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lastspartacus wrote:
Ya know, I don't know if I'd say DzC is balanced, but that's just because I don't find its core mechanics, the way the d6 rolls work, to be balanced. As far as model balance goes, it does seem incredibly balanced. I don't find the core mechanics super deep, but the aesthetic and feeling of moving all your troops in via dropships and jumping around is satisfying enough that I can have fun regardless and relax. That's a first for me in a wargame, honestly.

Oh, one caveat. I have a hatred of Resistance, but maybe UCM in general struggles with them. In particular, those damn biker dudes.

They did errata flame weapons to ignore Evasion, so Fireblades can function as a counter.

That and the new Phoenix can drop large templates on them, so who cares if you miss if you are still likely to cover a bunch of them?

I believe the bikers were nerfed quite heavily in general too.

I was dead-set on Halo being my space game of choice (never was around when BFG was going, so this will be a first excluding the Dystopian Wars naval game I have), but Dropzone has been making me have to think seriously about this. I really only have space/time for one, so now I just have to decide who it's going to be...

Very excited about Dropfleet, always been a big Andy C fan, sounds interesting and the UCM models previewed look great.

lastspartacus wrote:
Ya know, I don't know if I'd say DzC is balanced, but that's just because I don't find its core mechanics, the way the d6 rolls work, to be balanced.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, the dice rolling mechanics (shooting, bringing on fast movers, searching for objectives etc.) apply in exactly the same way to each faction, so how can they be unbalanced?

If he means what I think he means, actually, I can kinda see the point. I don't necessarily agree that it's a particular issue, but I think I can understand why someone would think that way.

Someone could quite easily take an issue with the way that in DZC, the game doesn't really give you much opportunity for the Law of Large Numbers to come into play.

In a 6 round game, your tank unit, say, may only get to properly fire 2 or 3 times. So that's 6 or 9 dice rolls. In that sort of situation, a bad streak of luck in a game can end up being game endingly awful.

Mathematically everything is fine, but a bad day is really noticable.

That's not really a balance issue, per se. Bad luck is something you have to be prepared for in any game that isn't chess, you just have to try and balance it with good decision making to ensure that if things don't go the way you want, you aren't completely screwed.

If the alternative were for DZC to adopt 'bucket of dice' rolling like you see sometimes in games like 40k, I don't think that would be an improvement.

I really like the look of the DZC spaceships. Lovely paintjob too.
I must admit I was sceptical whether Hawk would be able to make the same quality spaceships as Spartan, but these first ships are definitely up there with the very best Firestorm designs. Can't wait to see the other factions.
The ruleset is going to be great at least, that much I am sure about. I also hope it will be somewhat more affordable than DZC and that the models are going to be somewhat less tiny.

I'd expect the DZC space game to cost about as much as it's ground-based counterpart. The fleet Hawk took to Salute had 1 Battleship, 3 Cruisers and 4 Strike Carriers and they've said that an average tournament-sized list will be roughly double that.

I'd expect them to not be cheap because they're pretty heftily detailed and not exactly small models, the Battleship measures in at 142mm, with the Cruisers at 105mm, making them slightly longer than the old BFG cruisers.

 ProfessionalAmateur wrote:
I'd expect the DZC space game to cost about as much as it's ground-based counterpart. The fleet Hawk took to Salute had 1 Battleship, 3 Cruisers and 4 Strike Carriers and they've said that an average tournament-sized list will be roughly double that.

I'd expect them to not be cheap because they're pretty heftily detailed and not exactly small models, the Battleship measures in at 142mm, with the Cruisers at 105mm, making them slightly longer than the old BFG cruisers.

Well, it is good to know that they at least are not so tiny as the ground models. Those are really tiny, even for 10mm, which is my biggest problem with them. Price is important too, but ultimately secondary to nice miniatures

As someone who loves 10mm and smaller gaming, I must disagree. But to each their own.

 ProfessionalAmateur wrote:

lastspartacus wrote:
Ya know, I don't know if I'd say DzC is balanced, but that's just because I don't find its core mechanics, the way the d6 rolls work, to be balanced.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, the dice rolling mechanics (shooting, bringing on fast movers, searching for objectives etc.) apply in exactly the same way to each faction, so how can they be unbalanced?

I was just saying I don't prefer the mechanic itself. The factions seem very balanced, especially after the errata.

For me, the Dropzone game miniatures are probably my favourites at the moment. I'm not a massive fan of Halo although I can understand how that will swing it for some people.

But, I'm torn with Firestorm apparently really being a fun game to play with version 2.0 (I have heard a lot of good things about it), although I don't think that much of the miniatures..

So, perhaps going to be a choice between looks and personality?! (Depending on what Andy Chambers manages to do with the Hawk Wargames effort of course)

Also, how extensive can a Halo license be, for space battle? Pretty much every concievable ship is in the game already out of this box. At least Star Wars has a boggling large EU to draw from...

There are still plenty of ships in the halo universe that aren't in the starter set. Also Spartan has said that they are working with 343 to make new ships for the franchise. The Epoch cruiser from the starter set is a new ship.

There also is a potential issue with the number of faction. Without mixing and matching existing ships ala 40k allies into one fleet, there pretty much is only one more faction to introduce (the forerunners). The flood? Just nurgle + existing ships.

Those have both been confirmed as factions that will appear in the game. I can see the flood having rules for boarding and taking over enemy ships over the course of the game.

Edit: and what does it matter if there are only a few factions at most Star wars armada will probably only have 3.

I expect we can have Covenant, UNSC (with both war and post-war ships), insurrectionists, Flood and Forerunners.

And there is going to be some ally system where everyone can ally. Hell, even in one of the games there is a brief UNSC/Covenant Separatist/Flood/Forerunner alliance vs the Covenant Loyalists.

 Tyran wrote:
I expect we can have Covenant, UNSC (with both war and post-war ships), insurrectionists, Flood and Forerunners.

And there is going to be some ally system where everyone can ally. Hell, even in one of the games there is a brief UNSC/Covenant Separatist/Flood/Forerunner alliance vs the Covenant Loyalists.

Which ends up being three real factions from a unique model perspective and four by a significant rules difference perspective (adding the flood there). Throwing in some mishmash factions helps a bit as does trying to do a FOW early war/late war split but it's not the same thing as more real factions. In the end, that lack of additional factions only becomes an issue several years down the line at which point Spartan will have long moved on to other both related and unrelated games and be coming back for a second edition in any case.

It will do fine, at the very least the IP alone will kept it alive (pretty much like 40k these days).

This game is made for people who want to play halo they will be fine with the number of factions present in the game, and like I said star wars armada will at most have 3 factions maybe 4 and yet no one is complaining about that.

I know that I would like to do some Starships, based upon a cross between BSG and the FASA game Leviathan from their Renegade Legion universe.

Having spoken and taken classes with a lt of materials engineers working on Meta-Materials, and having talked with the science and tech advisor for BSG, the scale of the miniatures for such a hybrid would allow the game to be played at 1:1 scale with the miniatures (with miniatures between four and eight inches long).

But there are just too many Space Combat Games to compete with at this point.

MB