They delivered (late) and IMO the quality in the minis just isn't there. Especially the addons - they're significantly out of scale with what I expected.

 jacobus wrote:
What happened with Sedition Wars? There's so many gaming Kickstarters these days I can't keep track of all of them.

Lots of minis were warped out of scale messes with poor vent placement choices obscuring detail due to bad QA/oversight at all steps (design and production), people reported off center printed board tiles, and the rules were poorly thought out and full of typos to the extent that they needed to make a second edition/printing before the KS fullfillment was done because what they sent out in wave 1 was so bad (and they charged people $5 to get the fixed rules in later waves). Quality didn't result from a delay in that one despite the platitudes.

 warboss wrote:

Lots of minis were warped out of scale messes with poor vent placement choices obscuring detail due to bad QA/oversight at all steps (design and production), people reported off center printed board tiles, and the rules were poorly thought out and full of typos to the extent that they needed to make a second edition/printing before the KS fullfillment was done because what they sent out in wave 1 was so bad (and they charged people $5 to get the fixed rules in later waves). Quality didn't result from a delay in that one despite the platitudes.

Quoted For Emphasis, and Sad, Sad Truth Bearing.

What a mess that one turned out to be.

And yeah, "Delays For Quality!" cries don't always ring true in the end...

 Alpharius wrote:

 warboss wrote:

Lots of minis were warped out of scale messes with poor vent placement choices obscuring detail due to bad QA/oversight at all steps (design and production), people reported off center printed board tiles, and the rules were poorly thought out and full of typos to the extent that they needed to make a second edition/printing before the KS fullfillment was done because what they sent out in wave 1 was so bad (and they charged people $5 to get the fixed rules in later waves). Quality didn't result from a delay in that one despite the platitudes.

Quoted For Emphasis, and Sad, Sad Truth Bearing.

What a mess that one turned out to be.

And yeah, "Delays For Quality!" cries don't always ring true in the end...

The digital prints are looking good so far, so lets hope that translates well to the plastic modling process. I am upset at the ridiculous delays, and agree that the lateness of the project has nothing to do with improving the quality of the game and/or miniatures.

But I truly, deeply hope that RRT bears no resemblence to the abortion that was Sedition Wars. I still haven't ever got replacements for the off center cut tiles and counters. Ugh. Terrible on both CMON and McVey Studios.....such a let down.

I just accepted that mine are off center. None of the cuts are through the "picture" they're just off center.

I do understand that some sheets were way off center and cut through the middle of the picture - and that's just unacceptable.

 Alpharius wrote:

 warboss wrote:

Lots of minis were warped out of scale messes with poor vent placement choices obscuring detail due to bad QA/oversight at all steps (design and production), people reported off center printed board tiles, and the rules were poorly thought out and full of typos to the extent that they needed to make a second edition/printing before the KS fullfillment was done because what they sent out in wave 1 was so bad (and they charged people $5 to get the fixed rules in later waves). Quality didn't result from a delay in that one despite the platitudes.

Quoted For Emphasis, and Sad, Sad Truth Bearing.

What a mess that one turned out to be.

And yeah, "Delays For Quality!" cries don't always ring true in the end...

No, they don't which is why I don't take them at face value ESPECIALLY from a company known for exaggeration at best and lying at worst. The problem is that my description of the sedition wars rules as reported from multiple sources in the KS thread (didn't get it myself) pretty much describes Palladium RPG products except for that whole "fixing" things later on. I doubt Sedition Wars skipped playtesting yet the problems made it through. Also, didn't Relic Knights have alot of issues only found AFTER they posted the rules before printing during the first 6 month delay?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Salacious Greed wrote:
The digital prints are looking good so far, so lets hope that translates well to the plastic modling process. I am upset at the ridiculous delays, and agree that the lateness of the project has nothing to do with improving the quality of the game and/or miniatures.

But I truly, deeply hope that RRT bears no resemblence to the abortion that was Sedition Wars. I still haven't ever got replacements for the off center cut tiles and counters. Ugh. Terrible on both CMON and McVey Studios.....such a let down.

They do but they're only indicative of the sculpt and not the final production method nor the care used in making it (and we may still have poor vent placement in the final product). Having multiple 3d prints should hopefully prevent the out of scale minis like the BSG/Alien/Firefly stuff in Sedition Wars was. People were explaining that the warped bent out of shape figs were due to the PVC being taken out of the molds too quickly and/or poor mold design which shouldn't be a problem for the normal plastic stuff but may be an issue for the special characters.

Actually, I brought up Sedition Wars because someone was talking about the resale value for KS minis. Sedition Wars is selling complete for $35, whereas we payed $80 for it...

Link to where it is for sale for $35, please!

 Alpharius wrote:
Link to where it is for sale for $35, please!

This one?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SEDITION-WARS-BATTLE-FOR-ALABASTER-GAME-NEW-CONDITION-IN-BOX-/380816942165?hash=item58aa756455

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Actually, I brought up Sedition Wars because someone was talking about the resale value for KS minis. Sedition Wars is selling complete for $35, whereas we payed $80 for it...

Which is just under 1/2.

Given that, as I noted, we paid around 1/3 to 1/4 of the MSRP, presumably there'll be buyers at cost or more unless the line is an unmitigated failure.

As I also said, I wouldn't wager on being able to make giant piles of cash.

But considering that the MSRP of a Veritech kit (2 fighters in 3 forms each, so 6 models total) is $37 US, and the backers paid around $9 for them through Battle Cry tiers (give or take a little, depending on whether or not they had to pay for shipping, how their currency stacked up if buying internationally, etc), if they can't be sold for an amount that at least recoups that investment, this game is due for the bargain bin and a lot of stores, distributors and potential customers are going to be very angry.

There's an ebay store currently selling those Veritech packs for $24 US right now, and people are buying them, which leads me to think that it shouldn't be an unreasonable belief that one might be able to sell that $9 pack for $15-20 and recoup those costs.

That's all. I'm not saying I or others looking to sell part or all of their kit on the market are going to be rolling in cash, but merely that barring some truly epic failures, given the swell of interest from collectors, Battletech players, and Robotech fans/gamers in general, I have doubts it'll fall apart quite so soundly.

I fully recognize it's a gamble, but the success of the KS alone should indicate significant consumer interest.

I mean, unless one somehow believes that the only people interested in paying money for those models are the 5k'ish who backed the project.

Edit: hopefully my tone doesn't convey an aggressive or defensive stance as a quick re-read shows might become apparent. I simply think that, including some risk assessment, like many minis campaigns this one was loaded down with enough goodies to make it worthwhile.

I mean, does anyone really think that they couldn't get their $140-160 back if they offered up to sell an entire Battle Cry? That's like 3 times the contents of the base box for twice the price. And a bunch of that stuff will likely push the actual sticker price if one were to buy it all at a store way beyond that, possibly the 4-6+ times range.

 pretre wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Link to where it is for sale for $35, please!

This one?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SEDITION-WARS-BATTLE-FOR-ALABASTER-GAME-NEW-CONDITION-IN-BOX-/380816942165?hash=item58aa756455

With $25.20 in shipping?

 Alpharius wrote:

 pretre wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Link to where it is for sale for $35, please!

This one?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SEDITION-WARS-BATTLE-FOR-ALABASTER-GAME-NEW-CONDITION-IN-BOX-/380816942165?hash=item58aa756455

With $25.20 in shipping?

14.20 for me. There's a couple for $45 as well with free shipping. Just figured that was what he was talking about.

 warboss wrote:
They do but they're only indicative of the sculpt and not the final production method nor the care used in making it (and we may still have poor vent placement in the final product). Having multiple 3d prints should hopefully prevent the out of scale minis like the BSG/Alien/Firefly stuff in Sedition Wars was. People were explaining that the warped bent out of shape figs were due to the PVC being taken out of the molds too quickly and/or poor mold design which shouldn't be a problem for the normal plastic stuff but may be an issue for the special characters.

I would think with them making more than 5000 copies of the game, if not 10000, that the 4 special characters would be plastic. Well, Khiron and Miriya could both really just be upgrade parts to the Glaug and FPA. If the two SC Veritechs are different from the regular ones, then they'll have sprues all their own, as you'd need all 3 versions. But now that you've pointed this out, I'm sadly going to expect the worst for the SCs. Bummer.

I thought it was said that the only resin pieces would be the Super upgrade parts for the VF-1D's?

I haven't seen the SW stuff, the picture they are showing of the Relic Knight's battle boxes have been looking pretty good, but that's another project that's way behind, but is semi related due to Soda's part in both that and this, even if CMON is the producer there and using completely different materials. Those models will be available to the public to see and comment on at TempleCon. So I would think that will be the closest idea of the quality, until we will have the Robotech mini's are in our hands.

They did say that Rick, Roy and the others would be in the same plastic.

Far as I know, the only things that will be 'resin' are the bases, the SDF-1, and some parts of the VEF/1D pack, the latter of which might include some pewter as well.

There might be something I'm forgetting, but they definitely said Rick was going to be plastic.

Max and Miriya were in pewter and/or resin due to being a short run in the hundreds for two conventions (so far).

All plastic is good news! I don't know why they just wouldn't make a small sprue for the "super upgrade" parts. Plastic/resin/metal hybrid models suck.

My initial response is one word... Mantic. They're another company who run high profile KS that garner big bucks and they've changed the material unilaterally when it suits them from traditional (and promised) plastic to both PVC and even further to metal occasionally when it suits them. Kingdom Death did the same (although from resin to the "better" plastic .. but accompanied with a delay). The production of special characters in plastic is from a comment post many many months ago and not in the actual description of the appropriate pledge or add on graphics/text. Is it fair to judge palladium based on what other companies have done? No, but their experience might be helpful in understanding what sorts of issues palladium will encounter (and foresight apparently isn't a strongpoint of ND or PB).

A five thousand run of a miniature may sound like alot but it isn't frankly in terms of the numbers people throw around for needing to make their money back from traditional plastic that requires metal molds. Now, normally, you'd continue to rake in the dough with future sales but the special characters will be "convention exclusives" only after the KS which means they won't make that much additionally for the company. Making 5 separate molds (one for each special character) sounds pretty expensive and unlikely to me with that in mind especially if much bigger companies cost conscious companies like GW avoid doing it and always have despite selling the models direct to consumers every day (as opposed to just a few "convention exclusvie" days a year). Are there alternatives? Possibly, like a single UEDF special character sprue that you just clip off pieces to add to the normal kits. In that case, Roy is just 3 "jolly rogger" crew compartments/nosecones you add to a VF-1S nstead of a whole separate sprue and can fit with rick which is just a set of "super poseable" arms you add to a regular VF-1J. Khyron becomes an open cockpit and fits with the Miriya on the same. Heck, you could probably put all 4 on a single sprue and just make a single mold. They just add those sprues along with one of the already created base models (such as a glaug for Khyron, FPA for miriya, etc) and they're done with only a fraction of the initial cost that they'd incur otherwise. YMMV but that is the only way I personally see the specials coming in plastic. Another alternative is to do them in resin or cheaper PVC (which has the shrinkage and flash issues described above). Again, the above is just an educated guess based on what other companies have seemingly done faced with the same situation and Palladium/ND have shown us that they're not above unilaterally changing things when it suits them (see the switch in convention Miriya from resin to metal for a model example and the KS delivery date for an example of an altered KS promise).

The best situation would be if they came in plastic but it also is the most unrealistically optimistic. I certainly hope they prove my post wrong though just like I used to hope back in May last year that they'd prove my initial pessimism on their ability to deliver on time wrong. I'm really not trying to rain on anyone's parade but I just think that when dealing with the double whammy of both crowdfunding and Palladium that one should sets the goal posts more in tune with realism rather than the overly optimistic tone and claims of posts and updates.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Red Comet wrote:


I'm kinda surprised you don't like the show though considering how many nods it makes to the original SDF macross.

Nods are one thing, but if the series isn't good, it isn't good. I'm not really an anime fan. Well, let me qualify that - I like Miyazaki, Matsumoto... i like the original Gundam stuff, things like Votoms and SDF Macross, Emeraldas and Harlock... so I'm not really a modern anime fan. I like those other series and creators precisely because they aren't full of anime norms. Really annoying characters, ridiculous physics, modern anime nonsense. Frontier was full of it. I recently watched Attack on Titan because it was recommended to me - and it's fantastic, but merely because of the strength of the plot and the settings. It's good _despite_ it being anime - as it's full of annoying characters and ridiculous physics that are cringe-worthy and almost made me stop watching it on several occasions. Attack on Titan is able to get past it's own handicap of being anime, whereas Frontier does not. Like Miyazaki recently said - the problem with the anime industry is that it's full of anime fans... storytelling and character development take a backseat to the stereotyped tropes of the format. Frontier is a hollow shell of what it could have been and the "nods" to SDF Macross only made me, as a viewer, feel even more distanced and critical as it's nothing like the original. (this review very nearly mirrors my own opinions: http://www.anime-planet.com/reviews/a552.html)

I agree that Macross F has elements to make it popular for its time and all of the anime you listed have tropes from their time too. Frontier is really light on current anime tropes. At least it's not a harem with a guy who attracts like 80 women for no reason. I'd definitely have issues with the show if that was the case. AoT was great and I love how he goes out of his way to make fun of current manga tropes specifically Shounen manga. The one thing that bothers me is that Mikasa is a horrible trope of a women who can't do anything without her man and Eren can't realize what he has because he's the protagonist.

 pretre wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:

 pretre wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Link to where it is for sale for $35, please!

This one?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SEDITION-WARS-BATTLE-FOR-ALABASTER-GAME-NEW-CONDITION-IN-BOX-/380816942165?hash=item58aa756455

With $25.20 in shipping?

14.20 for me. There's a couple for $45 as well with free shipping. Just figured that was what he was talking about.

Yeah, I think that was the one. But you'd have to pay shipping no matter who sold it to you. I also seem to remember Miniature Market putting it on Black Friday clearance for about that much. Either way, since we pledged $80-$100 for it, it was not a case of just not making a profit. That could still happen with Robotech Tactics, depending on the end result.

Received my reply from Jeff Burke at Palladium about a refund. It went, and I quote:

"Unfortunately we are not able to issue a refund for this project. We hope you understand."

Well, actually I don't. I'd like to know why they are unable to issue a refund ("we can't" doesn't seem to be a valid reason to me), especially considering how far behind schedule they are. Uggh, we'll see how far I have the energy to take this.

 jacobus wrote:
Received my reply from Jeff Burke at Palladium about a refund. It went, and I quote:

"Unfortunately we are not able to issue a refund for this project. We hope you understand."

Well, actually I don't. I'd like to know why they are unable to issue a refund ("we can't" doesn't seem to be a valid reason to me), especially considering how far behind schedule they are. Uggh, we'll see how far I have the energy to take this.

How much do they have you hooked in for? If you do not mind me asking.

$140. So I'm not a huge fish, but that is a relatively large chunk of last year's gaming budget.

Maybe I'll go to Gencon for the first time this year and see how my $1000 investment is paying off.

 TalonZahn wrote:
Maybe I'll go to Gencon for the first time this year and see how my $1000 investment is paying off.

Take a raincoat. That way when they piss on you and tell you it's raining, it doesn't ruin your clothes!

 jacobus wrote:
Received my reply from Jeff Burke at Palladium about a refund. It went, and I quote:

"Unfortunately we are not able to issue a refund for this project. We hope you understand."

Well, actually I don't. I'd like to know why they are unable to issue a refund ("we can't" doesn't seem to be a valid reason to me), especially considering how far behind schedule they are. Uggh, we'll see how far I have the energy to take this.

This has me absolutely speechless.

This whole thing is turning into a bad PR campaign imho.

Well, if he burnt down his business, the investigators would figure it out pretty quickly. But if dozens of enraged customers just happened to burn down his business, the insurance company would have to pay out the big bucks. Then he can grab the rest of the KS funds supposedly spent on books "lost in the fire," and spend the rest of his life sitting on a beach, earning twenty percent.

He would be an exceptional thief.

Very, very, very happy I sat this one out...say what you will about GW, at least they'll make an attempt to rectify quality issues with minimal hassle.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
Very, very, very happy I sat this one out...say what you will about GW, at least they'll make an attempt to rectify quality issues with minimal hassle.

I hear you there!

I briefly contemplated going in on this one because, duh!, Giant Robots.

But then I realized my favorite giant robots are Giant Robo, Gaiking, Getter Robo and stuff like that.

Bullet dodged!

Though I do feel bad for all the Robotech fans who are in this one, and I hope they get their stuff as soon as possible, and that they're happy with the end results!

 pretre wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:

 pretre wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Link to where it is for sale for $35, please!

This one?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SEDITION-WARS-BATTLE-FOR-ALABASTER-GAME-NEW-CONDITION-IN-BOX-/380816942165?hash=item58aa756455

With $25.20 in shipping?

14.20 for me. There's a couple for $45 as well with free shipping. Just figured that was what he was talking about.

Amazon has it with free shipping:

http://www.amazon.com/Sedition-Wars-Battle-for-Alabaster/dp/B00B2WL3C4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391780341&sr=8-1&keywords=sedition+wars

$35.93

Jake

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
and spend the rest of his life sitting on a beach, earning twenty percent.

What you did there. I see it.

"shoot the glass". Everyone is a Die Hard fan!

It remains my favourite Christmas movie.

1 and 3 remain my favourites. 2 was sort of a rehash in ways that didn't astound me, 4 is sort of a guilty pleasure, 5 is flat out way funnier than it has any right being.

So does anyone have any (reasonable...lol) suggestions as to what my next course of action should be after that lovely reply from Palladium? They are very behind schedule, and most places let you return items in hand if they aren't quality or you don't like them. I don't even have any items to return.

 jacobus wrote:
So does anyone have any (reasonable...lol) suggestions as to what my next course of action should be after that lovely reply from Palladium? They are very behind schedule, and most places let you return items in hand if they aren't quality or you don't like them. I don't even have any items to return.

Since they sent that response (and assuming there is no other way for a refund, which I don't think there is), the only options I can see are to be stuck waiting it out or to sell your pledge to someone.

Or call the credit card company... or go public with your request on their forums and the comments to "shame" them into giving you a refund... or just wait it out and hope palladium finally has an accurate gauge on the project and that no further delays (whether in or out of their control) occur.

 Ironwill13791 wrote:
to sell your pledge to someone.

This isn't a bad option. I did this and Palladium changed my address in the survey to the buyer's address/name.

Contact your Credit Card company?

I personally am not too concerned about the delay, if we have quality models. If we got stuff on time, or near on-time, with the issues Mantic has at rushed production, there'd be a lot more hell to pay than if the project is delayed and the models are good. Plus, personally, even if my pledge showed up on my doorstep today I wouldn't have the time to paint them until probably August anyway.

Well, I got my friend to try out the game when I can get a hold of it. He might even take the Zentradi off my hands if he likes it (I really just want the USDF stuff).

Yeah, I'd start with the credit card company. Most have a much shorter time requirement then where we're at now, but we've heard good things in other threads about people getting lucky, or explaining to them that they've essentially pre-ordered something and got told there was another half year tacked onto the delivery date and that they found it unacceptable.

If that doesn't work, and you can't be bothered trying to start a movement about it online, selling your pledge to someone else would probably be the way to go.

Depending on how the MSRP goes down for the second lot and the Limited Edition figures sell on the secondary market, you basically got $500-600 of stuff for that $140. Even if one lowballs the numbers significantly, it shouldn't be too hard to get someone interested in buying it off you.

All the better if you're able to convince Palladium that you've decided to give your pledge to a 'friend' in another state as a present. >.>

Which is to say that I'm not sure how big a fan they'd be of someone saying "hey, can you change my name and address? I've sold my gak to someone else and don't want to have to ship it myself."

But I can't fault anyone for wanting out at this point. Signing up for an 8 month wait, being told that it might be 6-7, and then being told that it'll end up being 18+ isn't an unreasonable thing to be unhappy about.

Personally, I'm in for 3 Battle Cry boxes and a small pile of add ons, but have basically worked out that I plan to sell ~2/3 of the Zentraedi and 1/3 of the RDF to recoup some costs. As I think I'm contractually obligated to mention anytime someone talks about what to do with their stuff.

I definitely do not need 300 models.

Situations like this call for Dookie-in-a-box.

Plan ahead with Mexican for the night before.

 Forar wrote:
Which is to say that I'm not sure how big a fan they'd be of someone saying "hey, can you change my name and address? I've sold my gak to someone else and don't want to have to ship it myself."

I asked them over KS message if I could change my address. They said yes. I sent them a completely different name and address. They said 'All set. Changed it for you.'

It's pretty easy.

So how does the selling the pledge work? And how did you do it? I'd be worried what would happen when PB doesn't deliver the goods.

It's simple. You'd have to pay the person back. Their "contract" is with you.

I noticed kickstarter crazy posted this:
WilhelmRochRedDuke I noticed that your post on Tenkars Tavern ended up being the last one and seemed to shut a few people up. :-D

He left out a few details like the usual suspects. Product tardiness, PB business practices you know the usual. Also some of the comments about the ks being late came true. So it's not exactly a golden moment for PB.
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2013/04/a-tale-of-two-tactics-robotech-rpg.html#comment-form

I'd bring it to his attention but I'm sure the "faithful" will bat it away with their logic.

Funny I made that prediction about not being able to launch in a timely fashion well before they even teamed with Ninja Division, but what do I know? I'm just a guy who makes minis for a living.

I love how a few palladium fanboys assume I was asking for a huge sum of money for my efforts. Lets say if I were approached on a similar project that required me to work full time (or more) for an entire year I'd easily be bought for a whopping salary of $30k, probably even a good sum less if I had a passionate interest in a favorite childhood cartoon that I used to love so much so that I took the time and effort to make some miniatures for it and promoted the idea for free. But I've got a heart of ice that's black as coal and I want the world in exchange for my time.

I wonder what percentage they ended up paying out to ND? I'm sure it's soooo much cheaper than what I would have asked for.



Also why would PB ever fire or mistreat somebody like Tom who volunteers to stroke Kevin off for free?


.

 jacobus wrote:
So does anyone have any (reasonable...lol) suggestions as to what my next course of action should be after that lovely reply from Palladium? They are very behind schedule, and most places let you return items in hand if they aren't quality or you don't like them. I don't even have any items to return.

I posted on PB's FB page. Not sure that it will do anything, but hey, maybe it will help. What a shameful company. It says right on KS, and has been proven in court, that all KS's have to give a refund if they don't come through. I guess PB believes they are above that too.

Indeed there is an obligation to refund if a project creator can't deliver a project

but NO obligation to give a refund if the project is late (as long as progress is being made toward delivery)

and think what you like about Palladium/Ninja Divison etc they are working towards delivery (more slowly than most would like certainly) and any attempt to prove otherwise in court would (almost certainly) be futile

typically if a project hits the 'nope, no way to do this' point there's no money left to refund (I say this as a backer of a couple of 'dead' projects)

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Indeed there is an obligation to refund if a project creator can't deliver a project

but NO obligation to give a refund if the project is late (as long as progress is being made toward delivery)

and think what you like about Palladium/Ninja Divison etc they are working towards delivery (more slowly than most would like certainly) and any attempt to prove otherwise in court would (almost certainly) be futile

typically if a project hits the 'nope, no way to do this' point there's no money left to refund (I say this as a backer of a couple of 'dead' projects)

I don't think KS says when a refund is obligated, only that there is the obligation TO a refund.

PB/ND has far exceeded their self-made deadline, and has even split their shipment because they can't meet their second (third?) timeline.

If we propose that we are "financial investors" in this enterprise, as KS and the companies who take our money on KS propose, then technically we have entered into an agreement on the timeline that they published. As they have blown passed that initial date, it does not now matter that they will still deliver the product. This is why KS has changed their KS rules, to fully exclude themselves from any legal actions, and to further put the onus on the companies running their projects. A good attorney could easily make this case in court, and probably even recoup the court fees and their own fees, as PB/ND has no leg to stand on, as they made their own delivery deadlines.

Telling someone that 'No, you can't have your money back!' just wouldn't stand up as they have failed to hold their end of the bargain. If PB were to argue that it is a pre-order, the judge would laugh them out of the court room, as you can always cancel one of those. So, it is poor business practice on PBs part at the very least. Also a very poor way to treat their customer base.

I'm not a lawyer, but while there are similarities, my understanding is that we're neither investors nor paying for a pre-order.

As I've said a few times, the lack of consumer protections baked into the system at the moment isn't a good thing.

Kickstarter makes it a point to *NOT* call people investors as that terminology would trigger a whole bunch of laws from the stock market side of things.

 Forar wrote:
I'm not a lawyer, but while there are similarities, my understanding is that we're neither investors nor paying for a pre-order.

As I've said a few times, the lack of consumer protections baked into the system at the moment isn't a good thing.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that someone has already successfully sued KS and/or a project creator?

Fuzzy on the details (Sorry!) but it has happened!

 Alpharius wrote:

 Forar wrote:
I'm not a lawyer, but while there are similarities, my understanding is that we're neither investors nor paying for a pre-order.

As I've said a few times, the lack of consumer protections baked into the system at the moment isn't a good thing.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that someone has already successfully sued KS and/or a project creator?

Fuzzy on the details (Sorry!) but it has happened!

Yes, but that was (IIRC) a project that said it was not going to deliver (because of some reasons) and not going to issue refunds; rather then a project just being late.

Note that I never said that project creators were free from consequences.

I'm merely pointing out that being "an investor" or having purchased "a preorder" would give backers considerably more rights than they currently have.

KS can pretend all they like, but IF someone were to feel the need to sue, and have the funds to do so, I don't think many of the things that KS thinks are true would still be true at the end of said suit.

I imagine it'll be like a lot of EULA's; probably doesn't hold up under close scrutiny, but few consumers have the time or resources to bother challenging it.

 Forar wrote:
I imagine it'll be like a lot of EULA's; probably doesn't hold up under close scrutiny, but few consumers have the time or resources to bother challenging it.

I imagine that it is exactly like that!

 Alpharius wrote:

 Forar wrote:
I'm not a lawyer, but while there are similarities, my understanding is that we're neither investors nor paying for a pre-order.

As I've said a few times, the lack of consumer protections baked into the system at the moment isn't a good thing.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that someone has already successfully sued KS and/or a project creator?

Fuzzy on the details (Sorry!) but it has happened!

I read an article about the guy who was making a stand to hold your iPhone. It never worked out, and though he never gave up on the project, he was eventually sued. He lost his in court, and has a settlement against him, making it extremely difficult to get loans to try and finish the project. The article said he moved to Jamaica or somewhere because he lost his job and it ruined his life.

In this case, all you would have to do is convince a DA where you live, where KS is, where Amazon is, or where PB is that they've stepped across the line, and it wouldn't cost you a dime. Now, if you want to go after them in small claims court, it will cost you money, but it will also cost them money, time and effort, and I don't see anything that gives them a leg to stand on. But, not many people have that kind of fortitude.

 Cypher-xv wrote:
I noticed kickstarter crazy posted this:
WilhelmRochRedDuke I noticed that your post on Tenkars Tavern ended up being the last one and seemed to shut a few people up. :-D

He left out a few details like the usual suspects. Product tardiness, PB business practices you know the usual. Also some of the comments about the ks being late came true. So it's not exactly a golden moment for PB.
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2013/04/a-tale-of-two-tactics-robotech-rpg.html#comment-form

I'd bring it to his attention but I'm sure the "faithful" will bat it away with their logic.

Actually risking getting labeled as a PB "faithful" I have been well treated and probably been told a lot more than I should know. That being said what I have shared is being taken into account and reviewed so I hope to put at least a small stamp on the game that has my name behind it. There are times when a project has an issue where communication to all the shareholders is not appropriate and may even be viewed as finger pointing and scapegoating. In all the project could be a month or two farther along than it is but there are reasons for where it is where it is and greed and purposeful misleading of backers are not even on the radar here people.

With a KS, never expect a refund, unless the project totally fails, and then only expect a partial refund at the best. Sell the pledge to others or Ebay it when it comes if you are not happy. Instead of letting it keep you in a bad mood for months to come just make a choice on what you want to do and move forward. Complaining is not movement, forwards or backwards, but a way to occupy time until someone can make a decision. I wish my stuff was in the mail already too.....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and I feel a lot better after having to go through Strepp Throat for the last few days. I hope to have a few games in tonight for everyone!

Doesn't really explain the attitude towards backers in the updates. I get the feeling we're regarded as an inconvenience.

Joyboozer wrote:
Doesn't really explain the attitude towards backers in the updates. I get the feeling we're regarded as an inconvenience.

I could be wrong since I do not talk to the people in the office except through a few emails and a couple of calls. I get the sense that it is more of a frustration at wondering if somethings should have been said earlier of if others should have been said at all. I do agree though that some of the assurances are being handled too softly. Platitudes are nice, but unnecessary.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/22/why-this-jilted-kickstarter-backer-decided-to-sue-why-he-was-right/

This is a link to the interview with the lawyer who sued the IPad stand Kickstarter after they declared the project a failure and promised to refund money and hadn't done so.

On another note tonight's update is pretty interesting, if they keep doing some like these it will help build up confidence in the project.

What Kickstarter needs to do is update their FAQ to adopt the same "One year, no cost extension" that the NIH, NSF, and other grant agencies provide.

Good enough for government work, right?

After the latest update I think it might be a bit early for a refund. Even if PB ends up a bit more late. That's only my personal opinion of coarse. At best I thought it might be better than the BT sculpts. So far the glaug is looking more like its j-pan counterpart in 1/72. With the details coming along I'm willing to cut them some slack. I'm more interested in seeing the vf series in the next update.

What is the latest update?

 solkan wrote:
What Kickstarter needs to do is update their FAQ to adopt the same "One year, no cost extension" that the NIH, NSF, and other grant agencies provide.

Good enough for government work, right?

I'm all for criticizing the government when valid but this doesn't appear to be analogous at all. Most grant agencies (Government and private) allow for no cost extensions of grants they've awarded to let the grantee spend the originally requested money. Most grantees don't spent everything in the originally planned period due to the difficulty in estimating startup delays and planning for whether you'll get the grant in the first place.

So the provision doesn't really deserve the ironic pejorative, and in this case, we're the NIH!

Update #130 is here

Sorry I am not that great at reposting the entire update in this forum. The pictures would throw me off. So I posted a link to the kickstarter update.

Mike1975 wrote:
if others should have been said at all.

Oh, I'm sure we can think of a thing or two...

That said, this update was an improvement. It's been often requested to see what these things are that they're unhappy with, and they finally did. And I agree with their assessment!

It really shouldn't have taken this long or been this hard, but as I've said before, credit where credit is due.

Still not a fan of the (as mentioned in the comments) "come at me, bro!" pose they keep using for it, but as long as the arms have some leeway to their posing, that's just a personal preference thing I can rectify.

 Forar wrote:

I definitely do not need 300 models.

Technically, you probably don't "need" even one but I think we can all agree that all of us posting in the threads want hundreds of our precioussss...

I am glad though that they're sharing in the latest update the way they did. That is the type of update that the front page description says they would be giving us from the get-go and the type I was expecting. I can put up with delays as long as the delays are explained and not just hand waved away with a platitude *jazz hands*. I hope they continue both the weekly updates as well as treating us like crowdfunders (and not preorderers like during the majority of the last 8 months).

Well, yes, in the literal sense, sure. >.<

I mean more in terms of what I'm ever likely to field. I have sincere doubts I'll ever run more than 300 points in VTs, so getting 600 is probably overkill.

Seriously leaning towards trimming my Zentraedi force down to 'token' levels as well. Just can't see myself playing them nearly as often.

And everything I don't keep is something I don't have to build or store! Win/Win!

... I'm going to owe Battlefoam so much money during their next Thanksgiving Sale.

Edit: of course, that's still conjecture. Maybe playing a 600 point game with nothing but VTs is super fun. But... well, until we know more, I'm assuming there'll hit a point where I'll want to toss some Supers in there instead, or Destroids, or Ghosts/Lancers, etc.

 Forar wrote:
Well, yes, in the literal sense, sure. >.<

I mean more in terms of what I'm ever likely to field. I have sincere doubts I'll ever run more than 300 points in VTs, so getting 600 is probably overkill.

Seriously leaning towards trimming my Zentraedi force down to 'token' levels as well. Just can't see myself playing them nearly as often.

And everything I don't keep is something I don't have to build or store! Win/Win!

... I'm going to owe Battlefoam so much money during their next Thanksgiving Sale.

Edit: of course, that's still conjecture. Maybe playing a 600 point game with nothing but VTs is super fun. But... well, until we know more, I'm assuming there'll hit a point where I'll want to toss some Supers in there instead, or Destroids, or Ghosts/Lancers, etc.

Remember, you may want to "host" a game for a newbie friend or family member in a few years so you should keep a sizeable (*NOT* token) zentraedi force that shows off the variety for that reason. As for battlefoam, if you order custom foam during their sale you won't get it till the next year. My BF BF (battlefoam black friday double twin acronym!) order just arrived last week... after I started calling when emailing wasn't getting anywhere. It's good foam and I got a great deal but you will wait for custom work.

Joyboozer wrote:
Doesn't really explain the attitude towards backers in the updates. I get the feeling we're regarded as an inconvenience.

Of course we are. Once we've paid, would you expect anything else? This kind of attitude is not unique to PB by any means, either.

 warboss wrote:
As for battlefoam, if you order custom foam during their sale you won't get it till the next year. My BF BF (battlefoam black friday double twin acronym!) order just arrived last week... after I started calling when emailing wasn't getting anywhere. It's good foam and I got a great deal but you will wait for custom work.

That explains why PB contracted BF. Birds of a feather I suppose.

 warboss wrote:
Remember, you may want to "host" a game for a newbie friend or family member in a few years so you should keep a sizeable (*NOT* token) zentraedi force that shows off the variety for that reason.

Not likely to happen, but even if it does, I probably won't need more than 24 battlepods for said teaching experience.

Hell, I'd better not. The core box only comes with 12. I think 2 core boxes worth and a pile of extras (eventually) oughta suffice. :-P

As I said earlier in the thread, touch of buyers remorse, realizations that 3 BCs were probably overkill, etc. Wish we'd just stuck with 6 boxes instead of 8.

As for battlefoam, if you order custom foam during their sale you won't get it till the next year. My BF BF (battlefoam black friday double twin acronym!) order just arrived last week... after I started calling when emailing wasn't getting anywhere. It's good foam and I got a great deal but you will wait for custom work.

Aware of that too. But I'm also assuming that I won't have built a force large enough to require its own luggage compartment until early next year anyway. A couple dozen VTs and Destroids oughta fit in the little case I already have (might buy a single tray from the local distributor to make better use of the space), or some other storage solution for the occasional game.

Believe me, I've put a lot of thought into this.

Nari224 wrote:

 solkan wrote:
What Kickstarter needs to do is update their FAQ to adopt the same "One year, no cost extension" that the NIH, NSF, and other grant agencies provide.

Good enough for government work, right?

I'm all for criticizing the government when valid but this doesn't appear to be analogous at all. Most grant agencies (Government and private) allow for no cost extensions of grants they've awarded to let the grantee spend the originally requested money. Most grantees don't spent everything in the originally planned period due to the difficulty in estimating startup delays and planning for whether you'll get the grant in the first place.

So the provision doesn't really deserve the ironic pejorative, and in this case, we're the NIH!

I'm sorry but I'm not sure how you connect the fact that the federal government has a standard for timely completion of grants to some sort of criticism of those grant program standards.

Group A gives money to Group B with the expectation that a project will be completed in such and such time period. And, "due to the difficulty in estimating startup delays and planning for whether you'll get the grant in the first place" there's a policy for an automatic extension.

"due to the difficulty in estimating startup delays and planning for whether you'll get the grant in the first place" seems to be exactly the sort of thing that causes Kickstarter project delays, too. If nothing else, the fact that the project won't know how well the project is going to fund and how much needs to be produced is just as big a factor as whether the grant will be approved.

But only are you the NIH, but you paid money for the privilege. But if you were the NIH, you would have agreed to policies making this delay reasonable.

It certainly doesn't apply to all projects, but I daresay a lot of the ones that have become truly infamous in the community owe their delays to one thing; stretch goals.

It'd be one thing if projects picked a reasonable target and reasonable funding, hit it, and that was that.

Then campaigns started adding goals to inspire more backers/funding by aiming to expand the scope of the project. Better materials, more stuff, swag etc.

Now it's obvious that projects are 'lowballing' their opening offer in order to both tout out the old "omg we funded in X hours!" bit, followed by a flurry of activity. There are people who proclaim that perhaps RRT was only going to hit 30k and just be the base box without expansion. I call shenanigans. There is no way everyone involved put in all that time and work and expected a popular property with nostalgia factored in was only going to get a couple hundred backers.

And bluntly, I think it's leading to some irresponsible behaviour on the venue. Campaigns so wrapped up in hitting that hundred thousand dollar mark, or better, a million plus, who just see the huge Scrooge McDuck style pile of money they should receive in a few weeks, rather than the fact that they just doubled the scale of work to be done and may have made up a few things from whole cloth while they were at it.

Yes, I will cheerfully grant that "omg my toy soldiers were delayed 6/12/48 months" is pretty high up there in "#firstworldproblems", but I do think Kickstarter needs to revisit some of their policies.

It'd be nice if "massive delays" became the exception, as opposed to the rule, at least for gaming KS's.

The problem is that there's no standard to judge by when a project should be complete, especially given the wide range of industries and subject that KS caters to. We tend to look at it mostly through the lens of people wanting it to act as a retail pre-order system for our mans, but they handle lots of stuff and projects particularly truly artistic ones are often something you can't just snap together.

Time constraints are something most artists have a serious struggle with, it's not like other jobs where you punch a 9-5 clock and will have x quantity or art done. The artist mind and work flow typically functions in a very unpredictable wave form that hinges on surges of creative thought and energy, sometimes you are on fire and producing prolific amounts of artwork and other times you are completely useless. Obviously you want to know yourself and you abilities well enough that you can put a realistic estimate towards those projections but sometimes it's not possible particularly when it's some more intangible like music, or writing, that's coming from a single artist.

Also a lot of media forms are virtually impossible to set completion dates on, tons of music and films linger in production for years as the artist or director may need to have those gears turn just right to produce something of value and not rushed slop simply to appease a deadline. That's often the difference between something run of the mill or a masterful artwork. So simply stating that all projects must be done in x time is very limiting on project that are of a much stronger artistic form.

There is a world of difference between creating an object that will serve as a retail product and is created by a team vs an artistic work by a single artist.

Properly researched and planned projects that are focused on developing a commercial product however can be estimated much more accurately. Know that you will need x number of models you can plan accordingly. Many of the delays come from when expectations are wildly exceeded and the KS creator doesn't know their limits. With a lot of projects that smash their goals they start throwing out stretch goal after stretch goal without considering their ability to achieve those goals in a fashionable time. You get dazzled by the money coming in and assume that the increased money will solve all the problems which it doesn't

I think what more people need to do on KS is plan for a maximum funding limit for their projects, while nobody ever wants to turn away business that's beating down your door if you were planning on taking a small sip from the fountain it's a whole other set of prospects to suddenly try taking that sip from a fire hose. I'm sure that having that grand slam project on KS is a very intoxicating experience but you can't allow that to run out of control.

Every project is unique so there's no way to judge what an appropriate standard will be. So rather than have KS set any sort of blanket deadlines for delivery I think they should get people to ask themselves at what point do they get oversaturated with work and how will they prepare for a situation in which they are taking on too much work? You in theory have already correctly considered a lot of various aspects in determining how to meet your offers, it shouldn't take too much additional projection to figure out how to meet any extended goals and have plans created in the case it blows up. Despite doing a very impressive amount of initial ground work planning it seems that most KS project don't put in much effort past their planned goals, or place realistic limits on what they can handle in a maxium capacity. A lot of very successful KS projects are caught scrambling on how they can offer even more stretchgoals and take on more work when they need to set all the ego and excitement aside and start asking can we actually ride this wave? or should we cap this? if it goes well beyond what we planned for what do we do?

Doing otherwise is not really being honest with yourself or your backers.



(Not aiming this specifically at the Robotech KS, but rather all large KS projects in general)


.

 paulson games wrote:
The problem is that there's no standard to judge by when a project should be complete, especially given the wide range of industries and subject that KS caters to. We tend to look at it mostly through the lens of people wanting it to act as a retail pre-order system for our mans, but they handle lots of stuff and projects particularly truly artistic ones are often something you can't just snap together.

Time constraints are something most artists have a serious struggle with, it's not like other jobs where you punch a 9-5 clock and will have x quantity or art done. The artist mind and work flow typically functions in a very unpredictable wave form that hinges on surges of creative thought and energy, sometimes you are on fire and producing prolific amounts of artwork and other times you are completely useless. Obviously you want to know yourself and you abilities well enough that you can put a realistic estimate towards those projections but sometimes it's not possible particularly when it's some more intangible like music, or writing, that's coming from a single artist.

Also a lot of media forms are virtually impossible to set completion dates on, tons of music and films linger in production for years as the artist or director may need to have those gears turn just right to produce something of value and not rushed slop simply to appease a deadline. That's often the difference between something run of the mill or a masterful artwork. So simply stating that all projects must be done in x time is very limiting on project that are of a much stronger artistic form.

There is a world of difference between creating an object that will serve as a retail product and is created by a team vs an artistic work by a single artist.

Properly researched and planned projects that are focused on developing a commercial product however can be estimated much more accurately. Know that you will need x number of models you can plan accordingly. Many of the delays come from when expectations are wildly exceeded and the KS creator doesn't know their limits. With a lot of projects that smash their goals they start throwing out stretch goal after stretch goal without considering their ability to achieve those goals in a fashionable time. You get dazzled by the money coming in and assume that the increased money will solve all the problems which it doesn't

I think what more people need to do on KS is plan for a maximum funding limit for their projects, while nobody ever wants to turn away business that's beating down your door if you were planning on taking a small sip from the fountain it's a whole other set of prospects to suddenly try taking that sip from a fire hose. I'm sure that having that grand slam project on KS is a very intoxicating experience but you can't allow that to run out of control.

Every project is unique so there's no way to judge what an appropriate standard will be. So rather than have KS set any sort of blanket deadlines for delivery I think they should get people to ask themselves at what point do they get oversaturated with work and how will they prepare for a situation in which they are taking on too much work? You in theory have already correctly considered a lot of various aspects in determining how to meet your offers, it shouldn't take too much additional projection to figure out how to meet any extended goals and have plans created in the case it blows up. Despite doing a very impressive amount of initial ground work planning it seems that most KS project don't put in much effort past their planned goals, or place realistic limits on what they can handle in a maxium capacity. A lot of very successful KS projects are caught scrambling on how they can offer even more stretchgoals and take on more work when they need to set all the ego and excitement aside and start asking can we actually ride this wave? or should we cap this? if it goes well beyond what we planned for what do we do?

Doing otherwise is not really being honest with yourself or your backers.

(Not aiming this specifically at the Robotech KS, but rather all large KS projects in general).

Everything you and Forar said is true. However, I think some companies are approaching things more effectively, if not more realistically. Apparently some KS companies don't actually look at other successful KS's, and how they ran their projects. CMON with their Season 2 Zombicide had the definite time when things were split for a second shipment. Then, with the Rivet Wars project, the actual creator, Ted Terranova, added some new figures for KS backers when they had to change the core game due to space constraints in the physical box.

I don't see any of this from PB. Them giving us the core box in June is only to allow them to push their product at Gencon, not out of some altruistic thought of the backers. I agree with some of the previous posts, that PB has treated us more like a nuisance, that they don't need to explain things to us. I know that Mike1975 feels like he owes the party line to us for his involvement in this, but they need to up their PR effort.

I still am impressed with how badly the public relations are handled.

I have had to "manage" both suppliers and customers and in both relations you should give the impression they are "important" to you.

Sounding out missives gushing about how scrumptious the plastic money making pieces are so fiddly that you need lots of time getting them just right can only be written so many ways.

Give me a freaking spreadsheet.
1) List in the first column all the different separate models.
2) In the top row list all the operations in order of what needs to be done with approximate time needed between steps. Update these as you learn with each progressive item or in parallel. Go completely insane and add extra columns as you find new operations that need to be done.
3) An approximate date of completion can be determined with this method.
4) At the end of the row use "Max(...)" to determine the last part to complete for your main timeline.
5) Make a timeline for packing and shipping like in step 2 starting with the longest running part.
6) You now have a rough and easy schedule (or dazzle them with Microsoft Project or something...)
7) Divulge to backers as often as you wish!
8) Update with extreme diligence.

Your customers will like you even if they do not quite agree with the long wait but at least an honest effort is made with some degree of accuracy.

PB is really giving the message that we as customers are "stupid" and cannot understand all the "gee-wiz" development and manufacture intricacies.
Wrong, it is stupid to be unable to convey information in an understandable way and show you have things under control.
So at least if you have to make a correction to your timeline it is easy to understand.

Is there really anything negative here??

Simple!!!!

 Talizvar wrote:


PB is really giving the message that we as customers are "stupid" and cannot understand all the "gee-wiz" development and manufacture intricacies.
Wrong, it is stupid to be unable to convey information in an understandable way and show you have things under control.
So at least if you have to make a correction to your timeline it is easy to understand.

Is there really anything negative here??

Simple!!!!

How can we simple customers understand the intricacies of product development from the depths of our parents' basements when those atop Mt. Michigan at Palladium couldn't fathom them during all of 2013? What you're proposing also sounds like alot more work than asking people on payday what they think of their boss's big project. I trust Palladium as they've been in a somewhat related business for over 30 years which has kept them going (along with panhandling and selling gimmicks like pencils and mugs instead of new books for half the lines) without a need for unnecessary things like project management and accountability. Why fix what is only 98% broken? If you do that, you're basically throwing away the 2% that still works! Heck, next you'll tell me that Soviet style communism isn't a viable socioeconomic strategy...

 Salacious Greed wrote:
.

I don't see any of this from PB. Them giving us the core box in June is only to allow them to push their product at Gencon, not out of some altruistic thought of the backers. I agree with some of the previous posts, that PB has treated us more like a nuisance, that they don't need to explain things to us. I know that Mike1975 feels like he owes the party line to us for his involvement in this, but they need to up their PR effort.

Well what do you except, PB is the company that basically got a million+ bucks from there "fans" for "nothing". PB did it before, way wouldn't they take there time and snub there backers again. Then they will just release the game whenever the feel like it, even if years later.

 warboss wrote:
How can we simple customers understand the intricacies of product development from the depths of our parents' basements when those atop Mt. Michigan at Palladium couldn't fathom them during all of 2013?

You are very correct, I am mistaken, what is a daily thing for me does not necessarily translate to other work experiences especially since they have farmed out for those skills and then do not use them.

What you're proposing also sounds like alot more work than asking people on payday what they think of their boss's big project. I trust Palladium as they've been in a somewhat related business for over 30 years which has kept them going (along with panhandling and selling gimmicks like pencils and mugs instead of new books for half the lines) without a need for unnecessary things like project management and accountability.

It has been identified historically if project management was applied it would just further confusion on why they run so late or do not publish at all. Again, my mistake...

Why fix what is only 98% broken? If you do that, you're basically throwing away the 2% that still works!

The Forar drinking game continues... 2% has kept them in food so this is more correct than I like.

Heck, next you'll tell me that Soviet style communism isn't a viable socioeconomic strategy...

But you have me in agreement, it was a good system for the time especially when you do not want people thinking for themselves, like PB's culture...

 Talizvar wrote:

 warboss wrote:
How can we simple customers understand the intricacies of product development from the depths of our parents' basements when those atop Mt. Michigan at Palladium couldn't fathom them during all of 2013?

You are very correct, I am mistaken, what is a daily thing for me does not necessarily translate to other work experiences especially since they have farmed out for those skills and then do not use them.

What you're proposing also sounds like alot more work than asking people on payday what they think of their boss's big project. I trust Palladium as they've been in a somewhat related business for over 30 years which has kept them going (along with panhandling and selling gimmicks like pencils and mugs instead of new books for half the lines) without a need for unnecessary things like project management and accountability.

It has been identified historically if project management was applied it would just further confusion on why they run so late or do not publish at all. Again, my mistake...

Why fix what is only 98% broken? If you do that, you're basically throwing away the 2% that still works!

The Forar drinking game continues... 2% has kept them in food so this is more correct than I like.

Heck, next you'll tell me that Soviet style communism isn't a viable socioeconomic strategy...

But you have me in agreement, it was a good system for the time especially when you do not want people thinking for themselves, like PB's culture...

Warboss, Talizvar, you guys make me laugh. Very nice witticisms and sarcasm.

However, this is the level I place PB at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/world/middleeast/suicide-bomb-instructor-accidentally-kills-iraqi-pupils.html?hp&_r=0

Good thing they only make horrible books...

 Salacious Greed wrote:

 paulson games wrote:
The problem is that there's no standard to judge by when a project should be complete, especially given the wide range of industries and subject that KS caters to. We tend to look at it mostly through the lens of people wanting it to act as a retail pre-order system for our mans, but they handle lots of stuff and projects particularly truly artistic ones are often something you can't just snap together.

Time constraints are something most artists have a serious struggle with, it's not like other jobs where you punch a 9-5 clock and will have x quantity or art done. The artist mind and work flow typically functions in a very unpredictable wave form that hinges on surges of creative thought and energy, sometimes you are on fire and producing prolific amounts of artwork and other times you are completely useless. Obviously you want to know yourself and you abilities well enough that you can put a realistic estimate towards those projections but sometimes it's not possible particularly when it's some more intangible like music, or writing, that's coming from a single artist.

Also a lot of media forms are virtually impossible to set completion dates on, tons of music and films linger in production for years as the artist or director may need to have those gears turn just right to produce something of value and not rushed slop simply to appease a deadline. That's often the difference between something run of the mill or a masterful artwork. So simply stating that all projects must be done in x time is very limiting on project that are of a much stronger artistic form.

There is a world of difference between creating an object that will serve as a retail product and is created by a team vs an artistic work by a single artist.

Properly researched and planned projects that are focused on developing a commercial product however can be estimated much more accurately. Know that you will need x number of models you can plan accordingly. Many of the delays come from when expectations are wildly exceeded and the KS creator doesn't know their limits. With a lot of projects that smash their goals they start throwing out stretch goal after stretch goal without considering their ability to achieve those goals in a fashionable time. You get dazzled by the money coming in and assume that the increased money will solve all the problems which it doesn't

I think what more people need to do on KS is plan for a maximum funding limit for their projects, while nobody ever wants to turn away business that's beating down your door if you were planning on taking a small sip from the fountain it's a whole other set of prospects to suddenly try taking that sip from a fire hose. I'm sure that having that grand slam project on KS is a very intoxicating experience but you can't allow that to run out of control.

Every project is unique so there's no way to judge what an appropriate standard will be. So rather than have KS set any sort of blanket deadlines for delivery I think they should get people to ask themselves at what point do they get oversaturated with work and how will they prepare for a situation in which they are taking on too much work? You in theory have already correctly considered a lot of various aspects in determining how to meet your offers, it shouldn't take too much additional projection to figure out how to meet any extended goals and have plans created in the case it blows up. Despite doing a very impressive amount of initial ground work planning it seems that most KS project don't put in much effort past their planned goals, or place realistic limits on what they can handle in a maxium capacity. A lot of very successful KS projects are caught scrambling on how they can offer even more stretchgoals and take on more work when they need to set all the ego and excitement aside and start asking can we actually ride this wave? or should we cap this? if it goes well beyond what we planned for what do we do?

Doing otherwise is not really being honest with yourself or your backers.

(Not aiming this specifically at the Robotech KS, but rather all large KS projects in general).

Everything you and Forar said is true. However, I think some companies are approaching things more effectively, if not more realistically. Apparently some KS companies don't actually look at other successful KS's, and how they ran their projects. CMON with their Season 2 Zombicide had the definite time when things were split for a second shipment. Then, with the Rivet Wars project, the actual creator, Ted Terranova, added some new figures for KS backers when they had to change the core game due to space constraints in the physical box.

I don't see any of this from PB. Them giving us the core box in June is only to allow them to push their product at Gencon, not out of some altruistic thought of the backers. I agree with some of the previous posts, that PB has treated us more like a nuisance, that they don't need to explain things to us. I know that Mike1975 feels like he owes the party line to us for his involvement in this, but they need to up their PR effort.

I'm not sure how to take this last bit. I could give a rats ass about the Party line. BUT instead of bitching, whining, groaning, and complaining oft and constantly about 1. Things I cannot control. 2. Things I am not directly involved with and so cannot but guess at the real details 3. Decide to use my very limited knowledge to fill in those gaps and ending up with a good point here and there more often then not made off of some really bad assumptions based off of my very limited knowledge.

How did they let me get my foot in the door? Well instead of the 3 items from above I decided to take what we knew, and make the best of it. I used my own time and money to create and print standees and a game table. I used what knowledge I do have to dig through what little information we have from the KS and managed to build a more complete rules set that I blatantly offered for the betterment of all. Now because of the KS I was asked to not share the standees but many have see how easy they are to make and have made their own. I've been allowed to look at the rules and have made suggestions and shared ideas on how to improve things. What I have in all is not very far at all from what will be seen when the actual rules come out. I will up date a few things in the rules before the end of the month so that others who wish to play can also work on something similar.

After a few of the calls and emails I tend to think that PB is concerned that we get a good product and that we are happy with it. Although Kevin knows little about Mini gaming there are others who do and they have listened and even argued on some points with me. They know, as you and I do, that many Mini Gamers are pains in the ass and rules lawyers who often look for small rules technicalities to use to their advantage to win, always, and every time. I do not see any holes that will allow these types of players to move in and breed so I'm hoping for the best. Most of my suggestions have been on small rules changes and clarifications and adjustments of unit costs. Honestly they are working to make this the best they can for you.

Should they make a spreadsheet like Talivizar says, personally, I think so. Could they have said more earlier, at some points no, there were some things that no matter what was said ND and PB would be accused of either being lax or throwing each other under the bus for mistakes. If you have ever taken part in a big project, even to your manager you try to smooth the hard edges over and throw glitter on what is working well as long as it is not overdoing it. We are considered like shareholders, we put money in their hands to build a product. They can't come back and say look, "um, things are not as planned, give me more", BUT we expect to be able to go to them and say, "um I don't think it's working, I'm out". Whoever has that idea needs to go back and understand the process of a crowndfunder from square one.


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In fact the rules are so close to what they had some were quite literally surprised and wondered where in the world I got the information and then they remembered about the pre-release rules and tactical briefings.

Yes, that point does give me a little pride.

And for those who have read and/or played with the rules, thank you and I'm glad you have had fun and enjoyed it.

Mike, buddy, you're not really helping your case here.

If all it takes to be heard is to basically create their game for them from scratch (perhaps with some community interaction), play out a few games using these extrapolated rules and then email back and forth with the staff themselves, it's not exactly something that thousands or even dozens of backers could've all done.

What you did is impressive. It's great that you've had those efforts recognized.

But that still doesn't excuse the months of gak'y communications.

They've gotten better of late, which is nice. It's not great (want to see great updates? Go look at Xia), but it's a hell of a lot better than they were.

But don't downplay it like you just printed off your own Battlepod and Veritech stat cards from the net and suddenly you were heard.

Not to mention that it shouldn't take that much to be heard in the first place. They have forums. They have a KS comments section. Neither of which see a fraction of the interaction you've expressed having, despite potentially reaching several orders of magnitude more at once with either or both.

Hell, you, a non-employee, should not be one of our best sources of inside information, limited as that may be.

Things like that are a greater condemnation of this campaign than any snark we might lob at it, and that communication failure lands right on them.

And you know what, on closer examination? It's pretty gak'y to share the rules with ANY backer and leave the rest in the dark, considering how many times the fans have asked to see them.

Keeping those close to the chest, ESPECIALLY if they're able to be retroengineered by a backer with merely an outline to guide them is not currying them any favor.

Agreed. I signed up to fund/buy a Robotech minis game line to be delivered between October and December of 2013 with a buffer of 2-3 months as reasonable, not to be "allowed" to possibly reverse engineer their clunky RPG system into a minis game as severance for them not having a clue what they were getting into despite people telling them both before, during, and after warnings that have since come true.

In the end, Mike, people complain because Palladium has nonstop given them multiple valid reasons to complain. There are plenty of great suggestions that weren't followed over the past 8 months and others that still aren't being followed like a part by part spreadsheet updated weekly or biweekly as well as rules previews or preferably a full PDF release of the rules. I realize you agree with the above but the sentiments aren't shared over at Palladium and it follows a pattern. They've improved significantly over the past month in that regard which is why I've been cutting them slack on the KS comments as well as their forum but improving over months of silence punctuated by periodic platitudes is a pretty low bar to start with.

Do you want to see an alternate stream of Palladium project management failure? Check out the past two months of weekly updates about the UEEF Marines Robotech RPG book. That, just like the kickstarter, is not even treading water but actually moving back out to sea in terms of the release date. Over the past two months, it has gone from early 2012 to spring and Kevin just mentioned this week that he is still ASSIGNING art to various artists for the book. How the hell was he just a week or two planning on coming out with it in early spring when he hadn't even doled out the work assignments for art? That is the type of repeated systematic failure that pisses people off and gives them valid reasons to be overtly negative. You've hinted above that Palladium could have been more open but it would have been seen as throwing others under the bus but the RPG books are completely in their court until they're ready to be approved by HG... and yet we see the same type of empty promises and excuses from RPG projects just like we see with the minis game. Again, they 2 months ago obviously didn't have art even assigned (let alone reviewed and corrected if necessary by Palladium AND THEN sent to HG) but they felt the need to pad the weekly release with completely bonkers dates. Feel free to also follow the progress of the NG1 and 2 crowdfunded books that are touched by no one but palladium and their staff and yet are a year late despite being weeks away from the printer... two summers ago. There is a pattern.. you just have to see it yourself and not blame the people who do.

No, in the end people complain because they are wont to when they do not get what they want or things do not turn out to their expectations. My main point was that I found a way to move things forward and share and try to take part. Palladium has had problems in the past, yes, are you allowing that to cloud the present. I believe so. Will any of this change one wit of what you think. Unlikely. I know what patterns are there. I also know that if you want to look you can often create a pattern to fit whatever agenda you wish it to.

Forar,
C'mon, creating the game for them? You know that is just exaggeration. I put it together in large part from what they posted. I did not say the communication is awesome but when everyone jumps around pointing fingers on assumptions it reminds me of the guy who got in trouble for slapping a kid in class and sent to the principal. What the teacher does not know is that the kid who slapped the other kid was putting up with crap for the last 3 months and the teacher never noticed and finally snapped. There are a lot of assumptions here and NONE of it is evidence based. We are all like the teacher. We don't have the full picture.

Try a different track???? What kinds of things would cause a delay that neither Palladium or ND would want us to know about or think that it would not be wise to share with us? We like conspiracies right? What would the response be if shared? Is there enough clues from the recent updates to figure this out?

And no sharing the rules with one or two players when there are already well over 100 under NDA that playtested is not a huge deal for anybody but me personally. If you want maybe you could HELP with some of the things I would like to add to what I'm doing and maybe you might get a pek too? Still want to convert all the Macross stuff?

Actaully, mike1975 I did try and email them a while back and directly ask them for playrest info. They told me pointblank that they were not allowing others into the playtest and everything would be handled internally.

To allow only a few to have those very same rules which were supposedly 90% done last year is absolutely horrible PR. It's an absolute snub to the various fans who not only made their dream a reality, but want to help keep the dream alive.

This whole sitaution has absolutely burned me on anything PB will ever do again and it's because of theor horrible communication skills.

Update #131

Fear not Palladium True Believers! ©,™ There's plenty more:





I kid... mostly.



.

sqir666 wrote:
Actaully, mike1975 I did try and email them a while back and directly ask them for playrest info. They told me pointblank that they were not allowing others into the playtest and everything would be handled internally.

To allow only a few to have those very same rules which were supposedly 90% done last year is absolutely horrible PR. It's an absolute snub to the various fans who not only made their dream a reality, but want to help keep the dream alive.

This whole sitaution has absolutely burned me on anything PB will ever do again and it's because of theor horrible communication skills.

I was not brought in as a play tester. Playtesting was pretty much well over and done. I was brought in so that I could share with everyone some of the rules and information between now and release. If you learn the mechanics through after action reports its basically good PR. I can't understand the teary eyed but why not everybody attitude. That is a farce. The real question is more often Why is some other fan any more deserving than me? Answer. Check my Facebook page. I worked for it. Then emailed PB thinking why not? Nearly two months later I got a response. I wasn't expecting one. Hoping yes, expecting, No.


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besides. Just about EVERY backer is a huge fan. Do you just PDF the rules? Nope. Can't. HG and other IP holders would likely not allow that. As it is numerous fan based minis and such have disappeared in the last year or so.

Mike1975: It is good to know at least some people who are accessible have the ear of PB, it is better than a black hole that some people hint at.

I know there are PR fears of trying to not give too much information but I have always found people's imaginations are far worse than the reality so in these matters facts are far better than fiction.

I honestly think a broad strokes timeline should be published and could even portray certain models like a horse race of what can make it into wave1, wave2 etc.

Believe me, you MUST take the edges off on certain elements of development so departments do not feel persecuted: allow them the breathing room to focus on their jobs. As has been pointed out in this thread, some creative elements are particularly hard to nail down to a timeline and do not function well under stress. I have made fun of some design elements by titling that timeline "voo-doo and black magic happens here" or "waiting for the eureka! (1-3 weeks)" but you need to know your audience.

I know IP can be a touchy thing but there is this fine line of preventing competition scooping your latest game "engine" or throwing a bone to the fans.

Again, broad strokes outlining the rules could generate buzz or warn you of a potential blunder before release and get a chance to correct.

It could be an "opportunity" for Kevin to do those last minute finishing touches he likes to do...

I cannot help poke fun at the personalities and their culture because I have found myself too often working with controlling types and have had to say "I am here to make you look good so relax and let me do my job.". It all works out.

Mike1975 wrote:
Palladium has had problems in the past, yes, are you allowing that to cloud the present. I believe so.

Problems with the Robotech Kickstarter are not in the past but rather ongoing in the present. Problems with the NG2 rpg book are not in the past either as the second is approaching a year and a half delay. The delay yet again of the Robotech Marines book (originally scheduled for release around 4 years ago) is from last week's update and indicates again a problem in the present for Palladium. When the decades long history of the same ol' stuff matches exactly what is currently happening , there is no clouding going on.

This is the list of what they said was coming out in 2013 in their catalog. Feel free to see how many of the 20+ books listed actually made it out. Surely 2013 counts as a marker of the present, right?

Robotech UEEF Marines: 2013
Robotech RPG Tactics: 2013
Rifts Chaos Earth First Responders 2013
Rifts Chaos Eart Resurrection 2013
Northern Gun 2: Jan 2013
Megaverse in Flames: Early 2013
" Additional Nightbane® Sourcebooks are currently in development as we intend to release more new sourcebooks
for this dynamic game line."
Tome Grotesque: 2013
Beyond Arcanum: 2013
Land of the Damned 3: 2013
"Splicers® Sourcebooks: We plan to expand the Splicers® game setting to epic proportions with six new sourcebooks planned for 2013. More on them in the months to come.:
Rifts: Antarctica: 2013
Rifts: Secrets of the Atlanteans: 2013
Rifts: Sovietski 2013
Rifts: Delta Blues (2013 tentative)
Rifts: Dark Woods (2013 tentative)
Rifts: Voodoo and Spirit world (2013 tentative)
"We have several other sourcebooks in the process of being written and developed by a number of freelancer writers for 2013
release, including at least one or two sourcebooks for Heroes Unlimited™, Dead Reign™, Nightbane®, Palladium Fantasy
RPG®, and a few surprises."

To save you the trouble, only one book from the list of 20+ upcoming 2013 books in their 2013 catalog came out along with one that didn't even make the list because it was supposed to come out in 2012 and they just assumed it would but it instead came out in Fall 2013 (NG1). Ironically, that was the "year of palladium fantasy" as it was the 25th or 30th anniversary (can't remember which) and they planned on big stuff for it after the catalog came out and did nothing for the line as well. They hit less than 5% of their goals for the most recent year and the delays continue to add up for 2014 so far. That is the present situation of all things PalladiumTM.

Added album Feb 9th with some game descriptions on each of the photos. Need to sign in to Facebook to see them and read descriptions.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.1464108943808552&type=1

"This content is currently unavailable
The page you requested cannot be displayed right now. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page."

I'm logged in to facebook (haven't liked your page though)

Palladium's "issues" with meeting deadlines are a long known thing.

The Robotech Tactics project really needs to be run as a separate enterprise, I feel. It sounds like they aren't which is disappointing.

Mike1975 wrote:

Joyboozer wrote:
Doesn't really explain the attitude towards backers in the updates. I get the feeling we're regarded as an inconvenience.

I could be wrong since I do not talk to the people in the office except through a few emails and a couple of calls. I get the sense that it is more of a frustration at wondering if somethings should have been said earlier of if others should have been said at all. I do agree though that some of the assurances are being handled too softly. Platitudes are nice, but unnecessary.

Mike1975: This prompted my saying that you regurgitated the party line. I was not making any assumptions about who you are, what you do or your affiliation with PB. I was merely stating facts, as you've been touting PB's efforts. I have no problem with your position Mike, and I am not one of the people holding some grudge because you got a peek behind the curtain. I'm also not calling you a hand-waving fanboy. By your own words though, you're intentionally viewing PB/ND through rose colored glasses, focusing only on the few things that they're doing right. Hopefully, the rule set is something they've gotten right, as they'll have had more than a year to have perfected them, tightened them up and playtested them extensively since the end of the KS. However, their history does not reassure a great many people who have dealt with them and their assurances in the past.

However, let me tell you about myself, and my outlook on the professional business world. I have been a professional Soldier in the Army for more than 20 years, and been an Officer for most of that. I am currently deployed in Afghanistan, where Soldiers are putting themselves in harms way everyday. Concise, well developed plans and contingencies are owed to those Soldiers to keep them safe, as everything has great risk when they perform their duties, both on and off of our bases. The training was all completed before we set foot in this country, it is now down to pushing for perfection in planning to ensure that the execution can be flawless until contact with the enemy.

So when I look at a professional business entity, such as Palladium Books, who has what, a 25 year history? I expect them to comport themselves as professionals. Do I expect them to be experts at producing miniatures? No, not at all. But I do expect them to have the business acumen and professionalism to have reached out, brought in professionals who have insight and are experts in that field, especially when they are spending over a million dollars on it. While you say that you can set aside their mediocrity and missteps, I'm sorry, I believe that professional organizations should be held accountable, not backslapped away, told that it's ok. If you view my comments about a company with an ongoing problem as whining or complaining, fair enough. But I don't feel that I should give them a pass simply because they are "trying". I would probably not be filled with so much angst if anything since the KS ended seemed like it had a shred of integrity attached to it. Unfortunately, none of it seems to.

I ran into a guy from Ninja Division over the Templecon Weekend. I gave him some flak for the Robotech thing (basically I jokingly said, "Hey, when am I getting my Robotech stuff?" and he got upset).

@Mike: I do appreciate what you're doing in trying to drum up enthusiasm. The problem is that no matter how much effort you put into it (and you seem to be putting in alot and conversely being rewarded appropriately for it), it's not a replacement for that same effort from the makers of the game. You're basically the part time waiter bringing out the free cheesesticks at Restaurant Palladium on your own initiative when every customer is waiting for over an hour for their promised steak dinner while hearing the manager tell everyone how great their dinner is and how long it was aged..

The buck both figuratively and literally stops at Palladium. They organized this project that is progressing like it is run by the seat of their pants for the past 8 months after the well run kickstarter. They hired ND as the "experts" for the minis game when it seems they're at best in over their heads in work or at worst incompetent for the workload. They negotiated and signed the contract with HG that gives them approval over every little thing adding yet another delay to the process on top of the intrinsic delays associated with anything Palladium. Ultimately, Palladium's rep is entirely their own creation and only they can take the steps (or ignore them at their own peril) to fix it. Until they do the former, the tone will be negative and rightfully so due to their ONGOING history of failure.

Damn, I forgot that this Facebook group was closed.

Game Prep

Cont.

UEDF flies in while in fighter mode. Turn one is about ready to go so a few clarification are needed. In a Skirmish game Life is Cheap goes out the door. Units now may produce one command point each. So the UEDF will start with 2, one for each VF-1A, and the Zen with 6, one per Battlepod.

The game starts with each side rolling 2d6 and determining who wins the initiative. On Turn one the Zen roll a 9 and the UEDF roll an 8. The Zen wins but decide to give their first move to the UEDF knowing that nothing is even close to being in range. UEDF opts to turn towards the edge and zoom along it trying to split up the Zentraedi some.

After zooming over to the edge and moving 24 inches each the Veritechs are still out of range.

The Zen players moves the close Battlepods up keeping them within 2 inches of each other. Probably not the best idea Zen players also tries to bring the farther back Zentraedi up faster. There is no need to save command points as the turn is almost over. Spending 2 command points for each of the lagging battlepods the Zen player has a chance of allowing them to move even further.

On a result of a 6 for each command point spent the unit in question can move again equal to it's SPD attribute. Of the 6 rolls, not a single stupid 6.

Turn 2, command pools are refilled and then initiative is rolled and with the UEDF winning it by an inch this time. The veritech transform to Guardian mode and move up and fire salvos of missiles at the close pods hoping to take them out before their buddies show up.

Of the 8 missiles fired 5 are shot down through some lucky Anti-Missile fire. Anti-Missile needs a 5+ and 2 of the Battlpods get that.

The one battlepod struck tries to dodge and fails miserably getting hit with 3 missiles. At this point there is nothing more to do since even rolling against all three missiles would not be enough to keep it alive.

The Zen players's turn. The two remaining Battlepods close to take advantage of Focus Fire and Accurate and make it that much easier to strike the elusive veritech. They fire and manage to hit each veritech for 4 points of damage. Two 5's seal the hits. Each veritech attempts to dodge. Only one dodges. The other take 4 of it's 14 damage and marks it off.

The Battlpods lagging behing move up . And here is where turn 3 will start up. Command pools are refilled with only 5 command points to the Zentraedi and 2 to the UEDF. The Initiative dies rolls is a tie, neither side has a unit with a really high Leadership rating so the Zen go first this turn since the UEDF did last turn.

Zen go first but since the 2 close up Battlepods are at a range of 12 or less they can freely fire their weapons since they have Focus fire that will allow them to fire a second weapons system, and also Accurate for a +1 to their main guns if they don't move. I also measure out to the farther away battlepods and they will also all be in range when they move so that there is no reason to save command points to boost their speed.

The close Battlepods hit with one primary and one secondary from the Battlepods and winds up taking 6 more damage for a total of 10 of it's 14 points.

The battle pods that just come into range all fire on the other veritech hitting it twice and it manages to avoid on of the three attacks.

The Veritechs float back some trying to keep the ranges open and unleashing another missile barrage. This is their second of three missile barrages. They take out only one more pod.

One salvo is shot down with AM, another manages to dodge the missiles and the last one goes boom.

The remaining pods move up and take out on Veritech and would the other. The last veritech runs away with only 4 MDC left. Decisive win Zentraedi. I wonder how this would have gone if I have not given any Command Points to the Zentraedi?



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Comments were too long and it was not letting me post pic and description, guess I will have to have smaller explanations!

And a few other goodies.

What is particularly sad about all this is I somewhat enjoyed their IP of Rifts and how anything you think of could be done.

Them having Robotech was also impressive for interest.

They have shown little motivation to innovate.

Rifts RPG game on iPad!
Robotech side scroller on Android!
New ePub books with index, search and links!
New novels in the Robotech or Rifts world!
Any number of these I can see a clear means of getting them to market.

Not seeing movement on this, and many of us in the Kickstarter are looking forward to our involvement in PB ending here. I cannot stand be strung along so my liking for Robotech is the only thing affording me ANY patience at all.

I guess it pains me to see this happening and at least from my experience it is so easy to mitigate these problems or customer impatience.

I am used to customers that charge you $100 a minute their line is down when you did not give them parts on time so I may have a little more focus.

solkan wrote:
I'm sorry but I'm not sure how you connect the fact that the federal government has a standard for timely completion of grants to some sort of criticism of those grant program standards.

Group A gives money to Group B with the expectation that a project will be completed in such and such time period. And, "due to the difficulty in estimating startup delays and planning for whether you'll get the grant in the first place" there's a policy for an automatic extension.

"due to the difficulty in estimating startup delays and planning for whether you'll get the grant in the first place" seems to be exactly the sort of thing that causes Kickstarter project delays, too. If nothing else, the fact that the project won't know how well the project is going to fund and how much needs to be produced is just as big a factor as whether the grant will be approved.

But only are you the NIH, but you paid money for the privilege. But if you were the NIH, you would have agreed to policies making this delay reasonable.

Mea cupla, I read your original post as a bit of a gratuitous anti-government swipe. I do understand what you're saying but I still don't think it's the best analogy since the NIH can and will yank your funding if you don't meet certain criteria. Additionally in this case the stated level of preparedness would appear to have been somewhat... optimistic (i.e. there shouldn't have been significant startup delays). This is opposed to being effectively completely stalled stalled because you need the funding or the commitment of the funding to proceed with a lot of your project which is often the case with larger government grants. In this case, PB/ND clearly self funded at least a few sculpts and had some approximation of the rules before the KS. Yes I know there's some grey in that difference.

The main issue is that Kickstarter is a Libertarian's paradise - it connects the backers into making contracts with the Project creator (as clearly spelled out in the TOS) and not them, and then spends the rest of the TOS trying really hard to skirt securities (backers aren't investors) and consumer protection (backers aren't buyers) laws. This is their business model which works well for them and me, but carpe diem.

If Kickstarter started making statements on the behalf of their Project Creators that would likely dislodge them from that little niche they've found although I completely agree with your sentiment.

But we're rehashing what has already been gone over quite extensively on this thread at that point .

Remember Robotech was not the first, the first was Mechanoids and then the Palladium RPG then Turtles and 4th Robotech. Rifts did not come out till a few years after Robotech. It was when the lightbulb went on and PB realized that the system could be adapted to to anything. Imagine a Teenage Mutant Wolf Veritech Pilot? Too bad the TMNT license was dropped. That was by far the most fun of the bunch IMHO.

An I-pad version would also make character creation much better since the rules would have to be re-organized so that things would be more orderly. Having to look at HTH bonuses, Piloting and Gunnery Skill Bonuses and then Mecha bonuses and THEN physical skill/attribute bonuses to see of I had a +3 or a +4 to strike was a PITA. I never played enough but there were certain combinations that would give one crazy amounts of power. It was like D and D. I had an Archer/Ranger with a Magical Bow and a Magical Quiver. I could should ANY arrow and it would replicate itself in my quiver. If you have slaying arrows for all occaisions a 7th level character could be more powerful than many 12th level characters.

Mike1975 wrote:
. I had an Archer/Ranger with a Magical Bow and a Magical Quiver. I could should ANY arrow and it would replicate itself in my quiver. If you have slaying arrows for all occaisions a 7th level character could be more powerful than many 12th level characters.

off topic, but that's your DM's fault and easily fixable

I taught that lesson to a 13th level fighter riding Dragonback with a couple Dragon Slaying arrows. The Dragon landed on the rider in the fall .



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So what does my status change to at 250 posts?

No idea. You've got the default generic one from the looks of it. I used the ork one previously and created the Robotech Macross one during the kickstarter so I wouldn't be much help outside of those two.

NP, just curious

Hey, Mike, any chance of you reaching some sort of arrangement with Bad Syntax to use a few dozen of his hundreds of minis? He's apparently got 36 unassembled glaugs that he's not using so I assume he could spare a few to lend out for battlereports (along with some other models) for 6 months*.

*or until the sets actually arrive which could be significantly longer given the penchant for delays.

LOL, problem is not Glaugs, it's Battlepods. I have like 4-5 of my own Glaugs. If someone wants to set up a petition for PB to send me some they would have no complaints from me.

Mike, is it actually in the rules that "Life Comes Cheap" is removed in the Skirmish game?

Because, assuming that battlepods are balanced with that in place, removing it seems pretty huge.

And while it may not have been the sole edge that helped them manhandle those two VTs, a cursory read over your battle report shows that having 3 times the RDF's command point pool was, well, pretty damned useful.

Command points seem to be a very powerful and limited resource. While I can understand not wanting to play the game without the Zentraedi getting any to work with, giving them a full 6 seems problematic as well.

There are 3 ways to play skirmish.
One support or one special each
Two support cards each
One support and one special

The only case where this really matters is where you have one on one support cards and now the previously bereft of CP Zen Regults will get 6 CP's. I would say after the last game maybe allow Life is Cheap to go but give a player only one CP for every 2 units that had Life is Cheap.

The other case where it could matter is where you chose one Regult Squad and a Glaug as your special. Without Life is Cheap the Glaug's ability to spawn units is wasted. Only units with Life is Cheap can be respawned. So Arty pods cannot come back. Once dead that is it.

I may have missed something in the rules too, but I don't think so. I will check and if not maybe email PB and suggest the 1/2 CP rule I mentioned above.

Is there a way to field the second most famous squadron in Robotech via skirmish? (i.e. Vermillion squadron with 1x Vf-1J and 2x VF-1A)... or to use VF-1J at all in skirmish?

Since there is no single VF-1J support card and no option of upgrade a single unit that is a very good question. I will look into it.

Thanks. I've emailed them, asked on the kickstarter comments, and started a thread on their forums on that (as well as the problematic LOS rules they previewed). This is basically the gauge that I'm using to see if feedback from the gaming public is taken under advisement or just ignored as business as usual with Palladium. It's an incredibly simple fix (VF-1J support card) that would help the game emulate the show much better which is supposed to be one of their top goals. Vermillion squadron is tailor made for skirmish whereas those Skull glory boys can stay over in the full game.

I just emailed PB on both points, Skirmish and Regult CP's and the lack of a VF-1J support card and a look at Skirmish rules. Could be that my rules set is just out of date too.

Doubtful... I raised the issues last May and then again in the summer on multiple official private and public venues with no response. If they didn't correct it between May and December despite it being "final" and "approved" a half dozen times during that time, they never would based on fan feedback from outside the inner circle. Thanks for bringing it up in any case and I do hope they address them both.

Mike1975 wrote:
There are 3 ways to play skirmish.
One support or one special each
Two support cards each
One support and one special

The only case where this really matters is where you have one on one support cards and now the previously bereft of CP Zen Regults will get 6 CP's. I would say after the last game maybe allow Life is Cheap to go but give a player only one CP for every 2 units that had Life is Cheap.

The other case where it could matter is where you chose one Regult Squad and a Glaug as your special. Without Life is Cheap the Glaug's ability to spawn units is wasted. Only units with Life is Cheap can be respawned. So Arty pods cannot come back. Once dead that is it.

I may have missed something in the rules too, but I don't think so. I will check and if not maybe email PB and suggest the 1/2 CP rule I mentioned above.

Wait... the skirmish mode ignores the points costs entirely??

So I can sit down to a Skirmish with a friend, we pick "1 Special each", I reveal a Glaug (20 points), they reveal a MAC II (40 points), and that's expected to be a fair fight?

Why does a regular 150 point game where the Zentraedi player takes 2 Attrition Squads get zero command points for 24 battle pods, but the Skirmish player who takes 6 gets 6 points? That doesn't make any sense at all; it's clearly a resource that is intended to be worked for (requiring Zentraedi players to include Officer's Pods, Recon Pods, FPA, etc if they want a solid supply), why then throw that out the window for the skirmish game?

If command points are supposed to be a limited resource that the Zentraedi has to force build to get and the RDF gets a supply of included in the cost of their units, surely I'm not the only one that sees the issue with ignoring the limit on units who are presumably balanced without them?

I'd figured the skirmish would just be smaller scale (50-75 points to build a force of 1-2 support cards with minor upgrades/characters).

What the gak?

Bam, 2 Regult Squads: 12 command points, good luck RDF! Enjoy being rushed by pods and can-can'd to death!

Edit: for the record, I'm not actually freaking out here, but this sounds like some amateur hour game design. No units in a miniatures game will ever be perfectly balanced, but all else being equal, 100 points vs 100 points between evenly skilled players should basically be a fair fight, with luck, strategy and force choices shifting the balance.

This is kind of absurd news.

Forar, Skirmish ignores points because they are small, pick up style games but the game recommends that you try to balance points out some. Most support cards are worth 25-35 points. In those cases you can decide upon a total of points to use.

It's to allow for a quick game. If you say each side needs 50 points, that could be really easy or hard to do with a single support card. Bring your Mac, A squad of Gnerls will take it out easily....

I agree that the Battlepods thing made me pause. That is why I specifically mentioned it. It may well have been fixed already. The only copies of the rules allowed are hard copies and mine could be horribly out of date by now. Some of the minor changes and typos that I have found and pointed out had already been corrected. So I go with what I know and have. I did ask for an updated copy the last time I spoke to them.

All these little things will help clarify and fix things that could be abused.

I've written my own rules before. As much as I try there are always things that you know in your mind what you mean but that the way it is written is different.

I'd have to check but at most you could do something like ~120 points per side with the highest value support cards.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
HG will not allow PDF copies for fear of it getting out onto the internet for free downloads so everyone is forced to work off of paper copies. At least that is how I understand it.

Assuming each Support card has at least a couple of upgrades (several seemed to have at least one in the cards we had revealed a while ago), and it's possible to either hire cheap pregen/created characters (such as Mister "Big 5 Points" Rick), balancing the numbers at a low level shouldn't be that big a problem.

And you're missing the point entirely; it doesn't matter if a trio of Gnerls can take on a MAC II (note: they're 35 points, it should indeed be a fair fight, and depending on terrain and starting positions, I could see it going either way), it's an issue with the 'quite easy pick up game' ignoring a key force building mechanic for apparently no reason.

Points balances for those games are recommended, but it never lays out specific requirements

Right, which is a bad idea for all the reasons that points are used in the larger scale games.

If someone says "take a Support card" versus "take a support card/upgrades and/or characters worth 40 points or less", the former gives me 1 card (probably the most powerful one I have available based on the mission, terrain and what I might know of my opponent). 40 points lets me take a card and maybe an upgrade, or a character, or both, or just one badass set of units, etc.

It acts as an introduction to force building on a small scale, theoretically keeps balance between the forces (my Glaug vs MAC fight, at least I'd probably be rocking a solid character or some serious upgrades to even out the fight) and keeps everyone on the same page.

Just saying "take one upgrade card" assumes all upgrade cards are created equal. The fact that different upgrade cards have different costs indicates to me that they are not.

It seems like a bad design choice, all the moreso because I imagine the skirmish game will be how many new/potential players are introduced to the game. "oh, but the person setting up the demo will make a fair/fun/balanced fight!" isn't a justification for ignoring what we've long understood to be a primary balancing factor between asymmetrical squads.

Which ties back to my incredulity about ignoring "Life is Cheap". All else being equal, a squad of 6 Battle Pods (35 points, 0 command points) should be a roughly fair fight for 2 VTs (40 points, 2 command points). Just giving them 6 command points for gaks and giggles because reasons indicates to me that something is very fishy in the math for command points if that swing in availability supposedly remains balanced on the small scale.

Though this reminds me of some discussions that were had around Gencon about the Zentraedi players seeming to get a significant boost in command points compared to what we expected them to have. At the time we thought it might've been a miscommunication or something. Hopefully they just sent you the same rules set from then and have revisited that matter, because if those are the easy to spot matters that remain in the skirmish, I'm afraid of what I'll find in the larger scale games.

Just like Starfleet Battles was not designed to play with 20 ships/side. The cards themselves are not made to balance based on small or individual units but the points do. This game is based on using 1+ Core Squadrons and building up from there.

I did the 6 Command points myself since I did not see it explicitly explained anywhere. Again this could have been changed with a newer version of the rules.

Now I do have a spreadsheet that gives us a breakdown all the way to single units against single units if you want that kinds of breakdown and balance......

... if the cards aren't at least vaguely balanced then the people who worked out the numbers should feel ashamed of themselves and need to go have a long time out in the corner while they think about what they've failed to do.

If they aren't at least vaguely balanced on the small scale, that is only going to become exacerbated on the larger scale. If 35 points of Battlepods stomp the crap out of 40 points of Veritechs, it is highly unlikely that this will rectify itself when scaled up by a factor of 8. If anything, that disparity should become even more pronounced.

Edit: and on further examination, you've contradicted yourself. The core cards are, barring minor alterations like swapping a 1J for a 1A (an improvement, but by no means an enormous one mathematically), just larger versions of the Support cards.

If the game isn't balanced support to support, then it's not balanced core to core either, and we have a problem.

What I meant by cards is that some are worth 30 points, others 75. Picking a random card is not going to give you equal forces. That is why I said the points values are. Support cards can be smaller things worth 10 points like a Quel-Gulnau or bigger ones like a pair of Veritechs and picking any support card does not mean they are equivalent firepower in any way shape or form.

So one card does not equal another. 100 points of cards is equal forcewise to 100 points of cards. I did not contradict myself one bit. You just gotta read a little better.


Just like Starfleet Battles was not designed to play with 20 ships/side. The cards themselves are not made to balance based on small or individual units BUT THE POINTS DO. This game is based on using 1+ Core Squadrons and building up from there.


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Is there a point to this argument? We are on the same side here.

Except Forar is saying that it's a bad thing that Skirmish does to care about the points on a support card, while it seems like you're defending that.

Just my third party reading.

His whole deal is that he wants me to say for Skirmish battles use 2 support cards with a total of 100 points or some such. There is so much variation in support card costs that that would be the wrong way to do things. Let players determine how many points and how many support cards they wish to use and go from there. But since that is not explicitly written in the rules that I have then of course they are badly written. Skirmish was never a focus and the skirmish rules takes a total of 3 or 4 paragraphs. Skirmish was added for a quick pickup game but was never part of the game design. But if I say just go choose how many points you want to use then how dare I! The rules must be perfect and explain every case and possibility and nothing should ever be left to us to work out. It's a no win.

There is too much variation in Support card uses and costs to set any point range because you might want to do 40 points or 80 depending upon what you have in mind.

It's like telling someone pick a lance in battletech. A lance can have anywhere from 80 to 400 tons. You need to set limits on whether you want a heavy hitter skirmish or not. That is something that the rules do not need to have written up and specified.

You said that the skirmish does not use the points, that you just pick a support card, special, or combination thereof.

I said this was a bad idea.

Anything else is either a miscommunication or you missing my point.

rigeld2 has caught what I'm trying to convey exactly. And it doesn't need to be complicated. "A skirmish game is a small scale variation that can be used to teach newer players or slip in a fast 20-30 minute round when a longer or larger game might not be feasible. Select a point total (typically 50 or 100) to build your forces with, and using only Support Cards, Special Cards, Characters and card upgrades, try to reach as close as possible to that total without going over."

BAM, skirmish game that uses the points total described in one paragraph.

Except, y'know, I'm sure professional game designers could probably do it concisely in half the words and twice as elegantly.

YOU are the one who gave the "3 options for skirmishes" as how they're presented. If that's how they are in fact presented, then yes, the rules as they exist in the copy you received are "badly written", which is something I've been hoping wouldn't be the case for nearly a year now.

It shouldn't be this frakking difficult.

The game recommends balancing using points. It does not say specifically to do so.

Meh, semantics.

I said there are really only three options. The rules say pick one or two support or special cards. Nothing more.

That leaves you with only 3 options and I stated them.

Maybe I should just type up the 3-4 paragraphs from the book.....

Mike1975 wrote:
It's like telling someone pick a lance in battletech. A lance can have anywhere from 80 to 400 tons. You need to set limits on whether you want a heavy hitter skirmish or not. That is something that the rules do not need to have written up and specified.

Absolutely disagree. The rules NEED to have that type of stuff written up and specified to prevent strangers from arguing about it unnecessarily. Having things be loosey goosey and unclear is why so many gamers hate palladium rules. It's obvious that people are free to house rule whatever they want but there should be a standardized structure to pickup games that they can refer to if there isn't an agreement on what to change or add. If you want an example of nebulous left up to others "what's included" gaming, feel free to check out the weekly vehement arguments about whether FW is a part of "standard" 40k.

Let players determine how ruins work. I'm sure that'll go well.
Let players determine LoS. I'm sure that'll go well.
Let players determine what books are "legal". I'm sure that'll go well.
Let players determine anything and if they can't agree, just 4+ it. I'm sure that'll go well.

These are things that GW (rightly) gets mocked for doing wrong. Saying "the rules do not need to have [it] written up and specified" is simply incorrect. Especially when there's a perfect way to balance them already - the points on the damn card.

The less discussion about the rules you have before a game, the better the game is. Instead of ignoring the point values that have been play tested and balanced, use them. It's idiotic not to.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I ran into a guy from Ninja Division over the Templecon Weekend. I gave him some flak for the Robotech thing (basically I jokingly said, "Hey, when am I getting my Robotech stuff?" and he got upset).

Did he respond?

 warboss wrote:

Mike1975 wrote:
It's like telling someone pick a lance in battletech. A lance can have anywhere from 80 to 400 tons. You need to set limits on whether you want a heavy hitter skirmish or not. That is something that the rules do not need to have written up and specified.

Absolutely disagree. The rules NEED to have that type of stuff written up and specified to prevent strangers from arguing about it unnecessarily. Having things be loosey goosey and unclear is why so many gamers hate palladium rules. It's obvious that people are free to house rule whatever they want but there should be a standardized structure to pickup games that they can refer to if there isn't an agreement on what to change or add. If you want an example of nebulous left up to others "what's included" gaming, feel free to check out the weekly vehement arguments about whether FW is a part of "standard" 40k.

I completely disagree with you here. You have to think about how the game is set up. The rules recommend that you balance things out with points in a skirmish game but do not expressly push that fact. On this you fear abuse. Support cards range from a price of 10 to 60+ depending upon upgrades. You can't set a specific points limit per the rules because then you are excluding the use of many support cards for a skirmish game. So if you stick to 30 points for a skirmish game then you eliminate the use of a FPA. If you say 50 points nobody will ever even try Zen infantry in a skirmish game. Specifying a specific point limit for all Skirmish games would limit the game not enhance it. That would be similar to saying that each and every core squadron in a 300 point game MUST cost 150 points. That means you cannot have one that costs 120 and the other 180 or one that costs 145 and the other 150. What you COULD do is maybe put in a couple of recommendations as far as point levels. Something like mini skirmish game at 20-25 points/side and one card each, medium using 2 cards and 50-60 points per side and heavy at 75 points/side.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think your fear is that someone will pull out a FPA or two while the other player pulls out a couple Defenders and the battle is completely one sided. Fair enough. Decide before picking how many points each side should use and then pick cards.

But if you explicitly limit skirmish games to SPECIFIC point values you will eliminate the use of a number of units in a Skirmish style game. Vermillion Squad, what would they cost? If you limit a Skirmish game to 60 points would you still be able to play them? That is like saying at a maximum all games under the core rules must be played with at least 300 point armies and at max a 600 points army and now nobody can have these super table spanning games that they hope for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

rigeld2 wrote:
Let players determine how ruins work. I'm sure that'll go well.
Let players determine LoS. I'm sure that'll go well.
Let players determine what books are "legal". I'm sure that'll go well.
Let players determine anything and if they can't agree, just 4+ it. I'm sure that'll go well.

These are things that GW (rightly) gets mocked for doing wrong. Saying "the rules do not need to have [it] written up and specified" is simply incorrect. Especially when there's a perfect way to balance them already - the points on the damn card.

The less discussion about the rules you have before a game, the better the game is. Instead of ignoring the point values that have been play tested and balanced, use them. It's idiotic not to.

BUT one thing you ALWAYS discuss is setting a point size for your game. Does 40K say you HAVE to play with 2000 or 2500 or even 5000 point armies, no. Same difference. Skirmish games allows the players to set the game size before picking their forces, they don't force you into a corner and tell you how big that game MUST be. I'm not talking about just randomly putting figs on the table and saying that is my army this time around.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So after looking at the back and forth we are essentially arguing one specific difference.

Some want specific points for a skirmish game given to them

I think that that will limit players needlessly. Allow players to decide how many points they want for a skirmish game.

... but require they set a point limit. From what you've said there isn't that requirement. And that's the thing that is bad.

I don't want them to say "Skirmish games must always be 30 points, 20 support." or whatever.

I do not want them to say "points don't matter - balance it amongst yourselves." because that's stupid game design.

So if the only change is that the rules say specifically that players should agree on a point limit before choosing cards in a skirmish game then everything is now ok?

Instead of recommending that players choose a point limit for a skirmish game?

That change may have already been made but I will point it out.

Semantics

Mike1975 wrote:
So if the only change is that the rules say specifically that players should agree on a point limit before choosing cards in a skirmish game then everything is now ok?

Instead of recommending that players choose a point limit for a skirmish game?

That change may have already been made but I will point it out.

Semantics

It's not semantics.

There should never - ever - be a reason for people who design a game to say "See that number in a box over there? For this game type it doesn't matter, just ignore it. Everything will be balanced fine. Unless it isn't, then you should pay attention to the number, but there's no limit to how high it can go."

Do you understand why that's bad? Do you understand that's exactly what you're saying is okay?
GW is mocked for having crap, loosely written rules. And rightly so.
PB, creating a new game from scratch, shouldn't fall into that trap.

If you are playing with a 2000 point army against a 5000 point army and expect it to balance then, yes the system is broken.

If both sides know going into things that there are victory conditions that allow a chance for each side to win regardless of the point disparity then things are fine.

I will make the suggestion. I understand your concerns.

Mike1975 wrote:
Specifying a specific point limit for all Skirmish games would limit the game not enhance it. That would be similar to saying that each and every core squadron in a 300 point game MUST cost 150 points. That means you cannot have one that costs 120 and the other 180 or one that costs 145 and the other 150. What you COULD do is maybe put in a couple of recommendations as far as point levels. Something like mini skirmish game at 20-25 points/side and one card each, medium using 2 cards and 50-60 points per side and heavy at 75 points/side.

THIS IS WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING ALL ALONG.

I'm NOT saying "skirmishes MUST BE 50 POINTS OR PALLADIUM COMES TO YOUR HOUSE AND CRUSHES YOUR MODELS".

I AM saying "having a reasonable points range that players use to choose the size of their skirmish and then build their force with, JUST LIKE THE NORMAL SIZED GAMES, BUT SMALLER, is a sensible piece of game design." Maybe that suggested range is 25-100, but whatever it is, not all support cards are created equal, so basing it off cards alone is innately fraught with peril. There shouldn't be any need to specify how many cards are available, the points cap already limits it.

"A skirmish is generally played between 25 and 100 points, to be determined before the players begin choosing their forces" is a reasonable guideline. "Use 2 support cards" is not.

Mike1975 wrote:

So after looking at the back and forth we are essentially arguing one specific difference.

Some want specific points for a skirmish game given to them

I think that that will limit players needlessly. Allow players to decide how many points they want for a skirmish game.

No. Wrong. Bad.

The force building has to be determined somehow. You, YOU said that it was done by cards. I pointed out that this is an asinine way to balance forces. How many times do I need to repeat it, I'M NOT ASKING FOR A SPECIFIC NUMBER, BUT THAT THEY NOTE THE PLAYERS CHOOSE A POINTS TOTAL AND BUILD FROM IT.

Guys, am I speaking in tongues? Have I lapsed into a dead language?

Mike1975 wrote:
I will make the suggestion. I understand your concerns.

I really don't think you do.

Where are you from Forar? Must have some French or Latin blood in you.

I'm a big 'ol Canadian mutt, born and bred.

... seriously, there's a mix of German, Ukranian, French, English, and possibly one or two others going back only 2 generations or so.

At war with myself all the damned time.

So you called it, though it's a small part of the larger quilt that is my checkered heritage. :-D

Mike1975 wrote:
If you are playing with a 2000 point army against a 5000 point army and expect it to balance then, yes the system is broken.

And this is literally exactly what "just ignore those pesky point values" will lead to.

If both sides know going into things that there are victory conditions that allow a chance for each side to win regardless of the point disparity then things are fine.

Which is rare, and very difficult to balance, and I seriously - SERIOUSLY - doubt PB will put that much effort into it.

I will make the suggestion. I understand your concerns.

I'm not sure you do, but thanks.

Mike1975 wrote:

So after looking at the back and forth we are essentially arguing one specific difference.

Some want specific points for a skirmish game given to them

I think that that will limit players needlessly. Allow players to decide how many points they want for a skirmish game.

I don't think anyone is talking about that but you (but if anyone is, feel free to correct me). What we all are asking for/about is that skirmish games require players to agree to an equal points value (of their choice) ahead of time instead of just a number of cards as your post referred to with wildly varying points on either side. If you don't require agreement before hand, you will end up with people who try and take 400 ton lances versus 80 ton lances from your BT example because they can. The 40k equivalent would be requiring players to take specifically only a few certain force org slots but not requiring a points value allowing for instance massive 80 man IG blob squads with all the fixings versus a 5 man marine squad.

Like I said I understand your points, I told PB that I'd recommend a line requiring players to decide upon an amount of points or range of points for a skirmish game before selecting their support and/or special cards for a skirmish game.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Basically you want to eliminate the recommendation part and make it a rule to choose a points value or range for all skirmish games in order to help maintain balance and prevent abuse.

Mike1975 wrote:
So if the only change is that the rules say specifically that players should agree on a point limit before choosing cards in a skirmish game then everything is now ok?

Instead of recommending that players choose a point limit for a skirmish game?

That change may have already been made but I will point it out.

Semantics

It's not meaningless semantics but rather an important point to make that is one of the most basic in any game where forces are supposed to be "equal" in some way. Mike, your game reports always show your garage IIRC so it's likely you play with friends and "semantics" don't generally come up as an argument as often I'd gather. When you're playing against complete strangers that you met seconds earlier in a store or convention, you don't know what they'll try to pull or what is considered "normal" in their area but frowned upon in yours. The rules are supposed to provide you with a complete concrete common ground to start from if you do agree to change things or default back to if you can't. If the "default" is nebulous enough to not allow a fair game as per the written rules then the rules writers have failed. Taking out a 40pt squadron only to see that your opponent has completely legally according to the rules chosen a 60pt squadron doesn't make the game fun. Now I fully understand that some games have asymetric forces for specific missions that take the difference into account but that isn't what we're talking about here.

Just to clarify again.. no one that I know of in this thread is advocating a set pts limit for skirmish games but simply rather that the rules specificy that a points limit be agreed upon by the players (on top of the other restrictions you said) prior to the game.

 warboss wrote:

Mike1975 wrote:
So if the only change is that the rules say specifically that players should agree on a point limit before choosing cards in a skirmish game then everything is now ok?

Instead of recommending that players choose a point limit for a skirmish game?

That change may have already been made but I will point it out.

Semantics

It's not meaningless semantics but rather an important point to make that is one of the most basic in any game where forces are supposed to be "equal" in some way. Mike, your game reports always show your garage IIRC so it's likely you play with friends and "semantics" don't generally come up as an argument as often I'd gather. When you're playing against complete strangers that you met seconds earlier in a store or convention, you don't know what they'll try to pull or what is considered "normal" in their area but frowned upon in yours. The rules are supposed to provide you with a complete concrete common ground to start from if you do agree to change things or default back to if you can't. If the "default" is nebulous enough to not allow a fair game as per the written rules then the rules writers have failed. Taking out a 40pt squadron only to see that your opponent has completely legally according to the rules chosen a 60pt squadron doesn't make the game fun. Now I fully understand that some games have asymetric forces for specific missions that take the difference into account but that isn't what we're talking about here.

Just to clarify again.. no one that I know of in this thread is advocating a set pts limit for skirmish games but simply rather that the rules specificy that a points limit be agreed upon by the players (on top of the other restrictions you said) prior to the game.

I've played in conventions and know how rules-lawyers can be. I once had a battle called as a draw because the one enemy player left hid in some water and there were no rules for firing into or out of water. The pond was not big enough for me to go in after him. I've also seen my brother bring space marines armies fitted with sights to see through smoke and use smoke grenades. It would wipe out enemies unprepared for smoke. Cheesy, yes, but within the rules.

Like I said, suggestion made. I can see your point. We were on the same track for most of the time just possbilby arriving from different directions.

Is the 'Skirmish mode' intended as a sort of learning/demo tool that is only really played by people who are new to the game, perhaps?

Mike1975 wrote:
Like I said I understand your points, I told PB that I'd recommend a line requiring players to decide upon an amount of points or range of points for a skirmish game before selecting their support and/or special cards for a skirmish game.

Basically you want to eliminate the recommendation part and make it a rule to choose a points value or range for all skirmish games in order to help maintain balance and prevent abuse.

Yes. This. Exactly. High fives and cookies all around!

If the players choose a point limit to abide by, everything else falls into place. If it's 50 points, I don't need to know that it's "one special, or one support, or two supports, or one special and one support", I just know that with 50 points I can field any of those (depending on how much each costs), possibly with some upgrades, possibly with a cheap character or two, etc, etc.

It's far more elegant to have the players work within the system, doubly so in that it gets them in the mindset of working within those guidelines for the larger games. Gives them experience making the tradeoff between having one giant badass unit versus a 'swarm' (much as a swarm can be at that game size), or one solid unit with a cheap character and some chaff to blunt the opposition's attacks, etc, etc. If there's a point limit agreed upon, the other suggestions are superfluous; one simply cannot take 4 support cards of anything (far as I know) with only 50 points, so it doesn't need saying.

And with a suggested range, if we agree to 100 points, maybe I do try out running 5 pairs of Defenders, just to see if they can stand up to 12 Battlepods and a Glaug (and whatever else makes up 10 points).

Its flexible, scales up and down with the players time/space/model/experience limit, a win all around.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Balance wrote:
Is the 'Skirmish mode' intended as a sort of learning/demo tool that is only really played by people who are new to the game, perhaps?

My understanding is that it's meant as a small scale game that can be played for a variety of reasons; limited space (not enough table/floor to field a full scale game), limited time (few units/interactions should keep things swift in case it's an issue), and yes, it'd probably be a good manner of teaching as well.

Mike1975 wrote:
Like I said I understand your points, I told PB that I'd recommend a line requiring players to decide upon an amount of points or range of points for a skirmish game before selecting their support and/or special cards for a skirmish game.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Basically you want to eliminate the recommendation part and make it a rule to choose a points value or range for all skirmish games in order to help maintain balance and prevent abuse.

No range but rather have the players agree ahead of time to a single max points value of their choice. Thanks for passing that along as (you can see) it's an important and easily fixable point for some of us in the thread.

Also, you may want to pass along that these types of things would be more easily found with a release of the rules (minus the art). I know you said HG is the stopper on that, but given Palladium's decade long reticence to not offer for sale digitally anything they consider to be worth reprinting, I suspect they're just as much of a roadblock on that as HG ever could be. If something as basic as that (along with the LOS rules and no VF-1J in skirmish) wasn't caught by their 100+ playtesters, that worries me.

And that is something I may have been less than clear about. When I've said "a range" I mean a suggested range for skirmish size games. The players pick a firm size for their specific game (maybe it's 25 for one game, 100 the next, 75 the game after that, etc).

And even that doesn't stop players from playing super small (20 points, 2 defenders versus one Officer's Pod, go!) or super large (300 points using only supports and specials might lead to some odd force building. And the lack of 1J's would probably hurt the RDF at that size). But a guideline is probably a good idea to keep new players on the same page, if nothing else.

 Forar wrote:
If there's a point limit agreed upon, the other suggestions are superfluous; one simply cannot take 4 support cards of anything (far as I know) with only 50 points, so it doesn't need saying.

That I would also disagree with. Palladium had a split mechanic for army building that was (apparently accidentally) made for two broad game types (skimish and full wargame). In the full wargame, you agree on the pts total and take core plus support cards. In skirmish, you agree on the pts total and take support cards. I'm obviously basing this on the May previews and it may have changed. Not saying what cards should or shouldn't be taken brings us back to the same problem you brought up with Mike's explanation. Have you seen each and every support card? How do you know that one isn't so broken as to be both spammable, cheap, and overly effective? Ideally, something like that would be caught before publishing but a cursory view of any gaming thread would show that units that are markedly better than others for the same points. A general catch all rule about the cards mitigates that with one sentance. The key then would be to make sure that the support cards adequetly cover the minis. Excluding VF-1J from skirmish games (the most likely type of games a core box owner would play) is bad as it's only one of 3 variants allowed with that set.

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 Forar wrote:
But a guideline is probably a good idea to keep new players on the same page, if nothing else.

A guideline on that is fine for me as well. I just wanted to make sure to communicate to Mike that a firm discrete pts value to be agreed upon by the players prior to the game is the rule we were advocating adding.

Skirmish was never a primary concern with this game. A skirmish game is a 10 minute game. I think Skirmish was added to fill in a gap that players asked to be filled. Most games will start at around 100 - 150 points. Knowing that skirmish was not a primary concern the VF-1J conundrum does not surprise me at all. I've played a few smaller games and quite frankly it never came to my mind either. I doubt playtesters were out there focused on skirmish sized games except for the preset ones for Demos at cons where a player would sit and the person running the demo would ask what side the other player would like to try out.

Keep in mind how few people have even wanted to look at the rules that I made because they are waiting on the official rules. Not many have delved into the rules for themselves or even glanced at the pre-released rules that were shared during the KS.

I think that in some ways it's out own fault because of the Robotech Orgy we have not allowed our curiosity to work as much as it might otherwise. If this was not Robotech, something like AVP then the rules would have been reviewed a lot more than they have by the fans. I'm just glad you guys are willing to raise these questions so we can see if they are already fixed or to have them fixed before the game is ready to ship.


You mentioned LOS concerns. What are those again. I know we've talked about it before.

I was specifically referring to the "1 support, 1 special, 1 of each, 2 supports" list that Mike gave us that in part started this all.

As far as I know the core game doesn't have any upper limit on cards taken, just a lower limit/minimum (1 per 150 points).

If there is a unit that is 'spammable' and overpowered for its points cost at low levels, that's probably only going to be exacerbated at higher levels, so I was ignoring it. If that's a major issue and the skirmish game is broken by it, we have bigger problems on hand than simply determining how many cards people can field.


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Mike1975 wrote:
Skirmish was never a primary concern with this game. A skirmish game is a 10 minute game. I think Skirmish was added to fill in a gap that players asked to be filled. Most games will start at around 100 - 150 points. Knowing that skirmish was not a primary concern the VF-1J conundrum does not surprise me at all. I've played a few smaller games and quite frankly it never came to my mind either. I doubt playtesters were out there focused on skirmish sized games except for the preset ones for Demos at cons where a player would sit and the person running the demo would ask what side the other player would like to try out.

However, having tight skirmish rules is incredibly important. If demos (and presumably many demos will be skirmishes) are the first contact many players have with the game in person, that's the biggest first impression they can make. Things like tight force balancing become huge if you want to convince people to throw down hundreds and thousands of dollars on models.

It may not be the primary way the game is played, but as the ambassador of the product line and rules set, it needs to be as well written and clear as can be.

Keep in mind how few people have even wanted to look at the rules that I made because they are waiting on the official rules. Not many have delved into the rules for themselves or even glanced at the pre-released rules that were shared during the KS.

I don't think it's surprising that few people have read your rules. Good as they may be, a labor of love as they might have been for you, people want to see what the professional game designers that they paid 1.4m'ish have come up with in the last year and a half. I disagree that few looked at the rules snapshot we got during the campaign, however. That was a hot topic on every forum I perused about the game, and requests for new rules in the KS comments often reference it directly.

I think that in some ways it's out own fault because of the Robotech Orgy we have not allowed our curiosity to work as much as it might otherwise. If this was not Robotech, something like AVP then the rules would have been reviewed a lot more than they have by the fans. I'm just glad you guys are willing to raise these questions so we can see if they are already fixed or to have them fixed before the game is ready to ship.

You mentioned LOS concerns. What are those again. I know we've talked about it before.

Honestly, I think a big part of it is the utter contempt their major product line has for the concept of balance. Rifts is flat out designed so you can have a badass in a 20 foot tall giant robot, a hatchling dragon, someone who can rend the very fabric of space and time, and Jimmy, a guy with a 9mm pistol and a gut full of Irish Rose in a party, and that's just how it is. It is expected that the GM and other players will agree to whatever stipulations are present for the game to play smoothly, that the GM will make calls on what is or isn't permitted, on what gear, classes, OCCs, RCCs, PCCs, magic spells, super powers, and whatnot the players can select.

And that's fine for a table top RPG.

But for a miniatures game, an emphasis on balance is critical. Doubly so if they want to have a tournament scene, which they've claimed that they do.

So when there's even a hint of handwaving and "don't worry, the players will figure it out', it's not surprising that some people who are familiar with their other lines and have heard similar expressions begin looking at each other in a somewhat concerned fashion.

 Forar wrote:
I was specifically referring to the "1 support, 1 special, 1 of each, 2 supports" list that Mike gave us that in part started this all.

As far as I know the core game doesn't have any upper limit on cards taken, just a lower limit/minimum (1 per 150 points).

If there is a unit that is 'spammable' and overpowered for its points cost at low levels, that's probably only going to be exacerbated at higher levels, so I was ignoring it. If that's a major issue and the skirmish game is broken by it, we have bigger problems on hand than simply determining how many cards people can field.

And that is where things took off. The rules say use one or two support cards or use a special instead of a support card and so I said basically that means you have 3 options and things took off from there and the misunderstanding grew at that point. No big deal. We are past that.

Now as far as point costs on any individual unit, I spent a few hours a day and got some grief from the wife but I made a spreadsheet that calculated out the cost of ANY unit you could imagine. This was based off of the costs that were shown from the force orgs charts. There were only 3 things that showed some discrepancy. All 3 of those I have emailed and spoke to PB via Skype and and they have my spreadsheet and are looking it over. All the other units are pretty much spot on. I did make a blank one that you can fill out yourself.

I have the feeling that it's like a game of Battletech or 40K where you have a unit that just gets damned lucky ALL the time. So you value this unit way above it's point cost. Does that means it's worth more points. Normally, no, you just know how to use that figure really well.

Mike1975 wrote:
Skirmish was never a primary concern with this game. A skirmish game is a 10 minute game. I think Skirmish was added to fill in a gap that players asked to be filled. Most games will start at around 100 - 150 points. Knowing that skirmish was not a primary concern the VF-1J conundrum does not surprise me at all. I've played a few smaller games and quite frankly it never came to my mind either. I doubt playtesters were out there focused on skirmish sized games except for the preset ones for Demos at cons where a player would sit and the person running the demo would ask what side the other player would like to try out.

Keep in mind how few people have even wanted to look at the rules that I made because they are waiting on the official rules. Not many have delved into the rules for themselves or even glanced at the pre-released rules that were shared during the KS.

I think that in some ways it's out own fault because of the Robotech Orgy we have not allowed our curiosity to work as much as it might otherwise. If this was not Robotech, something like AVP then the rules would have been reviewed a lot more than they have by the fans. I'm just glad you guys are willing to raise these questions so we can see if they are already fixed or to have them fixed before the game is ready to ship.

I suspect it'll be a concern for the thousands of people at battlecry and those who at retail start Robotech with the starter (pun intended). For instance, most of the freebies at battle cry are NOT independent units and the more specialized figs MUST be added to core squadrons as a big frankenstein mess of a squad. My FPAs and MPAs and Gnerls need to be added to something else (IIRC a battlepod squad) to make a legal squad as I only have a "support card" worth of them with the most common pledge. My ghosts, lancers, and other UEDF upgrades need to be added to a valk squadron as well. If the skirmish game is properly done, I can field them as an individual unit (support card) instead giving me a taste of the larger game with my collection. It impressed me that they did this during the kickstarter (minus the glaring ommision of ever using a VF-1J as no support card exists) as an elegant solution both to the rules mechanics as well as matching the show itself by allowing you to make Vermillion squadron possibly (2x VF-1A support card, 1x VF-1J support card if it were added). Or late show Max and Miriya as a squad (2x VF-1J cards, one red and one blue). This style also simplifies things for the occasional RPG player/GM trying to play out their combat since those tend to use smaller amounts of enemies and smaller "player" units of even just 1 model. Skirmish is also the most likely and varied type for a person who buys the starter to use once it hits retail until they expand their collection as well as the tailor made for demos. The existence of a fully formed skirmish mode that they hinted on during the KS has alot of practical applications.

Mike1975 wrote:

You mentioned LOS concerns. What are those again. I know we've talked about it before.

The preview rules videos had a nebulously defined "center" of the model that was used exclusively to determine LOS. If, in their example, the "eye" of a battlepod was covered then it was out of LOS despite fully a 1/3 of the model being visible above the eye. This "center" was also not properly defined as the "eye" is insufficient and they'd have to specify the "center" of each and every model on both sagittal and coronal planes. That is unnecessarily complex and loose at the same time if left as is (where is the "eye" of a battlepod from the side? do you go by the eye jutting out on the front of the model or extend it backwards horizontally? where is the eye on the back?). TLOS is the only relatively simple option left... if you don't see a model, you don't see the model. A third option is to use an abstracted LOS system but in my experience that works better for "board game" style games like deadzone rather than full minis measure in inches games. Heavy Gear has used something like that for the past decade and it's been one of the most common complaints (and is being abandoned).

Which is great. Attending to things that are problematic or lead to a "NPE" (Negative Play Experience) is good.

Unfortunately there are a bunch of things that aren't obvious on paper, that need to be played out repeatedly to identify. Plenty of games have 'gone live' only to have things found months or years later to be completely overpowered, or unbalanced, even if 'by the numbers' it's all supposed to be good.

Sometimes it's under certain conditions. Sometimes it's in conjunction with another recent release. Sometimes it just takes players manipulating the rules a little in a way that doesn't break them, but bends them just enough to see some cracking points.

And these things will be found. Nothing is perfect, everything has to eventually be kicked out the door to sink or swim on its own.

But when a handful of us can identify potential show stoppers at a glance, it worries me a little as to what else might be lurking in there. As with horror movies, leaving things to the imagination is often more terrifying than simply showing, and even with recognition that it's probably not as bad as our greatest fears made manifest, that still leaves a huge range of 'pretty fraking bad' to cover.

It's good things are potentially being caught. It's less encouraging that some of these things should've been noticed by one of those hundreds of playtesters. Or worse, they were caught but either weren't fixed or weren't deemed to be worth glancing at until you brought it up again.

How many other things have slipped through the cracks like that thus far?

You having outdated info is a double edged sword. Sure, it means that even things we find issue with could be fixed in a more recent revision. But if they're not...


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And while it wouldn't surprise me to have errata and a FAQ very early on, supposedly they're going to start shipping sometime in the next 2.5 to 4.5 months (early May to late June).

If there are things that need fixing, they are rapidly running out of time to fix them in a measured, even fashion.

In Malifaux there were units that were changed at the last minute before the books went to print.

Surprising nobody (in hindsight), some players eventually found ways to break the game with them, necessitating card revisions and errata.

Mike1975 wrote:
I spent a few hours a day and got some grief from the wife but I made a spreadsheet that calculated out the cost of ANY unit you could imagine.

Just tell her the ol' Fokker line about robotech getting into your blood and charm her into making you some pineapple salad. You are in Texas though so be careful you don't end up on the floor with a gunshot wound in your back like Roy so ask nicely!


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 Forar wrote:


It's good things are potentially being caught. It's less encouraging that some of these things should've been noticed by one of those hundreds of playtesters. Or worse, they were caught but either weren't fixed or weren't deemed to be worth glancing at until you brought it up again.

This assumes that Mike's bringing it up as a potential issue is the magic panacea that actually gets it changed. As I mentioned to Mike, I brought up my issues through the appropriate public and private official channels multiple times with no response despite trying at the time to be constructive towards the project.


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 Forar wrote:

In Malifaux there were units that were changed at the last minute before the books went to print.

Did they publish the rules to be reviewed by the public in a beta?

That was referencing the first release, which I got into years after it was completed (they were up to 2 expansion books and version 1.5 already).

For their recent change to version 2.0, they had closed betas to sort the broad/general stuff out, and then indeed released the entire rules set along with character cards in an open beta, along with roughly weekly updated versions to reflect changes that had been made through internal playtesting and player reports.

They also (at least throughout 1.5's era) have had the base game rules (minus the diagrams and fluff) available for free to download as long as I've played (2 years).

Obviously not every company does this, but unless they're still undergoing major revisions, a condensed summary to start bringing the playerbase up to speed would probably be a good idea. The sooner people can begin familiarizing themselves with the rules, and feel comfortable with the mechanics of play, the more likely it'll be that we'll see more games cropping up early into the delivery schedule, which becomes free advertising (both in terms of games seen in stores, shared between friends or reported about online) for when they start selling at Gencon and retail.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I ran into a guy from Ninja Division over the Templecon Weekend. I gave him some flak for the Robotech thing (basically I jokingly said, "Hey, when am I getting my Robotech stuff?" and he got upset).

This. This right here. This sums up exactly the problem with both of these companies. Handy with platitudes when explaining away their problems in a faceless email. But someone approaches you in a public forum, where you are representing the company who is totally and completely responsible for the game not being on time, and you get upset? Put your game face on, spout some platitudes, or how about you manage to be contrite and show some integrity by letting the truth dribble out of your piehole?

It seems completely self-entitled for either of these companies to not understand why all those people that gave them money would want to know what the hold up is, when it's going to arrive. But to get angry about it? Wow, totally classless. That just moved Soda Pop down another rung...

To be fair, I'd want to see a video of the incident, or at least a far more detailed reporting of what happened before I condemned them about it. Define "got upset". Sad that they didn't have answers? Angry that they were being challenged about it? Was it the boss who should have had the boilerplate response memorized, or the newest, lowest guy on the rungs of the ladder who is tired of being ambushed about stuff that began a year before he even joined? Etc, etc, etc.

Not to call out Chaos here, I'm sure they're a fine chap, but there just isn't enough to go on to really make a call, let alone take it as evidence that ND should be lower in my esteem (not that they're highly placed to begin with, but that's in part due to being caught in the blast radius of my ire at PB and HG at the moment.

Just playing Devil's advocate here. It's mini-tales like these that get blown out of proportion and become 'things' that need addressing seemingly forever.

Agreed. I don't doubt the story we were told but the story is only a few words long and easily read in completely different ways. Even if ND is completely responsible for the delays, it is still easily probable that they are frustrated by their own delays. Plenty of tardy people get miffed at the results of their tardiness.

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 Forar wrote:
To be fair, I'd want to see a video of the incident, or at least a far more detailed reporting of what happened before I condemned them about it. Define "got upset". Sad that they didn't have answers? Angry that they were being challenged about it? Was it the boss who should have had the boilerplate response memorized, or the newest, lowest guy on the rungs of the ladder who is tired of being ambushed about stuff that began a year before he even joined? Etc, etc, etc.

Not to call out Chaos here, I'm sure they're a fine chap, but there just isn't enough to go on to really make a call, let alone take it as evidence that ND should be lower in my esteem (not that they're highly placed to begin with, but that's in part due to being caught in the blast radius of my ire at PB and HG at the moment.

Just playing Devil's advocate here. It's mini-tales like these that get blown out of proportion and become 'things' that need addressing seemingly forever.

Forar, you and Warboss could be right. It was a very short, off the cuff remark. However, it played out in my mind that Chaos bumped into this guy on the floor, said "When's my stuff showing up bro?", and the ND guy rolling his eyes and walking off.

Instead of being upbeat, smiling, saying "Yeah, we were totally surprised at how hard digitally sculpting all the mecha were in CAD. Getting all the little details looking really sharp set us pretty far back, but we're really happy with the sculpts, and can't wait to get them in your hands. They should start cutting the first mold 2 March, and the process will be rolling after that! I hope you''ll tell us how much you love the game once you get it in your hands!"

So, any engagement that carries any negativity just moves them further down in my estimation. And I am not trying to influence anyone elses feelings for ND with this, just sad that they're not putting on a good attitude, since they're the ones (PB and ND both) that are responsible for where this KS is.

The preview rules videos had a nebulously defined "center" of the model that was used exclusively to determine LOS. If, in their example, the "eye" of a battlepod was covered then it was out of LOS despite fully a 1/3 of the model being visible above the eye. This "center" was also not properly defined as the "eye" is insufficient and they'd have to specify the "center" of each and every model on both sagittal and coronal planes. That is unnecessarily complex and loose at the same time if left as is (where is the "eye" of a battlepod from the side? do you go by the eye jutting out on the front of the model or extend it backwards horizontally? where is the eye on the back?). TLOS is the only relatively simple option left... if you don't see a model, you don't see the model. A third option is to use an abstracted LOS system but in my experience that works better for "board game" style games like deadzone rather than full minis measure in inches games. Heavy Gear has used something like that for the past decade and it's been one of the most common complaints (and is being abandoned).

1. Measuring Distance, is centerline from base edge to base edge.

2. LOS is still Center of Torso to Center of Torso. Not to center of sensor eye which is just stupid. If this line from center to center is not completely blocked you have LOS. This was one of the first things I mentioned to Kevin. If I can see a unit I should get a chance to shoot it even if I can only hit an arm. BUT since all damage for a mecha is based off of Main Body damage it makes sense to assume that you might still shoot, you might even still hit, but unless you can hit the torso the damage is not significant. I did mention that they would need something showing the centerpoints on each unit in order to avoid rules lawyering.

This is something I am raising some discussion on with PB guys who helped write and test the rules.

Mike1975 wrote:

1. Measuring Distance, is centerline from base edge to base edge.

2. LOS is still Center of Torso to Center of Torso. Not to center of sensor eye which is just stupid. If this line from center to center is not completely blocked you have LOS. This was one of the first things I mentioned to Kevin. If I can see a unit I should get a chance to shoot it even if I can only hit an arm. BUT since all damage for a mecha is based off of Main Body damage it makes sense to assume that you might still shoot, you might even still hit, but unless you can hit the torso the damage is not significant. I did mention that they would need something showing the centerpoints on each unit in order to avoid rules lawyering.

This is something I am raising some discussion on with PB guys who helped write and test the rules.

I'd highly suggest if they're going with "torso" based LOS that they drop the "center" idea completely and just base LOS off of the torso. The center is still as nebulous as the "battle pod eye" and would need to be defined for every model as players determine the center differently (where is the center of an FPA? Do you count the engines as the torso or are they separate?). To properly enact a "center" based LOS they'd still need to show each model in two planes instead of just leaving it up to players to argue about. In the end, the "center" of a battlepod's torso being obstructed but still having almost half the torso sticking out over the cover but invisible is a bad idea IMO. YMMV but a true LOS system works a heck of alot better in preventing arguments as long as you define the torso for both humanoid and nonhumanoid models (wings, tails, limbs, weapons, antenna, and heads not included for instance).

While true line of sight would come from the sensors there is a point to having it based on the body position. The human mechs generally aren't shooting from eye level, they are often using weapons that are torso mounted or at elbow height. In the show veritechs are sometimes shooting from the hip or the shoulder (sometimes crouching) Zentraedi are firing lasers that are above head height so unless you want to work up separate line of sight and firing rules for every mech it's going to require a simplified rules set.

Personally I prefer rules that support streamlined play, true LOS rules are always a pain as you end up having a fraction of a weapon, antennae, or banner poking out of full cover and some anal type always wants to claim it's a valid target. People always tend to gloss over the idea that tabletop gaming not matter what system is still just a rough approximation to represent action and movement, nothing you can do is truly going to be exact. Much less in a game of mechs as if you want to be "realistic" mechs will never exist to begin with.

It is a slippery slope unless a hard rule is made.

Sure you could see the target with your "sensor" but is your weapon as well in a position to fire? (Paulson already beat me to this line of thinking).

A gun held middle to body or a "roof rack" missile launcher could have all kinds of arguments. I do not even want to get into "Apache Longbow D" peek and shoot type methods.

Center body mass (center of widest part of upper body) is a little better defined but it would be irritating to have a picture of each model with a "line of sight from here" specified.

Anyone who feels that an antenna is a valid target can then discuss the inherent difference in center body mass vs a flimsy 1/100th the width antenna and the inconvenience caused getting that sheared off... I really hate those moments.

I am used to 40k, from the eye(s)/sensor seems good enough to me, at least you do not have to argue over vague wording and I am sure with all the gymnastics we saw in the shows they would be able to get the appropriate guns to bear.

I only wish this would be the worst part of the rules...

I prefer Center of Body to Center of Body from some others. I've see LOS rules where if you can see 3/4 or 1/2 the mini then you can fire but you have negative to-hit modifiers if you do so. Since we are targeting the center of a unit and using the main body's MDC then these rules are fine. Otherwise you have people wanting to make rules for snap firing from cover and a bunch of other things. This is the KISS method for LOS.


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I think on the next AAR I will put emphasis on the terrain rules and share a bit of them with you all. Maybe even some of the weather conditions and other stuff rules.

The quickest and simplest route seems to be "can the two mechs see each other (by drawing a line from base to base)? If so, they can shoot at each other. The one 'in cover' gains a bonus to its defense (or the shooter takes a penalty to attack, but it's probably easiest if we stick to escalating bonuses unless it proves unwieldy or hard to account for all the different possibilities present).

There'll always be 'fractions of a millimeter' arguments (especially if prizes are on the line), but making LOS too complicated stands in direct opposition of making this game fast. Being too focused on the exact positioning of each mech in relation to each other mech in terms of gaining the most advantages/avoiding the most disadvantages when trying to move dozens of battlepods would add up swiftly.

That isn't to say that it's impossible to find an elegant solution that better encapsulates the goals of being fun, fast to play and sensible to most players, I just hope they managed to find that balance a bit better than the rules glance we got during the campaign, in which I'm with Warboss; arguing the 1/3 line or the 'center of target to center of target' risks running amiss of people who Model For Advantage (with the common response being "well don't play against those guys/gals", to which the counter point is "potential for competitive play; choosing not to play against them may not be an option).

Yes, even a simple "base to base" LOS system can have snags (intervening obstacles, etc), but what we got a glimpse of didn't exactly inspire confidence. Those too can be solved, which can heighten the complexity/potential for confusion, but there has to be a figurative (and/or literal) line drawn somewhere.

 paulson games wrote:
While true line of sight would come from the sensors there is a point to having it based on the body position. The human mechs generally aren't shooting from eye level, they are often using weapons that are torso mounted or at elbow height. In the show veritechs are sometimes shooting from the hip or the shoulder (sometimes crouching) Zentraedi are firing lasers that are above head height so unless you want to work up separate line of sight and firing rules for every mech it's going to require a simplified rules set.

Personally I prefer rules that support streamlined play, true LOS rules are always a pain as you end up having a fraction of a weapon, antennae, or banner poking out of full cover and some anal type always wants to claim it's a valid target. People always tend to gloss over the idea that tabletop gaming not matter what system is still just a rough approximation to represent action and movement, nothing you can do is truly going to be exact. Much less in a game of mechs as if you want to be "realistic" mechs will never exist to begin with.

So you'd prefer to have shots like this completely disallowed rather than have a rule dealing with a GU-11 gunpod sticking out around a corner? I'd much rather have a TLOS "torso" rule with exclusions personally instead of seeing so much of a model but not having a shot. (see pic below where "centers" are obstructed meaning no shot allowed)




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Mike1975 wrote:
I orefer Center of Body to Center of Body from some others. I've see LOS rules where if you can see 3/4 or 1/2 the mini then you can fire but you have negative to-hit modifiers if you do so. Since we are targeting the center of a unit and using the main body's MDC then these rules are fine. Otherwise you have people wanting to make rules for snap firing from cover and a bunch of other things. This is the KISS method for LOS.

I don't know how KiSS it is if they don't define the center for each and every model but instead leave it up to interpreation. For me at least, that's making more trouble than just using TLOS with exceptions (weapons, antenna, etc).

well you could also argue that the sensors on the VF are in the head so that you could peak over an obstruction with the head and whip the rifle around the corner of a building and still fire leaving just the head and GU-11 arm exposed. No, I think the KISS approach works better.

My own write up had partial cover if over 25% of the unit was hidden and heavy cover if 50-75% was hidden and cannot be shot at if over 75% was hidden. Then you get people bitching about what is 25% or 75% and so forth.

Mike1975 wrote:
well you could also argue that the sensors on the VF are in the head so that you could peak over an obstruction with the head and whip the rifle around the corner of a building and still fire leaving just the head and GU-11 arm exposed. No, I think the KISS approach works better.

I agree with the last part but the issue is that we don't agree on what is actually simpler. For me, simple is looking from TLOS and seeing if the "torso" is at all exposed per a two line definition... not trying to calculate a % exposed or finding a nebulous center that palladium likely won't properly define for most models to see if a shot is allowed at all.

Then in reality it comes down to letting people decide what is center, drawing them pictures as to what is the center, or whatever two line definition you come up with. See if you can define or write up that 2 line definition.

"The torso or main body (for non-humanoid models) does not include any limbs, appendages, weapons, antenna/sensors, wings, tails, or heads."

Compare that with 2 views of the veritech in EACH mode, 2 views of the battlepod (and we'll assume all regult variants are under 1 pic), 2 views of the glaug, 2 views of the FPA and MPA each, two views of the lancer, ghost, and gnerl each, two views of EACH destroid...etc to find out what the "center" model is without leaving it up in the air. One takes a few words to define whereas the other will take pages to properly define (but will likely only be given 2-3 small pictures in one view instead given the source). The worst case would be letting people decide what is the center for each and every model as that is highly subjective and abuable.

I mentioned to them that next to each unit's descriptions that they should place a small front and side view picture in silhouette that showed a point that was to be considered the center.

Forget 'centers'. That's unplayable nonsense.

Just use cylinder of base board presence.

also, '25 percent coverage' sort of cover/los systems are horrible and became outdated the instant the clocks rolled over to the 2000s. That's too finicky to determine with any accuracy.

real game does not use the 25% stuff, that was some early quick and dirty stuff that I wrote in my rules.

Now I honestly have no idea what this cylinder idea of yours is. Center of base of the mini or what?

 Killionaire wrote:
Forget 'centers'. That's unplayable nonsense.

Agreed. The idea that the two units below both peeking out over opposite ends of the same building wouldn't be able to get a shot of is both silly and needlessly complex just because one point on their torso is covered. I can't show opposed views correctly in one LOS picture but the "centers" of both models are covered and they're both over 50% in cover; if those are the restrictions and that is the "models' view" then this shot isn't allowed and both models are invisible to the other.

Mike, do the cover rules specify a minimum amount of cover necessary like 50% or is it ONLY the center that needs to be covered to be out of LOS? This is quite important to the discussion as well.

Something intuitive and straightforward is very important with such things.

I've learned a lot things over the years, and among them are that "on average, people are very bad at math" and "on average, people are very bad judges of, well, everything".

Yes, obviously we can't hand hold everyone through everything from how to put their pants on in the morning (if applicable), but the robustness and in-setting 'realism' of a system can't outweigh the needs to be applicable to a fairly diverse playerbase, many of whom will have very different ideas of what constitutes, for example, "above/below 50%".

I say 49, you say 51, but on a game table it's not like most players have either the time or equipment to accurately determine the exact number, and even if they can, it'd likely take far too long to justify including in "a fast paced system". That kind of simulationism just bogs things down.

Here's a work in progress of Max. Hence why it looks cartoonish. Yes I know what I just said.

http://i1037.photobucket.com/albums/a457/cypherxv/c0c1576550607f0a307fa3dbea1427ad_zps5c06f8b9.jpg

So, on the PB front page there's been a link in place for RRT's little news page that seems to be updated separately from the one that gets copy/pasted for the weekly newsletters.

Guess what got changed fairly recently (it may have been a while since I looked, but it can't have been too long ago):

Release Dates: Ships in early June to Kickstarter supporters. Ships a few weeks later to distributors. Should be in your hands no later than June and in stores by the beginning of July, 2014.

As noted in the KS comments, that's a lot more specific then they usually are.

Yes, obviously it assumes that mold tooling, production and multiple rounds of shipping go smoothly to make that timeframe, but it's almost suspiciously specific compared to their usual "it'll be done when it's done, so awesome, made an entire room of adults achieve simultaneous climax just by glancing at two pages of rules, etc, etc" platitudes.

I moved this LOS stuff over to the FB page for some additional discussion. I wanted to get more input from more people.

Mike, does the center LOS have any other restrictions like a minimum % cover amount?

 warboss wrote:
Mike, does the center LOS have any other restrictions like a minimum % cover amount?

None. If you can see center to center you can shoot. If you can't you can't.

Cover is a seperate affair and comes into efffect IF you have valid LOS.

Mike1975 wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Mike, does the center LOS have any other restrictions like a minimum % cover amount?

None. If you can see center to center you can shoot. If you can't you can't.

Cover is a seperate affair and comes into efffect IF you have valid LOS.

Houston, we have a problem with using the "center" as the primary indicator of LOS. One battlepod below is invisible due to strategic placement of a street lamp whereas the other is a valid target. Now obviously I added the crude lamp with my pro-MSPaint skills to the cartoon still but it illustrates the point that tiny stray pieces of terrain like stop signs or tips of trees that happen to block "centers" but not much else of the model will be completely legal blockers of LOS. Adding a % minimum restriction puts a band aid on it but the "center" LOS system still is a clunky mechanic. This isn't just semantics as the both pickup game and tourney players (since they said they're going for both) will have their fair share of people who try to abuse this on top of people who just find themselves in that odd situation.

I'm not saying I completely disagree but for tourneys you have to use rules. Not everyone uses common sense the same way. That much we can all agree on. I understand your point but those examples are the extreme and not the norm.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Plus a fig placed like that cannot fire back and you also ignore the fact that on your activation you move and then fire so obviously you can move into a position where this street lamp is not a problem.

And if that comment echo's PB's sentiments I just lost all interest in this as anything but a casual kitchen table game with friends.

Because it is possible to write rules to handle things like that. Refusing to do it means you're trending towards GW rules. That's not a good goal.

That is the way it is written in the rules that I have. Things may have changed. No idea since my set is from back in December. If you write overly complicated rules on the same token you open things up more to rules lawyering. I don't agree with it as written but all LOS systems have room for abuse.

Now if you could pose a workable and simple system in it's place I'm all for sharing it. You say it's broken that way. I partially agree. Now what is the fix?

Mike1975 wrote:
That is the way it is written in the rules that I have. Things may have changed. No idea since my set is from back in December. If you write overly complicated rules on the same token you open things up more to rules lawyering. I don't agree with it as written but all LOS systems have room for abuse.

Now if you could pose a workable and simple system in it's place I'm all for sharing it. You say it's broken that way. I partially agree. Now what is the fix?

I posted the band aid fix in the same post as I brought up the problem (add a % cover minimum to the "center" LOS rule i.e. "a model whose center is covered and who is over 50% obscured by cover) as well as hinted at with the initial question. The better solution is to simply drop the problematic and abusable "center" LOS system and go with something else (whether TLOS or "main body with exceptions").

Another issue we are bantering about.

I can see players placing FPA in cities to get cover and with the DF bonus of Hover they essentially double up on cover and make it nealy impossible to hit them (Building plus Hover). So can you hide in a city or on a hill behind terrain and still consider yourself Hovering in order to double up your defense bonuses?

Would a Veritech in guardian mode hiding behind a building on the ground still get the Hover bonuses. Common sense says not but there will still be players who try it.







Automatically Appended Next Post:

 warboss wrote:

Mike1975 wrote:
That is the way it is written in the rules that I have. Things may have changed. No idea since my set is from back in December. If you write overly complicated rules on the same token you open things up more to rules lawyering. I don't agree with it as written but all LOS systems have room for abuse.

Now if you could pose a workable and simple system in it's place I'm all for sharing it. You say it's broken that way. I partially agree. Now what is the fix?

I posted the band aid fix in the same post as I brought up the problem (add a % cover minimum to the "center" LOS rule i.e. "a model whose center is covered and who is over 50% obscured by cover) as well as hinted at with the initial question. The better solution is to simply drop the problematic and abusable "center" LOS system and go with something else (whether TLOS or "main body with exceptions").

But as Forar pointed out you have people who will argue if a unit is 45% or 52% hidden. So out comes where you have players with little common sense and you are asking them to use common sense judiciously??? I had a similar idea. In fact that is close to what I wrote up in my Tactics rules.

Mike1975 wrote:
Another issue we are bantering about.

I can see players placing FPA in cities to get cover and with the DF bonus of Hover they essentially double up on cover and make it nealy impossible to hit them (Building plus Hover). So can you hide in a city or on a hill behind terrain and still consider yourself Hovering in order to double up your defense bonuses?

Would a Veritech in guardian mode hiding behind a building on the ground still get the Hover bonuses. Common sense says not but there will still be players who try it.

Why not? They hovered close to the ground a lot in the show. Or am I misunderstanding the question?

But as Forar pointed out you have people who will argue if a unit is 45% or 52% hidden. So out comes where you have players with little common sense and you are asking them to use common sense judiciously??? I had a similar idea. In fact that is close to what I wrote up in my Tactics rules.

Instead of caring about that, make cover a smaller advantage and give it more judiciously. From base to base, anything in between? Cover. No? No cover.
Or TLOS - just define the "eyes" or sensors on every model. If there's something blocking in the path, cover.

If they're flying it would have to be essentially TLOS - anything blocking? Cover. No? no cover.

As I said on the facebook page, I really like the cylindrical method to LOS. I have played Warmachine and it is awkward at 1st glance, but really clear cut and definitive. I haven't had or heard an argument on LOS or cover using there rules. But as long as it isn't as ugly as 40k's LOS/cover system, I will be fine.

Mike1975 wrote:
I'm not saying I completely disagree but for tourneys you have to use rules. Not everyone uses common sense the same way. That much we can all agree on. I understand your point but those examples are the extreme and not the norm.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Plus a fig placed like that cannot fire back and you also ignore the fact that on your activation you move and then fire so obviously you can move into a position where this street lamp is not a problem.

Rules should be as solid as possible for ALL play as even friends can argue about interpretations. Also, common sense is not that common. You should really take a peek through the You Make the Call section of this forum to see how minis players in the wild actually interpret rules. I posted an extreme example to illustrate the point but not all the issues that will come up with this needlessly complicated and abusable center system will be so clear cut. As for the "can't fire back", that did occur to me in the past when I initially brought this up in May. Models who don't primarily fire (like VEF-1 and recon pods) can "creatively" be models hugging the ground to abuse LOS. If the electronic warfare rules those units get don't have LOS requirements, they can use them with impunity while being immune to fire with their centers 1" off the ground. Also, you're wrong about not being able to fire if the game uses a 180 degree fire arc (not sure if it does currently but the gencon gameplay videos seemed to indicate it). You're only NOT able to fire at the units in front of you if you're behind the terrain. If my lone veritech has 12 battlepods far off in front and two off 60 degrees off to the side, I can easily angle the model to have most of the big squadron denied LOS while still getting shots off on the ones on the side.

Mike, in the end, strong rules benefit everyone (Palladium, Tournament organizers, players, etc) and weak yet complex rules hurt everyone. No set of rules are bullet proof and even a clear cut rule about 50% cover will have people occasionally arguing about 49% versus 51% cover interpretations but you try to plug the really big holes before you ship. The center LOS system is a big potential hole in normal play and not just a fringe TFG thing (although there will likely be a fair amount of those as well abusing it).

Exalted for truth, Warboss.

The latest murmur is out.

http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=49&p=2762523&sid=5629ab0722615d0905343e4d737c1b59#p2762523

Although I'm not sure if this is a cheeky backhanded insult.lol

"While I cannot honestly say that “I love all of you,” I can say that all of us at Palladium Books appreciate and respect you. We welcome your comments and input, and love your passion."

Mike1975 wrote:
Another issue we are bantering about.

I can see players placing FPA in cities to get cover and with the DF bonus of Hover they essentially double up on cover and make it nealy impossible to hit them (Building plus Hover). So can you hide in a city or on a hill behind terrain and still consider yourself Hovering in order to double up your defense bonuses?

Would a Veritech in guardian mode hiding behind a building on the ground still get the Hover bonuses. Common sense says not but there will still be players who try it.

For the first part, no, it shouldn't in theory but it's difficult to fix in practice. Other games with flying type units that get similar bonuses basically are immune to cover. In Heavy Gear, the aircraft (although admittedly they're a token resource in that game) are considered to always fly above terrain. Unfortunately, when you're talking about so many models in robotech having that type of rule then you have additional concerns. One way to fix it is to assign a constant "height" to models that are using "hover" like 6" that would negate most (but obviously not all) cover. It simulates the effects of actually hovering (not just walking on the ground) but it's not without perils as it would slow down gameplay. For instance, if the model is at 6", that introduces whole other LOS issues with units then being able to shoot it that don't see the model on the tabletop. I wouldn't advocate that method even though I've seen it's use occasionally.

Ultimately, I think simply including and REQUIRING models with the hover rule to use the elevated base stands is the best solution. If a model has hover, you MUST use the elevated flight base. They get the benefit of Hover but they also have a higher LOS profile that makes them less likely to be able to use most non-building cover. It won't help in the city situation you're talking about but it will nip modeling for in game advantage like gluing FPAs flat on their bellies 3mm off the base.

Mike1975 wrote:


But as Forar pointed out you have people who will argue if a unit is 45% or 52% hidden. So out comes where you have players with little common sense and you are asking them to use common sense judiciously??? I had a similar idea. In fact that is close to what I wrote up in my Tactics rules.

I'm sorry Mike but those two are different things. The % cover is an interpretation whereas the abusable cover is clear cut rules as written. The latter may be abuse of those rules and against their spirit but it would be completely in line with the poor choice of rules we've been talking about. In my example, the "center" was absolutely covered and LOS was blocked. In your counterpoint, you're bringing up a difference of opinion as to an interpretation of cover which is something that you can never get rid of in a tabletop game. The two examples are not the same.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Cypher-xv wrote:
Here's a work in progress of Max. Hence why it looks cartoonish. Yes I know what I just said.

Looks good! Also, cartoonish isn't a bad thing when you're talking about Robotech models! My favorite painted robotech model I saw online was one done up specifically to look cell shaded like cartoons and the borderlands video games. The below pic is a PAINTED MODEL by a talented Japanese modeller.

 warboss wrote:

Mike1975 wrote:
I'm not saying I completely disagree but for tourneys you have to use rules. Not everyone uses common sense the same way. That much we can all agree on. I understand your point but those examples are the extreme and not the norm.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Plus a fig placed like that cannot fire back and you also ignore the fact that on your activation you move and then fire so obviously you can move into a position where this street lamp is not a problem.

Rules should be as solid as possible for ALL play as even friends can argue about interpretations. Also, common sense is not that common. You should really take a peek through the You Make the Call section of this forum to see how minis players in the wild actually interpret rules. I posted an extreme example to illustrate the point but not all the issues that will come up with this needlessly complicated and abusable center system will be so clear cut. As for the "can't fire back", that did occur to me in the past when I initially brought this up in May. Models who don't primarily fire (like VEF-1 and recon pods) can "creatively" be models hugging the ground to abuse LOS. If the electronic warfare rules those units get don't have LOS requirements, they can use them with impunity while being immune to fire with their centers 1" off the ground. Also, you're wrong about not being able to fire if the game uses a 180 degree fire arc (not sure if it does currently but the gencon gameplay videos seemed to indicate it). You're only NOT able to fire at the units in front of you if you're behind the terrain. If my lone veritech has 12 battlepods far off in front and two off 60 degrees off to the side, I can easily angle the model to have most of the big squadron denied LOS while still getting shots off on the ones on the side.

Mike, in the end, strong rules benefit everyone (Palladium, Tournament organizers, players, etc) and weak yet complex rules hurt everyone. No set of rules are bullet proof and even a clear cut rule about 50% cover will have people occasionally arguing about 49% versus 51% cover interpretations but you try to plug the really big holes before you ship. The center LOS system is a big potential hole in normal play and not just a fringe TFG thing (although there will likely be a fair amount of those as well abusing it).

Sorry, had a phone call. I'm not pushing PB's set of LOS rules. I chimed in to answer on how these rules are interpreted in Tactics. I happen to agree with what you are saying on both counts, LOS and Strong Rules sets are good and important factors to a mini's game . I've just seen and read a lot of arguments for and against all the different ways to write up and do LOS. I agree, common sense is not common that is why I said not everyone uses it the same way . What makes sense to you and me might be nonsense to other and vice-versa. So it comes down to allowing players to use some common sense vs Iron rules or somewhere in between. Iron rules means no room for interpretation but some things will get lost in translation . In order of how open the rules are to interpretation....

1. Straight LOS: Players can see any part of a unit they can shoot. Is it fair to shoot at a unit even where the only thing you see is the foot. (40K style?). Players tend to place minis in advantageous positions to take advantage of system.

2. TLOS: Open for players to model miniatures in such a way as to reduce LOS and adds some room for abuse of the system. Players tend to place minis in advantageous positions to take advantage of system. My guy is crouched so he get better cover.

3. Cylindrical: Never played this way before but I have heard that it leaves a lot open since you base LOS on the size of the base and the height of the mini. I've also heard that it is simple and leaves less open for interpretation than the above systems. Mini postion not as important.

4. Center of Body (interpreted): Allows way to get around fault of Center to Center LOS but opens up games to some interpretation.

5. Center of Body to Center LOS: Center of body might be blocked? Makes no sense to ignore LOS on units if that is all that is blocked. Tree/Street lamp example.

So it appears we both prefer a #4 style rules set balanced between rules definitions and allowing some room for common sense interpretation. The conundrum is to define the center of body in such a way as to leave only a small window for interpretation. Too big a window and you get abuse, too small and you lose all flexibility and #4 becomes #5.

Are we on the same page here?

 warboss wrote:


For the first part, no, it shouldn't in theory but it's difficult to fix in practice. Other games with flying type units that get similar bonuses basically are immune to cover. In Heavy Gear, the aircraft (although admittedly they're a token resource in that game) are considered to always fly above terrain. Unfortunately, when you're talking about so many models in robotech having that type of rule then you have additional concerns. One way to fix it is to assign a constant "height" to models that are using "hover" like 6" that would negate most (but obviously not all) cover. It simulates the effects of actually hovering (not just walking on the ground) but it's not without perils as it would slow down gameplay. For instance, if the model is at 6", that introduces whole other LOS issues with units then being able to shoot it that don't see the model on the tabletop. I wouldn't advocate that method even though I've seen it's use occasionally.

Ultimately, I think simply including and REQUIRING models with the hover rule to use the elevated base stands is the best solution. If a model has hover, you MUST use the elevated flight base. They get the benefit of Hover but they also have a higher LOS profile that makes them less likely to be able to use most non-building cover. It won't help in the city situation you're talking about but it will nip modeling for in game advantage like gluing FPAs flat on their bellies 3mm off the base.

That is exactly my thinking. I posted Hovering veritechs on sticks that raised them up about 3 inches from gound and fighters on ones that raised them about 6 inches.

I think it would come down to #s 3 through 5 for me. 1 and 2 are just 40k-style junk that can be thrown out.

Mike1975 wrote:

That is exactly my thinking. I posted Hovering veritechs on sticks that raised them up about 3 inches from gound and fighters on ones that raised them about 6 inches.

That would work both in theory and practice. I don't think that they'll have two different flight base sticks though but requiring the use of flight bases on models who have hover or flight would be a good and more importantly easy idea as it just requires a sentance and making sure the models include the stands if they have that trait. I'd be fine with just the curved elevated clear plastic flight stand they've shown previously.

 Ironwill13791 wrote:
I think it would come down to #s 3 through 5 for me. 1 and 2 are just 40k-style junk that can be thrown out.

Agreed 100%

Mike1975 wrote:

Sorry, had a phone call. I'm not pushing PB's set of LOS rules. I chimed in to answer on how these rules are interpreted in Tactics. I happen to agree with what you are saying on both counts, LOS and Strong Rules sets are good and important factors to a mini's game . I've just seen and read a lot of arguments for and against all the different ways to write up and do LOS. I agree, common sense is not common that is why I said not everyone uses it the same way . What makes sense to you and me might be nonsense to other and vice-versa. So it comes down to allowing players to use some common sense vs Iron rules or somewhere in between. Iron rules means no room for interpretation but some things will get lost in translation . In order of how open the rules are to interpretation....

1. Straight LOS: Players can see any part of a unit they can shoot. Is it fair to shoot at a unit even where the only thing you see is the foot. (40K style?). Players tend to place minis in advantageous positions to take advantage of system.

2. TLOS: Open for players to model miniatures in such a way as to reduce LOS and adds some room for abuse of the system. Players tend to place minis in advantageous positions to take advantage of system. My guy is crouched so he get better cover.

3. Cylindrical: Never played this way before but I have heard that it leaves a lot open since you base LOS on the size of the base and the height of the mini. I've also heard that it is simple and leaves less open for interpretation than the above systems. Mini postion not as important.

4. Center of Body (interpreted): Allows way to get around fault of Center to Center LOS but opens up games to some interpretation.

5. Center of Body to Center LOS: Center of body might be blocked? Makes no sense to ignore LOS on units if that is all that is blocked. Tree/Street lamp example.

So it appears we both prefer a #4 style rules set balanced between rules definitions and allowing some room for common sense interpretation. The conundrum is to define the center of body in such a way as to leave only a small window for interpretation. Too big a window and you get abuse, too small and you lose all flexibility and #4 becomes #5.

Are we on the same page here?

I don't personally see the confusion as Ironwill said about 40k style LOS but that is a preference and not a hard fact and I acknowledge other people can differ in opinion. I would add though that the above are NOT mutually exclusive.

I would however change #2 as I don't think it's much different from #1.

#2: Modified TLOS: If you see a part of the model not including the base, limbs, wings, tail, weapons, or antenna, you have LOS. Use the entire model excluding the base to determine cover % when necessary.


The new alpha rules of Heavy Gear (check out their site dp9forum.com for links to the files or the Heavy Gear thread in this subforum) have a combination of the above. They use TLOS to encourage modelling variety like kneeling models but have a fallback of the warmachine standard defined cylinder if players can't agree to cover the TFG situations. That way you can creatively build your models to look better but if you encounter someone who is doing that not for the cool factor but rather to abuse the rules, you have the option to default to using a standard sized paper cutout with set dimensions (like what you pictured above).

I'd prefer my #2 followed by #3 personally.. with #5 (nebulous center to center) as the worst followed by #1 (shooting at battlepod barrels) as the second worst.

Most players so far prefer something in the #3 to #4 range. I have never used #3 so I can't really comment on it.

It's trivial to fix modeling abuse with #2. Publish official pictures of the models - anything deviating significantly from that defaults to no cover.

That might be a bit harder to pull off outside of particularly egregious examples.

Sure, if someone is using a "flight base" that's only 2mm tall, they're being a jerk, but given that we're talking about multi-pose minis, there has to be some wiggle room in how the figure stands.

It's a big part of why I like the malifaux style that recognizes the base as opposed to the model for determining cover, with adjusted rules for the model's height (as in, listed height number) for seeing it over cover or not (and some extrapolation for when the height of the model, due to design or circumstance doesn't accurately reflect its intended height against terrain and other figures).

Sure, it's not perfect either, but at makes "modelling for advantage" irrelevant for the most part. Doesn't matter that your battle pods are all 'crouched and ready to spring, and also happen to be as small as they can possibly be built', the base doesn't change.

There are always exceptions and fringe cases, but my crew (yes, they're back) found few issues that couldn't be resolved with a tape measure.

 Forar wrote:
That might be a bit harder to pull off outside of particularly egregious examples.

It's only the egregious examples that people complain about.

Sure, if someone is using a "flight base" that's only 2mm tall, they're being a jerk, but given that we're talking about multi-pose minis, there has to be some wiggle room in how the figure stands.

Absolutely! Hence the word "significantly" in my post.

It's a big part of why I like the malifaux style that recognizes the base as opposed to the model for determining cover, with adjusted rules for the model's height (as in, listed height number) for seeing it over cover or not (and some extrapolation for when the height of the model, due to design or circumstance doesn't accurately reflect its intended height against terrain and other figures).

That'd work also, but it's not as fast IMO

Thanks for the compliment warboss. I had seen that pic of the vf-1d too. Wish I had the skills to paint miniatures like that. I know its a large scale model 1/72 maybe.

The problem is that the egregious ones are those that are caught, but even a little hunch (all of the battloid's are leaning into a run!) or the right sweep to the guardians could prove advantageous. Even if it's not intentionally done for that result.

Basically, the models will shift from person to person. If the exact model as it is has in game effects, those variations that might simply be done for aesthetics can become a benefit or detriment to either player.

So I'm suggesting that we take them out of the equation.

The bases shouldn't change, especially since they have the "forward facing and flanking arrows" present (either using the included bases or appropriately marked custom ones), so they're the common denominator, at least in my eyes.

 Forar wrote:
The bases shouldn't change, especially since they have the "forward facing and flanking arrows" present (either using the included bases or appropriately marked custom ones), so they're the common denominator, at least in my eyes.

I'd completely forgotten about that.
The Malifaux system is 1000% better than anything else with that in mind.

Hopefully there's an update tomorow if not today.

 Cypher-xv wrote:
Hopefully there's an update tomorow if not today.

It would be nice, but judging from a lot of other kickstarters, I don't think we'll hear anything definitive out of China until March. An update about non-model related stuff would be great though.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/750249

New update.

So... new update is out. If you combine the past month's worth of updates and ND facebook post, we have the rules, destroids, glaug, veritech, and battlepods still being tweaked and likely needing to be sent yet again to HG for approval prior to the mold even being cut... so basically NOTHING other than maybe the dice in the base starter set is actually possibly ready to manufacture at this point... 10 months after stating 98% was done on two dozen sculpts. June is starting to look doubtful already.

I like that we're still getting regular updates. I wish they had more rules tidbits and touched upon stuff we haven't seen yet (in terms of gameplay mechanics), but I'll take 'em over some of the pure platitude based ones of not too long ago.

But I also concur that we're not too many weeks from them needing to drop the hammer and getting things going if they want to make Gencon, let alone June, let alone May (why do I have a feeling they're going to regret that statement the same way they regretted the last one that included a "maybe even early!" clause?).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As noted in the Shadows of Brimstone thread here, it's interesting that I'm now essentially watching a three way (errr) race to deliver before Gencon.

In one corner, we have Wyrd. Campaign finished in Jan 2013, backer boxes were due in August/September, which was pushed back to March 2014, though with only 6 weeks left, no actual word has been given (last update was 5 weeks ago). Supposedly the books are almost done (closed beta ended a few weeks ago).

In another corner, we have Palladium. Campaign finished in May, we all know the story from there. Lots to do, 98%, everyone loves it, platitudes and reassurances regarding things very few people were seriously concerned about, etc.

And in the third corner (apparently it's a triangular room), we have Flying Frog Productions. Despite the campaign only ending back in November, this one I'm actually worried about the least. Supposedly the game has been simmering for years, and far as I've heard, they've actually managed to have big releases at Gencon on time in the past in their chosen field, so I actually have faith that they know what they're doing, rather than expanding their business product line into a new field and stumbling their way into it.

*Cue Chariots of Fire*

Ok, so I saw the update about the Regults. They look like they're going to be a royal pain to put together. I'm really aching for a refund now.

How will they be a pain? Just curious.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
How will they be a pain? Just curious.

I think he's referring to them having 15 pieces for something smaller in volume than a crisis suit. I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment when you're talking about a plastic model but I do see where he's coming from. That is alot of pieces for a "horde" model.

On the up side, it might allow for some significant variance in poses, for those so inclined.

At least they don't look as bad as Wyrd's clockwork traps. Those fiddly little donkey caves had like 10+ pieces for something around a third the Battle Pod's size.

Maybe this'll be part of what ends the "omg we have to do a 10,000 point battle!' kick some of my friends are on, in that it will probably take them 5 years to assemble half of what they have coming.

Which brings us right back to those Skirmish rules... >.>

For those who missed it this is a good time to join the Tactics Facebook Group.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1440349382851175/



I doubt I'll be playing much Skirmish, that is for like 2-4 UEDF or 4-12 Zen units/side. We are talking really small games that will last less than 15 minutes.

Which is perfect when people only have 5-10 figures assembled apiece.

300+ points is a LOT of figures to assemble, just to hit the cap. Having a diverse force adjust for the game objectives, terrain, expectation of what ones opponent might be fielding, etc? Definitely going to take a while.

I'm very happy about the fact that I won't be stuck with the same boring poses with the pods. I don't have a problem with them being multi bit. I have to say I'm disappointed that the skirmish rules are being glossed over in favor of mass combat. I was looking for a more intimate gaming experience with RRT. It's not like I couldn't come up with extra rules. But it's a problem when playing against strangers.

 Forar wrote:
Which is perfect when people only have 5-10 figures assembled apiece.

300+ points is a LOT of figures to assemble, just to hit the cap. Having a diverse force adjust for the game objectives, terrain, expectation of what ones opponent might be fielding, etc? Definitely going to take a while.

Plus the fact that I have stand-ins that I can use until I get mine assembled...

Only if you put them on appropriate bases. ;-)

 Forar wrote:
Only if you put them on appropriate bases. ;-)

They are all the same green ugly bases. So I hope that counts.

Posted another AAR on the Facebook Page

You have to be a memeber to read it all.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1440349382851175/

I'll try to post it here later this week. I really need to create a Blog or something to post all of these.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
A while back there was some concern about the rules having a 1 always miss and a 6 always hit. After playing few more games I realized that this completely makes sense the way the game works. Most units have a GN of 2 and and DF of 5 requiring a 3+ to hit. If you have a basic unit being targeted by an Elite one with a GN of 3 or 4 than without that rule most hits would basically be automatic. Nothing should ever be automatic. On the flip side if that unit was hit by something like a VF-1S with a GN of 4 and the pilot rolls a 5 to hit for a total of 9, most standard units only have a PIL of 2 and without the rule of 6 always succeeding then the target would have no chance to dodge. The rule of 1 always failing and 6 always succeeding damps down a bit on high skill units so that they are powerful but not infallible. I don't care how good of a pilot you have, you should never have a unit that can automatically hit or dodge attacks and you should never make it impossible even for a lowly Battlepod to survive an attack through sheer dumb luck.

Mike1975 wrote:
A while back there was some concern about the rules having a 1 always miss and a 6 always hit. After playing few more games I realized that this completely makes sense the way the game works. Most units have a GN of 2 and and DF of 5 requiring a 3+ to hit. If you have a basic unit being targeted by an Elite one with a GN of 3 or 4 than without that rule most hits would basically be automatic. Nothing should ever be automatic. On the flip side if that unit was hit by something like a VF-1S with a GN of 4 and the pilot rolls a 5 to hit for a total of 9, most standard units only have a PIL of 2 and without the rule of 6 always succeeding then the target would have no chance to dodge. The rule of 1 always failing and 6 always succeeding damps down a bit on high skill units so that they are powerful but not infallible. I don't care how good of a pilot you have, you should never have a unit that can automatically hit or dodge attacks and you should never make it impossible even for a lowly Battlepod to survive an attack through sheer dumb luck.

I agree with this. Has there been some complaining about this? I figure current wargamers would be used to this. Why would you want to face units that CAN'T miss? Even our best, most expensive GPS guided bombs only hit their target 50% of the time. There is deviation and fallibility built into the best that science can offer now.

Now, there are lots of unlucky bastards out there, who get those ones when they really need anything but. I imagine they want something else, but would agree with ones always missing or failing...

I think it was just the shock of automatic 1 and 6 and not thinking through the reasoning. I remember a few people early on saying WTF and wanted to share. After a few games I thought back and realized that it made perfect sense and why.

I'd be a bit surprised if that complaint was common as it is pretty common in lots of games from RPGs to tabletop minis (including the most popular scifi game). I don't have any issue with that personally at all. Even Max and Roy occasionally failed a dodge!

It was not a major concern but since it came to mind last night as I was doing the AAR......

 Forar wrote:
As noted in the KS comments, that's a lot more specific then they usually are.
Yes, obviously it assumes that mold tooling, production and multiple rounds of shipping go smoothly to make that timeframe, but it's almost suspiciously specific compared to their usual "it'll be done when it's done, so awesome, made an entire room of adults achieve simultaneous climax just by glancing at two pages of rules, etc, etc" platitudes.

This is information for distributors and is a launch cycle with them (no pre-order money rolling in just yet, wanting some buzz) I look at this as similar to how specific it was to us until the kickstarter closed.

There is money to be had so I would hate to think they are trying to get an influx of money at a point where they think they will need it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 warboss wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
How will they be a pain? Just curious.

I think he's referring to them having 15 pieces for something smaller in volume than a crisis suit. I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment when you're talking about a plastic model but I do see where he's coming from. That is alot of pieces for a "horde" model.

I have always felt that the more models you must field that are the "same type" it is all the more important to be able to add as much varying poses as possible.
If they are exactly the same static pose it looks more like playing Axis and Allies rather than some table top game.
It is also fun to notice some joe-model that for some strange reason performs well (would never notice if all the same).
YES I agree having a "base" model with a ton of parts can be a slog (40k eldar guardians = 11 parts including base 28mm model "joe-troop" = painful).
It could be worse, I am thinking those tiny guns may be flimsy and I may replace them with brass rod/tube so they do not snap off = happy-fun-joy!
It could be worse in the opposite sense: the one piece hunk of plastic with base included! Like a version of "army men" or the scary Battletech box sets of old.

So PB had plenty of room to do much evil, they seem to know where to draw the line for models (thanks be to god...)

 jacobus wrote:
Ok, so I saw the update about the Regults. They look like they're going to be a royal pain to put together. I'm really aching for a refund now.

If PB keeps refusing you, and the credit card company wont help of course, then I would be more than happy to take that battle cry pledge off of your hands.

Jacobus, there are a number of people who are part of the Facebook group who missed out on the KS that would buy you out.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Jacobus, what exactly does the pledge you want to sell include?

AAR Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Missiles fire in Volleys of 4 and can be split among targets that are within 2 inches of each other. Guardian mode VF's have a GN of 2 and Battlepods have a DF of 4 meaning that the missiles will only hit on a 4+. There are rules that give a unit +1 to strike bonus if the units are in Close Formation (within 2 inches of each other). But you have to have more units than the GUN rating of those units than the GUN rating of those units. So if I have 3 units in Close formation and they Gun skill is less than 3 they get a +1 strike bonus. If they have a GUN greater than or equal to a 3 they do not get a bonus. Interesting change from the KS video. Now it means that UEDF can take advantage of Close Formations since in the KS you only got the +1 bonus if you had more units firing than they did. I think this is a good change.

Part 4

5

Three Battlepods are hit. Missiles do 9 MDC, you half that if you roll and pay a command point. Zen players spends 3 CP's to half damage and save 3 Battlepods from destruction. Looking back I see I screwed up and one of the Pods was hit with 2 missiles and should have died. That's what happens when you play a solo game!

Part 6

The UEDF pays 2 CP's to dodge, one for each VF. The PIL of a guardian mode VF is a 3 so the pilots need to meet or exceed the strike rolls to succesfully dodge. One VF rolls a 5 plus the PIL of 3 gets total of 8 that is equal to or higher than all the Battlepod's strike rolls so he is safe. The other rolls a 3 for a total of 6 and is still hit 3 times since the Pods had a +2 for GUn of 1 and Close Formation making the dies rolls of 5 a total of 7. If he had rolled a 4 he would have dodged 2 of the stike rolls and been hit only once. He rolls 3 times to reduce the 3, 4 MDC hits to 3, 2 MDC hits. Leaving him with 8 MDC.

Clarification:
Attacker adds GUN skill to any bonuses like close formation. He then needs to match or better targets DF with bonuses, if any. If hit the defender has a few options. First, attempt to dodge. You do so by payingone command point and rolling a die adding the pilot's PIL skill. If the result is greater than or equal to the strike roll total the unit dodges. If you are hit with multiple shots you need only make one dodge roll and pay only one command point. Target may wind up evading some of the shots but not all. If hit the player can then spend additional command points to roll against the hit causing it to do half damage. Rolling costs one command point for EVERY hit that you roll against. So if you are hit 3 times and you roll against all three you may survive but you need to pay 3 command points to do so. There are times when it is better to lose a unit than use up your command point pool. The player must decide and plan in order to determine when to use or not use command points. It may even be better to simply roll instead of attempting to dodge. Tactics...

Part 7

Part 8, still awake?

Part 9? Now I'm forgetting