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The amount of keywords definitely increased, that's for sure.

I've been playing this game for well over 3 years now, so that probably also helps massively to memorize any of them... But having said that, this really is nothing too bad compared to industry standards for amount of rules and is absolutely laughably small compared to older rules sets (or even current date ones with long pedigrees such as battletech).

And having playtested for a long time, a lot of the wording is extra long just because of how much that is required for everybody to get the intent and not discuss wording endlessly. You wouldn't believe how many people trip up over a single word in a rules set.

Mind you, I still think the game could use a bit of a cleanup concerning some keywords... Being a specialist at shooting at aircraft probably doesn't need 3 different variants for instance. But overall, the game is in a pretty good state. Good enough that the developers can start thinking about cleaning things up again where needed in a 4th edition.

I imagine the next wave of simultaneous ORBAT updates (another good thing for this game to prevent excessive power creep) could be one of the last ones before a new edition swings around.

The special rules bloat seems like it would be pretty easy to massively pair back. There's so many rules that are just slight variations, and it feels like that's because they're afraid of any two units having the same set of rules.

Going to specifics, in the Union we have Linear Dash and Full Steam Ahead which do basically the same thing and I really can't see much if any benefit to gameplay of having them both instead of just one.

Ugh, just remembered as well, there's been a recent proliferation specifically in my faction of "weapon that is blatantly from another faction, but instead of reusing their keywords, it has a whole new unit specific trait that's written slightly differently" (looking at you Indianapolis and Steward) and it's maddening. It's going in the wrong direction.

 slyphic wrote:
The special rules bloat seems like it would be pretty easy to massively pair back. There's so many rules that are just slight variations, and it feels like that's because they're afraid of any two units having the same set of rules.

Going to specifics, in the Union we have Linear Dash and Full Steam Ahead which do basically the same thing and I really can't see much if any benefit to gameplay of having them both instead of just one.

Ugh, just remembered as well, there's been a recent proliferation specifically in my faction of "weapon that is blatantly from another faction, but instead of reusing their keywords, it has a whole new unit specific trait that's written slightly differently" (looking at you Indianapolis and Steward) and it's maddening. It's going in the wrong direction.

Correct about linear dash and full steam ahead. That's pretty easy "low hanging fruit" to streamline in the next edition.

And yeah, it's a typical Union thing to try and mimic other nation's tech (as they are still a very young nation in this setting). But that's largely limited to that faction however... And they largely copy the Prussians it seems. Remember: "made in Germany is a quality label, made in the US is a warning!"

I want to make something clear. I have fun playing the current edition of Dystopian Wars. I just cannot engage with a game uncritically, and have a list of complaints with every single miniature game I've ever played, especially the ones I like the most.

I've got a good sized Union force I'll be painting up this coming month (January was a 'Terrain Month' for me), and hopefully playing semi-regularly at my local. I can work around the rules bloat both through making my own reference materials and general system mastery through continued play.

The only things that I can't fix are the size and bothersomeness of dice pools, but that just makes this a 3 hour game not a 2 hour game, and the need for large blocks of models, which just means it's a mass battle naval game and again a 3 hour game not a 2 hour game.