wife I wanted to go once more, because I just KNEW they would still have the box of dice under the counter, and I would have bought the whole box. Just because...
I saddly could'nt go, as my beloved mother died that week, and I had other things to do.
In a nutshell, the canadian dollar's value tanked after the kickstarter.
This. The only thing I can add is that they did put an extra Acco in because of the logistics of casting; the Acco was on the same sprue as the legs and bodies for all the other Caprice stuff, and you needed 5 casts to make the Caprice army set. So instead of 4 Acco, you get 5. Not exactly compensation for the loss of the Sidewinder and Tiger sprues, and I wouldn't tout 'finding room for more parts on other sprues' as something they did as compensation (it was something we all expected them to do if possible).
But at least they owned up to the screw-up. If Palladium had done the same early on I might have written off RTT long ago, rather than still being in axe-grinding mode years later. Then again, Palladium's shenanigans probably went beyond mere screw-ups.
This is the second thread complaining about the three years delayed kickstarter with no realistic end in sight for half the rewards. The previous thread was locked after 200 pages when palladium with great aplomb announced a "restart" of the conversation regarding the kickstarter and a new openness... followed by a full year of showing almost nothing and months without a peep (even copy pasted KS updates). Google robotech kickstarter for their "spin" and read the thread above for the reactions.
bound for glory wrote: LOL! Do you have a link to Palladiums shenanigans? Back in the day, my group played the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG.
Head on over to the Robotech thread in this forum: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/651554.page. It's a truly epic tale of idiocy, but it's a long read. It started with the Kickstarter being done in partnership with Ninja Division, which got a LOT of people's attention. Then when the KS was closed, Ninja Division was suddenly 'out of the picture' with 'their obligations fulfilled'. TRANSLATION: Palladium wanted to keep all the money themselves.
Three years later, the money's gone, RTT is a dumpster fire and Wave 2 is never happening as long as Palladium can keep saying "Soon we'll tell you more..."
Kickstarter rewards arrived today. Images in my Flickr page, link in the signature. It's a lot of stuff (6 cores, half is mine, half belongs to friends). FWIW, it's packed pretty darn tight - not tight enough to smoosh minis, but tight enough that the only packing material included was a small wad of paper to keep stuff from rattling around inside the book box (6 books and counters/patches/decals and stuff inside that).
warboss wrote: Cool! Was it packed efficiently without wasted space/cost? Robotech's core box and add-ons for the base pledge were particularly bad at that.
Jam packed. No extra air in the bags, just enough to not smush minis, one small paper wadding to keep the box the books (from multiple cores) were in from sliding around.
It looked like this all the way down to the bottom. For reference, there was six cores plus a few extras in this box:
That's a Mantic terrain mat it's sitting on. The box is 14"x14"x11"(tall).
JohnHwangDD wrote: So, had it taken a hit on the corner or edge, product would have been damaged?
Depends how hard it gets hit. These sprues aren't big, so the outer ring of plastic on each is pretty strong (rigid). If your corner or side gets staved in, you'll probably see some damage. If you just get a crunched corner or dent, the product will probably just shift inside its own bag. They did a decent job of taping the edges, which should help. And the baggies are probably freezer bags, not sandwich bags (thicker plastic).
Pretty much a catch-22 situation, though. If they overpack to prevent damage, shipping costs go further up. The box is as sturdy as any KS box I've gotten in the past 3-4 years. The books and patches and decals came in a smaller folding cardboard box (plenty sturdy). but again I had 6 cores so it kind of needed its own box for books.
Yup, thanks John Prins. That looks pretty tightly packed without space wasted. If they pack the international packages that way then they really did all they could in saving money at least in regard to shipping by package volume.
warboss wrote: Yup, thanks John Prins. That looks pretty tightly packed without space wasted. If they pack the international packages that way then they really did all they could in saving money at least in regard to shipping by package volume.
Yeah, it look pretty decently done, all in all. Still, not sure how much volume would affect the equation for the canadian mail in the case of international backers if they're doing a bulk shipment.
Each army is in its own bag. The book has a page identifying all the weapons on the sprues for each faction, though not the location on the sprue, just the appearance. Not hard to figure out. I think the only place people might have problems is with the Caprice minis and the leg armor, but I've just finished putting together 100TV of them and it wasn't hard.
Yeah, security certificate got messed up somehow, but Greg fixed it.
Sorry, I've been working hard on something of late, and just yesterday whatever virus has been floating around in my system finally decided to kick into overdrive on me.
I'm fighting it off right now, but I don't plan to let this slow me down.
This is part a fluff question, part a rules question, and I'm happy to hear back about both.
When building a squad for HG, is it better to have as many of the same variants together to maximize the squad's role, or have a wide variety to cover a wider range of situations?
Example one: Cobra fire support squad (Spammed): Role Indirect fire support
Razorfang Junglemower Support Cobra, Junglemower Support Cobra, Support Cobra, Support Cobra
Fit's the southern idea of multi-purpose, (Has AT, a pair of HRC's for short range anti-not infantry, and a relatively heavy indirect punch), but is definitely focused on indirect firing the LFG's.
Cobra fire support squad (variety): Role indirect fire support
Razorfang Spitting Cobra, Support Cobra, Flamm Cobra, Slashing Cobra
Still multi-purpose, but the indirect fire options have different capabilities for a wider range of targets. They also have different optimum ranges and difficulty getting them all in the "Sweet spot".
Example Two: Grizzly Support squad (Spammed): Indirect Fire support
Thunder Grizzly, Grizzly x3
Again, all of the indirect weapons match both for range and role. (model to model, not MGM to MRP)
For this one, there is more variety in weapon's role and range of targets, but like the 2nd squad above there might be difficulty getting all the guns to bear in the optimum band. Fluff wise, I'm not sure how this squad would work for the North, as it's definitely more of a multi-role squad (Primary: indirect, 2nd: Assault (MGL/HRC), AT (HBZ))
What's the consensus for squad building?
What does the fluff say?
(for those of you who frequent both this and the PodBay's forum I posted this in both)
The answer is for both rules crunch and backstory fluff that it depends. I realize it sounds like a cop out but it really isn't. In terms of old rpg fluff, one polar faction was described as preferring generalist squads whereas the other favored specialist squads (although I can't recall which was which). I don't think they ever commented on badlands and off world factions but I'd guess generalist given the fluff on interstellar travel weight limits and supposed badlands manpower deficiencies compared to polar forces (which is completely ignored in the rules).
Gameplay wise, it depends on your personal playstyle. I prefer specialists squads because I rarely find generalists to be worthwhile. In 40k, id lump antiarmor marine devastators together because if I didnt then half the squad felt useless (heavy bolters pinging off of a tank with no chance of damaging while 2 lascannons did the real work). In hg, it's less of an issue because you can split fire but you still lose synergy bonuses sometimes when doing so. I think my opinion is best summed up by the full phrase of "jack of all trades, MASTER OF NONE".... most folks leave off that last part. Sorry about the poor format but I'm posting from a cell.
Historically, North and South has had differing doctrines, when talking about unit profiles.
The North has usually preferred to make specialist units, heavily reliant on the rest of the detachment to get the work done, but much better at it than any generalist can be. They tend to go for heavy sinergy between units, in a way similar to.. Eldar, you might say.
The South, OTOH, has always preferred to have either more generalist units or just plain more units (in case of conscripts, infantry and the like). Due to the way they tend to use their units (particularly Gears), they usually prefer their units to be as self reliant as possible.
This tend to come from the way the two polar powers deploy their stuff, Gears in particularly. Northern doctrine dictate Gears to be used in a way that you could say it's "infantry+", that is, taking combat roles very similar to regular infantry units with vehicle support, only without the need for vehicles. They tend to view their Gear forces as a sort of super infantry, and they deploy them as such.
OTOH, the South doctrine tend to be more radical in that regard. For starters, their forces have a much bigger percentage of regular infantry and armor, which makes their armies bigger. This has changed somewhat since the WotA, but historically speaking, the South has used Gears much like super special forces, particularly as paratroopers: meant to be a more elite force than the regular troopers, self reliant, and deep within enemy territory. That's why they usually are kitted to be more independent than northern units. Fluff wise, they usually get away with it because they hit the backside of the enemy, so to speak. Which doesn't translate so well on the tabletop, admittedly.
From what I've been looking at, considering the interaction between rules and fluff (and based on your answers).
While 4 stock cobras and 4 stock grizzlies have roughly similar load outs, on the grizzly the machine gun is a defensive weapon, while on the cobra it's only a "mostly" defensive. A northern commander wouldn't send the grizzlies in to machine gun infantry as a point of doctrine, and unless him doing so really saved everyone's bacon would probably get a talking to from his superiors about knowing the role of his weapons (aka the grizzlies), while the southern commander would only hear about it afterwards if he messed up.
I've been looking at this view recently because so many gears on both sides have several roles worth of equipment available to them on each variant.
From a squad building perspective, I like the more specialized squads too. Both in game as it's easier to run them in a distinct role, and in fluff (a modern military standardizes, and heavy gear is presented as a modern military).
So I've been reading through the quickstart rules and the current version of the LRB and I think I have a handle on most of it (with the exception of E/W because there seems to be a ton of stuff you can do with that).
Mostly I have been trying to figure out what sort of 150 TV force I want to work my way up to, and how best to build the Hunters etc from my pledge so that they will be useful to me later and not simply for my first few ~40 TV demo games.
Can someone more familiar with the current edition rules tell me if I have done anything horribly wrong here? Most likely this will be a WFP list:
This weighs in at 147 TV which would appear to leave me with enough TV to upgrade the Thunder Hammer to a vet (Tested in Battle), the Para Strike Headhunter to a vet (Family Ties) and then give the CO the vet ability Electronic Warfare Specialist (since I can nominate that upgrade as part of Family Ties and the Weasel is a vet already).
The idea being that the Recon team hangs back and mostly snipes, spotting for other models including the mid field GP squad and the off-table Thunder hammer. The GP squad makes up for its lack of heavy firepower with the circling Scorpion and the Para squad will just have to drop in and do as much damage as possible, largely unsupported.
Does that sound feasible given the gear choices and combat group structure?
There was a long discussion months back on the official forum that proved weapons that you'd think would be long range "sniping" types like rifles were absolutely not but instead medium range beatsticks and worse in every other situation. I don't know how many of those models use rifles but that may be important to keep in mind. Only advanced weapons like lasers were true snipers in both name and actual rules and did a better job for the same price. I can't comment on the list other than that since I haven't crunched any numbers yet let alone actually played.
warboss wrote: There was a long discussion months back on the official forum that proved weapons that you'd think would be long range "sniping" types like rifles were absolutely not but instead medium range beatsticks and worse in every other situation. I don't know how many of those models use rifles but that may be important to keep in mind. Only advanced weapons like lasers were true snipers in both name and actual rules and did a better job for the same price. I can't comment on the list other than that since I haven't crunched any numbers yet let alone actually played.
That does sound about right - when you look at the squads that get rifles, they tend to be close or mid range units rather than units who stay on the other side of the table, so I suppose they fill more of the DMR role than an actual sniper. As rifles go, I'm not sure that the slightly longer range, one extra point of penetration and the ability to win ties (again) if the target has agile is a good trade off for the extra dice you would be rolling if you just had the equivalent auto cannon. However, in a recon squad your options seem pretty limited. Fortunately, the only two gears with rifles are the hilariously named "Sniper" Ferrets with their bad-ass gunnery skill of 5+. However, I can't justify a unit of four gears that sit around for half the game playing cards and occasionally running away while one of them (the Weasel) spends all his time on the phone to the Thunder Hammer.. so I guess having two gears plinking away is better than waiting for something nasty to get into pack gun and frag cannon range. Sniper Ferrets, away!
Just to reiterate, they're not DMRs as rifles are paradoxically LESS LIKELY TO HIT than other weapons including ACs in heavy gear. When they do hit, they hit slightly harder but only at medium range because of the combined hit/damage mechanics.
warboss wrote: Just to reiterate, they're not DMRs as rifles are paradoxically LESS LIKELY TO HIT than other weapons including ACs in heavy gear. When they do hit, they hit slightly harder but only at medium range because of the combined hit/damage mechanics.
I was thinking more in terms of engagement range than effectiveness. But you are absolutely right. auto cannons get burst, which means more dice, which means more likely to hit. Moreover, those extra dice increase the chance of a higher MoS which can easily add up to more damage than the rifle would have done.
A modern .50 cal sniper has an effective range of a half mile. Confirmed sniper kills go out to a mile... and a half. On the tabletop, that would be... 50 feet.
And those are just the man-portable rifles. In the HG universe, these are Gears with much heavier weapons with what should be far higher ranges.
For my game, I've been converting stats, and I typically treat HG range as "point blank", without any maximum.
Yeah, most mini games tend to claim some sort of logarithmic scale. Also, they tend to claim that the figs are oversized for the scale that the combat rules take place in.
Though I totally agree that if I were to make a tabletop game using HG figs, I'd toss range out. Maybe keep it in for a very select set of weapons.
My homebrew game system has two ranges: minimum for things like artillery, and a set of ranges for weapons that disperse over distance. Most ranges are so short (48" equals 576' at the 1:144 scale) that I'm thinking of eliminating most forms of artillery, as the boards are shorter than their minimum range. That or force them to direct fire.
Vertrucio wrote: So, what do people think of this new landship scale heavy gear game? I'm trying to figure out the relation to DP9.
The guy behind Fusion Core Studios, Wunji Lau, is IIRC the same guy that did the Jovian Chronicles fleet game for DP back in the day (Lightning Strike). He's not part of DP now, and apparently has licensed the setting of HG to do a fleet scale new game.
According to the KS, the molds and actual sprue pops will be done by the same companies that did it for the HGB Kickstarter, so you probably should expect a similar quality/detail level, although for designs that on a first blush seem to be quite a bit easier to mold.
Brandon, the guy promoting the game here, is a writer for both Fusion Core Studios and Arkrite Press (The company doing the new edition of the Heavy Gear RPG... well, eventually).
Looking at the price and the stuff inside the box, though, the first thing I wonder is, why plastics at all? I mean, being a fleet scale game and all, it seems quite fit for a resin release, I think...
Hey, Al. We noticed your question (Wunji did), and he gave me an answer to your question.
In regards to resin, it would be more expensive for the customer, and not a great long-term investment for a company. A resin landship would retail for around $20-25, at least, making a reasonably-sized force around $200. The goal is to get the army cost down to about 25% of that.
BrandonKF wrote: Hey, Al. We noticed your question (Wunji did), and he gave me an answer to your question.
In regards to resin, it would be more expensive for the customer, and not a great long-term investment for a company. A resin landship would retail for around $20-25, at least, making a reasonably-sized force around $200. The goal is to get the army cost down to about 25% of that.
Wow, that high? I was looking at Firestorm Armada's ships for reference, and the impression I got is that it seemed a bit of a wash. I guess that they must have some kind of numbers advantage there.
Thanks for the answer
EDIT: I gather that you're gunning for a 8-10 landships per side regular size game, then, by your price point? That's... larger than I was thinking, TBH. Then again, a target of around $50 for that seems pretty decent even if I would prefer a different kind of battle than you seem to be going for.
While I can't speak for Firestorm Armada, Halo fleet battles ships are a bit more pricey in resin for similar sized ships (and sold in two packs or more typcially) but there is the added cost of the Halo license involved in that. I wish Wunji luck with this (even if he did tell me at Gencon that their new original blitz rulebook would last for years!). I didn't know he was responsible for Lightning Strike which I enjoyed despite not finding an opponent.
BrandonKF wrote: Hey, Al. We noticed your question (Wunji did), and he gave me an answer to your question.
In regards to resin, it would be more expensive for the customer, and not a great long-term investment for a company. A resin landship would retail for around $20-25, at least, making a reasonably-sized force around $200. The goal is to get the army cost down to about 25% of that.
I'd stress the added benefit of having someone else pay for the relatively huge proportion of the total cost that is upfront with plastics. With resin, the ongoing "tail" costs are much more prominent and the company, not strangers on the internet, is responsible for those. Ten years ago, something like this absolutely would have been made in resin in North America with the risk entirely on the shoulders of the company. Nowadays, with crowdfunding, letting the backers risk their money for hopefully a shared benefit like a discount is business as usual. I'm a bit jaded though with the whole idea of crowdfunding due to Robotech so apply salt as needed.
While I'm pretty much 100% fine with the detail level for stompy robots, I don't think it'll translate as well to ship models 4"~5" long. Especially compared to Halo and now Dropfleet Commander plastic ships, those renders just don't look nearly on the same level. The robots you can pose and have multi-part assemblies to help hide the lack of detail and you can fake the rest with painting and decals, but on a ship you kinda need that sculpted in. Unless you plan on using a lot of decals to make up the difference, like with the Star Trek/Federation Commander ships. The concept art looks great, I just think they need to step up the 3D modelling a bit. I'm in full if they unlock the infantry tho, an army of 8mm tall Gears? Oh hellz yeah!
Kalamadea wrote: While I'm pretty much 100% fine with the detail level for stompy robots, I don't think it'll translate as well to ship models 4"~5" long. Especially compared to Halo and now Dropfleet Commander plastic ships, those renders just don't look nearly on the same level.
How about we look at the BFG Cruisers from nearly 20 years ago?
Those were only a few inches long, and I thought they were nicely greebled for what they were... back in 1999!
This is fine. Put details where there needs to be details, you don't need greebles everywhere, and those 3D models don't have lighting, better to look at the sample miniatures.
I like the idea of this and I liked the idea of HG fleet back then. Not sure if this concept really needs the Heavy Gear license as honestly, it limits the game more than the license helps.
Not sure if I'm seeing the scale correctly, but will the unit models be smaller or bigger than the original? Chalk me up for someone who wants smaller models, with multiple models on a base.
Mmmpi wrote: My homebrew game system has two ranges: minimum for things like artillery, and a set of ranges for weapons that disperse over distance. Most ranges are so short (48" equals 576' at the 1:144 scale) that I'm thinking of eliminating most forms of artillery, as the boards are shorter than their minimum range. That or force them to direct fire.
Most artillery guns have some sort of ammo for use in emergancies, like if the battery was suddenly attacked by tanks/light scout type vehicles or infantry.
In late 1944, a battery of German "Hummel" SP guns was suddenly attacked by a platoon of Soviet T70 light tanks, which had slipped through a gap in the lines several miles ahead. The Hummels were just deploying for expected fire missions when the T70's came across the field and began firing on the battery.
The Hummels would have been destroyed if not for the HEAT rounds the unit had for just such an emergency. The 3 T70's were destroyed with only one SP gun damaged.
I was doing some surfing for dreadnought content and swung by Brandon's facebook group. Everyone's favorite youtube channel that resembles an annoying over ad bannered repeating pop up window website is now looking for the public to buy the models for him.
Sigh... it's bad enough that he shills for pretty everyone that hands him a dollar by prefaces videos with a half dozen ads that in he past were at times LONGER than the actual content on top of stripping other channel's HG videos of their logos/intros without telling them and reposting them... but now he won't even buy his own models. IMO he's putting the cart before the horse in this case and should be making the content and THEN asking for funding. Too bad he's a mod on that group (who in the past has deleted content that didn't paint him in a good light like with the aforementioned "borrowed" videos that got him a 6 month no ads copyright strike after which he ragequit youtube.. but not really) so you can't even comment honestly about it.
BrandonKF wrote: I wasn't aware of that. Wish you'd said something sooner, warboss. He's no longer a group admin.
I'm glad he's not an admin anymore. I don't frequent facebook much so it may take months for news to reach me from there like with this). Are you're refering to the "borrowed" videos (and there was more than just one)?
I'm referring to content being deleted. If there were objections, I didn't hear about them. And while I have a lot of admins there, I'm the owner. I had to trim some of the inactive admins anyway.
BrandonKF wrote: I'm referring to content being deleted. If there were objections, I didn't hear about them. And while I have a lot of admins there, I'm the owner. I had to trim some of the inactive admins anyway.
After a simple innocuous comment about it being an older reposted video on both youtube and one of my only ever posts on your group disappeared, I mentioned it here in this thread right after you posted and even PM'ed you about it here on dakka. In any case, you made the right call in his case.
BrandonKF wrote: I apologize. I must have completely missed those replies... my bad.
No worries; that part is old news. You may not want to allow him to cyberbeg though on the group as allowing him opens the door for others to do the same. Posting actual content and THEN asking for patronage is a different story and not the same thing as just panhandling. I know times are hard but it's a bad precedent to set. YMMV.
How is the traffic on the group since the kickstarter delivered? Has DP9 started retail shipping yet?
I can ask. I'm focused on the writing for the RPG and Dreadnoughts. The Group is very active, we have had at least a half dozen battle reports of late, and more people painting. Of course, we still have to deal with the holiday season, which also will cut into folks backing the KS, but it was either now or mid next year in comparison to the competition.
HudsonD wrote: Looking at the numbers, that KS is DOA, period. From the second update posted, Wunji knows it, too.
While I'm not thinking it is DOA, I do think that the current rate of funding and likely end amount barring a sudden surge of interest would have been more appropriate for a resin starter and not a plastic kit. There is this line from that update:
Now.. you can assume that he is referring to the stretch goals but I'm not sure that is the best assumption because if the "market doesn't like it" at half that amount it still means it funded with a few stretch goals as well thrown in... so then what? Continue knowing it's be a "failure" despite funding? One option is that they're including their own money into that amount (i.e. if it funds for $30k, they've got $70k+ ready to thrown in already planned and set up) to reach the $100k. That's reasonable... except that Dave recently also said that he didn't want to address a different project until the kickstarter funding iirc 4x over (so $120k).
"Bad news first: The rules will be delayed. To exactly when I cannot say but this is to prevent conflict of attention with the Heavy Gear: Dreadnoughts game going live soon on Kickstarter. I promise a X-mas or New years present for you all for being extra patient (And I will drop the rules early if Dreadnoughts hits 400% funded!)." http://dp9forum.com/index.php?showtopic=17736
Two unrelated comments? Possibly. Dave just being nice and not wanted to steal their Thunder? Probably. The realist in me is suspicous after following closely dozens of miniature game kickstarter campaigns since Sedition Wars (albeit not funded them) and watched several cancel AFTER reaching their artifically low kickstarter funding goals of the same amount as Dreadnoughts because they didn't reach their ACTUAL secret goal needed to make the project. They set the initial goal low, pad some stretch goals with things they had always planned on including, and hope that they fund and the momentum carries them through to their REAL goal before the campaign ends. If they don't reach the real number or start backsliding late in the campaign when it loses steam, they cancel. I suspect that those two statements are related and that the real target number needed/desired is actually in the 6 digits for a full plastic starter. HG funded at not much over that and still had to cut back on stretch goals to pay the bills and that was over two years ago with prices rising in the meantime likely.
If they have their own funding ready to pick up the difference betwen 30k and 100k then they'll should be fine at least in terms of initial fulfillment. If they don't and the 30k goal is artificially low to encourage bidding and they don't exceed it by a large amount, I guess we'll see a KS cancelled for reorganization message in another two weeks. YMMV. Season with salt as needed. If your eyebrow is raised for more than four hourse, contact an optimist immediately.
At first, I was going to quote and respond in the KS thread for this project but didn't want it to seem like I was trying to actively discourage funding so posted here. I still think it is a worthwhile discussion to have though.
Ahah, nope !
There's no way they have 70K $US set aside. I'd be amazed if they had even 10K saved for that purpose.
That Wunji posted "we don't need those plastic doodads anyway" just goes to tell you he's lucid about the KS hopes of success at this point. Whether he learns the right lessons from this is another matter...
Ahah, nope ! There's no way they have 70K $US set aside. I'd be amazed if they had even 10K saved for that purpose.
That Wunji posted "we don't need those plastic doodads anyway" just goes to tell you he's lucid about the KS hopes of success at this point. Whether he learns the right lessons from this is another matter...
The reality is that he is correct and doesn't need them judging from what he is posting.. I reposted his comment from the kickstarter over in the news and rumors thread. The game basically sounds like an old avalon hill chits and tokens style strategic game with some overly large minis shoehorned in to cater to the minis crowd. YMMV but it doesn't sound like the premise and mechanics for the game match the marketing and physical pieces. At most, it should have some small FFG style game pieces like in Fortress America (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/115293/fortress-america) but it's being crowdfunded and marketed like Descent instead. Again, this is all without the benefit of actual playtesting the game or even a gameplay video on the kickstarter (a big mistake IMO to not have one ready to go right away).
The reality is that he is correct and doesn't need them judging from what he is posting.. I reposted his comment from the kickstarter over in the news and rumors thread. The game basically sounds like an old avalon hill chits and tokens style strategic game with some overly large minis shoehorned in to cater to the minis crowd. YMMV but it doesn't sound like the premise and mechanics for the game match the marketing and physical pieces. At most, it should have some small FFG style game pieces like in Fortress America (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/115293/fortress-america) but it's being crowdfunded and marketed like Descent instead. Again, this is all without the benefit of actual playtesting the game or even a gameplay video on the kickstarter (a big mistake IMO to not have one ready to go right away).
Yeah, I'd fully agree with you, except for one thing... The minis are what makes the money these days.
Actual money is relative to costs and total funding. I'll reserve final judgement until if/when I see a gameplay video but right now I'm thinking they'd have been better off going with a Starfleet Battles style setup... chits and tokens strategic boardgame with a real $10k funding goal for a small initial print run for the actual game with existing fleet scale minis as optional add ons; if they fund beyond their goal, they followup with stretchgoals of 1"-2" new landship minis and eventually tiny epic 40k sized updated ground unit minis. That is admittedly the WFPA take on the premise; they seem to have opted instead for the SRA version of the game.
A game company should not rely on Kick Starters for every new project.
Land Ships in HG are these huge, land based super sized aircraft carriers. They were so huge that they had no stats in HG except for very specific scenarios and only for a small section of the ship. Sure, they were present in the fluff, but they were unplayable in the actual game.
Now consider that Heavy Gear is a Mech game, and along comes this fleet based game set in the same universe, but with no mechs. Where are the gears? How will they influence the game? Strike 1. In the fluff, these ships were rare, and the center of a Land Fleet (much like Aircraft Carrier groups of the US Navy). The idea of 3-5 or more of these fighting in the same battle... where are the escorts? The Cruisers, Frigates, Destroyers? Strike 2. The final strike: The gaming industry is becoming flooded with fleet based games: Firestorm Armada, Dystopian wars, Halo Fleet Wars, Dropfleet Commander, and Battle Fleet Gothic still has a huge following. There are a couple more out there as well. The KS shows nothing unique, or special about this fleet game besides it being in the HG Universe. Strike 3, it's out. There is no example game play. Is this a finished game? Will it use the incredibly complicated and arcane resolution system that the new version of HG Blitz has?
Basically, unless this game has some new, innovative game resolution system that just blows me away, I won't be interested.
Tamwulf wrote: A game company should not rely on Kick Starters for every new project.
Land Ships in HG are these huge, land based super sized aircraft carriers. They were so huge that they had no stats in HG except for very specific scenarios and only for a small section of the ship. Sure, they were present in the fluff, but they were unplayable in the actual game.
Now consider that Heavy Gear is a Mech game, and along comes this fleet based game set in the same universe, but with no mechs. Where are the gears? How will they influence the game? Strike 1. In the fluff, these ships were rare, and the center of a Land Fleet (much like Aircraft Carrier groups of the US Navy). The idea of 3-5 or more of these fighting in the same battle... where are the escorts? The Cruisers, Frigates, Destroyers? Strike 2. The final strike: The gaming industry is becoming flooded with fleet based games: Firestorm Armada, Dystopian wars, Halo Fleet Wars, Dropfleet Commander, and Battle Fleet Gothic still has a huge following. There are a couple more out there as well. The KS shows nothing unique, or special about this fleet game besides it being in the HG Universe. Strike 3, it's out. There is no example game play. Is this a finished game? Will it use the incredibly complicated and arcane resolution system that the new version of HG Blitz has?
Basically, unless this game has some new, innovative game resolution system that just blows me away, I won't be interested.
Strike 2: Not sure that is true in NuFluff for NuBlitz. Everythign is cranked up to 11, remember? NuCoal and Paxton grew like crazy overnight both in power and population so flooding the sands with fleets of previously rare landships is less of a stretch (but still a stretch). As a historical footnote, that sort of naval growth isn't unprecedented; see the US navy during WW2.
The US navy had 8 aircraft carriers (fleet and escort combined) at the time of Pearl Harbor at the very end of 1941. By VJ day in mid 1945 less than three years later, they had 99! And that doesn't include the number that were built and sunk during that time either.
Strike 3: Nothing unique? Landships IMO by definition distinguish them from all of the above thematically as well as the close integration of ground units into the combat. I have no idea though if that new subniche will hurt or help the game though.
I agree that the lack of gameplay video with the rollout of the campaign is concerning. If this is a game different in scope (very strategic compared with the other games) as well as theme (landships!), an actual demo of a game could have helped... could... not sure if it would though given the discrepancies above. I'd have put that as strike 1 though.
warboss wrote:Actual money is relative to costs and total funding. I'll reserve final judgement until if/when I see a gameplay video but right now I'm thinking they'd have been better off going with a Starfleet Battles style setup... chits and tokens strategic boardgame with a real $10k funding goal for a small initial print run for the actual game with existing fleet scale minis as optional add ons; if they fund beyond their goal, they followup with stretchgoals of 1"-2" new landship minis and eventually tiny epic 40k sized updated ground unit minis. That is admittedly the WFPA take on the premise; they seem to have opted instead for the SRA version of the game.
What's wrong with the Republic? LOL
Tamwulf wrote:A game company should not rely on Kick Starters for every new project.
Land Ships in HG are these huge, land based super sized aircraft carriers. They were so huge that they had no stats in HG except for very specific scenarios and only for a small section of the ship. Sure, they were present in the fluff, but they were unplayable in the actual game.
Now consider that Heavy Gear is a Mech game, and along comes this fleet based game set in the same universe, but with no mechs. Where are the gears? How will they influence the game? Strike 1. In the fluff, these ships were rare, and the center of a Land Fleet (much like Aircraft Carrier groups of the US Navy). The idea of 3-5 or more of these fighting in the same battle... where are the escorts? The Cruisers, Frigates, Destroyers? Strike 2. The final strike: The gaming industry is becoming flooded with fleet based games: Firestorm Armada, Dystopian wars, Halo Fleet Wars, Dropfleet Commander, and Battle Fleet Gothic still has a huge following. There are a couple more out there as well. The KS shows nothing unique, or special about this fleet game besides it being in the HG Universe. Strike 3, it's out. There is no example game play. Is this a finished game? Will it use the incredibly complicated and arcane resolution system that the new version of HG Blitz has?
Basically, unless this game has some new, innovative game resolution system that just blows me away, I won't be interested.
I've come to recognize that folks will often question what is 'innovative'.
What I can say is that Gears, striders, tanks and aircraft are included, and in fact play a large role as attached ground forces.
The landships are centerpieces, yes. However, they act more in the style of an amphibious assault carrier, combined with a forward operating base, or FOB. They retrieve the attached ground and air forces (when the weather permits) and act as anchors for the maneuvers of the entire detachment.
Toward that end, to avoid the comet trails of SW Armada, the various capabilities are kept simple.
There's a few basic terrain types that one uses on the tabletop.
You get Clear, Rough, Difficult, Impassable, and Urban.
The cardboard templates for terrain you lay out until both players are satisfied with the set-up.
Depending on the type of terrain one is in, the attached ground force's capabilities (mobility, maneuver) fluctuate. So, a tank formation on Clear ground has an overall superb advantage in dice compared to an infantry counter on Clear terrain. Flip-flop that for urban areas.
I disagree with you strongly on Heavy Gear Blitz Living Rulebook being arcane or or complicated, but then that's your decision and tastes. Not everyone enjoys 2nd edition anymore, and everyone had various opinions about the editions preceding the Living Rulebook.
Having discussed it with Wunji, the initial idea for gameplay is simplistic enough that it could rival OGRE in some forms.
The older generation of landships (destroyers, frigates) are still around, but they are outdated, and instead usually form as escorts for the new classes. New class descriptions represent their particular 'strengths', and overall are streamlined to operate independently from any tenders. Instead, they can deploy for prolonged periods and use their ground forces to collect what resources they absolutely need to stay in operation, although after a while, they begin to wear out.
So, the original 'idea' of landships as 'super-sized aircraft carriers' (which really only applied to the Vortex-class, and that was a medium-class carrier at best), is now being replaced with this new, more modern fleet.
Tamwulf wrote: A game company should not rely on Kick Starters for every new project.
The gaming industry is becoming flooded with fleet based games: Firestorm Armada, Dystopian wars, Halo Fleet Wars, Dropfleet Commander, and Battle Fleet Gothic still has a huge following. There are a couple more out there as well. The KS shows nothing unique, or special about this fleet game besides it being in the HG Universe.
There is no example game play. Is this a finished game?
Will it use the incredibly complicated and arcane resolution system that the new version of HG Blitz has?
Game companies using KS for new stuff is reasonable for marketing and demand estimation, but there had best be some sort of real discount or bonus for fronting money on a promise vs waiting for retail. When concepts are unclear, discounts are stingy, delivery is spotty, it's just best to wait.
Nothing wrong with more fleet games, provided that they are good. At least BFG was good.
The problem is that we don't know if this game is any good. In 2016, if the game isn't print & play, it's a non-starter. We're long past the point where people should be throwing money at creators based on a few renders and sculptures, on a promise of a great game. Sedition Wars taught me that lesson.
HG Blitz is indeed awful to resolve. NuBlitz is unnecessarily overcomplicated in its resolution, due to all of the modifiers that carried over from OldBlitz. For the scale of this game, one would hope for a further streamlining, but I'm pretty skeptical.
BrandonKF wrote: Streamlining what game? The Living Rulebook, or Dreadnoughts?
Streamlining "NuBlitz" vs. "OldBlitz". It's like all the old, clunky modifiers are still in the game, but they are just renamed! The weapons table still looks like the old one, just with some different numbers. Heck, a column was even added- the Code column. Still three pages of model and weapon traits! Four pages of reference tables! I've never seen a more complicated movement system- and I've played Battletech and Full Thrust. Another thing that I can't believe made it- Silhouettes and Lock- such an abstract, totally over complicated way to draw line of sight to a model. And cover- seems to be better, until you realize that you have partial cover, and full cover, and each cover now has Light, Heavy, and Solid cover for a combined total of 12 different types of cover! Then you have models used as cover, and area terrain as cover too. And they all tie back into Silhouettes, Lock, and the new, "fun" ECM and hiding rules.
Back to the weapons- I really liked the Optimum range, and the maximum range. And then I started to read the Penetration rules, and all I could think of was "Really?", and then there is the sub-optimal range...
Then I got to 8.2, Detailed Attack Action Summary and Timing:
Specifically, F.-K. and Calculate damage. That's when I realized nothing had changed in NuBlitz. I couldn't get past section 9.4 Overkill. Sorry, I put the rule book down, and haven't looked at it since.
I will say one bright spot that made me happy was that army construction rules seem way, way better then OldBlitz. Thumbs up there for sure! Although all I did was scan it and not really read it.
HGB is still a complicated, clunky rules system that makes little intuitive sense. There is probably no other game currently in production on the market that comes even close to this kind of complication/abstraction on the table top. At least, none that I know of (and I play quite a lot of games). I hate to say it, but one of my favorite table top games right now is Age of Sigmar, and it only has 4 pages of rules. If NuBlitz could have pulled that off... but alas. It was not meant to be.
I hope to get to my Kick Starter models over the Holidays painted and play my first real game of NuBlitz aoon after. Something tells me it's still going to play like the OldBlitz, just with a lot of new terms.
@Tamwulf - have you looked at N3? It weighs in at over 300 pages of hair-splitty rules, and has unlimited reactions to movements to grind gameplay to a halt.
As a general rule, I only care for innovative new rules when they offer distinct improvements over the old stuff they're intended to replace, so there's that.
As to the little we know about Dreadnoughts' ruleset, so far it feels like it would be much better served with a classic "hexes & chits" game, which is not a slam against the game in any way or form, as I'm right now rekindling my affection for that kind of games (and well, the old tactical rules are the only HG rules I keep playing nowadays, so).
Given the scale you want to go for, and what you've commented about resource expenditure, an hex and chits game feels like a much better fit, and would allow the addition of supply chains and the like.
Obviously I agree. I wish them well but I just don't think the game is for me. I would have preferred a more minis-centric feeling game to go along with the minis instead of a classic board game that *sounds* like it clashes instead with them thematically. As you said, there is nothing wrong with board games (both newer style streamlined ones with minis and older style chits and crunch avalon versions) but I just don't think the combo of the two works in this situation. If they cancel to reorganize, I'd recommend picking either a board game (with stretch goal smaller metal/resin fleet scale minis using the same designs b[/img]ut made by DP9 in house) or making it a proper plastics minis game in both theme and mechanics.
If they go full minis game, I'd recommend changing the scale to 5km per inch with a turn taking roughly an hour in game time scale. You'd still have an appropriate sense of scale with Brandon's previously mentioned landship arty lob to 80km possible on a 3'x4' table and hopefully most of the mechanics can transfer over that fit in that new timescale. Instead of a typical game being the month long Battle for Indiana, it'll be the first day of the Battle for the Greater Metro Indy Area (referencing the location of the company for both game and time scale).
Again, all of the above is of course based on reading the tea leaves of Brandon's and Wunji's posts since unfortunately no gameplay video was posted to my knowledge; apply salt as needed. Here's also a helpful quick chart from Kicktraq on the project.
@Brandon:
Does Wunji have a dakka account? If so, I'd recommend him posting as well. It's not that you haven't been doing a good job but rather that it's in his best interests to do so as well; I don't think we've been too harsh on the subject to interact with. Let him know that he can set up both a company account under the company's name in case his personal one has an inappropriate or unhelpful name (i.e. WeirdbutWunji).
JohnHwangDD wrote: @Tamwulf - have you looked at N3? It weighs in at over 300 pages of hair-splitty rules, and has unlimited reactions to movements to grind gameplay to a halt.
Ah, Infinity. The height of rules interaction and complication. How many times have you forgotten whose turn it was after resolving all the interrupts? Just to mess with my opponent one time, every time he moves a model 1", I'd interrupt and try to perform some action. He was getting frustrated and pissed and I was a total troll about it laughing my off! It was all in good fun though, and my "strategy" worked- he totally forgot what he was going to do with that model and his plan for the turn in general.
I think you'll both find that the most common opinion (certainly not unanimous or even a large majority though) is quite different on both the Infinity rules and AOS here on dakka at least.
warboss wrote: I think you'll both find that the most common opinion (certainly not unanimous or even a large majority though) is quite different on both the Infinity rules and AOS here on dakka at least.
Infinity is a great system! Very complicated, but its solid. The rules make sense to me.
AoS is a fantastic game! I've liked it since it game out, though I was very sour on the army construction rules. Now, with the General's Handbook out, all my gripes and complaints about AoS are gone. My comment was that if HGB could have followed what GW did with Fantasy and then AoS, it would be an outstanding game with people lining up to play it.
Heck, they couldn't even be bothered to change the name to what everyone else calls the game: Heavy Gear. The only people I've ever met that called it Heavy Gear Blitz was the employees and some of the Pod Squad.
There is no other game out there right now that I want to be so much better and so many more people playing than Heavy Gear Blitz. But they take one look at the rules and say "no way".
Tamwulf wrote: Heavy Gear Blitz. But they take one look at the rules and say "no way".
This has been the case since I got my first HG minis during the Tactical era. Every time we've sat down to play it, it's been a chore. And those were the guys who were kind enough to give it a try, vs outright refusing.
Well, the KS got 210$ in pledge yesterday. I guess the market just wasn't ready for fictious big ships and fleet actions in an exotic setting.
In the meantime, Spartan's Dystopian War KS, a game of fantasy big ships in an exotic setting just brought 51K $US, almost triple the amount, in barely 3 days.
To be fair, even DW isn't doing as well as they should, but they should reach their goals and then some.
I do feel that by now there kind of is a fleet action game glut, TBH. Not sure in how many more slices can that pie be cut.
Of course, that's another reason to split from the group and do something different, like a hex based strategical fleet boardgame with pretty gaming pieces.
Albertorius wrote: I do feel that by now there kind of is a fleet action game glut, TBH. Not sure in how many more slices can that pie be cut.
Of course, that's another reason to split from the group and do something different, like a hex based strategical fleet boardgame with pretty gaming pieces.
Quick! Someone relaunch ADB's SFB with plastic minis!
BrandonKF wrote: I wish Spartan Games all the best in their endeavors.
I'm going to focus on getting things written up for folks interested in Heavy Gear Dreadnoughts, and hopefully more will support it.
Edit: Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Post Thanksgiving Brandon.
Just to clear some things up- the actual game play for Heavy Gear Dreadnoughts isn't actually done yet? Hasn't been written or play tested yet? Is that what you are saying?
I think you will find that expanding out into the fleet based games will be a challenge. Without some kind of innovative, exciting rules, the only thing this game will have going for it, is that it's set in the Heavy Gear universe, a universe known for it's mechs, not it's Landships, and trying to get those prospective players into the game will be difficult at best.
IMHO, and take it or leave it as you see fit, gears will have to play some kind of viable, key role in the game. And you won't be able to just have a token with some generic gear silhouettes that add +1 to your combat modifiers when in base contact with the Landship for example. If you make this game with the Landships/Dreadnoughts as the central theme, it will fail. Create a game with at least equal importance placed on the Gears + Landships and it will succeed.
The image I posted is continuously updated instead of static so it shows today's totals despite being posted yesterday here in the thread... and it doesn't look any better. Unfortunately, this is roughly the progression that I alluded to earlier on that I expected but hoped wouldn't happen. I suppose the next question is whether or not the feedback received will be incorporated into a reboot of the campaign +/- cancellation (which may or may not be too little too late regardless after this false start) or whether or not this vision is simply the only version that Wunji, Brandon et al. dreamed of making. While the second option is reasonable, I hope they go for the first and incorporate some of the feedback here in the thread and elsewhere online into the next campaign. The big bullet points for me would be in a dakka style KS post mortem for the campaign:
1) Game scale/mechanics matching the game components. The size of the models simply doesn't jive with the chits and tokens style gameplay alluded to in the game. Smaller scale resin tokens made in the same scale as the old Fleet game match the old board game mechanics more than massive minis game miniatures. The game should have started with FFG card/xwing style tokens for units with stretch goals to add fleet scale physical models... and if funding had a massive start then eventually add larger plastic models. Instead, the cart was put before the horse (and in this case it was a cart made for oxen to begin with).
2) Show, don't allude to, the game. I really am surprised there was no starter rules PDF and/or gameplay video available at launch. We've been hearing about the noncommittal, legally nonbinding yet we want you to pledge real money gameplay and game mechanics "impressions" and "inspirations" posted by Wunji instead of seeing the actual rules either in print or in action.
3) This one is a bit presumptive and an educated guess based on Dave's and Wunji's posts about the KS... Set a real goal instead of an artificially low one. The funding goal for an all plastic box with big models seemed mighty low. This is a common *BAD* practice in the industry since KS came around with low stretch funding goals to appeal to backer's fragile wills with the hopes that momentum will carry the project through to the real funding target. Several projects in the past exceeded their posted low stretch goals yet were cancelled suddenly because it became evident that the real much higher funding total would never be reached. That won't be the case here as the funding total never approached the goal but the statement about artifically low totals (if that is the case here as I suspect) stands.
Yeah, I know it's dynamic, which is helpful. I just saw that it was 2 bad days (and accelerating), and noted that a 3rd bad day is usually the point at which a campaign should be cancelled by the creator. It looks like we're getting that 3rd bad day.
It's poor practice not to have gameplay video and rules at launch. There's no reason to believe that these rules will be good without evidence via print & play. Although there was some fair amount of high-level chatter by the creator, saying it's going to have X, Y & Z isnt' the same has having actual rules for X, Y & Z, much less working rules for X, Y & Z...
It's OK to have a low goal, for a minimal product set. If it's like BFG, with 1 "big" model design per side, and Gears / whatnot as bitz - just 2 small sprues, 4x6" each. $30k might just cover that tooling. However, I think the campaign is more ambitious than that.
I glanced through the comments last night, and people were saying that the ships were miles long? Supercarrier-sized land vehicles? In an ostensibly "hard" SF universe? I play Ogre Miniatures, and taking it that far is just beyond ridiculous. Does nobody understand the square-cube law?
I glanced through the comments last night, and people were saying that the ships were miles long? Supercarrier-sized land vehicles? In an ostensibly "hard" SF universe? I play Ogre Miniatures, and taking it that far is just beyond ridiculous. Does nobody understand the square-cube law?
I'm guessing folks less technically inclined were confused by the conflicting game and model scales. 5" long model and 1"=20km game scale = 100km long landship visually. The seeing mismatch in the mechanics and the components in action (further muddied by the lack of actual gameplay videos upon release).
JohnHwangDD wrote:Yeah, I know it's dynamic, which is helpful. I just saw that it was 2 bad days (and accelerating), and noted that a 3rd bad day is usually the point at which a campaign should be cancelled by the creator. It looks like we're getting that 3rd bad day.
It's poor practice not to have gameplay video and rules at launch. There's no reason to believe that these rules will be good without evidence via print & play. Although there was some fair amount of high-level chatter by the creator, saying it's going to have X, Y & Z isnt' the same has having actual rules for X, Y & Z, much less working rules for X, Y & Z...
It's OK to have a low goal, for a minimal product set. If it's like BFG, with 1 "big" model design per side, and Gears / whatnot as bitz - just 2 small sprues, 4x6" each. $30k might just cover that tooling. However, I think the campaign is more ambitious than that.
I glanced through the comments last night, and people were saying that the ships were miles long? Supercarrier-sized land vehicles? In an ostensibly "hard" SF universe? I play Ogre Miniatures, and taking it that far is just beyond ridiculous. Does nobody understand the square-cube law?
I'm reminded of the square-cube law every time Gearstriders are brought up.
There were explanations given for landships in the past fluff, and the current fluff was going to give an even greater in-depth explanation, which I feel was on-point.
The individual who alluded this comment: "I understand the scale vs scope in this game (and in others). I am quite the scale junky. These ships are so huge they must be self sufficient. Imagine how many crewmen it takes to staff one of those landships. The bathrooms...think of all the bathrooms 60 mile by 30 mile wide ship has? Do not forget all the dining facilities too. How many janitors and cafeteria staff does a ship like this need to function? Supposedly the NC1701D Enterprise only had one bathroom in the middle of the ship. I hope these landships are not designed that way. What a cruel joke for the head engineer to play. CHances are his high school bullies are assigned to the ship. This is his revenge against them. What do you do if you are 20 miles away in ZZZ1789D deck and you have to have an emergency anal evacuation? It is a good thing there are like 500,000 janitors on the ship. They need it. I bet that is a mark of pride to be on leave in your janitor dress uniform. The girls really go for those guys with the sanitation engineer insignia. I also cannot help but think about Rimmer going on a 3 week hike through the red dwarf with those little robots. Every time I see those model ships I think of Rimmer's slide show. Thank you, you guys are the best. Enjoy the rest of the show I've got merch in the back."
That's him joking around.
It was also his first time backing a Kickstarter. Of the four comments he left, one was an interest in making 2mm-3mm Gears, the rest spent defining the 'super-scale' of the Dreadnoughts.
All of which were a joke.
Yes, the largest landships were up for grabs first, and yes, the Susano-O class rivals a Nimitz-class supercarrier (roughly 300 meters). It's not the most offensive thing to hard science fiction.
Tamwulf wrote:
BrandonKF wrote: I wish Spartan Games all the best in their endeavors.
I'm going to focus on getting things written up for folks interested in Heavy Gear Dreadnoughts, and hopefully more will support it.
Edit: Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Post Thanksgiving Brandon.
Just to clear some things up- the actual game play for Heavy Gear Dreadnoughts isn't actually done yet? Hasn't been written or play tested yet? Is that what you are saying?
I think you will find that expanding out into the fleet based games will be a challenge. Without some kind of innovative, exciting rules, the only thing this game will have going for it, is that it's set in the Heavy Gear universe, a universe known for it's mechs, not it's Landships, and trying to get those prospective players into the game will be difficult at best.
IMHO, and take it or leave it as you see fit, gears will have to play some kind of viable, key role in the game. And you won't be able to just have a token with some generic gear silhouettes that add +1 to your combat modifiers when in base contact with the Landship for example. If you make this game with the Landships/Dreadnoughts as the central theme, it will fail. Create a game with at least equal importance placed on the Gears + Landships and it will succeed.
The rules were written in large part, however, I hesitate to use the words 'innovative' or 'exciting', because quite frankly, it's almost a catch-phrase of Kickstarters today. That's not a ding against others who truly do come out with exciting Kickstarters, just that, as you have said, fleet-action games are often filled to the brim, and I don't like over-selling anything.
However, would I say they are innovative in their own way? Yes. The rules are simple, easily defined, and there were only a few pieces that needed massaging, largely involving Air Defense.
I personally felt that it could be defined as a combination of chess, OGRE, and Harpoon, though with some key differences.
Heavy Gears are a part of the wider combined-arms ground forces that would be involved. Their role is middle-of-the-road in the array of units. There was no "add +1 to combat modifiers". Each Unit has set Maneuver, Move, Skirmish Power and Engagement Power ratings. With certain Heavy Gears, that would change, depending on the Player's choices during their Turn.
A Turn gives the player one Order to spend, plus whatever Orders they wished to spend through their Command Point usage. Then it went to the other Player. Like chess.
Difference, you could give a Standing Order to one specific Unit, and that Unit would complete that Standing Order every Turn until you assigned a different Order to it. Once it had a Standing Order, you couldn't assign any further Orders to it, unless it was a Landship (for example, a Landship could Travel to Destination, its Standing Order, and then carry out other Orders through Command Point usage).
There are also several other things included (Mission Cards, Event Cards, and Weather Tracker), all of which were intended to be simple, yet powerful in their own right.
warboss wrote:The image I posted is continuously updated instead of static so it shows today's totals despite being posted yesterday here in the thread... and it doesn't look any better. Unfortunately, this is roughly the progression that I alluded to earlier on that I expected but hoped wouldn't happen. I suppose the next question is whether or not the feedback received will be incorporated into a reboot of the campaign +/- cancellation (which may or may not be too little too late regardless after this false start) or whether or not this vision is simply the only version that Wunji, Brandon et al. dreamed of making. While the second option is reasonable, I hope they go for the first and incorporate some of the feedback here in the thread and elsewhere online into the next campaign. The big bullet points for me would be in a dakka style KS post mortem for the campaign:
1) Game scale/mechanics matching the game components. The size of the models simply doesn't jive with the chits and tokens style gameplay alluded to in the game. Smaller scale resin tokens made in the same scale as the old Fleet game match the old board game mechanics more than massive minis game miniatures.
2) Show, don't allude to, the game. I really am surprised there was no starter rules PDF and/or gameplay video available at launch. We've been hearing about the noncommittal, legally nonbinding yet we want you to pledge real money gameplay and game mechanics "impressions" and "inspirations" posted by Wunji instead of seeing the actual rules either in print or in action.
3) This one is a bit presumptive and an educated guess based on Dave's and Wunji's posts about the KS... Set a real goal instead of an artificially low one. The funding goal for an all plastic box with big models seemed mighty low. This is a common *BAD* practice in the industry since KS came around with low stretch funding goals to appeal to backer's fragile wills with the hopes that momentum will carry the project through to the real funding target. Several projects in the past exceeded their posted low stretch goals yet were cancelled suddenly because it became evident that the real much higher funding total would never be reached. That won't be the case here as the funding total never approached the goal but the statement about artifically low totals (if that is the case here as I suspect) stands.
That's all I can think of at the moment.
1. Chits and tokens weren't the end goal, but seeing the response, I suppose things might flex now. I will have to discuss it with Fusion Core. I wasn't entirely crazy about the idea initially, and I'm still not. That's not a ding against all those who like chits and tokens, I just liked the vision of an open-format tabletop using board-game rules that could flex however players (including myself) wished to, with just a few cut-out terrain pieces, and perhaps some 'centerpiece' models, like a three-dimensional Catan mountain range representing a particular mountain peak. (Personally, I would have been fine with the small Fleet-scale Gears, tanks, and whatnot, rather than the larger single counters).
2. An oversight that will need to be remedied.
3. The goal for the original four vessels wasn't artificially low. The original goal for the molds was around the breakpoint. Personally, I wasn't interested in 'breaking folks' fragile wills'. I know Fusion Core wasn't, either. Some folks said that the goals set for the additional molds was too high, others, such as yourself, said it was too low. Just goes to show that individuals looking from the outside through different lenses will see matters differently.
The 'wills', I see in reference to what's going on with the Kingdom Death Kickstarter. Though frankly I don't believe said individuals are 'fragile', rather I see the kind of excitement I wish would be attributed to Heavy Gear, not merely for nostalgia's sake, but for genuine excitement. I imagine that the man behind that game is probably over-the-moon and also biting his thumb hard, realizing the immensity of what he is being given and entrusted with. Had that been me, I'd have dead-fainted for at least a couple hours, and then gotten to work. But, I'll still work things over here, in all respects. Perhaps things will turn around now, or perhaps not. If there is a cancellation, Fusion Core will reset, then resurrect later, with everything in place. It's a learning process, and I've learned quite a bit merely as a Collaborator in the project. It's an in-depth look at how a Kickstarter is run.
1. Chits and tokens weren't the end goal, but seeing the response, I suppose things might flex now. I will have to discuss it with Fusion Core. I wasn't entirely crazy about the idea initially, and I'm still not. That's not a ding against all those who like chits and tokens, I just liked the vision of an open-format tabletop using board-game rules that could flex however players (including myself) wished to, with just a few cut-out terrain pieces, and perhaps some 'centerpiece' models, like a three-dimensional Catan mountain range representing a particular mountain peak. (Personally, I would have been fine with the small Fleet-scale Gears, tanks, and whatnot, rather than the larger single counters).
I think you misunderstand me. Chits and tokens weren't a suggested end goal but rather the starting line on the way to the end goal of big plastic minis (and with intermediate stretchgoals of fleet scale resins). IMO it should have been the initial funding goal version of the game with the components getting more and more grand as more and more money rolled in theoretically instead of starting with the end.
2. An oversight that will need to be remedied.
Good to hear. It's not that we didn't appreciate your descriptions and wunji's broad game design thoughts but a moving picture is worth a thousand words (if I may mangle that old saying to the video age).
3. The goal for the original four vessels wasn't artificially low. The original goal for the molds was around the breakpoint. Personally, I wasn't interested in 'breaking folks' fragile wills'. I know Fusion Core wasn't, either. Some folks said that the goals set for the additional molds was too high, others, such as yourself, said it was too low. Just goes to show that individuals looking from the outside through different lenses will see matters differently.
The 'wills', I see in reference to what's going on with the Kingdom Death Kickstarter. Though frankly I don't believe said individuals are 'fragile', rather I see the kind of excitement I wish would be attributed to Heavy Gear, not merely for nostalgia's sake, but for genuine excitement. I imagine that the man behind that game is probably over-the-moon and also biting his thumb hard, realizing the immensity of what he is being given and entrusted with. Had that been me, I'd have dead-fainted for at least a couple hours, and then gotten to work. But, I'll still work things over here, in all respects. Perhaps things will turn around now, or perhaps not. If there is a cancellation, Fusion Core will reset, then resurrect later, with everything in place. It's a learning process, and I've learned quite a bit merely as a Collaborator in the project. It's an in-depth look at how a Kickstarter is run.
I'm guessing the fragile wills comment touched a nerve as you mentioned it three times... I just can't think of any other way to describe the herd mentality of gamer crowdfunding. If something is hot, folks back a project they have little to no interest in just to not miss out (and some who back for financial resell gain). If something instead plateaus, they accelerate the fall by backing out even though it won't cost them a dime to stay in on a project that isn't likely to reach its stated goal. I can't think of any reason why for the last four days the funding total should be decreasing. The update on the 23rd didn't contain any earth shattering revelations like Wunji's secret plans to binge on chasing loose women and gorging on poutine with the funds. The project is no better or worse planned or executed than it was days earlier when it began and the money flow was still positive. And yet the exodus started... that's what I refer to as the fragile wills of backers. YMMV but if you're kickstarting a project and are willing to put money down on it in the first few days then you should be firm enough in your resolve to weather a few folks leaving midway. Did they back but only on the value premise of all the stretch goals being met and added to their pledge for free and bailed when only the initial offering might happen? Who knows... it's about as stallwart a bunch as a herd of cats apparently.
As for the initial goal, if that is the break even point for just the moulds, what happens if there is an unforseen delay/complication like with HG? Wunji wouldn't have stretch goals to unilaterally renege on like Robert and Dave did to save money if he only met his initial goal. What about punching out the sprues? Printing the card and paper components? Multiple shipping (within China, to the US, to backers) steps? I mentioned in the beginning that he may have money set aside for that but that isn't what KS has accustomed backers to believe. The goal feels artifically low for what he was offering and that to many educated backers is a red flag. It's kind of the opposite cause but same end effect as above but from a different group/psychology of backers.
I look forward to hearing what eventually comes next though and wish you luck. This current project simply wasn't what I was interested in but maybe the next version will be.
1. Chits and tokens weren't the end goal, but seeing the response, I suppose things might flex now. I will have to discuss it with Fusion Core. I wasn't entirely crazy about the idea initially, and I'm still not. That's not a ding against all those who like chits and tokens, I just liked the vision of an open-format tabletop using board-game rules that could flex however players (including myself) wished to, with just a few cut-out terrain pieces, and perhaps some 'centerpiece' models, like a three-dimensional Catan mountain range representing a particular mountain peak. (Personally, I would have been fine with the small Fleet-scale Gears, tanks, and whatnot, rather than the larger single counters).
I think you misunderstand me. Chits and tokens weren't a suggested end goal but rather the starting line on the way to the end goal of big plastic minis (and with intermediate stretchgoals of fleet scale resins). IMO it should have been the initial funding goal version of the game with the components getting more and more grand as more and more money rolled in theoretically instead of starting with the end.
Well, I made a faux pas of my own in my writing.
I was meaning to allude to the idea of hexboards.
Initially, hexes was the idea considered.
But I've grown rather fond of open boards, rather than the old 90s-style Battletech and hexboards of Heavy Gear. OGRE, I give a pass, because it's simple, quick, and plays fast.
Heavy Gear Dreadnoughts was intended to play much in the same way, only with more freeform templates. Cut out some cardboard, mark it with the terrain, maybe use a printed terrain sheet to represent the type of terrain in that area, lay it out on the battlespace, and voila.
While I suppose that using flat counters is fine for a starter set, or even as a freebie for aspiring players who don't have the funds, I'd much rather use miniatures, even if they're only a straight color plastic that can later be painted to the owner's desires. Heck, even OGRE Designer Edition's 2.5-dimensional OGREs were of interest to me when I see them.
Your point about the grander design as funds came in is noteworthy, and something I personally would have to keep in mind. Which brings me to the below:
3. The goal for the original four vessels wasn't artificially low. The original goal for the molds was around the breakpoint. Personally, I wasn't interested in 'breaking folks' fragile wills'. I know Fusion Core wasn't, either. Some folks said that the goals set for the additional molds was too high, others, such as yourself, said it was too low. Just goes to show that individuals looking from the outside through different lenses will see matters differently.
The 'wills', I see in reference to what's going on with the Kingdom Death Kickstarter. Though frankly I don't believe said individuals are 'fragile', rather I see the kind of excitement I wish would be attributed to Heavy Gear, not merely for nostalgia's sake, but for genuine excitement. I imagine that the man behind that game is probably over-the-moon and also biting his thumb hard, realizing the immensity of what he is being given and entrusted with. Had that been me, I'd have dead-fainted for at least a couple hours, and then gotten to work. But, I'll still work things over here, in all respects. Perhaps things will turn around now, or perhaps not. If there is a cancellation, Fusion Core will reset, then resurrect later, with everything in place. It's a learning process, and I've learned quite a bit merely as a Collaborator in the project. It's an in-depth look at how a Kickstarter is run.
I'm guessing the fragile wills comment touched a nerve as you mentioned it three times... I just can't think of any other way to describe the herd mentality of gamer crowdfunding. If something is hot, folks back a project they have little to no interest in just to not miss out (and some who back for financial resell gain). If something instead plateaus, they accelerate the fall by backing out even though it won't cost them a dime to stay in on a project that isn't likely to reach its stated goal. I can't think of any reason why for the last four days the funding total should be decreasing. The update on the 23rd didn't contain any earth shattering revelations like Wunji's secret plans to binge on chasing loose women and gorging on poutine with the funds. The project is no better or worse planned or executed than it was days earlier when it began and the money flow was still positive. And yet the exodus started... that's what I refer to as the fragile wills of backers. YMMV but if you're kickstarting a project and are willing to put money down on it in the first few days then you should be firm enough in your resolve to weather a few folks leaving midway. Did they back but only on the value premise of all the stretch goals being met and added to their pledge for free and bailed when only the initial offering might happen? Who knows... it's about as stallwart a bunch as a herd of cats apparently.
As for the initial goal, if that is the break even point for just the moulds, what happens if there is an unforseen delay/complication like with HG? Wunji wouldn't have stretch goals to unilaterally renege on like Robert and Dave did to save money if he only met his initial goal. What about punching out the sprues? Printing the card and paper components? Multiple shipping (within China, to the US, to backers) steps? I mentioned in the beginning that he may have money set aside for that but that isn't what KS has accustomed backers to believe. The goal feels artifically low for what he was offering and that to many educated backers is a red flag. It's kind of the opposite cause but same end effect as above but from a different group/psychology of backers.
I look forward to hearing what eventually comes next though and wish you luck. This current project simply wasn't what I was interested in but maybe the next version will be.
Two different groups to appeal to, that I understand. The fragile wills comment touched a nerve only in the regard that I wanted to properly express myself without appearing arrogant or condescending towards other Backers. As someone who has only of late been involved in Kickstarters, mostly small charities, and Heavy Gear, and some terrain boards, I would not presume to know why someone chooses to back out of a Pledge. Typically, when I've Pledged, I don't pull out.
Which leads me to the elephant in the room.
JohnHwangDD wrote:Kingdom Death 1.5 launched on the 25th. It pulled $2M in 2 hours, and is now over $5M in under 5 days. That's what's sucking up all of the KS money.
SPM's Way of the Fighter got the same treatment, and collapsed for much the same reason.
I'd strongly suggest cancelling now, getting the game rules into P&P condition, and then relaunching Feb-Mar, after people's wallets recover.
I have strongly disagreed with you in the past, Mr. John, but on this, I grant you that that might have to be considered. Strong as I might have my misgivings about our previous conversations, I do respect your experience and your weathered tone on these matters. I'm not Fusion Core, of course, so I have no capability to press the 'Cancel' button. I'm just the mouthpiece, so to speak.
I have regularly been checking in with multiple forums to see what kind of impact the announcements have had.
Here, on Dakka, there was a short period of excitement and interest and questions.
On Beasts of War, the post largely laid dormant until a couple individuals noted the plastic prototype miniatures.
WargamersAU, there were several individuals who mentioned that the looks of the miniatures were 'horrible'. When I responded by showing the prototypes, and invited them to ask questions, there was no response.
On TheWargamesWebsite, Rhoderic, an old fan, mentioned he didn't like the size, in particular, but was otherwise hopeful for the project, and of course, of late, has offered much the same advice as has been given here.
BGG, no response.
RPG.net, I misplaced the KS thread, but after it was placed in the appropriate forum, the post went by the wayside with no response.
On Facebook, lots of shares by hardcore fans in smaller Groups, but in larger Groups, the announcement gets lost in the noise of 'Superman vs. Batman, Goku vs. Superman' discussions.
On G+, folks occasionally notice and give it a +1, some have commented.
On Twitter, very little presence outside of my own tweets.
Of course, quite a few hardcore fans themselves mentioned that they just simply do not have the funds to Back at this time, and I understand that fully. And we do have to deal with the fact that we are in 'competition', so to speak, with other Kickstarters.
I do wish we could get something out in the larger gamer media outlets to provide folks with something more 'meaty', as there were several mentions of 'armadas', and I think that that is a loaded term. Learning curve.
We will continue to discuss this, you know, until I'm dead and buried. Hopefully not for awhile.
One could argue that I did it not often enough, taking it all into account. But it's not just me, as you know.
Right now I'm trying to provide alternate solutions for the problem, though.
BrandonKF wrote: But I've grown rather fond of open boards, rather than the old 90s-style Battletech and hexboards of Heavy Gear. OGRE, I give a pass, because it's simple, quick, and plays fast.
Heavy Gear Dreadnoughts was intended to play much in the same way, only with more freeform templates. Cut out some cardboard, mark it with the terrain, maybe use a printed terrain sheet to represent the type of terrain in that area, lay it out on the battlespace, and voila.
You shouldn't really be looking at BTech or Heavy Gear in this instance, actually. That's not really what we're talking about when we say "hex and chits" games, even though we played those on hexboards. You should be looking to something more like... well, this:
Strategic level wargames, which seem to be the level you guys are going for. The above is a turn of Ardennes '44, but it's just an example. You can of course replace the actual chits for more pleasing minis, as long as you provide the same info in a similar way.
While I suppose that using flat counters is fine for a starter set, or even as a freebie for aspiring players who don't have the funds, I'd much rather use miniatures, even if they're only a straight color plastic that can later be painted to the owner's desires. Heck, even OGRE Designer Edition's 2.5-dimensional OGREs were of interest to me when I see them.
Minis as counters instead of chits is definitely very doable with the above.
Of course, quite a few hardcore fans themselves mentioned that they just simply do not have the funds to Back at this time, and I understand that fully. And we do have to deal with the fact that we are in 'competition', so to speak, with other Kickstarters.
It is a difficult time of the year, that's for sure. Black Friday, christmas sales and everything else eats up people's disposable income, so anything that people might find interesting but not that interesting probably falls by the wayside, or there's simply a need to prioritize. I would also advice to cancel now, rethink your strrategy and come back stronger come february or whereabouts.
Another possible example would be the Command. & Colours games (Ancients, ACW, Memoir '44, WW1) which are sold as games using wooden blocks on a hex map but which are commonly played using miniatures on hex-based terrain.
Pretty sure the lack of funding boils down to the squandering of the HG license overall.
Haven't had time to read through the crap storm and fighting here. But let's be frank, HG can't even touch Dystopian Wars in terms of name recognition, miniature quality, and actual releases. This isn't the fault of this new game, but it is Dream Pod 9s fault for not maintaining their brand.
I think the concept of big land ships, large ground scale war is a good one. After all, that's basically what DW is (but with a crappy ruleset).
Decouple this idea from HG, create a bigger universe and more designs with a similar look. Sculpt actual ground unit models instead of stand ins, show what the rules will be like, and even show a table in play, and you've got a recipe for a successful kickstarter.
Vertrucio wrote: Haven't had time to read through the crap storm and fighting here.
I don't think either exist (at least in relation to the Dreadnought project) in the thread recently. A year or two back for Blitz? Sure... but not now for this offshout. Pessimism/realism with a large dose of constructive criticism though abound.
While I suppose that using flat counters is fine for a starter set, or even as a freebie for aspiring players who don't have the funds, I'd much rather use miniatures, even if they're only a straight color plastic that can later be painted to the owner's desires. Heck, even OGRE Designer Edition's 2.5-dimensional OGREs were of interest to me when I see them.
Your point about the grander design as funds came in is noteworthy, and something I personally would have to keep in mind. Which brings me to the below:
I'd much rather use minis as well but it's a potential lower cost starting point for both players (total cost of the starter set) and Fusion Core (as a KS initial funding goal). Thanks for posting and keeping us updated, btw.
Strategic level wargames, which seem to be the level you guys are going for. The above is a turn of Ardennes '44, but it's just an example. You can of course replace the actual chits for more pleasing minis, as long as you provide the same info in a similar way.
Minis as counters instead of chits is definitely very doable with the above.
It is a difficult time of the year, that's for sure. Black Friday, christmas sales and everything else eats up people's disposable income, so anything that people might find interesting but not that interesting probably falls by the wayside, or there's simply a need to prioritize. I would also advice to cancel now, rethink your strrategy and come back stronger come february or whereabouts.
Thanks for the example. Yeah, when talking about "strategic" level gameplay for an entire region, that is the style of game that comes to mind. It's not my personal preference by any means though and as you said you can indeed replace the chits with small minis when using larger hexes or a normal map (or alternately use cardstock tokens where 2d like FFG board games or faux 3d like Ogre).
I hadn't thought about Black Friday but that could (in addition to John's mention of Kingdom Death) suck up funds. I don't think spending money on a kickstarter that won't likely arrive till late next year or worse makes for a good Xmas gift this year under the tree. Printing out the cover page and stuffing that in an envelope just doesn't have the same effect on young or old gamers.
@John: I didn't realize Kingdom Death had gone up so high so fast. Even with little overlap in genres, I'm guessing it is sucking up lots of funds as you said from both speculative resellers as well as cross genre interested gamers. I last looked on the thread when it was at 1 million and people were still complaining about the last campaign's lantern set that they got a full refund for... I wish that was an option two years ago with Robotech.
The timing could be better I guess, but blaming such a failure on the timing, or the Kingdom Death KS is just lazy.
The Dystopian Wars KS is doing quite ok on its own, despite facing the same issues.
Albertorius wrote: You shouldn't really be looking at BTech or Heavy Gear in this instance, actually. That's not really what we're talking about when we say "hex and chits" games, even though we played those on hexboards. You should be looking to something more like... well, this:
Strategic level wargames, which seem to be the level you guys are going for. The above is a turn of Ardennes '44, but it's just an example. You can of course replace the actual chits for more pleasing minis, as long as you provide the same info in a similar way.
Minis as counters instead of chits is definitely very doable with the above.
Hex and chit is the most natural approach for this, for a grand strategic battle with naval-size units. However, you're doing a minis game. Physically, I'd look at Command and Colors (Memoir '44 / Battle Cry / BattleLore 1E) for they handled hex-and-minis gaming - it's quite elegant for the scale, and the hexes are well-sized at just over 2" across. Ogre Miniatures is also a nice hex-and-minis game.
Regardless, your minis are prossibly too big for the scale of game that you envision. Smallest unit should be 3/4" long, largest <2", if you intend a sense of scale and any significant positioning prior to engagement. OTOH, if it's a no-tactics, no-maneuver 40k furball, then huge minis are fine.
We will continue to discuss this, you know, until I'm dead and buried. Hopefully not for awhile.
One could argue that I did it not often enough, taking it all into account. But it's not just me, as you know.
Right now I'm trying to provide alternate solutions for the problem, though.
BrandonKF wrote: But I've grown rather fond of open boards, rather than the old 90s-style Battletech and hexboards of Heavy Gear. OGRE, I give a pass, because it's simple, quick, and plays fast.
Heavy Gear Dreadnoughts was intended to play much in the same way, only with more freeform templates. Cut out some cardboard, mark it with the terrain, maybe use a printed terrain sheet to represent the type of terrain in that area, lay it out on the battlespace, and voila.
You shouldn't really be looking at BTech or Heavy Gear in this instance, actually. That's not really what we're talking about when we say "hex and chits" games, even though we played those on hexboards. You should be looking to something more like... well, this:
Strategic level wargames, which seem to be the level you guys are going for. The above is a turn of Ardennes '44, but it's just an example. You can of course replace the actual chits for more pleasing minis, as long as you provide the same info in a similar way.
While I suppose that using flat counters is fine for a starter set, or even as a freebie for aspiring players who don't have the funds, I'd much rather use miniatures, even if they're only a straight color plastic that can later be painted to the owner's desires. Heck, even OGRE Designer Edition's 2.5-dimensional OGREs were of interest to me when I see them.
Minis as counters instead of chits is definitely very doable with the above.
Of course, quite a few hardcore fans themselves mentioned that they just simply do not have the funds to Back at this time, and I understand that fully. And we do have to deal with the fact that we are in 'competition', so to speak, with other Kickstarters.
It is a difficult time of the year, that's for sure. Black Friday, christmas sales and everything else eats up people's disposable income, so anything that people might find interesting but not that interesting probably falls by the wayside, or there's simply a need to prioritize. I would also advice to cancel now, rethink your strrategy and come back stronger come february or whereabouts.
AndrewGPaul wrote:Another possible example would be the Command. & Colours games (Ancients, ACW, Memoir '44, WW1) which are sold as games using wooden blocks on a hex map but which are commonly played using miniatures on hex-based terrain.
One could argue that you didn't enough, Albertorius, but then, one could also argue that I didn't argue enough in the past. I often chose a 'wait and see' approach. I've grown rather tired of waiting though, as I expressed elsewhere. But I think you and I both have our minds set in those matters, and we'll continue to discuss options to work around that. You do bring valuable information and points to the foreground, which I appreciate, since I do tend to think in far larger terms than others might comprehend as feasible.
The chits included in that example picture provided in that picture of Ardennes '44 are a bit tightly packed for the ideas Fusion Core has in mind, far as I know. It works great for a strategic level of command, but lends itself to very wooden (pardon the pun) interaction.
Dreadnoughts' Ground and Air Units includes slightly more data than OGRE, or those described in Command and Colors games, or Ardennes '44.
Chiefly, Maneuver, Movement, and Attack. All dependent on which type of terrain you're in.
A couple other stats included are Regroup and Power.
That's just a basic overview, of course.
Vertrucio wrote:Pretty sure the lack of funding boils down to the squandering of the HG license overall.
Haven't had time to read through the crap storm and fighting here. But let's be frank, HG can't even touch Dystopian Wars in terms of name recognition, miniature quality, and actual releases. This isn't the fault of this new game, but it is Dream Pod 9s fault for not maintaining their brand.
I think the concept of big land ships, large ground scale war is a good one. After all, that's basically what DW is (but with a crappy ruleset).
Decouple this idea from HG, create a bigger universe and more designs with a similar look. Sculpt actual ground unit models instead of stand ins, show what the rules will be like, and even show a table in play, and you've got a recipe for a successful kickstarter.
Sorry, decoupling from Heavy Gear isn't going to happen, Vertrucio, as far as I'm aware. Frankly, I wouldn't want it to.
There's been some fighting here and there throughout the years in this thread since I first joined in and have had a listen to what everyone had to say.
That doesn't change. There's always going to be some fights between people who are passionate about ideas.
What does change is how we come to agreements about those finer points.
warboss wrote:
Vertrucio wrote: Haven't had time to read through the crap storm and fighting here.
I don't think either exist (at least in relation to the Dreadnought project) in the thread recently. A year or two back for Blitz? Sure... but not now for this offshout. Pessimism/realism with a large dose of constructive criticism though abound.
While I suppose that using flat counters is fine for a starter set, or even as a freebie for aspiring players who don't have the funds, I'd much rather use miniatures, even if they're only a straight color plastic that can later be painted to the owner's desires. Heck, even OGRE Designer Edition's 2.5-dimensional OGREs were of interest to me when I see them.
Your point about the grander design as funds came in is noteworthy, and something I personally would have to keep in mind. Which brings me to the below:
I'd much rather use minis as well but it's a potential lower cost starting point for both players (total cost of the starter set) and Fusion Core (as a KS initial funding goal). Thanks for posting and keeping us updated, btw.
It's what I do.
HudsonD wrote:The timing could be better I guess, but blaming such a failure on the excuse, or the Kingdom Death KS is just lazy. The Dystopian Wars KS is doing quite ok on its own, despite facing the same issues.
I addressed Dystopian Wars in my previous posts. I wish them the best. I do the same for those behind Kingdom Death.
I call it a learning experience. Moving on.
JohnHwangDD wrote: Hex and chit is the most natural approach for this, for a grand strategic battle with naval-size units. However, you're doing a minis game. Physically, I'd look at Command and Colors (Memoir '44 / Battle Cry / BattleLore 1E) for they handled hex-and-minis gaming - it's quite elegant for the scale, and the hexes are well-sized at just over 2" across. Ogre Miniatures is also a nice hex-and-minis game.
Regardless, your minis are prossibly too big for the scale of game that you envision. Smallest unit should be 3/4" long, largest <2", if you intend a sense of scale and any significant positioning prior to engagement. OTOH, if it's a no-tactics, no-maneuver 40k furball, then huge minis are fine.
Heheh, no, John, Fusion Core wasn't interested in doing the furball.
The big miniatures were because, well, frankly, they look great, plus, they give some added 'weight', if you will, as to the abilities and presence a landship has in the battlespace. They're powerhouses. Even strider and tanker crews get a chill when they know the enemy has even one landship in the vicinity.
At the current TV costs for a standard game, you might be able to bring at most half a dozen of the vessels to the battlespace, but you wouldn't have much room for Ground Units, and without those, you're shooting yourself in the foot (figuratively). Ground Units, like Infantry, Heavy Gears, and Tanks, can control Objectives, which is the primary means to gain Victory Points. You could also destroy the Objective with a Landship Artillery Strike (or an Air Unit Bombing Strike) and deny it to the enemy (and in some Missions, that's the case), but most of the time you'd suffer a ding to your Victory Points, because you're eliminating a valuable strategic or tactical asset to your own forces in the process. Wipe out too much, you're liable to end up in front of the amirals and admirals (depending whether you're South or North) explaining your 'strategies' when you decided to lay waste to a target filled with civilians caught in the crossfire.
Short run to the hangman's noose from there.
Strategic Strikes also cost you TV, and include orbital artillery, tactical nuclear warheads, and antimatter warheads, but again, you're likely going to suffer Victory Point loss at the end of game because you're using valuable assets, and unless you garnered major Victory Points from the act, you'll have a Pyrrhic victory on your hands. You might not end at the hangman's noose, but you'll be demoted to an out-of-the-way outpost where you won't be handling such precious materials so carelessly. But hey, maybe someone will give you a second chance (unless again, you struck a civilian target in the process). In addition, they're expensive, and the chances are that something might not go according to plan. Launch a tac nuke or antimatter missile, and it gets intercepted before it strikes the target, and you just lost more Victory Points because you wasted a valuable asset "and like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target!"
By contrast, a Maelstrom Landship, for example, would pack (roughly) 8 Air Units (about 80 TV), and 10 Ground Units (100 TV). That would mean 1 Maelstrom and 18 Units in total, roughly about half the force you could bring to a standard 500 TV game, a quarter of your force for a division-strength operation at 1000 TV. That's a lot of usable forces to accomplish Objectives, and still put a hurt on the enemy.
Anyway, the size of the miniatures will likely be discussed more, as well as other matters.
Edit: As for why include more miniatures than you could feasibly deploy (if you have two of everything, but they cost so much, why include them in the Starter Set?), I believe that was part of the plan to include the modular kits later on in the Stretch Goals. Rather than have multiples of the same variant, you could build each individual vessel, with one of each sub-class, so to speak, and thus have flexibility in choosing which vessel you brought to which engagement.
BrandonKF wrote: One could argue that you didn't enough, Albertorius, but then, one could also argue that I didn't argue enough in the past. I often chose a 'wait and see' approach. I've grown rather tired of waiting though, as I expressed elsewhere. But I think you and I both have our minds set in those matters, and we'll continue to discuss options to work around that. You do bring valuable information and points to the foreground, which I appreciate, since I do tend to think in far larger terms than others might comprehend as feasible.
I was thinking more about the time when the Cat was originally presented, really ^^. I hope you forgive me if I'm too brash or if I say something out of line in the heat of the moment. I do mean well, even if I'm more interested in keeping the setting I like going forward and less in making it more widely appealing.
As to the larger terms comment, if that's regarding the population scaling that's being discussed, it's not so much that we don't comprehend them as feasible (they're kind of iffy from a population growth POV, of course, but that's another thing), but rather that we don't feel there's an actual need for them. To each their own, but you're in a much better position to muscle your opinion into the setting,
The chits included in that example picture provided in that picture of Ardennes '44 are a bit tightly packed for the ideas Fusion Core has in mind, far as I know. It works great for a strategic level of command, but lends itself to very wooden (pardon the pun) interaction.
Dreadnoughts' Ground and Air Units includes slightly more data than OGRE, or those described in Command and Colors games, or Ardennes '44.
Chiefly, Maneuver, Movement, and Attack. All dependent on which type of terrain you're in.
A couple other stats included are Regroup and Power.
That's just a basic overview, of course.
Interesting, thanks for the roundup. That amount of information seems very doable on a minis base, tbh (take a look at the amount of information crammed on a X-Wing base, for example).
The above was an example on what I personally (and I think most boardgamers and fands of the genre) think when talking about "hex and chits" game, rather than a suggestion for your game. The above depicts units from a really big offensive (we're talking millions involved here, and thousands of... well, everything), and I believe your game is meant to represent actions with much smaller forces, so it should be proportionate to that.
That said, the above and other games like the aforementioned Memoir '44 are a good representation of something I feel would fit the kind of game you seem to be going for:
Heheh, no, John, Fusion Core wasn't interested in doing the furball.
The big miniatures were because, well, frankly, they look great, plus, they give some added 'weight', if you will, as to the abilities and presence a landship has in the battlespace. They're powerhouses. Even strider and tanker crews get a chill when they know the enemy has even one landship in the vicinity.
Great as they may look, I think that form should follow function. IMHO, if the current version of the mini is too big for the intended purpose, then it should be remade to fit the function.
The last part feels kind of strange to me, because that's simply not the way I think regular troopers in in the setting would go around thinking about landships. I mean, it's on another whole scale, after all, like a base or our modern wet fleets. Mostly, they will worry about what they bring with them (for example, if the USA moves a fleet, people in the zone gets worried about the air power it brings with it, or the marines it carries). The actual weapons on the ships seems to me the lesser of the threat.
At the current TV costs for a standard game, you might be able to bring at most half a dozen of the vessels to the battlespace, but you wouldn't have much room for Ground Units, and without those, you're shooting yourself in the foot (figuratively). Ground Units, like Infantry, Heavy Gears, and Tanks, can control Objectives, which is the primary means to gain Victory Points. You could also destroy the Objective with a Landship Artillery Strike (or an Air Unit Bombing Strike) and deny it to the enemy (and in some Missions, that's the case), but most of the time you'd suffer a ding to your Victory Points, because you're eliminating a valuable strategic or tactical asset to your own forces in the process. Wipe out too much, you're liable to end up in front of the amirals and admirals (depending whether you're South or North) explaining your 'strategies' when you decided to lay waste to a target filled with civilians caught in the crossfire.
Short run to the hangman's noose from there.
Strategic Strikes also cost you TV, and include orbital artillery, tactical nuclear warheads, and antimatter warheads, but again, you're likely going to suffer Victory Point loss at the end of game because you're using valuable assets, and unless you garnered major Victory Points from the act, you'll have a Pyrrhic victory on your hands. You might not end at the hangman's noose, but you'll be demoted to an out-of-the-way outpost where you won't be handling such precious materials so carelessly. But hey, maybe someone will give you a second chance (unless again, you struck a civilian target in the process). In addition, they're expensive, and the chances are that something might not go according to plan. Launch a tac nuke or antimatter missile, and it gets intercepted before it strikes the target, and you just lost more Victory Points because you wasted a valuable asset "and like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target!"
By contrast, a Maelstrom Landship, for example, would pack (roughly) 8 Air Units (about 80 TV), and 10 Ground Units (100 TV). That would mean 1 Maelstrom and 18 Units in total, roughly about half the force you could bring to a standard 500 TV game, a quarter of your force for a division-strength operation at 1000 TV. That's a lot of usable forces to accomplish Objectives, and still put a hurt on the enemy.
Anyway, the size of the miniatures will likely be discussed more, as well as other matters.
Edit: As for why include more miniatures than you could feasibly deploy (if you have two of everything, but they cost so much, why include them in the Starter Set?), I believe that was part of the plan to include the modular kits later on in the Stretch Goals. Rather than have multiples of the same variant, you could build each individual vessel, with one of each sub-class, so to speak, and thus have flexibility in choosing which vessel you brought to which engagement.
Thanks for the rundown.
You now, since your comment about units getting depleted and the like, I've had something stuck on my mind: resource point economy.
From a strategic point (and this would work beautifully for a hexes game), it would be nice if landships and ground bases generated a certain amount of "resource points" each turn, that they could later either distribute to units to keep them supplied (if you have a supply line to them, of course), use to effect repairs on themselves or stuff on their hex, or spend to launch air attacks or artillery/ortillery strikes, for example. Something similar to how Focus points work in Warmachine, actually...
BrandonKF wrote: One could argue that you didn't enough, Albertorius, but then, one could also argue that I didn't argue enough in the past. I often chose a 'wait and see' approach. I've grown rather tired of waiting though, as I expressed elsewhere. But I think you and I both have our minds set in those matters, and we'll continue to discuss options to work around that. You do bring valuable information and points to the foreground, which I appreciate, since I do tend to think in far larger terms than others might comprehend as feasible.
I was thinking more about the time when the Cat was originally presented, really ^^. I hope you forgive me if I'm too brash or if I say something out of line in the heat of the moment. I do mean well, even if I'm more interested in keeping the setting I like going forward and less in making it more widely appealing.
As to the larger terms comment, if that's regarding the population scaling that's being discussed, it's not so much that we don't comprehend them as feasible (they're kind of iffy from a population growth POV, of course, but that's another thing), but rather that we don't feel there's an actual need for them. To each their own, but you're in a much better position to muscle your opinion into the setting,
I am, but I also listen to what is told to me. Recall my previous numbers versus now. That's in large part due to the observations you, the other playtesters, Arkrite and Fusion Core brought up.
Less is more in that instance.
Interesting, thanks for the roundup. That amount of information seems very doable on a minis base, tbh (take a look at the amount of information crammed on a X-Wing base, for example).
The above was an example on what I personally (and I think most boardgamers and fands of the genre) think when talking about "hex and chits" game, rather than a suggestion for your game. The above depicts units from a really big offensive (we're talking millions involved here, and thousands of... well, everything), and I believe your game is meant to represent actions with much smaller forces, so it should be proportionate to that.
That said, the above and other games like the aforementioned Memoir '44 are a good representation of something I feel would fit the kind of game...
For a starting point, in my humble opinion.
It's worth discussion.
Heheh, no, John, Fusion Core wasn't interested in doing the furball.
The big miniatures were because, well, frankly, they look great, plus, they give some added 'weight', if you will, as to the abilities and presence a landship has in the battlespace. They're powerhouses. Even strider and tanker crews get a chill when they know the enemy has even one landship in the vicinity.
Great as they may look, I think that form should follow function. IMHO, if the current version of the mini is too big for the intended purpose, then it should be remade to fit the function.
The last part feels kind of strange to me, because that's simply not the way I think regular troopers in in the setting would go around thinking about landships. I mean, it's on another whole scale, after all, like a base or our modern wet fleets. Mostly, they will worry about what they bring with them (for example, if the USA moves a fleet, people in the zone gets worried about the air power it brings with it, or the marines it carries). The actual weapons on the ships seems to me the lesser of the threat.
Yes, but that's because we live in a world where ships can't cross land or deal with aerial threats on the fly with directed-energy weapons. Now imagine if said task force could maneuver over land with the troops. Now you don't know where precisely it's hiding, and it's firepower can flex with the forces it supports.
However, I know that folks are still iffy about the large scale, so it's something to think about.
Thanks for the rundown.
You now, since your comment about units getting depleted and the like, I've had something stuck on my mind: resource point economy.
From a strategic point (and this would work beautifully for a hexes game), it would be nice if landships and ground bases generated a certain amount of "resource points" each turn, that they could later either distribute to units to keep them supplied (if you have a supply line to them, of course), use to effect repairs on themselves or stuff on their hex, or spend to launch air attacks or artillery/ortillery strikes, for example. Something similar to how Focus points work in Warmachine, actually...
That's where Turns, Cycles, Command Points, Regroup, and the Recovery and Reserve tracker come in.
Each Turn lasts one Order, plus whatever Orders the active player uses with Command Points. Once he or she is finished, the other player starts their Turn. Either player can call a Cycle at the end of their Turn, or wait. As long as the Cycle continues, Command Points don't regenerate.
Each Unit has SIG. The worse the SIG, the more worn out they are, the easier they are hit, the quicker they go to the Scrapyard. You can burn a Turn Order or Command Point Order to roll to Regroup, replenishing them and decreasing their level of SIG. But again, CPs don't regenerate until a Cycle is called. If you want, you can also roll to Withdraw the Unit to go to the Recovery tracker.
Any Units that you withdraw from the field at diminished capacity go to their respective stage of Recovery, and don't move up the tracker until a Cycle is called. However, calling a Cycle to move your Units up the Recovery tracker gives the OPPOSING player their full Command Point pool.
So, you can try to burn out your opponent’s CPs by waiting a long time, but if a majority of your forces are in Recovery because of wear and tear, your opponent can conservatively maneuver to accomplish Objectives unopposed.
BrandonKF wrote: I am, but I also listen to what is told to me. Recall my previous numbers versus now. That's in large part due to the observations you, the other playtesters, Arkrite and Fusion Core brought up.
Granted. I may not agree with you on the current numbers, but they certainly look much better now, and you've been listening.
For a starting point, in my humble opinion.
It's worth discussion.
Sure, of course. As I said, it was just an example to make the idea clearer.
Yes, but that's because we live in a world where ships can't cross land or deal with aerial threats on the fly with directed-energy weapons. Now imagine if said task force could maneuver over land with the troops. Now you don't know where precisely it's hiding, and it's firepower can flex with the forces it supports.
However, I know that folks are still iffy about the large scale, so it's something to think about.
Actually, terranovan dry navies still must face much of the same problems than curren wet ones do:
Landships don't fly, after all, they just hover a couple meters above ground, and the orography, woodlands and the like of the terrain will have a much greater impact than water will have on a regular ship (water is kind of flat most of the time, unless there's a really big storm). While you keep yourself to the Badlands you're mostly OK, but even there if your ship is on the Barrington Basin you're not going to go nowhere near the Karak Wastes with it, and on a less general level, the moment you reach any significantly hilly terrain you will need to find an alternative route.
There are few ways to hide landships, too, given the amount of radiation (and well, sand clouds) they generate, unless they stay grounded, which would have its own sets of problems. They're easier to hide than fixed bases, sure, but it's not like currently nations don't keep tally of other countries' assets. I don't think that will be changing anytime soon.
That's where Turns, Cycles, Command Points, Regroup, and the Recovery and Reserve tracker come in.
Each Turn lasts one Order, plus whatever Orders the active player uses with Command Points. Once he or she is finished, the other player starts their Turn. Either player can call a Cycle at the end of their Turn, or wait. As long as the Cycle continues, Command Points don't regenerate.
Each Unit has SIG. The worse the SIG, the more worn out they are, the easier they are hit, the quicker they go to the Scrapyard. You can burn a Turn Order or Command Point Order to roll to Regroup, replenishing them and decreasing their level of SIG. But again, CPs don't regenerate until a Cycle is called. If you want, you can also roll to Withdraw the Unit to go to the Recovery tracker.
Any Units that you withdraw from the field at diminished capacity go to their respective stage of Recovery, and don't move up the tracker until a Cycle is called. However, calling a Cycle to move your Units up the Recovery tracker gives the OPPOSING player their full Command Point pool.
So, you can try to burn out your opponent’s CPs by waiting a long time, but if a majority of your forces are in Recovery because of wear and tear, your opponent can conservatively maneuver to accomplish Objectives unopposed.
As long time Steve Jackson Games Ogre player, I can say that there are various issues from having 6mm or 1/300th miniatures on a map where the ground-scale is one hex per 1500m, which is approximately a mile.
Removing the hexes and making the movement free-form doesn't make the problem disappear as anyone who has played Ogre Miniatures will tell you, because if you increase the nominal hex size to match the models one ends up having to play on very large areas, and the game play is affected by the conversion from area (hexes) to point-to-point measurement.
I've done a lot of this in the past, and at one level I wish the recen Ogre Minis KS had bitten the bullet and down-scaled the miniatures to 2mm or 1/700th scale – then at least Ogres would have fitted inside one hex: and don't get me started on the asinine comment made by an SJG spokesman that Ogres are big! They're not that big, not 3000m long kind of big.
So, the relevance of the above to the discussion of Ogre in relation to Dreadnoughts is hopefully obvious. The miniature to ground-scale is an issue.
Personally I would make the ground-scale larger, because while I might not like the disparity in Ogre, it can clearly be made to work, and therefore offers a solution that keeps large models fighting over maps.
Oh yeah, gosh another twenty odd pages to this post. However popular HG is or is not, it sure can generate a shed load of discussion.
Paint it Pink wrote: As long time Steve Jackson Games Ogre player, I can say that there are various issues from having 6mm or 1/300th miniatures on a map where the ground-scale is one hex per 1500m, which is approximately a mile.
don't get me started on the asinine comment made by an SJG spokesman that Ogres are big! They're not that big, not 3000m long kind of big.
Personally I would make the ground-scale larger,
Ashley, I agree that there are *HUGE* issues with the way Ogre Minis are scaled. They look great, but aren't realistic at all. esp. at 2" per hex. Really, one needs to look at games of Ogre Minis as playing out an Overrun situation.
The Ogre minis are consistent scale. I get that. Shrink by more than half, LTs and LGEVs would be too small to wrangle. Even at 1/500, LTs and LGEVs would be difficult to handle. Ogre is a hex-and-chit game - that's where the scale makes sense. Not at 1/285 // 1/300 scale.
As this is a new line, I would do both: shrink the minis *and* increase the ground scale.
Oh yeah, gosh another twenty odd pages to this post. However popular HG is or is not, it sure can generate a shed load of discussion.
Despite what sometimes feels like DP9's earnest efforts to dissuade them in the past, there are a couple of fans still passionate about the IP here. Thanks for the OGRE insight.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
JohnHwangDD wrote: Ashley, I agree that there are *HUGE* issues with the way Ogre Minis are scaled.
I suppose there is no way to avoid reading that for the next four years in a Trump parody voice. huuuuge!
The Ogre minis are consistent scale. I get that. Shrink by more than half, LTs and LGEVs would be too small to wrangle. Even at 1/500, LTs and LGEVs would be difficult to handle. Ogre is a hex-and-chit game - that's where the scale makes sense. Not at 1/285 // 1/300 scale.
As this is a new line, I would do both: shrink the minis *and* increase the ground scale.
I only care about consistent scale within a class of vehicles and relative scale out side of that. For instance, in this type of game the landships should be consistently scaled with each other and bigger than any other model... but those other models don't have to be in the same scale as the dreadnoughts. For instance, if they make a variety of gears then those gears should be to scale with each other with the largest gear dwarfed by the smallest strider... but that smallest strider can be a different sliding scale as long as that scale is consistent between striders (and probably tanks as well).
That works, too. As long as the sliding scale doesn't get ridiculous (buildings and people being the problem areas).
But here, the issue is with a 25m long Ogre in a 1500m hex, where the model is 100x ground scale. You can get away with 100x in naval & space games, but ground scale shouldn't go above 10x.
Agreed. It would be nice if Wunji responded to *any* of this (whether here, on the KS in an update or comment, on facebook, smoke signals, etc) in the past week as his company's first kickstarter is slowly bleeding to death.
Personal issues require his immediate attention. I won't elaborate further, as it is strictly private. However, I've told him and I tell you, I am continuing writing, and editing, and copy editing.
I'll discuss the finer points brought up above when I'm not at work, which will be a few hours from now.
BrandonKF wrote: Personal issues require his immediate attention. I won't elaborate further, as it is strictly private. However, I've told him and I tell you, I am continuing writing, and editing, and copy editing.
I'll discuss the finer points brought up above when I'm not at work, which will be a few hours from now.
I appreciate your responses, Brandon, and especially their timliness but I'm guessing your not the one making the final call on things. The lack of response is troubling for a kickstarter; if it funded but later things went sour either personally or professionally, would this be the type/lack of response to expect as a Dreadnought backer in 2017+? I'm not asking you to elaborate further but personal issues, even if very serious, don't preclude five minutes of attention for a week unless Wunji himself is seriously incapacitated (which at that point it would be his responsiblity to delegate that to someone like you). I don't expect problems to be solved nor issues completely addressed in that five minutes but the complete lack of any effort for the past week on his part as this falls apart is absolutely grounds for concern both now and for a future potentially revamped project (especially in addition to the apparently serious issues present within the campaign that contributed to it not funding like scale issues and no gameplay demos).
Checking in on this: It's pretty clear there's a few factors. I haven't played any HG in like 2 years, when there was that whole prior-to-new-edition clusterfeth of half-baked armoy books and the like.
In this case with this new Dreadnaughts game... there's many issues. One thing alone: I don't find the models appealing. They're uncharismatic lumps with some polygon angles. Is that our scifi game, about apparently robot jeeps and hovertanks? Because that's not what draws people in. The old Vortex-class Carrier is awesome: It looks and feels great. Even when not in a cheesy video game cutscene. These new guys are bland.
Comparing it to a chit and hex game? My god, that's one way to ensure the game dies in obscurity. Chit and Hex are all incredibly niche.
A strategic scale game is great. That can be cool. I recently got way into the Homeworld Deserts of Kharak prequel (which incidentally, is about land-carriers dueling in the deep equatorial desertlands...) and it's a fantastic idea. But execution is key.
To clarify, the ground scale that they talk about for this game is 20km per inch (1/780,000 scale) - what would normally be handled as hex-and-chit.
At that scale, 4 feet on the gameboard is 960 km. That is just under 600 real world miles. That is enough to encompass the entire Bos-Wash corridor, dipping down to Richmond, and grabbing a bit of Maine! Manhattan would be about an inch long. As an in-scale terrain item, the Statue of Liberty would be 1/2500 of an inch tall (<<1 mm).
Or, one could battle from Detroit to Washington on the same tabletop, with the Blue Ridge Mountains cutting across the bottom, and Lake Erie cutting across the top.
If gaming in the West, the Grand Canyon is less than 1 cm deep.
1" = 20km is a patently ridiculous scale for miniatures gaming, but works fine if you're playing hex-and-chit games of the Battle of the Bulge.
OTOH, the miniatures are 1/2500 scale, which should really be 1/2400 to match existing naval wargaming. At this scale, 1:1 minis:ground scale is possible, and probably desirable. Manhattan being 2 miles (3.2km) wide means it's 4 feet wide on the tabletop. Of course, Gears are only 2mm tall...
1/1200 is even better due to the inclusion of land elements. A Gear stands 5mm tall, like 1/300 human infantry. Under this scheme, a 12 cm landship model is "only" 150m long, which is still ridiculously large for a land vehicle. If you downscale the biggest landships to 9 cm, then they are a little over 110m long - that is not completely implausible. That's roughly the size of the Goodyear Blimp / football field. It would be ponderously slow, but one could imagine it moving across some open ground.
Albertorius wrote:Landships don't fly, after all, they just hover a couple meters above ground, and the orography, woodlands and the like of the terrain will have a much greater impact than water will have on a regular ship (water is kind of flat most of the time, unless there's a really big storm). While you keep yourself to the Badlands you're mostly OK, but even there if your ship is on the Barrington Basin you're not going to go nowhere near the Karak Wastes with it, and on a less general level, the moment you reach any significantly hilly terrain you will need to find an alternative route.
There are few ways to hide landships, too, given the amount of radiation (and well, sand clouds) they generate, unless they stay grounded, which would have its own sets of problems. They're easier to hide than fixed bases, sure, but it's not like currently nations don't keep tally of other countries' assets. I don't think that will be changing anytime soon.
They can hover a little farther than a couple meters off the ground. That's been the impression for a long time.
They don't use hover-fans to float, so sand clouds aren't generated by their repulsors. Their thrusters might throw some up, but those are usually designed for forward momentum, not vertical.
In addition, they utilize thick EW screens, through a variety of units. Those will be detailed in the fluff.
warboss wrote:
I appreciate your responses, Brandon, and especially their timliness but I'm guessing your not the one making the final call on things. The lack of response is troubling for a kickstarter; if it funded but later things went sour either personally or professionally, would this be the type/lack of response to expect as a Dreadnought backer in 2017+? I'm not asking you to elaborate further but personal issues, even if very serious, don't preclude five minutes of attention for a week unless Wunji himself is seriously incapacitated (which at that point it would be his responsiblity to delegate that to someone like you). I don't expect problems to be solved nor issues completely addressed in that five minutes but the complete lack of any effort for the past week on his part as this falls apart is absolutely grounds for concern both now and for a future potentially revamped project (especially in addition to the apparently serious issues present within the campaign that contributed to it not funding like scale issues and no gameplay demos).
No, I don't make the final call on things. But as the Kickstarter's collaborator, as a Heavy Gear promoter and writer, as a fan, and as a virtual friend - even if that doesn't count for much - I feel it's my duty to stand in the gap.
Paint it Pink wrote:
So, the relevance of the above to the discussion of Ogre in relation to Dreadnoughts is hopefully obvious. The miniature to ground-scale is an issue.
Personally I would make the ground-scale larger, because while I might not like the disparity in Ogre, it can clearly be made to work, and therefore offers a solution that keeps large models fighting over maps.
Oh yeah, gosh another twenty odd pages to this post. However popular HG is or is not, it sure can generate a shed load of discussion.
Killionaire wrote:Oh hey, familiar names and faces.
Checking in on this: It's pretty clear there's a few factors. I haven't played any HG in like 2 years, when there was that whole prior-to-new-edition clusterfeth of half-baked armoy books and the like.
In this case with this new Dreadnaughts game... there's many issues. One thing alone: I don't find the models appealing. They're uncharismatic lumps with some polygon angles. Is that our scifi game, about apparently robot jeeps and hovertanks? Because that's not what draws people in. The old Vortex-class Carrier is awesome: It looks and feels great. Even when not in a cheesy video game cutscene. These new guys are bland.
Comparing it to a chit and hex game? My god, that's one way to ensure the game dies in obscurity. Chit and Hex are all incredibly niche.
A strategic scale game is great. That can be cool. I recently got way into the Homeworld Deserts of Kharak prequel (which incidentally, is about land-carriers dueling in the deep equatorial desertlands...) and it's a fantastic idea. But execution is key.
JohnHwangDD wrote:To clarify, the ground scale that they talk about for this game is 20km per inch (1/780,000 scale) - what would normally be handled as hex-and-chit.
At that scale, 4 feet on the gameboard is 960 km. That is just under 600 real world miles. That is enough to encompass the entire Bos-Wash corridor, dipping down to Richmond, and grabbing a bit of Maine! Manhattan would be about an inch long. As an in-scale terrain item, the Statue of Liberty would be 1/2500 of an inch tall (<<1 mm).
Or, one could battle from Detroit to Washington on the same tabletop, with the Blue Ridge Mountains cutting across the bottom, and Lake Erie cutting across the top.
If gaming in the West, the Grand Canyon is less than 1 cm deep.
1" = 20km is a patently ridiculous scale for miniatures gaming, but works fine if you're playing hex-and-chit games of the Battle of the Bulge.
OTOH, the miniatures are 1/2500 scale, which should really be 1/2400 to match existing naval wargaming. At this scale, 1:1 minis:ground scale is possible, and probably desirable. Manhattan being 2 miles (3.2km) wide means it's 4 feet wide on the tabletop. Of course, Gears are only 2mm tall...
1/1200 is even better due to the inclusion of land elements. A Gear stands 5mm tall, like 1/300 human infantry. Under this scheme, a 12 cm landship model is "only" 150m long, which is still ridiculously large for a land vehicle. If you downscale the biggest landships to 9 cm, then they are a little over 110m long - that is not completely implausible. That's roughly the size of the Goodyear Blimp / football field. It would be ponderously slow, but one could imagine it moving across some open ground.
These comments deal with material I want to handle collectively, so I'm keeping them together, and they also address Paint-it-Pink's mentions as well.
First, downscaling the landships in actual size to 110 meters in length isn't going to happen.
For reference, this is the Fleet Scale landship miniatures at present (all of which are 1/4000 in miniature scale) with their Gear/tank/aircraft counters (cast in 1/350 miniature scale):
This is the Vortex:
The Vortex is 285 meters long.
So, it's almost as long as the Susano-O, which is rated to be roughly 310 meters in length.
In reference to Killionaire's mention that the models are uncharismatic lumps - this is the Khan. It's 260 meters in length.
The Vortex gets a pass in looks because it's designed like a retro aircraft carrier, but insofar as looks, the Khan and its fellow Southern landships aren't much different from the current line-up, like the Sanguinaire and Khagan (a modernized version of the previous Khan):
The Sanguinaire is currently the tiniest of the landships that will appear:
As you see, it's rated at 230 meters in length.
Let's compare and contrast some more.
Here is the Iowa:
Spoiler:
Here is a Ticonderoga-class cruiser.
Spoiler:
And here is an LCS, the Independence, part of the inspiration for the current Dreadnoughts:
Spoiler:
So, looks-wise, the Independence isn't 'regal', in the sense of the older Iowa, but it's functional.
One of our biggest talking points about Heavy Gear is 'hard science fiction'. "Hard" can mean different things to different persons, but I personally feel that it's ultimately wrapped up in a sense of verisimilitude that such a design could actually exist in the minds of the gamers.
I look at the Vortex, I see a cool design, but, even as a teenager, I recognized that the deck layout was hazardous in some respects. You have two landing strips that aren't much wider than the aircraft they're designed to launch, both joining at the center elevator to lower to the hangar below, and their flight path is directly over the helipads from the aft sector.
Now, I look at the Maelstrom:
Spoiler:
Forward ramp for launching STOL conventional winged aircraft or VTOL aircraft with less thrust than needed for their vertical take-off, offset landing strip that's wide enough to accommodate possibly three aircraft (or one larger transport aircraft) without having to shutdown the helipads/VTOL pads on the aft deck, reasonable accommodations to use the aft end as a landing strip for aircraft if they need more runway...
It's function over form (and, in the case of the Khagan, improving function, since the runway is no longer coming out the sides, as it does with the Khan, but instead, like the Sanguinarius and Imperatrice, is located on the top of the vessel).
However, as Fusion Core shared in their last update:
" We like where the size is; it doesn't take up too much table space, still looks plenty impressive, and as a game piece, is right about where a human-sized player picks it up and gets the sense that it's an important item.
Our 3D-printed prototype models are kind of a halfway stage in the plastics design process. The 2D art of the landships is our main reference for mood and look of the ships; ideally, we want that feel to carry through to our final miniatures as much as possible. However, at 1/2500 scale, many details have to be exaggerated in order to a) be visible and b) hold paint. There's also a general desire for "greeblies," distinct textures, ridges, and depressions that help add dimension to a miniature without the need for airbrush shading. Finding a comfortable compromise between these often-conflicting requirements isn't easy.
Although the 3D printed miniatures have limited details, they help us find answers for the aforementioned concerns by allowing us to physically work with model size, proportions, and gross detail. For example, after building and handling the Susano-O prototype, we found that we might need to exaggerate the size of the gun turrets just a smidge, to make them more visible when looking down at them on a table and to make the gun barrels easier to paint and handle. We also found that the missile hatches, while perfectly visible in the 2D art, are just a pebbly pattern on the physical model, necessitating a redesign of the hatches for the miniatures. Panel line abundance and thickness are also concerns, and we do want to be able to add some more sharp lines to make washes and highlighting more effective.
That said, these ship designs are intentionally less "busy" than many modern sci-fi vehicles. We really tried to inject a sense of an object that's built for a purpose (even if that purpose is wholly fictitious), so the hulls needed to have a sense of solidity to them, and the armaments had to be of reasonable size. We know that's a departure from traditional miniatures gaming, which tends to maximize table appeal with wild silhouettes and massive weaponry, but if there's a niche for us to fill, this is certainly the best way to find out."
So, it's not unlikely that, like the Fleet-scale vessels, the Dreadnoughts will have certain proportions (namely, around the weapons) enlarged to make them easier to paint and visually more appealing.
As it stands, making them smaller will make this more difficult, however, it will be something to review and discuss.
-----
In regards to the ground scale.
The way that I see Heavy Gear Dreadnoughts, this is intended as a 'low' strategy game, at least in respects to my personal terminology.
Instead of controlling entire divisions or corps, you're in command of a task force that roughly equals a regiment to brigade-sized element. However, that element has the advantage of large war vessels for support and transport, in addition to the capability to deploy armored personnel carriers, tanks, striders, or Heavy Gears, and, if you so choose, what I term "higher-level" assets. A company of Heavy Gears is equivalent in manpower to a modern U.S. Army armor company, roughly 85-100 men and women. Heavy Gear regiments run about 400-500 men and women, with 250 Gears, plus attendant technicians, infantry support, and headquarters unit.
Each 'counter' in Heavy Gear Dreadnoughts contains roughly a platoon of 12-20 Gears, with maybe an IFV or two in support. An infantry battalion in Heavy Gear is roughly 800 men and women, most mounted in either APCs, like Badgers or Caimans, or mounted on ATVs, or, in some cases, living cavalry mounts. The largest vessel, the Susano-O class, can carry over 100 Gears, plus several companies of tanks, a couple companies of infantry, and more. The smallest, the Borasco, carries 30 Gears, a couple infantry companies, and no tanks.
This is 'low-level' in the case that you're not bothering with all the tactics that you deal with in Heavy Gear Blitz. It comes down to operating in a limited scope, a sector of responsibility, and using your units and landships wisely to accomplish whatever mission objectives are given to you over a course of days or possibly a week on the outside. Each Unit counter during maneuvers and engagements assumes that the lieutenants, rangers, sous-sergents and others "in the thick of it" are nominally efficient and capable of doing their jobs without you micromanaging them every step of the way. You tell them to go someplace, they will go there by the best means possible, they'll maneuver their units into all the different formations possible to assume the best offensive and defensive postures, and you're left with the 'big picture'.
Is 20 kilometers in an inch too much? Possibly. It will be discussed.
--------
With all that in mind, I'd like to thank you all for your thoughts. And I would appreciate it if you all continued to provide feedback.
However, I did want to underscore that the size of the landships themselves isn't going to change, at least in-universe terms. These aren't Goodyear blimps. And there are certain expectations that will be clarified - and perhaps overturned - with new revelations in the fluff.
Okay, I've spent awhile composing this, and I need to hit the sack eventually, but I'm off to go do some other things.
Also, long time no see Killionaire. You should stick around more often, or come visit in the Terra Nova DMZ, there's a lot more activity of late.
BrandonKF wrote: They can hover a little farther than a couple meters off the ground. That's been the impression for a long time.
That's... not at all what the Technical Manual says, and the Tech Manual is the setting tech bible. Actually I overstated the height. The Tech Manual says the following (fast translation, I only have access to the spanish version of the book here):
"Thanks to a combination of magnetic repulsion technology and ground effect, this gargantuan ships hover a few centimeters above the sands of the Badlands and the polar savannas, which they patrol as is they were oceans".
You know, just like a regular hovercraft, which is what they were supposed to work as, only writ larger and with added technobabble to justify the size.
If you guys are changing that, it will certainly be a heavy retcon with very deep implications for the setting.
They don't use hover-fans to float, so sand clouds aren't generated by their repulsors. Their thrusters might throw some up, but those are usually designed for forward momentum, not vertical.
...yes, yes they do. They are even right there on the original pics! That's what the vectored thrusters are.
In addition, they utilize thick EW screens, through a variety of units. Those will be detailed in the fluff.
That's all well and good, but 1) That don't do nothing against visual detection (see above, and well, that's what sats do all the time) and 2) A zone where you can't see a thing due to active EW covering is eve more conspicuous than a blip on a radar. They will know there's something there and will veryfy with visual sensors.
Not to distract from the discussion of futuristic gear-capable cruise liners:
I decided to use the Rumbl service the Podbay was advertising, well use again as the last guy I challenged never actually answered me. I'm close enough to Canada that I decided to challenge Rob himself to a game.
Wish me luck?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, assuming that somehow the Dreadnoughts game gets off the ground (anti-grav joke there folks) and I actually get some of the stuff, would it be bad form to model one of them with Jabba and friends partying on the back? I can make a sarlacc terrain piece if I have to.
Mmmpi wrote: Not to distract from the discussion of futuristic gear-capable cruise liners:
I decided to use the Rumbl service the Podbay was advertising, well use again as the last guy I challenged never actually answered me. I'm close enough to Canada that I decided to challenge Rob himself to a game.
Wish me luck?
Congrats! I haven't check it since it was first mentioned here a while back (late last year?) but the closest person at that time was hundreds of miles away. Hopefully, a few more popped up in between. EDIT: Just checked... 198 miles away for the closest opponent. :(
Also, assuming that somehow the Dreadnoughts game gets off the ground (anti-grav joke there folks) and I actually get some of the stuff, would it be bad form to model one of them with Jabba and friends partying on the back? I can make a sarlacc terrain piece if I have to.
Only if he's the original fat guy in a fur jacket like a space Henry VIII!
JohnHwangDD wrote: Has anybody ever been to the desert? It's not flat. It has giant hills and dunes.
If they're keeping the old RPG fluff Albertorius quoted where they float only a few centimeters above the sand then an outcropping of rocks just large enough for a child to sit on could potentially stop a mighty dreadnought. They'd have to have dedicated reconaissance landscaping teams clearing the way in front of the landship like in curling.
LOL, some fluff might need to be changed (but not to the extent of the now apparently and thankfully abandoned space landship yamato idea).
JohnHwangDD wrote: Has anybody ever been to the desert? It's not flat. It has giant hills and dunes.
If they're keeping the old RPG fluff Albertorius quoted where they float only a few centimeters above the sand then an outcropping of rocks just large enough for a child to sit on could potentially stop a mighty dreadnought. They'd have to have dedicated reconaissance landscaping teams clearing the way in front of the landship like in curling.
I always took the "few" as a "few hundreds" TBH, because going by the pics it what it felt like. Still, to me it clearly was made that way to make them even more of a shout out of actual navies, as in, that way they would be limited in their movements by the oceans as much as regular ships are by, only these oceans were made of sand (they even say that much in the Making of a Universe book.
If they can fly over mountains and main geographic markers, one would need to ask why they didn't the extra mile and made them able to fly or exit orbit, seeing as spaceships exist in the setting.
Then again, a White Base equivalent feels quite a bit out of place in the setting.
Design Works
Heavy Gear is the result of nearly two years of collective development. The foundations for the world of Heavy Gear were laid down in September 1993, when we sat down over coffee to jot down some notes and scribble sketches about a world that was waiting to come out. In the months that followed, the game designers worked on the Silhouette game engine while the writers and various creators brainstormed to merge everyone's ideas into one harmonious whole. Not much later, inspired by various excellen British TV series (Dr. Who, Blake's 7, Red Dwarf) and Babylon 5, we came up with the concept of the over-arcing storyline and developed ways to adapt it to a game universe in a consistend, believable manner.
The universe evolved rapidly. We knew we wanted "giant robots", but we wanted them to make sense. They had to be smaller than traditional Japanese mecha, more functional and built to last. We needed something closer to human proportions, something which would not dominate the battlefield but would turn an ordinary soldier into a sort of super-infantry. Something that would be closer to super-equipment, super-gear. From there, we were a step away from the name of those vehicles: Gears...
We wanted the Gears to be very cool, so we got started on them even before we knew exactly just how they would work. After viewing a tape on the real-world V-engine, we snapped our fingers and said, "THAT'S the perfect engine for a Gear! It's simple, it's reliable, it's easy to maintain and it runs on any combustible fluid". Anmd so, the Gears came to have the V-engine in their backpacks. Sketch after sketch, the machines took shape. As the world evolved around them, we decided that hard, gritty science fiction would be the norm. The overall technology would be patchy and imperfect, but cool-looking. The Gears themselves are a perfect example of this: a super-advanced computer (actually, a neural net) in an old-tech body with nuts and bolts everywhere.
The landships don't exactly make sense, especially in the notion of a giant desert with high winds - that's what creates the huge dunes in the first place!
JohnHwangDD wrote: Has anybody ever been to the desert? It's not flat. It has giant hills and dunes.
We have a couple in our country. I can attest to that ^^. Still flatter than hills or mountains, though xD.
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. The song just never bothers to mention that it's twice a year. Unless I'm there. Last time I was in Madrid it rained for 16 straight hours and on three days. Locals thought I was a witch.
warboss wrote:
Mmmpi wrote: Not to distract from the discussion of futuristic gear-capable cruise liners:
I decided to use the Rumbl service the Podbay was advertising, well use again as the last guy I challenged never actually answered me. I'm close enough to Canada that I decided to challenge Rob himself to a game.
Wish me luck?
Congrats! I haven't check it since it was first mentioned here a while back (late last year?) but the closest person at that time was hundreds of miles away. Hopefully, a few more popped up in between. EDIT: Just checked... 198 miles away for the closest opponent. :(
Also, assuming that somehow the Dreadnoughts game gets off the ground (anti-grav joke there folks) and I actually get some of the stuff, would it be bad form to model one of them with Jabba and friends partying on the back? I can make a sarlacc terrain piece if I have to.
Only if he's the original fat guy in a fur jacket like a space Henry VIII!
Well, Rob just turned down the challenge. *Le sigh*
BrandonKF wrote:
JohnHwangDD wrote: Has anybody ever been to the desert? It's not flat. It has giant hills and dunes.
National Training Center, and Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar.
And if you brought in Jabba as the original fur jacket, he'd likely only be the size of half a pinhead. X-3
Which at that scale means he'd only be the size of two SUV's. Seems legit.
I always took the "few" as a "few hundreds" TBH, because going by the pics it what it felt like.
A few hundred centimenters is by definition a few meters... and now we're back full circle to Brandon's initial quoted altitude. LOL
As he was answering to my comment about the orography thing, I got the impression that his "a little farther than a couple meters" meant more like "tens of meters".
Which still would make most non-flat terrain fairly impassable, of course...
EDIT: Hm, maybe this is because I'm european and we use centimeters, but if the original landship quote would have said "a few feet" I would have translated in my mind much differently. To me, in that context, "a few centimeters" meant "a meter or two", whereas I would have taken "a few feet" for granted as "2 to 4 feet"
JohnHwangDD wrote: Has anybody ever been to the desert? It's not flat. It has giant hills and dunes.
We have a couple in our country. I can attest to that ^^. Still flatter than hills or mountains, though xD.
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. The song just never bothers to mention that it's twice a year. Unless I'm there. Last time I was in Madrid it rained for 16 straight hours and on three days. Locals thought I was a witch.
Ah, so it was YOU.
Seriously now, it's not nearly that bad, and actually this season tends to rain quite a lot. It's just that where it rains it's not very well balanced at all.
Mmmpi wrote: Not to distract from the discussion of futuristic gear-capable cruise liners:
I decided to use the Rumbl service the Podbay was advertising, well use again as the last guy I challenged never actually answered me. I'm close enough to Canada that I decided to challenge Rob himself to a game.
Wish me luck?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, assuming that somehow the Dreadnoughts game gets off the ground (anti-grav joke there folks) and I actually get some of the stuff, would it be bad form to model one of them with Jabba and friends partying on the back? I can make a sarlacc terrain piece if I have to.
MicroMachines Jabba's Sailbarge would make a great "counts as" Ashanti landship.
Brandon's comments about unit sizes are fairly interesting (thanks much for those, btw), but is it me, or they feel fairly low for the scale? I mean, that would mean that unless you cluster your units a lot, they will be really isolated, if each inch of terrain is multiple kilometers... (when the represented units are buffier is not much of a problem because they feel better able to sct independently, but a single platoon seems too small for that IMHO).
The scale of the units remind me of the old Battleforce, or Epic: something that feels more suited to a more "tactical" scaling of the terrain, for lack of a better word... tactical engagements, the fighting parts of a battle instead of theather management.
The landships don't exactly make sense, especially in the notion of a giant desert with high winds - that's what creates the huge dunes in the first place!
1983 to be precise.
Landships always were the more "this is here because it's cool" part of the setting, that's for sure, and TN winds are stated as being as strong and sudden as to make long range flight unfeasible, actually.
OTOH, if the slopes are gentle enough dunes should not be much of a problem if landships can lift a meter above ground. The path would be visible from basically everywhere, though (I think they would be flatting/throwing aside the sand below them with their thrusters and lift fields), and non movable stuff would be tricky.
At the end of they day, they are one of the parts of the setting that follow the rule of cool more closely instead of believability. As long as they work more or less as wet navy ships swapping the oceans of water for oceans of sand, we would be in the same place as in the original depiction.
One of the things that concerns me about all this:
Has all development, play testing, and writing stopped on heavy Gear Blitz as DP9 rolls out this KS for a game no one really asked for or wanted?
We still only have the "Quick Start Rules" for HGB. When are we going to get the full version of the rule book? The new plastic Gears are, well, I think the consensus here is "OK", not bad or great, just OK. I tend to agree with that. When will we be seeing the other factions going plastic? Still have PAX/Peace River, NuCoal, Utopia, Eden, Black Talons... I'm not even seeing updated data cards on most of these factions. Since the Kick Starter Pledges went out, we've seen ZERO further development or even news about the new edition of HGB. What's going on?
Which brings up another point, and the #1 reason why DP9 really should have changed the name of the new edition from Heavy Gear Blitz to something else: Go look at the website and you see Heavy Gear, Heavy Gear Locked and Loaded, Heavy Gear Blitz, Heavy Gear Blitz 1.1, etc. etc. I wouldn't say just delete all that content, but maybe move it into an archive tab of "old stuff" and start converting everything over to the new edition? Make it 100% clear that THIS is for the latest edition of Heavy Gear Blitz, and THIS is from previous editions and kept only as a reference. The downloads section is a complete mess right now. They are still listing the new edition as Heavy Gear Blitz Beta, not to be confused with the file that says Heavy Gear Blitz Alpha... They are still listing the Field Manual under...
OK, I'm not going to get all upset or worked up about this. DP9 obviously can't manage their own product line worth a , and now they want us to buy into Dreadnoughts. Newsflash: I don't want to play Dreadnoughts, I have no interest in Dreadnoughts, and I wish them success in whatever they are trying to do with Dreadnoughts. What I WANT them to do, is
FINISH YOUR GAME FIRST BEFORE STARTING ANOTHER KICKSTARTER!!!
Albertorius wrote: Oh, haven't they? I was under the impression that they had already released the new edition...
All we have for the new edition is what was promised in the KS: The North, South, CEF, Cparice armies in plastic, a quick start rulebook, patches! (everyone's gotta have patches!), and digital versions of the KS factions and rule book. Oh, I think they released another Chibi Gear to celebrate something. Because, you know, everyone wants to use Chibi gears in a game!
The Kick Starter was a success, and DP9 needed to build off that success. Instead of finishing the new edition, they have decided to concentrate on a new Kick Starter and game. /sigh
The last update to anything related to the new edition of Heavy Gear Blitz was in July of 2016. The last update for the "living Rulebook" was in July, while the thread for it has little tweaks here and there, FAQ's, etc. etc. but none of it has been incorporated into the Living Rulebook yet. Kinda makes it a Dead Rulebook, eh? LOL
brettness37 wrote: DP9 has licensed the setting to someone else for Dreadnaughts. Not sure what they are working on themselves, but this Kickstarter is not theirs.
Yup, this is licensed to Wunji and his company. While he is a longtime DP9 collaborator, I don't recall ever seeing his name even mentioned when I peeked behind the scenes for a year or two to see how the gear sausage is made. Other than probably approvals, I don't see Robert and Dave (who essentially are DP9 in its entirety) having a hand in this or this impacting the bottom line beyond scheduling (like not trying to debut the Jovian Chronicles redux at the same time as Dreadnoughts for instance). He'll probably help out at the gencon booth like he did when I was attending years ago and get some space in the display there but I don't expect this offshoot to have any effect on HG proper. Love your avatar btw.
Which brings up another point, and the #1 reason why DP9 really should have changed the name of the new edition from Heavy Gear Blitz to something else: Go look at the website and you see Heavy Gear, Heavy Gear Locked and Loaded, Heavy Gear Blitz, Heavy Gear Blitz 1.1, etc. etc. I wouldn't say just delete all that content, but maybe move it into an archive tab of "old stuff" and start converting everything over to the new edition? Make it 100% clear that THIS is for the latest edition of Heavy Gear Blitz, and THIS is from previous editions and kept only as a reference. The downloads section is a complete mess right now. They are still listing the new edition as Heavy Gear Blitz Beta, not to be confused with the file that says Heavy Gear Blitz Alpha... They are still listing the Field Manual under...
I advocated in proof of concept/pre-alpha testing for a rename to just "Heavy Gear" like with D&D in 5th edition (or Tomb Raider in video games) instead of keeping the confusing blitz name...and I got no response as to why they wouldn't. I don't know if it has anything to do with the heavygear.com domain name belonging to stompybot and their pc game i.e. if they licensed the rights to the simple HG name to them.
brettness37 wrote: DP9 has licensed the setting to someone else for Dreadnaughts. Not sure what they are working on themselves, but this Kickstarter is not theirs.
I seem to remember hearing something about Jovian Chronicles?
brettness37 wrote: DP9 has licensed the setting to someone else for Dreadnaughts. Not sure what they are working on themselves, but this Kickstarter is not theirs.
I seem to remember hearing something about Jovian Chronicles?
Yup. I quoted Dave earlier in the thread in reference to what I believe was an artificially low funding goal to encourage pledging.
brettness37 wrote: DP9 has licensed the setting to someone else for Dreadnaughts. Not sure what they are working on themselves, but this Kickstarter is not theirs.
I seem to remember hearing something about Jovian Chronicles?
Yup. I quoted Dave earlier in the thread in reference to what I believe was an artificially low funding goal to encourage pledging.
Albertorius wrote:Brandon's comments about unit sizes are fairly interesting (thanks much for those, btw), but is it me, or they feel fairly low for the scale? I mean, that would mean that unless you cluster your units a lot, they will be really isolated, if each inch of terrain is multiple kilometers... (when the represented units are buffier is not much of a problem because they feel better able to sct independently, but a single platoon seems too small for that IMHO).
The scale of the units remind me of the old Battleforce, or Epic: something that feels more suited to a more "tactical" scaling of the terrain, for lack of a better word... tactical engagements, the fighting parts of a battle instead of theather management.
Tactical scale, or rather, my perception of it, involves individual troops and platoons. This is slightly above that level.
An equivalent force to a platoon in Heavy Gear terms is roughly three squadrons or cadres (whether you're North or South). That's 12 to 15 Gears. Much of Heavy Gear Blitz involves that level of combat, typically in very built-up areas, or at shorter ranges than would typically be seen.
Heavy Gear Dreadnoughts expands on the idea that Heavy Gears are one-man infantry fighting vehicles, capable of engaging over 1,500 meters from their targets. You need legroom to maneuver like that, just as tanks and infantry do. Infantry in this scale aren't merely foot troops. Their forces include Caimans, Badgers, Mastiffs, Hoplites, and the occasional Heavy Gear as back-up (like the much-loved and much-hated Asp). However, the exact composition doesn't affect base stats in Dreadnoughts. There might be some options here or there, but for the most part, Gears are Gears, scout Gears are scout Gears, tanks are tanks, and striders are striders.
Tamwulf wrote:One of the things that concerns me about all this:
Has all development, play testing, and writing stopped on heavy Gear Blitz as DP9 rolls out this KS for a game no one really asked for or wanted?
We still only have the "Quick Start Rules" for HGB. When are we going to get the full version of the rule book? The new plastic Gears are, well, I think the consensus here is "OK", not bad or great, just OK. I tend to agree with that. When will we be seeing the other factions going plastic? Still have PAX/Peace River, NuCoal, Utopia, Eden, Black Talons... I'm not even seeing updated data cards on most of these factions. Since the Kick Starter Pledges went out, we've seen ZERO further development or even news about the new edition of HGB. What's going on?
Which brings up another point, and the #1 reason why DP9 really should have changed the name of the new edition from Heavy Gear Blitz to something else: Go look at the website and you see Heavy Gear, Heavy Gear Locked and Loaded, Heavy Gear Blitz, Heavy Gear Blitz 1.1, etc. etc. I wouldn't say just delete all that content, but maybe move it into an archive tab of "old stuff" and start converting everything over to the new edition? Make it 100% clear that THIS is for the latest edition of Heavy Gear Blitz, and THIS is from previous editions and kept only as a reference. The downloads section is a complete mess right now. They are still listing the new edition as Heavy Gear Blitz Beta, not to be confused with the file that says Heavy Gear Blitz Alpha... They are still listing the Field Manual under...
OK, I'm not going to get all upset or worked up about this. DP9 obviously can't manage their own product line worth a , and now they want us to buy into Dreadnoughts. Newsflash: I don't want to play Dreadnoughts, I have no interest in Dreadnoughts, and I wish them success in whatever they are trying to do with Dreadnoughts. What I WANT them to do, is
FINISH YOUR GAME FIRST BEFORE STARTING ANOTHER KICKSTARTER!!!
Tamwulf wrote:
Albertorius wrote: Oh, haven't they? I was under the impression that they had already released the new edition...
All we have for the new edition is what was promised in the KS: The North, South, CEF, Cparice armies in plastic, a quick start rulebook, patches! (everyone's gotta have patches!), and digital versions of the KS factions and rule book. Oh, I think they released another Chibi Gear to celebrate something. Because, you know, everyone wants to use Chibi gears in a game!
The Kick Starter was a success, and DP9 needed to build off that success. Instead of finishing the new edition, they have decided to concentrate on a new Kick Starter and game. /sigh
The last update to anything related to the new edition of Heavy Gear Blitz was in July of 2016. The last update for the "living Rulebook" was in July, while the thread for it has little tweaks here and there, FAQ's, etc. etc. but none of it has been incorporated into the Living Rulebook yet. Kinda makes it a Dead Rulebook, eh? LOL
Tamwulf, the Quick Start Book is just the most basic stuff from the Living Rulebook for new players.
The Living Rulebook is the finished product. Any revisions that occur will be updated directly there. It isn't going to paperback, unless you want to download it and print it off yourself. It's similar, in most respects, to Corvus Belli's Infinity rules design. A free rulebook that you don't have to purchase to play.
It took Infinity more than a couple years to change their rules from version 1 to version 2. And the latest, version 3, didn't come out until a couple years ago, and is still going strong.
From the base that Dream Pod 9 has now, they can flex the rules if they absolutely need to.
So, why would Dream Pod 9 absolutely need to update the rulebook monthly or every couple of months, when most companies don't do it, and such constant updates were one of the larger complaints while the Beta was ongoing back in 2015?
Heavy Gear Blitz Living Rulebook is not hard to find, either.
Google "HGB Living Rulebook", the DTRPG link is the third result.
warboss wrote:
brettness37 wrote: DP9 has licensed the setting to someone else for Dreadnaughts. Not sure what they are working on themselves, but this Kickstarter is not theirs.
Yup, this is licensed to Wunji and his company. While he is a longtime DP9 collaborator, I don't recall ever seeing his name even mentioned when I peeked behind the scenes for a year or two to see how the gear sausage is made. Other than probably approvals, I don't see Robert and Dave (who essentially are DP9 in its entirety) having a hand in this or this impacting the bottom line beyond scheduling (like not trying to debut the Jovian Chronicles redux at the same time as Dreadnoughts for instance). He'll probably help out at the gencon booth like he did when I was attending years ago and get some space in the display there but I don't expect this offshoot to have any effect on HG proper. Love your avatar btw.
Just as brettness put it. Heavy Gear Dreadnoughts is licensed and being worked on by Fusion Core.
As for Jovian Chronicles, there have been rumblings.
The landships don't exactly make sense, especially in the notion of a giant desert with high winds - that's what creates the huge dunes in the first place!
1983 to be precise.
Landships always were the more "this is here because it's cool" part of the setting, that's for sure, and TN winds are stated as being as strong and sudden as to make long range flight unfeasible, actually.
OTOH, if the slopes are gentle enough dunes should not be much of a problem if landships can lift a meter above ground. The path would be visible from basically everywhere, though (I think they would be flatting/throwing aside the sand below them with their thrusters and lift fields), and non movable stuff would be tricky.
At the end of they day, they are one of the parts of the setting that follow the rule of cool more closely instead of believability. As long as they work more or less as wet navy ships swapping the oceans of water for oceans of sand, we would be in the same place as in the original depiction.
Within setting, if the winds are that strong, and it's a giant desert, then massive dunes would result, and even landships would be buried...
But if it's just an excuse to reskin a wet naval game, then that's fine. But don't have the ground / sea scale so far off the model scale. 1/2400 models and 1/5000 hexes work. As does a 1:1 model:ground scale.
BrandonKF wrote: Tactical scale, or rather, my perception of it, involves individual troops and platoons. This is slightly above that level.
Ok then. I would argue that it's not what you usually call "tactics" as opposed to "strategy" but ok.
An equivalent force to a platoon in Heavy Gear terms is roughly three squadrons or cadres (whether you're North or South). That's 12 to 15 Gears. Much of Heavy Gear Blitz involves that level of combat, typically in very built-up areas, or at shorter ranges than would typically be seen.
Heavy Gear Dreadnoughts expands on the idea that Heavy Gears are one-man infantry fighting vehicles, capable of engaging over 1,500 meters from their targets. You need legroom to maneuver like that, just as tanks and infantry do. Infantry in this scale aren't merely foot troops. Their forces include Caimans, Badgers, Mastiffs, Hoplites, and the occasional Heavy Gear as back-up (like the much-loved and much-hated Asp). However, the exact composition doesn't affect base stats in Dreadnoughts. There might be some options here or there, but for the most part, Gears are Gears, scout Gears are scout Gears, tanks are tanks, and striders are striders.
The current scale you're working with is 1''=20km, going by the comments in this thread. If your units are spread over the gaming zone they might as well be in another country, for all the help they will be to any other ally. Even having your nearest unit at 3'' mean they are 60 km apart. It simply does not matter how advanced or how "not merely foot soldiers" the mighr or might not be: they will be all alone out there, with no support whatsoever (and even more on Terra Nova, the "no, you don't get to fly" planet [exaggerated for effect here]).
You might need leg to maneuver, alright. The scales you're talking about are not "legroom to maneuver". They are "the table is my whole country". Engagement range is also misleading, if you think about it. An M16 has a maximum range of 2.700m and a lethal range of 900m, but still you don't spread soldiers 1km apart from each other. If you want to keep the 1''=20km scale, something of the following will happen:
1) You will need to cluster your units all pretty much in the same inch to be able to work together.
2) If they are spread out, all your engagements will be like separate HBG games played with regular minis on a soccer field.
3) You will need to shorten the scale to better reflect your units.
4) You will need to enlargen the units to better reflect the scale.
There is also the fact that the small excerpts of rules that you have shown seem to be better suited to bigger units (units of that size won't really get depleted as much as suffer casualties, for example). IMHO the odd duck out from what you seem to be wanting to do is scale. Shorten it and you can do a game much better suited to the kind of units you want to represent in the field and the scale you want to use for your landships.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
JohnHwangDD wrote: Within setting, if the winds are that strong, and it's a giant desert, then massive dunes would result, and even landships would be buried...
But if it's just an excuse to reskin a wet naval game, then that's fine. But don't have the ground / sea scale so far off the model scale. 1/2400 models and 1/5000 hexes work. As does a 1:1 model:ground scale.
It would depend on the type of desert, of course, but yes, the main objective of landships have always been to mimic wet navies. I've always rolled with it because of that, although it's not the setting fact that most interest me by a long shot.
When it was first mentioned, I was thinking that a gear token for instance would be at least a section of gears (3+ squads plus a small dedicated command element).
This is the only image I could find and that is from Smilodon's reimagining of HG tactical organization. I don't recall how different that is from the old RPG organization but that is the type of force that I see deployed to cover a single 20km hex for the active battlefield that the game represents.
Tamwulf, the Quick Start Book is just the most basic stuff from the Living Rulebook for new players.
The Living Rulebook is the finished product. Any revisions that occur will be updated directly there. It isn't going to paperback, unless you want to download it and print it off yourself. It's similar, in most respects, to Corvus Belli's Infinity rules design. A free rulebook that you don't have to purchase to play.
It took Infinity more than a couple years to change their rules from version 1 to version 2. And the latest, version 3, didn't come out until a couple years ago, and is still going strong.
From the base that Dream Pod 9 has now, they can flex the rules if they absolutely need to.
So, why would Dream Pod 9 absolutely need to update the rulebook monthly or every couple of months, when most companies don't do it, and such constant updates were one of the larger complaints while the Beta was ongoing back in 2015?
Heavy Gear Blitz Living Rulebook is not hard to find, either.
Google "HGB Living Rulebook", the DTRPG link is the third result.
One of the primary reasons for DP9 to go with a "Living Rulebook" was the ability to update as needed and not on any kind of set schedule. The last time the living rulebook was updated was 17 July 2016. Since then, there have been almost 3 pages of corrections and errata brought up to the living rulebook, and each time was a "Thanks!", "We're working on it" and "it'll be in the next update!" So.. when will this PDF document that would take all of a couple hours to update with these corrections, be updated?
You are also looking at the game as a veteran of DP9. If I was a brand new player, and I went to the DP9 website front page, I would see "Free Living Rulebook Ebook" with a small graphic of Heavy Gear Blitz. WTF does that mean? What's a living rulebook? What is that the rulebook for? And why are there all these other links on the front page to Heavy Gear Blitz? When I do a google search, I know that I'm looking for the Heavy Gear Blitz Living Rulebook, because I follow the game. Random guy from Warhammer 40K is going to type in "Heavy Gear Rulebook" and get what? Keep in mind google uses cookies and keeps track of your search history using a predictive algorithm to modify your search results based on what it thinks you are looking for. What's a new player going to get when he types in "Heavy Gear Rulebook"?
Visiting the front page, if you click on the link that says "Heavy Gear Blitz" guess where it takes you? To the OLD edition of HGB with links to all kinds of great reference material, but also to rulebooks. There is no clear indication at all that it's outdated material. Again, this would all be misleading and confusing to a new player.
Where are the rules for the other factions? Oh, that's right! Buried in the forums under the subforum "Heavy Gear Blitz Living Rule Book Development". At least it's pinned to the top. The website is a disaster from a web developer stand point, and from a marketing standpoint, it's even worse.
I reiterate my earlier stance: The website is a mess and needs to be cleaned up for ease of you. All the information is there, if you already know where to look.
When will we be seeing an update for HGB? What's being worked on? The latest development blog (linked on the front page under "Heavy Gear Blitz New Edition News and Downloads") is from July 28th, 2014 and talks about Beta Infantry rules! Under a different link, Dave Mcleod on 11/16/2016 posted a good blog about "I got my Kickstater, what next?"
Another blog was posted on 10/28/2016 called "FAQ and Errata" and written by Dave talking extensively about the Observer Effect. After clicking on that link today, because I read the forums, not the stuff on the front page, I discovered the answers to many of my original , gripes, and complaints about the game, as well as a roadmap of HGB through next spring. The formating of the blog is strange- different font values and pitch sizes, and it rambles here and there, but again, WTF. I really feel like I have to dig, dig, and dig for a gold nugget of information that's buried and "hidden". Oh, and there is an errata line to impact attacks in the blog that is not reflected in the Living Rulebook thread in the forums. So I give up. The rules are still clunky, army creation, while still better then the last edition, still feels way, way over complicated. After trying to follow how to do it in the Quick Start Rulebook, I gave up and just used the Gear Grinder from the forums. It should not be this difficult to make an army to play. Not even Infinity is this complicated.
Who is this game being targeted to? Because it's not new players, and it's not veteran players who gave up on the game.
warboss wrote:When it was first mentioned, I was thinking that a gear token for instance would be at least a section of gears (3+ squads plus a small dedicated command element).
This is the only image I could find and that is from Smilodon's reimagining of HG tactical organization. I don't recall how different that is from the old RPG organization but that is the type of force that I see deployed to cover a single 20km hex for the active battlefield that the game represents.
Typically sections didn't have dedicated command/specialist details (dedicated support companies/command sections were at the regiment level, but the above is a great organization for a HGB army) and the individual squads usually were made up of 5 Gears instead of 6, but that is the unit level that Brandon was commenting about:
BrandonKF wrote:An equivalent force to a platoon in Heavy Gear terms is roughly three squadrons or cadres (whether you're North or South). That's 12 to 15 Gears. Much of Heavy Gear Blitz involves that level of combat, typically in very built-up areas, or at shorter ranges than would typically be seen.
Heavy Gear Dreadnoughts expands on the idea that Heavy Gears are one-man infantry fighting vehicles, capable of engaging over 1,500 meters from their targets. You need legroom to maneuver like that, just as tanks and infantry do. Infantry in this scale aren't merely foot troops. Their forces include Caimans, Badgers, Mastiffs, Hoplites, and the occasional Heavy Gear as back-up (like the much-loved and much-hated Asp). However, the exact composition doesn't affect base stats in Dreadnoughts. There might be some options here or there, but for the most part, Gears are Gears, scout Gears are scout Gears, tanks are tanks, and striders are striders.
A regular Gear section usually amount to 3-4 squadrons. Now, in a 20km diameter hex that would mean 15-20 units to control an area of 314 square kilometers, which feels... awfully spare IMHO. that's 16-21 square kilometers per Gear. Yes, they absolutely could be the only units in the zone, of course, but there's only so much a unit that size can do in that much space, particularly in built-up areas. Actually, a significant part of the hex should be out of range of the unit's weapons.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mmmpi wrote: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. The song just never bothers to mention that it's twice a year. Unless I'm there. Last time I was in Madrid it rained for 16 straight hours and on three days. Locals thought I was a witch.
A regular Gear section usually amount to 3-4 squadrons. Now, in a 20km diameter hex that would mean 15-20 units to control an area of 314 square kilometers, which feels... awfully spare IMHO. that's 16-21 square kilometers per Gear. Yes, they absolutely could be the only units in the zone, of course, but there's only so much a unit that size can do in that much space, particularly in built-up areas. Actually, a significant part of the hex should be out of range of the unit's weapons.
I'm ok with that. Evening assuming that the squadrons are spaced out geometrically as far away from each other on the corners of the hex, they're still less than an hour at combat speed away from help (and 15min at top speed). That assumes you can't stack tokens voluntarily on a hex from increased density as well (and I don't believe Brandon said that). It also depends on the time frame used per turn as to how appropriate the scale/density is.
OTOH, this is Malaga today:
An umbrella while wading through waist deep water? Isn't that like closing the shutters after the roof is torn off in a hurricane? I suppose he really doesn't want to ruin his hairdo...
warboss wrote: I'm ok with that. Evening assuming that the squadrons are spaced out geometrically as far away from each other on the corners of the hex, they're still less than an hour at combat speed away from help (and 15min at top speed). That assumes you can't stack tokens voluntarily on a hex from increased density as well (and I don't believe Brandon said that). It also depends on the time frame used per turn as to how appropriate the scale/density is.
It's more assuming that they will go forward with scenery and table instead of hexes, as was the original plan. There's a limited amount of stuff that you can pile up together that way (DP9's regular hex bases are 1'' across, so basically it limits it to a unit per inch). If we're talking cardstock or small pieces on a hex, well, then things change for the better.
An umbrella while wading through waist deep water? Isn't that like closing the shutters after the roof is torn off in a hurricane? I suppose he really doesn't want to ruin his hairdo...
I guess it's more it weirded him out ^^. It's been a bad weekend altogether for the area, and they are not used to it. We've even gotten fatalities due to the water, and some quite daring rescues, in a place that's actually 120km away from a desert.
It's not an ideal outcome, but it's not an awful one, either. A large number of factors were in play here, most of them unpredictable (and of a personal nature, which we won't get into here, except to say that our available time and resources have been greatly, and unavoidably, curtailed these past few months). Of the factors that could be predicted, we'd accounted for them and accepted the risk, and this is one of the possible moves we knew we might have to make when we decided to go ahead with a demo-less Kickstarter this late in this particular year. From here, we simply keep moving forward.
I was under the apparently mistaken idea that the "personal issues" mentioned by Brandon were sudden and unexpected *DURING* the campaign leading to the lack of timely responses to serious issues raised but apparently they've been ongoing for months. So they decided, after knowing for months they were unable to adequately prep this campaign, to go forward with it anyways? Le Sigh. That's not an attitude that I want from someone who is asking me for money a year to years in advance with little to no recourse on my part if things fall apart later on. If personal issues popped up again during a latter stage, would they just release a half assed incomplete game as well? You don't order "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" with someone else's ship if you know you forgot to load the guns and the helmsman called in sick.
Those were originally the primary focus of our plastics efforts, but they got back-burnered in favor of the landships. Seems like our first instinct was our best one, so we'll put the troops back on the drawing board. We'll settle on a firm size; we've followed closely the discussions on the pros and cons of smaller figures, and while we probably won't go way down to 1/1500 or smaller, we'll go for the smallest size that still shows clearly recognizable design traits. We'll get them modeled up at the new size, too, so that we're not using placeholders. And we'll probably move them up into an earlier stretch goal, if not into the main Kickstarter funding goal.
It doesn't spell it out explicitly but it looks like he might be addressing both the ground units scale (the troops reference) and the landship size mismatch potentially to the gameplay (the 1/1500 scale reference as that can't possibly refer to gears/infantry).
Considering how the project was bleeding money, it's kinda silly that they didn't pull the plug earlier.
This is, arguably, the most half-assed "name" KS I've seen in a while.
1. Totally unprepared with rules / gameplay.
2. Non-sensical "hard SF" background.
3. Non-responsive creator.
In 2012, it might have , but it's nearly 2017, and at this point, they needed more than 4 renders and some nice words to fund. In 2016-2017, you need to show that you're read to go into production with 80+% readiness. But still, the reall killer was #3. The creator kinda looked like he gave up on the project.
Oh yeah, 1/2500 is a workable ground scale (1:1 = 6mm Gears). Even 1/5000 works, if Gears become counters.
Tamwulf, I can point you to at least a dozen games played with the new rules by newer players on the Terra Nova DMZ.
Maybe, if you joined us there, you could ask questions, get clarifications, and also learn some new tricks yourself.
As for development, I don't have a say in when Dream Pod 9 decides to update their rulebook, but I certainly don't expect them to keep "developing" when they've already settled on this as the finished rules. Anything beyond this is not 'development', so much as it is massaging the current rules.
A regular Gear section usually amount to 3-4 squadrons. Now, in a 20km diameter hex that would mean 15-20 units to control an area of 314 square kilometers, which feels... awfully spare IMHO. that's 16-21 square kilometers per Gear. Yes, they absolutely could be the only units in the zone, of course, but there's only so much a unit that size can do in that much space, particularly in built-up areas. Actually, a significant part of the hex should be out of range of the unit's weapons.
I'm ok with that. Evening assuming that the squadrons are spaced out geometrically as far away from each other on the corners of the hex, they're still less than an hour at combat speed away from help (and 15min at top speed). That assumes you can't stack tokens voluntarily on a hex from increased density as well (and I don't believe Brandon said that). It also depends on the time frame used per turn as to how appropriate the scale/density is.
There's still no hexes insofar as I know.
But yes, the time scale involved isn't being measured in minutes or seconds. Think hours and days.
Honestly, as far as the cancellation, I knew it was coming eventually. For now, it's back to work.
'Hard SF' matters a lot less than 'quality product', 'good rules', 'solid support', and 'attracts players'.
There's a reason that say, Kingdom Death Monster 1.5's pulling in a 7 million dollar Kickstarter. Or that even in the same genre as this, a tabletop vehicular minis game, Dropfleet Commander did about 1 million. And produced great quality.
Literally the last thing that matters is freaking out about exactly how many kilometers to scape the board is, when you're using abstractions like 'My models need to be visible' and 'Terrain has to be practical'.
The issue isn't "hard SF" per se, it's that the game didn't match the "hard SF" background. It's an obvious disconnect.
As for KD:M, there is a lot of goodwill garnered by producing boutique minis and actually overdelivering on the first KS. HGD has no such track record, and the minis don't jump out as being obviously amazing, nor notorious. They're just workmanlike, which is fine. It's not obvious what the game does special / better, because the rules weren't released.
Killionaire wrote: 'Hard SF' matters a lot less than 'quality product', 'good rules', 'solid support', and 'attracts players'.
I suppose it matters alot more to the person who will be making/working on the game if that is their personal favorite genre. It may be the case that it's not worth it for them to devote years (whether part time or full time) if they can't make the game *THEY* want... similar to how some FLGS owners preferentially stock the games they're interested in but not what their customer base may want. Of course, that doesn't necessarily turn out well for the store either....
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Killionaire wrote: ' Literally the last thing that matters is freaking out about exactly how many kilometers to scape the board is, when you're using abstractions like 'My models need to be visible' and 'Terrain has to be practical'.
I disagree there. Figuring out the scale is right up there on top of the crunch priority list along with the intended model count IMO when trying to make a good game and should probably be determined BEFORE you work on the rules. You need to tailor the rules to the type of combat you're attempting to represent with little figures instead of trying to shoehorn one into the other. Traditionally, HG has suffered from this problem. Tactical was an RPG made for 4-5 models (the PC's) per side but played with 2-3x that amount. Blitz IMO was made for 10-15 models but was marketed at double that. I can't speak with any certainty about nublitz though as I haven't played enough (just small solo scenarios).
I think you're mistaking the scope of the game, which is a rather critical design element, with the actual scale of the game. The latter is kind of trivial, all told, and some games don't even specificy scale (FoW !), while the former is... yeah, critical.
The sheer casualness with which the Fusion Core team prepared and then brushed aside this KS "We didn't expect it to succeed anyway", is rather surprising, and not exactly a good sign for potential customers.
Furthermore, I'm not certain they even realize why it failed. (Hint : It's not the timing). For something to be a learning experience, you have to actually learn things from it...
Amusingly, I'm not so hot on FoW as a simulation of any sort, although it's not too bad as a WW-2 themed game. A lot of my FoW issues stem from the lack of scale.
HudsonD wrote: I think you're mistaking the scope of the game, which is a rather critical design element, with the actual scale of the game. The latter is kind of trivial, all told, and some games don't even specificy scale (FoW !), while the former is... yeah, critical.
No confusion here as in this case they're related and I'm referring to both figurative and literal scale mismatch. I do think your clearer wording is preferrable though.
I disagree there. Figuring out the scale is right up there on top of the crunch priority list along with the intended model count IMO when trying to make a good game and should probably be determined BEFORE you work on the rules. You need to tailor the rules to the type of combat you're attempting to represent with little figures instead of trying to shoehorn one into the other.
I'll pile on to what HudsonD already remarked - what you're talking about is the 'theme' of the game, more than the table/ground ground scale. HG's problem (with mass adoption) has always stemmed from a fetishization of 'hard sci-fi'. Instead of choosing thematics and make sure they had a game with mechanics that represented that 'big vision' they embraced 'realism' as their theme. That's missing the forest (integrated mecha combat) for the trees (accurate weapon ranges!) in a big way. It worked for the RPG, but it hasn't worked with the miniatures market - which has steadily improved both the quality of play and reduced barriers to entry for play.
I wish the best for HG as a property - but I think their choices will force them to continue to target an increasingly small user base.
JohnHwangDD wrote: Wait, HG has "accurate weapon ranges"? I thought HG's "hard SF" was limited to the fluff, not the tabletop.
Until Heavy Gear Blitz! the main rules assumed that regular play was over hexmaps (and/or an RPG battle), where weapon ranges were mostly accurate, yes. For example, the regular Light Autocannon of a Hunter had an effective range of up to 800 meters (16 50-meter hexes), whereas heavier autocannons upgraded that to 1.200 meters and a heavy railgun had an effective range of up to 4 km. Of course, using the optional rules for representational terrain instead of hexes (that is, terrain on the same scale as the minis) the range at the table for most weapons was short range.
When the original Blitz rules came, the default changed to regular wargaming terrain at the same scale of the minis. Ranges... didn't change much, at first, as IIRC they used the regular tac ones but changing "hex" for "inch". Later versions of the rules slowly changed that, but it never has used "accurate weapon ranges".
I disagree there. Figuring out the scale is right up there on top of the crunch priority list along with the intended model count IMO when trying to make a good game and should probably be determined BEFORE you work on the rules. You need to tailor the rules to the type of combat you're attempting to represent with little figures instead of trying to shoehorn one into the other.
I'll pile on to what HudsonD already remarked - what you're talking about is the 'theme' of the game, more than the table/ground ground scale. HG's problem (with mass adoption) has always stemmed from a fetishization of 'hard sci-fi'. Instead of choosing thematics and make sure they had a game with mechanics that represented that 'big vision' they embraced 'realism' as their theme. That's missing the forest (integrated mecha combat) for the trees (accurate weapon ranges!) in a big way. It worked for the RPG, but it hasn't worked with the miniatures market - which has steadily improved both the quality of play and reduced barriers to entry for play.
I wish the best for HG as a property - but I think their choices will force them to continue to target an increasingly small user base.
The miniature rules would probably have enough with weapons that listed and effective range and that's it: outside of effective? Penalty. Minimum range? listed as a Flaw for the few weapons where it would matter. Done. Maybe even with an "Outside of Effective x2? Can't even shoot" rule. Maybe. And yes, there is no real need to state a "X inches = X meters" rule anywhere for the minis game. But the scope of the game is very important indeed, as it should inform... well, everything else. And an approximation to the supposed size of the battlefield is part of that, I'd say.
JohnHwangDD wrote: The issue isn't "hard SF" per se, it's that the game didn't match the "hard SF" background. It's an obvious disconnect.
As for KD:M, there is a lot of goodwill garnered by producing boutique minis and actually overdelivering on the first KS. HGD has no such track record, and the minis don't jump out as being obviously amazing, nor notorious. They're just workmanlike, which is fine. It's not obvious what the game does special / better, because the rules weren't released.
Well, while I have played the miniatures game off and on(mostly off, tbh) since the beginning, I see that the plastics are a FAIL. Mean to say, sure, some people have made them look amazing. But to my eye, they look kinda lame.
Having said that, I think the metals are very nice. So why bother with the plastics? Why not say, "we tried plastics, it did'nt work as planned, so lets re double our efforts and make the best miniatures we can in metal"?
bound for glory wrote: Well, while I have played the miniatures game off and on(mostly off, tbh) since the beginning, I see that the plastics are a FAIL. Mean to say, sure, some people have made them look amazing. But to my eye, they look kinda lame.
Having said that, I think the metals are very nice. So why bother with the plastics? Why not say, "we tried plastics, it did'nt work as planned, so lets re double our efforts and make the best miniatures we can in metal"?
I think it's both premature and ignorant (I mean that not as an insult but in the literal "none of us have any knowledge of their sales" way) to say they failed from a sales/financial POV. While visually I certainly agree with you and find the metals preferable, it's a sunk cost with a lower tail unlike metals. There isn't much of a downside to keeping both lines and offering the plastics as a low cost option for stores with metals as supplements. Price barrier to entry has been an issue for HG since they discontinued the old RAFM line especially with a trending increase in the intended model count per game with new rulesets during the blitz era. I haven't been paying much attention but I haven't seen any mention of discontinuing the old metals line so they always have that to fall back on. Part of the issue with HG is that it was priced per mini like a boutique skirmish game yet wanted a model count of a mass battle one instead... with rules somewhere inbetween.
JohnHwangDD wrote: Wait, HG has "accurate weapon ranges"? I thought HG's "hard SF" was limited to the fluff, not the tabletop.
Until Heavy Gear Blitz! the main rules assumed that regular play was over hexmaps (and/or an RPG battle), where weapon ranges were mostly accurate, yes. For example, the regular Light Autocannon of a Hunter had an effective range of up to 800 meters (16 50-meter hexes), whereas heavier autocannons upgraded that to 1.200 meters and a heavy railgun had an effective range of up to 4 km. Of course, using the optional rules for representational terrain instead of hexes (that is, terrain on the same scale as the minis) the range at the table for most weapons was short range.
When the original Blitz rules came, the default changed to regular wargaming terrain at the same scale of the minis. Ranges... didn't change much, at first, as IIRC they used the regular tac ones but changing "hex" for "inch". Later versions of the rules slowly changed that, but it never has used "accurate weapon ranges".
Ah, got it. HG ranges working out to 1" = 800m explains a lot, and yes, 1:1 ground scale does mean pretty much all weapons fire at short range. Thank you!
In other news, I broke down and managed to buy old Southern Recon & Fire Support Cadres that are in scale with my Tactical-era GP & Strike Cadres. Oddly, the models that I got seem to have changed to 9tiny!) separate heads & RPs, rather than being part of the torso. But the arms & bodies & legs are all Tactical scale. I guess there was a 2nd set of minis during the pre-Blitz Tactical era, where the bodies got lightly redone, before moving to the bigger models with bigger arms and bigger guns for Blitz. Anyhow, I'm looking to convert the Strike Cobra into a Support Cobra reworkin the Bazooka bit, so that'll be a pretty cool add to my KOG light arsenal. Also, if I don't sell it, I guess I'll count my Arena Cobra as something else, maybe a Gear Strider, for how big it is compared to my Tac-ear stuff.
So HGA had another weeks long countdown timer just like 3-4 years ago prior to the first announcement of crowdfunding for the game and history repeated itself. The big steam premiere was met with a bit fat pffft as nothing happened for two days and it looks like folks are just now able to download the game.
It doesn't look like the reception is particularly good (barring the superfans like Blackfang who have been hyping it up for years regardless). I'm a bit surprised that it went to Steam Early Access after several years of already being in Alpha but that gives them an easy excuse as to why so little has changed in so long I guess. The combo of paying $40 and then being pay to win for everything unlockable in the game seems particularly popular.
warboss wrote: So HGA had another weeks long countdown timer just like 3-4 years ago prior to the first announcement of crowdfunding for the game and history repeated itself. The big steam premiere was met with a bit fat pffft as nothing happened for two days and it looks like folks are just now able to download the game.
It doesn't look like the reception is particularly good (barring the superfans like Blackfang who have been hyping it up for years regardless).
The game failed to appeal to long term HG fans - either from the miniatures game or the old PC games. Redesigning the appearance of the gears was the first mistake, choosing an arena combat format was the second.
Not saying that HGA can't/won't be fun on its own merits, but it's not the HG video game I would want (which would be Battlefield with gears, hovertanks, striders, GRELs and hoppers).
John Prins wrote: The game failed to appeal to long term HG fans - either from the miniatures game or the old PC games. Redesigning the appearance of the gears was the first mistake, choosing an arena combat format was the second.
Not saying that HGA can't/won't be fun on its own merits, but it's not the HG video game I would want (which would be Battlefield with gears, hovertanks, striders, GRELs and hoppers).
That's what Mechwarrior Online turned out to be, only without the tanks, striders, and other units.
To be fair, only aerospace fighters are supposed to easily survive 1:1 encounters with Battlemechs. Vehicles usually usually have to be 1:2, and Power Armor at least 1:5 (if not more). PBI is more up to 1:28 and needs an urban environment to have a prayer.
Gears, on the other hand, are much smaller than 'Mechs and have a harder time dealing with Tanks 1:1. A 'Mech can operate solo in many occasions, except for dealing with other 'Mechs. Gears are usually set up to operate in small squads, while Striders are closer to 'Mech size.
So, Arena is the only place in which it can be close to balanced for Multiplayer. However, having options for events besides the pure competition of Multiplayer would still be nice and also encourage interest in the tabletop side for the story. Then when you look at it from there, do you do one story like in the previous Heavy Gear games, or do you search to do many stories representing the numerous polities that exist in the game so people will look to doing those armies?
warboss wrote: So HGA had another weeks long countdown timer just like 3-4 years ago prior to the first announcement of crowdfunding for the game and history repeated itself. The big steam premiere was met with a bit fat pffft as nothing happened for two days and it looks like folks are just now able to download the game.
It doesn't look like the reception is particularly good (barring the superfans like Blackfang who have been hyping it up for years regardless).
The game failed to appeal to long term HG fans - either from the miniatures game or the old PC games. Redesigning the appearance of the gears was the first mistake, choosing an arena combat format was the second.
Not saying that HGA can't/won't be fun on its own merits, but it's not the HG video game I would want (which would be Battlefield with gears, hovertanks, striders, GRELs and hoppers).
I would have to say the first mistake was blaming the fans after the hilarious and massive failure of the first crowdfunding effort, but the Gear designs are bad.
So, Arena is the only place in which it can be close to balanced for Multiplayer.
I can think of at least 1 easy way to balance things for multiplayer - when you queue up for a map, you choose your vehicle, which has a Threat Value. The game balances the TV on each side, and tries to even out the forces on each side (2 tanks per side, 10 gears per side, etcetera). Also, your bigger vehicles (tanks, some striders) need more than one player to operate, so they'll be rarer on the battlefield. That doesn't seem that hard to manage. You can limit the numbers of tanks and striders, meaning those guys have longer queues, where things like GP gears get priority (certain minimums required on a map).
Or you just have maps that have spots to fill. A certain map might require 6 hovertanks on one side, and 20 gears on the other. Another map might have 5 stealth gears vs 4 tanks and 5 gears. Or you could go the Battlefield route and have the gears/tanks/striders present on the field without pilots, who climb into whatever they want (first come first served), and based on what you've unlocked you can upgrade the gear at the nearby garage before the scenario starts.
Obviously you'll never get perfect balance, but you won't get that either in Pay To Win arena combat either.
On Steam, there are some new faces in the Discord chat because of its promotion.
Others are becoming aware of it too.
It might not fit your personal narrative, but it's their product.
As for the big fat pfft, their update reads: Stompy Bot Productions was set to release Heavy Gear Assault on Steam Early Access December 15th, 2016. What happened? Well, we believe Valve is overwhelmed with the upcoming Winter Sale and other happenings over there and as a result they were unable to give us final approval in time for our launch date despite us giving Steam 7 days for approval. As an end result we are stuck in Steam purgatory and we’re not happy about it! On December 15th, 2016 @4pm PST we released Steam keys to our early backers and alpha testers so they could play our game. Today we’ve decided to release a batch of our free Steam key giveaway for our splash page newsletter subscribers ahead of schedule. We don’t know what’s up at Valve but we will be sure to post an update as soon as we hear from them. #SteamDevPurgatory
So, Arena is the only place in which it can be close to balanced for Multiplayer.
I can think of at least 1 easy way to balance things for multiplayer - when you queue up for a map, you choose your vehicle, which has a Threat Value. The game balances the TV on each side, and tries to even out the forces on each side (2 tanks per side, 10 gears per side, etcetera). Also, your bigger vehicles (tanks, some striders) need more than one player to operate, so they'll be rarer on the battlefield. That doesn't seem that hard to manage. You can limit the numbers of tanks and striders, meaning those guys have longer queues, where things like GP gears get priority (certain minimums required on a map).
Or you just have maps that have spots to fill. A certain map might require 6 hovertanks on one side, and 20 gears on the other. Another map might have 5 stealth gears vs 4 tanks and 5 gears. Or you could go the Battlefield route and have the gears/tanks/striders present on the field without pilots, who climb into whatever they want (first come first served), and based on what you've unlocked you can upgrade the gear at the nearby garage before the scenario starts.
Obviously you'll never get perfect balance, but you won't get that either in Pay To Win arena combat either.
And that is similar to how MWO works. They operate just on the class of the Mechs, though.
But again, in order to add in Vehicles in MWO, we'd have to look at basically treating them at a lower weight class or two. In Heavy Gear, a Tank may be two Gears.
But hey, they could have just keep it full field Gear v Gear just like MWO is Mech on Mech and toss the combined arms aspect of Heavy gear out the window.
It might not fit your personal narrative, but it's their product.
As for the big fat pfft, their update reads: Stompy Bot Productions was set to release Heavy Gear Assault on Steam Early Access December 15th, 2016. What happened? Well, we believe Valve is overwhelmed with the upcoming Winter Sale and other happenings over there and as a result they were unable to give us final approval in time for our launch date despite us giving Steam 7 days for approval. As an end result we are stuck in Steam purgatory and we’re not happy about it! On December 15th, 2016 @4pm PST we released Steam keys to our early backers and alpha testers so they could play our game. Today we’ve decided to release a batch of our free Steam key giveaway for our splash page newsletter subscribers ahead of schedule. We don’t know what’s up at Valve but we will be sure to post an update as soon as we hear from them. #SteamDevPurgatory
Happens.
Yup, it happens and more often to some apparently. The last time they had a multiweek countdown, it happened as well and it wasn't their fault either. The lack of anything was blamed on their website crashing for two days due to the response... the response for a project so viral that it only garnered a few hundred (mid 200's iirc when I checked) likes on their facebook page during that countdown. I remember because I made up my first ever (throwaway) FB account specifically to like it in order to get the free arena pdf and the number seemed low to me at the time even as a non-facebooker. That was their personal narrative back then and now it's Steam's fault. I don't know if 7 days is typically enough time for a project to be approved given Steam's backlog but it certainly isn't on consoles where simple patches take over a week to two weeks let alone full games. That would be exacerbated by the sale was upcoming. Is the winter sale an expected yearly thing like the summer sale? If so, blaming Steam is about as legitimate as blaming the post office for taking too long to ship if you ordered your significant other a Christmas present today or traffic for being late picking someone up when you left 10 minutes before a pickup for a 15 minute journey. The latter may play a role but the lack of adequete preparation is responsible for the lion's share of delay (and that is the best case scenario assuming they're being truthful this time unlike the last time).
If anyone tries it out, let us know about the unlock system. I'm curious to see how the combination of pay to win works with the additional cost of a $40 buy in. What gears do you start with unlocked at $40? Just the hunter/jager or even just one of them? I know they had different more expensive packages on their site when I looked but that was a while back.
warboss wrote: Is the winter sale an expected yearly thing like the summer sale?
Much more so. It is literally the original Steam Sale. The one that made the site hit the proverbial gold vein.
I happened to be able to get a free key of the game. Maybe I'll check it out sometime. When it, you know, works.
Thanks for the clarification. So, in other words, they've been hyping this (steam release) up for six months but left Valve a week to approve their submission during a known yearly busy time for them. I suppose that's better than the dog eating their homework assuming they're actually telling the truth this time. Keep us/me updated if you get a chance.
Thanks! Also, Festivus for the rest of us! On a peripherally related note, the first real news came out so if someone wants to make a Jovian Wars thread feel free.
RJVF wrote: I might be interested in a JC kickstarter. Anyone read thru the rules yet, and have a verdict on how playable they are?
Edit: Sorry...its Jovian Wars now.
Probably best for it's own thread given that this is a general HG thread and not everything DP9. I do however have some concerns about the almost complete lack of opposed rolls or defender interaction (i.e. an attack is simply the attacker rolling with no mods based on the target's toughness/agility/etc). The only exceptions I found were for missile attacks (there are some missile defense rolls) and for energy resistance traits. Whether you're shooting at a nimble scout ship or a lumbering giant carrier, there is no effect on the attack roll as with target numbers (you're still just looking for repeated dice rolls) and no subsequent defense roll either (with the two exceptions already stated above). The same is true of exos dogfighting (you just sit there and trade attack roll blows until one runs away or is dead). Whether you're the space mech equivalent of a cheetah or a grizzly, it makes no difference in the dogfight... you just stand there trading damage the same regardless. Traits like nimble and fast only apply to the movement phase and running away but not on the actual dogfighting combat rolls. I only skimmed through so correct me if I'm wrong about that and missed it.
RJVF wrote: I might be interested in a JC kickstarter. Anyone read thru the rules yet, and have a verdict on how playable they are?
Edit: Sorry...its Jovian Wars now.
Well, given that now I've seen their plastics... yeah, not interested. The fact that I already have more space fleet battles games than I can possibly play makes the decision even easier, of course.
The warships would be fine, IMO, at the level of detail of the new HG plastics.
However, fleet-scale Lightning Strike, or whatever they're calling it now isn't the game I'm interested in. I like the 1:500 scale individual exo-armour miniatures. I want to play a game with four or five of them per side, swanning about the orbit of Jupiter lobbing smart missiles around and shanking one another with plasma lances. Something around the complexity of the 1st or 2nd edition Heavy Gear wargame.
Once upon a time, I used the Jovian Chronicles RPG rules to play a miniatures skirmish game. Fun, but we never played it enough to get really into it.
warboss wrote: Is the winter sale an expected yearly thing like the summer sale?
Much more so. It is literally the original Steam Sale. The one that made the site hit the proverbial gold vein.
I happened to be able to get a free key of the game. Maybe I'll check it out sometime. When it, you know, works.
Thanks for the clarification. So, in other words, they've been hyping this (steam release) up for six months but left Valve a week to approve their submission during a known yearly busy time for them. I suppose that's better than the dog eating their homework assuming they're actually telling the truth this time. Keep us/me updated if you get a chance.
Apparently Steam finally give the game the green light and it's released as an Early Access game.
Reports on the game seem to be... uneven, let's say:
Current comments on the Steam page seem to be mixed as well (Blackfang was a regular at Stompybot forums, IIRC?)
I'm not touching it until it's out of Early Access. HG1 and HG2 were AAA studio games and we got them at release (not early access). Stompy Bot is indie and putting it out early access, so yeah, comparisons and nostalgia are NOT going to be favorable at this point.
John Prins wrote: I'm not touching it until it's out of Early Access. HG1 and HG2 were AAA studio games and we got them at release (not early access). Stompy Bot is indie and putting it out early access, so yeah, comparisons and nostalgia are NOT going to be favorable at this point.
I got it for free so I'll eventually test it I guess, but my main problem is that it's just not the kind of game I'd want out of HG. Online e-sports are simply not my thing at all.
John Prins wrote: I'm not touching it until it's out of Early Access.
So, you're not touching it ever ?
Not sure if you're implying games never make it out of EA, or that just this one won't.
We'll see. Given the history, I'm impressed that Stompy Bot is still chugging along on this project, so who knows if they can manage to finish it. EA might give them the time/cash to actually do it.
John Prins wrote: I'm not touching it until it's out of Early Access.
So, you're not touching it ever ?
Not sure if you're implying games never make it out of EA, or that just this one won't.
We'll see. Given the history, I'm impressed that Stompy Bot is still chugging along on this project, so who knows if they can manage to finish it. EA might give them the time/cash to actually do it.
It's true that a lot of games never stop being Early Access, but given how long this one has plodding along so far it might eventually do it.
It depends how you define it. Some companies do release Alpha versions for public testing, but in limited numbers. I don't consider that to be Early Access in the manner that Steam does it (where they sell unlimited numbers of copies).
That said, there have been games that sit in Early Access for that long and get finished. I'll use one example, Planet Explorers. The Kickstarter for that was funded in April 21, 2013, the Steam Keys were released in March 12, 2014, and the 1.0 version of the game in November 9, 2016. So including pre-Kickstarter work on it, it probably took Pathea 4+ years to make the game!
So, there's a debate on Initiative stats going on in the PodBay (DP9 forums) (http://dp9forum.com/index.php?showtopic=17835). Since several of you are very passionate about the game, I was hoping to get your opinion; both on fluff, and on rules. (even if it doesn't match my views).
Mmmpi wrote: So, there's a debate on Initiative stats going on in the PodBay (DP9 forums) (http://dp9forum.com/index.php?showtopic=17835). Since several of you are very passionate about the game, I was hoping to get your opinion; both on fluff, and on rules. (even if it doesn't match my views).
I can¡'t easily access the pod forums, so could you summarize what's being talked about?...
Eh, it's just another post illustrating the poor overall design of North vs. South and how easy it is for the South to get initiative units. The discussion then quickly moved to ECM, where again, it has been revealed that the South has far more ECM units, but the North has better quality ECM units.
Sprinkle in the "Git Good, scrub!" posts, and the "This is a perfect game, you are just playing it wrong!" and you'll get the gist of the now 5 page thread that is basically being dominated by two posters going back and forth.
ECM and Initiative was a pain in the butt and seemed to go through several incarnations during play test, and this version still isn't the best. It feels like "We're running out of time, just throw something in!"
I was mostly interested in opinions on command vehicles.
What does the north typically use. Opinions on front-line commanders (specifically those who don't lead small units, such as colonels on up). Also, how rare/wide spread is the spearhead hunter?
Also, what you missed. 11Bullets childishly calling everyone children.
Mmmpi wrote: Tamwolf pretty much summed up the bulk of it.
What a lovely picture.
I was mostly interested in opinions on command vehicles.
What does the north typically use. Opinions on front-line commanders (specifically those who don't lead small units, such as colonels on up). Also, how rare/wide spread is the spearhead hunter?
Well... usually speaking, colonels and up just plain don't command from the frontline, because that usually leads to them being dead and all . More often than not the get cozy inside some kind of mobile HQ or base, and leave the hands-on command to lesser brass. They usually are way more effective that way, too
That said, as to the Spearhead Hunter, canon-wise it started as a field variant requested by the Nova RedRiders' CO:
Northco's Spearhead Hunter is an attempt to use the Hunter frame as a versatile command center. This variant was first fielded by Colonel Keeth Bradlee, regimental commander of the 74th Heavy Gear Regiment (Nova Redriders), and is typical of many regimental command Gears. Because regimental commanders are not expected to fight on the frontlines but may need the mobility of a Gear, the Spearhead was derived from the simple and tested Hunter chassis rather than the more valuable Jaguar chassis. While the basic structure of the Hunter remains the same, the computer and communications system have been radically modified. First fielded in TN 1930, the Spearhead uses an Abaline Tactical Systems TOC-15 tactical coordination computer -a less powerful version of the TOC-27 employed in the Command Mammoth strider. A satellite uplink dish has also been added to ensure an ease of communication with dispersed forces. The two systems allow for easy interface with a regimental Tactical Operations Center as well, although the integration of the TOC-15 display hardware with the IHADS system has cramped the head module with electronics and blocked the Gears vision slits. Weaponry has been changed to a single M225 autocannon, supplemented by automated anti-personnel charges to prevent close assault.
The Spearhead Hunter remains in very limited distribution. The TOC-15 system has proven effective, but the sensitive electronics do make the Spearhead vulnerable to attack. The Northern Guard also does not wish to encourage its colonels to hop in a Gear and lead from the field where they can easily get killed. Northco and Abaline hope to use the example of the Spearheadto develop a new generation of command Gears once the Jaguar has been firmly established as the center of Northern forces, but for now the Spearhead remains mostly an interesting experiment fielded only by the Nova Redriders and a few other regiments. For the time being commanders believe that regiment-level mobile command is better done from a dedicated vehicle such as the CV-3 Murdock which allows the commander to travel with close advisors.
Also, what you missed. 11Bullets childishly calling everyone children.
What does the north typically use. Opinions on front-line commanders (specifically those who don't lead small units, such as colonels on up). Also, how rare/wide spread is the spearhead hunter?
What the fluff says about the Spearhead Hunter isn't of primary significant to the wargame, IMO. The fluff comes from the RPG, which is a completely different beast than a wargame. Albertorius handled the fluff answer (i.e. you shouldn't see them) but I'd argue you have to step back and ask if there's a role for them that makes sense on the table. I'd argue that mechanically, a leadership boosting model is a good thing from an abstract perspective. The implementation may be botched, sure - but it's an iconic model and giving it a good niche helps the wargame more than it hurts it. The question "how rare is the Spearhead" should be largely a mechanical one that's influenced by the fluff, rather than dictated by the fluff.
This is not to come down on one side or the other of the debate happening on the DP9 forum. Initiative buffs and sinks are a hard thing to get right.
Yeah, the last the actual topic in that thread was addressed, it was:
1. Initiative isn't broken LTP noob.
2. Initiative can be abused if built for. (aka picking models to give solid buffs for it, and an army list to take advantage of it),
and
3. No idea, but it's PR's specialty, so to buff someone else's Initiative is a stealth nerf to PR, and so is changing the initiative rules. No answer given on what isn't PR's specialty, outside of it's lack of advanced and guided weapons.
Personally I was (and am) a supporter of #2, mainly because the armies that can build for it don't have to do much to get it, and several armies (some who's fluff suggests that it would actually fit for them), don't get it. The fact that it doesn't have a huge points cost to get for the armies that take advantage of it, and that it doesn't seem to require much of a change in an army's build. BT/PR just need a squad upgrade for example.
What does the north typically use. Opinions on front-line commanders (specifically those who don't lead small units, such as colonels on up). Also, how rare/wide spread is the spearhead hunter?
What the fluff says about the Spearhead Hunter isn't of primary significant to the wargame, IMO. The fluff comes from the RPG, which is a completely different beast than a wargame. Albertorius handled the fluff answer (i.e. you shouldn't see them) but I'd argue you have to step back and ask if there's a role for them that makes sense on the table. I'd argue that mechanically, a leadership boosting model is a good thing from an abstract perspective. The implementation may be botched, sure - but it's an iconic model and giving it a good niche helps the wargame more than it hurts it. The question "how rare is the Spearhead" should be largely a mechanical one that's influenced by the fluff, rather than dictated by the fluff.
This is not to come down on one side or the other of the debate happening on the DP9 forum. Initiative buffs and sinks are a hard thing to get right.
I do like the Spearhead quite a bit myself, TBH, but here I'd take the middle road of appeasing both fluff and game concerns. The fluff already states that "Northco and Abaline hope to use the example of the Spearhead to develop a new generation of command Gears once the Jaguar has been firmly established as the center of Northern forces", so IMHO what you should do is use that and the fact that the wargame was advanced already the timeline to create a new "Spearhead" type of variant probably reserved for Hunters and Jaguars (and the new models with the same roles) to be used as a command Gear swap. That way you're growing the setting organically and there's no need for the new Gear to be piloted by COs.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Paint it Pink wrote: I have fallen to the charms of the old RAFM era Gears. Picture and text on my blog here:
From that Panther website: Wow that new Visigoth is quite large. Not sure I'm super opposed, as I think it was always meant to be a rather large tank, larger than a standard MBT. It looks like they almost have gotten it to not look like a giant flat square rectangle. Though the Abrams still looks better -- I'd be tempted to just stick the futuristic turret of the Visigoth on that smaller Abrams and call it a day.
Oh, and the videogame made it up on Steam Early Access. Still looks like amateur hour, and looks to play more like Battletech than Heavy Gear.
As for rules, I haven't played any of the new rules, not surprised that PR is still overpowered. Though they weren't all that bad in the previous ruleset until the last update that gave them everything and the kitchen sink.
Oh, hey, I've just got a mail from the Pod via the HG Kickstarter... because I guess they would still want me to buy their stuff even if they don't want to have to hear me, seeing as it's a Jovian Wars KS promotional link.
And what is Jovian Wars? From the mail, it seems like it's an attempt to give new life to their Jovian Chronicles IP with a new space fleet game.
"Yeah, Albertorius, but what is Jovian Chronicles?"
Good question. Back in the day, Jovian Chronicles started as a setting for the Mekton RPG, and was mainly a... well, a Gundam ripoff, if we're being completely honest. A very cool and interesting ripoff, mind. Further down the line it was rereleased using the in-house Silhouette setting, and had a great run of sourcebooks, and it developed into a fairly hard sci-fi inter solar system setting, with lots of political tensions, and giant space robots (what? Gundams are awesome. Shut up). Somewhere during that time there apparently was a change of developers and JC started to be all about the ships and the giant robots got mainly sidelined, though.
It also had a very decent fleet combat game with campaign elements called Lightning Strike, which was a pretty cool game for the time.
And now they're releasing Jovian Wars, apparently, because there's so very few space fleet battle games already released that it's the obvious move.
The $88 CAD level gets you double the number of ships of the above pic, but no fighters/gundams (those are add-ons). Also, the ships' scale are about 1,5 times bigger than the older resin models, so if you have old ones (like me) you're kind of boned.
Having already SW Armada, XWing, FSA and some Yamato ships coming my way for about $3 each, I can't say I'm overly interested in it, and seeing as the Mr. Dubois is at the helm, I'll give it a wide pass, thank you.
That said, at first I was interested on the fighter/Gundam bases to use with the other games... right until I saw the prices, that is. I'll stick with the Armada bases, I think.
EDIT: Ohhhh, for half the amount of the pledge I could get a starter DFC fleet!
You mentioned one of the reasons I'm not joining in. I already play Star Wars Armada, Fire Storm Armada, Dystopian Wars, and have two Battle Fleet Gothic fleets sitting in a bin. That and the difficulty I have actually getting in a game of HGB makes me want to concentrate on just that for PodBay IPs.
If it was a "skirmish" game using the old 1:500-scale exo-armours and fighters, I'd be all over this. Once upon a time, I tried to use the RPG rules as a set of miniatures rules; fun, but too fiddly. The spaceships just aren't as interesting.
AndrewGPaul wrote: If it was a "skirmish" game using the old 1:500-scale exo-armours and fighters, I'd be all over this. Once upon a time, I tried to use the RPG rules as a set of miniatures rules; fun, but too fiddly. The spaceships just aren't as interesting.
Agreed completely. Of course, I'd kill for a Flightpath system Gundam or Macross game, so it was kind of a given in my case.
Not sure I'd want anything like that - I want to use 5 - 10 vehicles per side, and something Flightpath-esque gets a little fiddly above three or four IMO.
I even converted a Wyvern into one of the Martian Exo-armours at one point. I wonder what I did with all of those ...
Quite frankly, I don't "get" Jovian Wars. The giant robot models are tiny, and the ships aren't anything special. As a spaceship game, it's not replacing BFG, for which I already have multiple, large, playable, painted fleets.
Al's notion of a Flightpath Gundam game would be awesome. 15m Gundam scaled down to a 30mm miniature, so 1/500 scale - about half Gashapon. A mobile armor like the Neue Ziel would be about 6" tall... Dendrobium would be about 5" wide. Totally playable! Do want!
You're noticing the lack of niche. It seems less like "we see a spot for a fleet game", and more of "How can we profit on a fleet game."
Still, they made their goal, plus a few unlocks so yay?
Had a few friends interested. I told them I'd go in only if they: A: went in and B: covered my costs until they could prove they were into it enough to show enthusiasm (aka more than one game a year), at which point I would reimburse them. This is the same group that said "YAY Heavy Gear!", and "YAY Infinity" of which they played the latter twice. Christmas 2015, leaving me with a barely touched infinity army. Thankfully I found others to play HG against, and have one of my FLGS owners interested (on other hates it, one doesn't like Scifi games, and the last is an idiot). Same store btw.
They didn't see my reasoning on point B. even though I said they would be the official owners until I paid them back.
Mmmpi wrote: Still, they made their goal, plus a few unlocks so yay?
Their goal was $6,800 USD, and are still under $10k USD after several days of funding. Not sure the bar could have been set much lower.
Well, AFAIK they are trying to fund a small number of simple resin and metal mould, so it's not really like they need all that much money.
...or any money at all, given that they already have all the needed capabilities for it, but getting the money beforehand sure is a nice perk.
I mean, you see "Jovian Wars, our giant robo fleet scale game", and you might think of BFG, DFC or FSA, but in truth the current KS is to fund mould for... what, 6-8 resin ships? and they already do resin and metal casting in-house, so In perspective, I'd say they are asking for the right amount, if they have to ask for any amount at all.
Mmmpi wrote: Still, they made their goal, plus a few unlocks so yay?
Their goal was $6,800 USD, and are still under $10k USD after several days of funding. Not sure the bar could have been set much lower.
While I agree that it was a lower goal, they did hit it rather quickly, and with just a few people. I honestly think there's a good chance at pragmatism behind this one. Why ask for more than they need? It would be an unnecessary risk, especially when there's already an incentive system in place for exceeding the base goal. Besides, even if they don't need the money, or shouldn't need the money, in theory doing this does help spread the brand, even if just a little, and gives people something to be excited for.
Mmmpi wrote: Still, they made their goal, plus a few unlocks so yay?
Their goal was $6,800 USD, and are still under $10k USD after several days of funding. Not sure the bar could have been set much lower.
While I agree that it was a lower goal, they did hit it rather quickly, and with just a few people. I honestly think there's a good chance at pragmatism behind this one. Why ask for more than they need? It would be an unnecessary risk, especially when there's already an incentive system in place for exceeding the base goal. Besides, even if they don't need the money, or shouldn't need the money, in theory doing this does help spread the brand, even if just a little, and gives people something to be excited for.
Yeah, in this case and with the goal they have I don't feel there is an actual need to ask for more than they already have. They already have the means to produce resin and metal castings, they already have done some of the prototypes... there's not much more that costs actual money left to do, other than actual production, and they do that regularly for the rest of their stock, so... (plus, producing in-house, they don't actually need to overproduce or anything like that, so the production and warehousing costs are nelligible).
JohnHwangDD wrote: Quite frankly, I don't "get" Jovian Wars. The giant robot models are tiny, and the ships aren't anything special. As a spaceship game, it's not replacing BFG, for which I already have multiple, large, playable, painted fleets.
Al's notion of a Flightpath Gundam game would be awesome. 15m Gundam scaled down to a 30mm miniature, so 1/500 scale - about half Gashapon. A mobile armor like the Neue Ziel would be about 6" tall... Dendrobium would be about 5" wide. Totally playable! Do want!
The game was a lot more interesting back in 2001 when the only options for space games were BFG, Starfleet Battles, Babylon 5 Wars and Full Thrust. All of those except BFG were very niche and none of them were anime based in a time when anime was only starting to really hit the mainstream. In 2017 there's just so many more options for space games and anime-influenced games, but JC has remained a favorite and their 1/500 figures remain extremely well done even for today, although very fiddly. I love the 17mm Exos, but also the 30MM ones and the larger resin Tau Crisis-suit sized ones that were out some years ago, I'm the type of idiot to buy all of them with nobody to play against
And speaking of 30MM gundams and buying a bunch of things with nothing to use them for, have you seen the 1/400 gashapon gundams that Bandai released under the "Gundam Collections" title? They were random packs, unfortunately, and getting harder to find now, but I bought a crapload of them to play Gundam SEED battles with. They come prepainted in gashapon style vinyl, but they look great with a basic wash, unfortunately I only have the one pic of mine, but there's quite a lot around the internet. It's getting harder to find the stuff for it, but it's still out there and there were a few ebay sellers doing singles and you can still find cases every now and again, there was something like 12 sets plus another 8 NEO sets
They even did some larger sets including a Dendrobium vs Nue Ziel set and it is indeed about 5" wide!
Spoiler:
It's pretty expensive now since it's OOP, but there's now a 1/550 scale kit for both the Nue Ziel and Dendrobium that run about $20~$30 if you don't mind the small shift in scale
Mmmpi wrote: Still, they made their goal, plus a few unlocks so yay?
Their goal was $6,800 USD, and are still under $10k USD after several days of funding. Not sure the bar could have been set much lower.
Well, AFAIK they are trying to fund a small number of simple resin and metal mould, so it's not really like they need all that much money.
Probably all they'd need would be a small metal mold to cast bases, the rest should go to the costs of silicone and resin required. In all likelihood DP9 probably could have done this the regular way (monthly releases), but this should let them release all of it at once and generate more buzz for the new rules.
What game is less complex, Heavy Gear blitz, or Lighting strike 2nd edition? Id only use the gears is lighting strike, not anything else
I have HGB new plastic 2 player starter and its been fun on the surface. Just now getting into the deeper rules like Forward Obs and the massive headache that is.
Also any word when Heavy Gear Blitz will be converting more of the packs of gears to plastic? Or are starters/big gears/tanks only going to be plastic? Id like to buy more squads, but using that metal before was horrid.
From what I've playtested, the Heavy Gear rules have become somewhat less complex with each edition, so the nuBlitz Quickstart rules in your starter set are the least complex set of rules for HG.
If you want to dial complexity back big time, then you would look at my KOG light homebrew, specifically created to play with HG minis.
Right now, the Pod has their hands full with Jovian Wars, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them revisit HG plastics in a year or two.
ncshooter426 wrote: So -- I lost track of HG over the years, where does the current rulebook stand?
The new plastic armies are a nice deal it seems, I still got tons of the old metal (and some RAFM ones) Nucol/north/south stuff
If you go to heir official site, there is a link you can click to go download the newest living rulebook.
I bought the plastic 2 player, and have since invested a good 300 into filling out north and south to 300 points+ A buddy even bought in buying the 2 player and using it to build a black talon force
ncshooter426 wrote: So -- I lost track of HG over the years, where does the current rulebook stand?
The new plastic armies are a nice deal it seems, I still got tons of the old metal (and some RAFM ones) Nucol/north/south stuff
It's somewhat simpler than Blitz, which was somewhat simpler than Tactical, but still not smooth and modern. It is (should be) freely downloadable, but I'm not sure the Pod is doing much with it lately. As above, there is at least 1 fan ruleset out there. *toot*
Supposedly, the Pod is looking into the next big thing, which one presumes will bring NuCoal and others into plastic, along with a further tweak to make PRDF the best of the best of the best.
As it is, the game as the newest version of blitz it pretty easy and not to complicated for picking it up and doing some anime robot battles.
Where it gets odd is indirect, electronic warfare, a kinda goofy cover system
Ive played about 10 games and we are really trying to get into the weeds of all the unit types and electro warfare and its not the easiest thing. Also, pherhaps its me but the solid cover cover heavy cover etc system is a little odd and confusing.
But I do like the game. I don't know how much more I will expand on my current forces both at 300 points. I bought a few metals to fill out holes, but god do I hate the metals. Rather wait for plastics or buy more vehicles.
There is apparently a 2017 Kickstarter in the works.
The Heavy Gear Blitz 2017 Kickstarter to make plastic miniatures for the Peace River, NuCoal, and Utopia faction core models is now set for a mid-September launch. We had hoped to be ready for a July launch, but our 3d modelers are still working on the models for the NuCoal and Utopia. Plus with Gen Con in August and all the work that entails, we think its best to wait until after its out of the way.
Ahtman wrote: There is apparently a 2017 Kickstarter in the works.
The Heavy Gear Blitz 2017 Kickstarter to make plastic miniatures for the Peace River, NuCoal, and Utopia faction core models is now set for a mid-September launch. We had hoped to be ready for a July launch, but our 3d modelers are still working on the models for the NuCoal and Utopia. Plus with Gen Con in August and all the work that entails, we think its best to wait until after its out of the way.
Yep! Myself and a few locals are excited about this news.
So how hard is it to run/manage a Kickstarter? You make some 3d-mock ups in whatever program ahead of time. Only need a couple of the core models for the first part. Write a paragraph or two about how much the game rocks, and needs the support of the players. Throw in a realistic, attainable goal, and then a couple sentences about manufacturing issues, shipping delays, etc. etc. Make some throw away award levels (Free patches! Free dice! extra models!), and make a few more 3d renders as future rewards. Start the Kickstarter. You have 30 days. Pop in every once in a while, say thanks! Give words of encouragement, and as rewards are hit, drop the rewards you've already planned out.
What DP9 wants to do is drop the Kickstarter what, two weeks after Gencon? LOL Unless they have a booth at Gencon and can actually show off some preproduction models, this KS won't go over all that well. Granted, not every gamer makes it to Gencon, but if you are trying to hype up a Kickstarter, what better place then Gencon?
I'm not sure I understand what the delay is in starting the KS. Jovian Wars is well along in development, and they posted screen shots of preproduction models for the new KS, so...? Why wait?
What is the original backstory fluff (& what books is it found in) for NuCoal and it's associated city-states/locales?
- Was there ever a reason given for the Humanist Alliance to have chosen to collaborate with NuCoal over Peace River other than ''because we said so dammit, so get over it or STFU''?
Tamwulf wrote: So how hard is it to run/manage a Kickstarter? You make some 3d-mock ups in whatever program ahead of time. Only need a couple of the core models for the first part. Write a paragraph or two about how much the game rocks, and needs the support of the players. Throw in a realistic, attainable goal, and then a couple sentences about manufacturing issues, shipping delays, etc. etc. Make some throw away award levels (Free patches! Free dice! extra models!), and make a few more 3d renders as future rewards. Start the Kickstarter. You have 30 days. Pop in every once in a while, say thanks! Give words of encouragement, and as rewards are hit, drop the rewards you've already planned out.
What DP9 wants to do is drop the Kickstarter what, two weeks after Gencon? LOL Unless they have a booth at Gencon and can actually show off some preproduction models, this KS won't go over all that well. Granted, not every gamer makes it to Gencon, but if you are trying to hype up a Kickstarter, what better place then Gencon?
I'm not sure I understand what the delay is in starting the KS. Jovian Wars is well along in development, and they posted screen shots of preproduction models for the new KS, so...? Why wait?
I agree they should definitely wait longer. Right after everyone has spent their hobby money at Gencon isn't the right time. Personally I'd go for an October kickoff, so they don't compete with people buying Christmas gifts either.
In addition, now that they have some of the kinks work out from the last KS, maybe this one will get done completely, and on time. And with fewer errors.
Smilodon_UP wrote: What is the original backstory fluff (& what books is it found in) for NuCoal and it's associated city-states/locales?
- Was there ever a reason given for the Humanist Alliance to have chosen to collaborate with NuCoal over Peace River other than ''because we said so dammit, so get over it or STFU''?
I'm not sure if the first question is completely serious, given I've had a lot of obscure setting conversations with you, but just in case :
The original fluff for the NuCoal was in the first edition books "Life on Terra Nova" and "Into the Badlands", mainly. That got mostly ported to the 2nd edition core rulebook and the 2nd LoTN book.
As to the second question... well, there was a joint program between Jan Mayen and the HA regarding GREL reproduction, the result of which were the twins. But other than that... no, not really (And it's not like Jan Mayen was a part of the NuCoal, either, so...). Even with the virus, the war and everything else, a massive, secret migration towards NuCoal territory through thousands of miles of desert is... kind of a stretch ^^. Just going by simple physical distance, Peace River is at like, half the distance away, and you wouldn't need to cross ginormous mountain ranges to get there.
As to any DP9KS... heh, right. They've made evidently clear that they don't want me (they might want my money, though), so Robert can kindly go feth himself.
Ya know, I'm looking at the 3D renders of the new Skirmisher and... I just don't like it. It looks too blocky? Too thin? The pose just looks off... like the lower legs come out of the knees at a forward angle, meaning the lower legs are not directly under the body, but in front of the body? The front on view makes the model look like a box. Maybe if they changed the shoulders a bit- less squared off, 90 angles? Again, they look like boxes with rectangles coming out of the bottom.
I'm guessing it'll be cancelled long before the stated initial funding goal (let alone what might be the higher real expectation/goal). Yesterday was a net negative daily funding total and today so far is only positive by one pledge and it never bodes well to stall before funding (or even after minimally/moderately funding). It appears that the plastics and new rules didn't energize the playerbase as expected. That said.. I'd expect this kickstarter to be naturally lower as the most popular factions (Polar and CEF) were covered the first time around. Utopia (and Paxton and Nucoal players) may be vocal but definitely are a minority within the niche that is HG and I'd expect a lower funding total even if DP9 did everything right.
I like that they have posted a whopping 20 SGs out to $150k, while not even funded to $50k because they're leading with the ugly Utopia designs. Plus, the plastics they actually delivered were far worse than the metals and renders that they showed during the KS campaign.
Does anybody know whether the game is even selling in stores to justify new army expansions?
ScarletRose wrote:Welp, looks like they cancelled and decided to split it into 2 Kickstarters (Utopia, then NuCoal + Peace River) starting the Utopia one in January.
I'm still going to pledge tbh, I think the minis are decent for the price and I want to support the company.
I wish you and them luck. I'm still sitting on three armies' worth of Leclerc metals painted up that haven't gotten me any games beyond one time demos for others so I'll pass unless someone else locally turns out to be a closet gear fanatic.
HudsonD wrote:Cancelled after a week ? What an embarassing failure. Ironically, looks like they're going to ask even more for the next ones.
They probably should have done it in the first place. We're talking about second and third tier factions in this kickstarter in terms of popularity for an already niche struggling game. I suspect that despite the vocal minority that Utopia won't fund but the badlands duo will.
JohnHwangDD wrote: I like that they have posted a whopping 20 SGs out to $150k, while not even funded to $50k because they're leading with the ugly Utopia designs. Plus, the plastics they actually delivered were far worse than the metals and renders that they showed during the KS campaign.
Does anybody know whether the game is even selling in stores to justify new army expansions?
My FLGS refuses to stock dp9 out of personal dislike for Rob. He'll do special orders, but that's it. Not that there's been a large call for the game. Just a few players who got the kickstarter kits. Since I moved overseas, not even that.
They probably should have done it in the first place. We're talking about second and third tier factions in this kickstarter in terms of popularity for an already niche struggling game. I suspect that despite the vocal minority that Utopia won't fund but the badlands duo will.
I pretty much agree with this assessment. I have a passing interest in some of the NuCoal gears (as in: would like to paint a few, but not build an army). I already have more metal Peace River than I know what to do with, and I have no interest in Utopia. I had backed for $6 so I could get the resin unlocks later - though the sweet Peace River patches were tempting as add-ons. I was a big backer for the first KS but there really wasn't much reason for me to back for much.
Yeah, I ended up backing for half of what I was last time, with plans to increase it to the same. But in many ways this wasn't as good a deal as the last kickstarter was.
Four starters for 130 C? This time it was two. (was not going to assume this one would explode.) I was planning on adding to my collection of "Hey let's play heavy gear" armies, where my friends who were only sort of interested could just borrow one. But if you were waiting for this one expecting the same deal as the last one? $65 C is close to the retail price of the first run of starters. So double that for two armies? The last one had them at $32.50. So for the last one I was eager to jump in and really get a solid collection going. For this one I was more hesitant. Why not wait for a general release?
Honestly what I'd do is three small ones. Maybe 20-25K each. Give each their own unlocks and add ons. toss in the general add ons such as the terrain, tape measures ect, chibies if you *REALLY* have to. Focus on each one. Lets say the basic jump in point was $70 C. Make it a starter and an extra, such as a quartet of gears that you were planning on making an early unlock. Just start them off. They won't be in the starter, but would be a backer reward to draw in the deal hunters and give a bit of ok, I'll join now. Maybe have just a few pledge levels. 1. I want to chat $1. 2. Give me a set of the special gear, where they can get a quartet/duo of a gear in the starter, like 4 warriors, or 2 crusaders ect $20-30. 3. Full starter + bonus gear. This level would get full add-ons, where the earlier one would get maybe the relevant arm/leg upgrade kits. $60-70. Maybe have a wave 1/wave 2 of this set. Finally a retail set if you feel you need one. Bam! Done.
My FLGS refuses to stock dp9 out of personal dislike for Rob. He'll do special orders, but that's it. Not that there's been a large call for the game. Just a few players who got the kickstarter kits. Since I moved overseas, not even that.
Your FLGS wouldn't be in Montréal, would it ? DP9's real popular in their hometown... I'd go on the DP9 boards to twist the knife, but then, most things DP9 fall in CGAA territory these days.
Is there information on how many backers there are, as opposed to just dollars? I'm wondering if a bunch of people bailed, or just a couple big ones.
I'm shocked that the non-iconic HG stuff didn't draw anywhere near what the Pod expected (an easy and quick run to match the revenue of the first KS with the factions people actually wanted).
Tracking the Monopoly money total works just as well when the drop is "only" -$180 - it's obviously a net loss of -1 or -2 people leaving. And then they gained back $10 today. What's surprising is that they threw in the towel so quickly, as most KS like this take a few more days postponing the inevitable cancellation.
The Update is amusing, but reveals a lot where they admit wanted to launch just to launch in 2017, but not really caring whether it would fund. I wonder how well the next couple campaigns are going to go, now that they've got the stink of failure on them.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mmmpi wrote: Honestly what I'd do is three small ones. Maybe 20-25K each. Give each their own unlocks and add ons.
This is probably the most sound approach, although a big part of the Pod's problem is having to make each army set comparable to the previous sets.
If the single army goal is $20k, and they want people to pledge $50 for the army, they need 400 backers. If they only got 232 backers across all 3 factions, I think their next KS is automatic failure. OTOH, if they target for 200 backers at $50 each, that's only $10k - unless they have other profits / funds, $10k won't be enough to tool an entire army.
But then again, the Pod was obviously expecting to get the full 1,000 backers in the 1st KS in for an average of $150+ each...
I've suggested on the DP9 Forum that they do Peace River and NuCoal first rather than after Utopia, which is likely to fail.
Plenty of Kickstarters fail and come back for a second, successful pass, but Utopia IMO isn't every going to be worthy of plastics. There just isn't the interest. I also suggested they put the resin stuff as add-ons right up front, or Kickstart those on an individual basis if they really can't front the cash themselves for them. I've got way too much Peace River to back for plastics of same already, but I would have put down for probably 2 of anything new for PR in resin, meaning by backing total would have been much higher.
How big a seller are those chibi stuff they push out? It feels like every time I get a notification from them, they're pushing a new chibi something. You need to kickstarter your plastics, but you can just have a sculptor up a make you a chibi on a rush, in time for Christmas? It makes me agree with most of you when you're questioning their priorities.
I also pointed out this KS has delayed stuff that's been ready for months that could be pulling in retail dollars now. The Jackal has been ready since mid-August to go to pewter.
Honestly, this is as unsurprising as unsurprising can get. Last KS there were a fair amount of non-USA pledgers who got kind of burned when the time came to pay the shipping costs (which were kinda horrendous, at least to ship this side of the ocean, from what I've been told). That, coupled with no actual way in hell to get DP9 stuff over here other than ordering direct (with more horrendous shipping costs) means there's a snowball's chance in hell for those backers to do repeat business.
Add to that the fact that they're asking more for less, and that they're leading with Utopia and well... foregone conclusion.
Plus, some of us old backers are getting quite annoyed with all the inane spam we're getting from their old KS to shill this one... is there any way to block updates from an old KS?
Albertorius wrote: Honestly, this is as unsurprising as unsurprising can get. Last KS there were a fair amount of non-USA pledgers who got kind of burned when the time came to pay the shipping costs (which were kinda horrendous, at least to ship this side of the ocean, from what I've been told). That, coupled with no actual way in hell to get DP9 stuff over here other than ordering direct (with more horrendous shipping costs) means there's a snowball's chance in hell for those backers to do repeat business.
Add to that the fact that they're asking more for less, and that they're leading with Utopia and well... foregone conclusion.
Plus, some of us old backers are getting quite annoyed with all the inane spam we're getting from their old KS to shill this one... is there any way to block updates from an old KS?
I forgot about the international shipping issue last time; yeah, that would definitely stop me from ordering if I were abroad and inclined to in the first place. As for updates, if you go to your KS profile (upper right corner when logged in), then settings, notifications, you can select which projects can send you nofitications. I actually kind of appreciate it as I don't regularly go to their website or forums anymore for years.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
John Prins wrote: I also pointed out this KS has delayed stuff that's been ready for months that could be pulling in retail dollars now. The Jackal has been ready since mid-August to go to pewter.
I wasn't aware of that. That sucks.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mmmpi wrote: How big a seller are those chibi stuff they push out? It feels like every time I get a notification from them, they're pushing a new chibi something. You need to kickstarter your plastics, but you can just have a sculptor up a make you a chibi on a rush, in time for Christmas? It makes me agree with most of you when you're questioning their priorities.
That was the only thing left that Phil LeClerc (sp?), the guy who brought us the modern blitz pewter minis look, did anymore for them (at least when I was paying attention). According to John above, they're still coming out with pewter minis too which I wasn't aware of.
That was the only thing left that Phil LeClerc (sp?), the guy who brought us the modern blitz pewter minis look, did anymore for them (at least when I was paying attention). According to John above, they're still coming out with pewter minis too which I wasn't aware of.
If by 'coming out with' you mean 'sitting on until they get KS money'. I can't think of anything more important to a miniatures line than regular releases to keep people interested. Even if it's one new model a quarter, at least you're keeping the line alive.
Albertorius wrote: Plus, some of us old backers are getting quite annoyed with all the inane spam we're getting from their old KS to shill this one... is there any way to block updates from an old KS?
Log into KS and go to your account. There should be an option to uncheck updates being emailed to you.
That was the only thing left that Phil LeClerc (sp?), the guy who brought us the modern blitz pewter minis look, did anymore for them (at least when I was paying attention). According to John above, they're still coming out with pewter minis too which I wasn't aware of.
If by 'coming out with' you mean 'sitting on until they get KS money'. I can't think of anything more important to a miniatures line than regular releases to keep people interested. Even if it's one new model a quarter, at least you're keeping the line alive.
You're going to accept your once a year new mini (the annual Chibi whatever) and like it, Mr. Prins! I agree totally (both with regards to HG and Robotech, the latter of which is in even more dire straits).
ScarletRose wrote: Welp, looks like they cancelled and decided to split it into 2 Kickstarters (Utopia, then NuCoal + Peace River) starting the Utopia one in January.
Probably for the best. I pledged for the NuCoal faction, but I was really more interested in the Utopia faction. If they didn't reach that stretch goal (which they probably would not have) I'd likely have cancelled my pledge before the KS ended, anyway.
You're going to accept your once a year new mini (the annual Chibi whatever) and like it, Mr. Prins! I agree totally (both with regards to HG and Robotech, the latter of which is in even more dire straits).
I usually put in a Christmas order to get the latest stuff. This year, there isn't any latest stuff - chibis don't count - and no order from me. Still no word on the 25th anniversary edition of the HGRPG, either. I was excited for the rumored 28mm line that would go with it, but so far, crickets.
You're going to accept your once a year new mini (the annual Chibi whatever) and like it, Mr. Prins! I agree totally (both with regards to HG and Robotech, the latter of which is in even more dire straits).
I usually put in a Christmas order to get the latest stuff. This year, there isn't any latest stuff - chibis don't count - and no order from me. Still no word on the 25th anniversary edition of the HGRPG, either. I was excited for the rumored 28mm line that would go with it, but so far, crickets.
I hear you. The esports arena shooter FPS that no one asked for still isn't a functional game either and even the limited functionality they did have hasn't worked since September.
I suppose that as long as the yearly royalty payments keep coming in so the lights stay on in Montreal then DP9 won't care about that licensed product either.
Not every faction needs to be/should be in plastic imo. We'll see if Utopia fans can match their talk with funding. I suspect it won't come close to funding.
It's interesting to see the tank. Not sure why it costs $85 though. Seems a bit pricey. I wonder how closely it conforms to the idea I posted on their Utopia thread awhile back.
edit: And now I know the answer to both.
from Rob himself:
"The Gilgamesh Command Tank is big at 191 mm long x 90 mm wide x 62 mm tall (7.5" long x 3.5" wide x 2.4" tall), with 4 drone carrier side pods added on the sides of the tracks its 128 mm wide (5" wide). :-) "
They did borrow most of my idea. It'll be 100% if it has modular weapons.
Mmmpi wrote: It's interesting to see the tank. Not sure why it costs $85 though. Seems a bit pricey. I wonder how closely it conforms to the idea I posted on their Utopia thread awhile back.
edit: And now I know the answer to both.
from Rob himself:
"The Gilgamesh Command Tank is big at 191 mm long x 90 mm wide x 62 mm tall (7.5" long x 3.5" wide x 2.4" tall), with 4 drone carrier side pods added on the sides of the tracks its 128 mm wide (5" wide). :-) "
They did borrow most of my idea. It'll be 100% if it has modular weapons.
...huh. Just for reference, a 40k Rhino is 115x75x50...so that thing is almost twice as long and about 25% wider and higher... for a 1/144 game. and $85, because their stuff is not crazy expensive as it is already.
Right. That doesn't sound stupid at all. Something Rhino sized is already too fething big for that scale, so what the hell, let's more than double it.
Mmmpi wrote: It's interesting to see the tank. Not sure why it costs $85 though. Seems a bit pricey. I wonder how closely it conforms to the idea I posted on their Utopia thread awhile back.
edit: And now I know the answer to both.
from Rob himself:
"The Gilgamesh Command Tank is big at 191 mm long x 90 mm wide x 62 mm tall (7.5" long x 3.5" wide x 2.4" tall), with 4 drone carrier side pods added on the sides of the tracks its 128 mm wide (5" wide). :-) "
They did borrow most of my idea. It'll be 100% if it has modular weapons.
...huh. Just for reference, a 40k Rhino is 115x75x50...so that thing is almost twice as long and about 25% wider and higher... for a 1/144 game. and $85, because their stuff is not crazy expensive as it is already.
Right. That doesn't sound stupid at all. Something Rhino sized is already too fething big for that scale, so what the hell, let's more than double it.
That's bigger than the 40k Land Raider according to this:
Yeah.... I'm not seeing that happening especially as a resin/metal kit at $85. The HHT-90 is $130 and they had to bump that up to that price when they offered it through the retail chain up from around $100 iirc... and that was like 5 years ago. Then factor in possible currency fluctuations like what happened last time and they're just begging to for a problem yet again.
...huh. Just for reference, a 40k Rhino is 115x75x50...so that thing is almost twice as long and about 25% wider and higher... for a 1/144 game. and $85, because their stuff is not crazy expensive as it is already.
Not that DP9 stuff isn't generally more expensive than their competitors, but in all fairness you are comparing a mass produced plastic model to a limited run resin model (not limited as in LE but limited in the number of people willing to buy it)
Right. That doesn't sound stupid at all. Something Rhino sized is already too fething big for that scale, so what the hell, let's more than double it.
The size of the vehicle does match the fluff, FWIW. Admittedly, it does seem stupid big for the scale of HG, but then I think a lot of the bigger Forge World Imperial Armour vehicles are stupid big for the scale of 40K. Some people just like ginormous tanks.
The size of the vehicle does match the fluff,FWIW. Admittedly, it does seem stupid big for the scale of HG, but then I think a lot of the bigger Forge World Imperial Armour vehicles are stupid big for the scale of 40K. Some people just like ginormous tanks.
It's not worth much. That fluff was made to justify the model's size as it was to be offered soon after in the failed KS and likely the actual model was either already done or in the process of being done simultaneously.
. And any enemy model you wanted to kill? You could pretty much easily kill. It was like you were playing a totally different game then your opponent. It was an army that either won big, or lost big, with nothing in the middle. It won far more then it lost unless your opponent tailored a list or was really, really good.
And there are certain expectations that will be clarified - and perhaps overturned - with new revelations in the fluff.
