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 paulson games wrote:
There will be 4 classes of weaponry, ranging from light to super heavy. Each mech profile will feature a number of hard points for weaponry and equipment. Players will be able to alter profiles by switching out armments based on their hard point availability. Mechs can upgrade to a heavier class weapon one step above their normal weight class at the expense of extra slots. This keeps light mechs from carrying heavy or superheavy weapons as they don't have the frame strength or energy capacity to support such massive items.

There will be a few set designs with hardwired systems that can't be changed with the benefit of an extra hardpopint vs customized mechs.

Pilots will also alter a units stats, experienced pilots (veterans & aces) will be able to chose skills to represent advanced training, raw tallent etc granting them options above what standard grunt pilots are capable of. Several of the heavy mechs and super heavy quads are crewed by more than one pilot making them very deadly if crewed by elite pilots.

The game won't have rules for building every individual aspect of a mech (like battletech), but it will allow you to pick a base chasis and outfit the weaponry and subsystems as desired.

Uh, I think something is going wrong.

I am throwing my money at the computer screen, but rules and mechs aren't appearing.

I will keep trying, hopefully whatever technical issue is causing this will be sorted out soon.

GBL wrote:


Uh, I think something is going wrong.

I am throwing my money at the computer screen, but rules and mechs aren't appearing.

I will keep trying, hopefully whatever technical issue is causing this will be sorted out soon.

That only works on page one of the thread! Jeez...

The idea of strong and simple rules almost sounds like a 15mm scale CAV game, rather than Battletech, which is perfectly fine by me! I have been getting the urge for some time to get into 15mm gaming, because it would give me a changeup in my painting hobby for figures and terrain, as well as easier storage of terrain/smaller gaming table space to play a game.

Some questions:

I know you are running with the idea of skirmishing squads of mechs. Will you be designing the rules so that a force could also be made of infantry and tanks with a single mech or two for support, or will it mostly be themed towards a squad of mechs with a tank or an infantry unit or two in support?

Would infantry in your game be handled as individually-based troopers, or like other game systems where a 'unit" is a group of 3-5 figures on something like a 40mm base.

 warboss wrote:

GBL wrote:


Uh, I think something is going wrong.

I am throwing my money at the computer screen, but rules and mechs aren't appearing.

I will keep trying, hopefully whatever technical issue is causing this will be sorted out soon.

That only works on page one of the thread! Jeez...

Didn't work either.
I went to page one and threw money at the screen and nothing happened.

Thanks, Obama.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

 warboss wrote:

GBL wrote:


Uh, I think something is going wrong.

I am throwing my money at the computer screen, but rules and mechs aren't appearing.

I will keep trying, hopefully whatever technical issue is causing this will be sorted out soon.

That only works on page one of the thread! Jeez...

Didn't work either.
I went to page one and threw money at the screen and nothing happened.

Thanks, Obama.

Its a conspiracy I tells ya.

 paulson games wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
If I got into this I'd be using them for this game, not another... so I hope the ruleset is good!

Aw man... my gig is up. I'd been planning on slipping by with a shoddy system but now that I've been called out I'm gonna have to do some actual work. Next time Gadget, next time!!





In all serious I want to make a game that's balanced and fun to play, I had pretty good player response at last year's Adepticon with the previous Robotech
game i'd drafted up and I think this one will be a good improvement over that as it'll offer several options I didn't have before. I will be making the ruleset
available to everyone in text form before the kickstarter launches that way they can decide if they like it or not and provide feedback if I need to improve areas.
I want to keep it a personal goal to be in sync with my customers and player player base unlike some bigger companies.

This was hilarious and sounds great.

Hurm... awesome looks mechs. I'll have to keep an eye on this closely. Cheers!

Why do companies refuse to make anything but skirmish scale games?

I seriously have no interest in something as simple and basic as a game with 4-5 models all with similar functions.

Griever wrote:
Why do companies refuse to make anything but skirmish scale games?

I seriously have no interest in something as simple and basic as a game with 4-5 models all with similar functions.

plenty of games can scale up to mass combat(Brushfire does for example), but saying 'You need to buy around 100 models to get started' will turn people off of smaller companies games. Its much easier to build up a community over time with smaller purchase requirements.

Pretty much what Cyporiean said, it's much easier to attract a player base if there's not a high bar of needing a metric ton of models to play. If larger battles are wanted players can always expand the size of the game if they like.

The secondary issue is with the larger size of these models there's less table space. With the mecha being on a 60mm & 120mm bases it would be skin to playing 40k with everything using dreadnaught sized bases or larger. Factor in in sligtly larger terrain than 28mm stuff and a standard gaming table fills up very fast. The table space is the one downside of having large mecha models, where a smaller 1/300 game like battletech can use more units in the same space as it's half the size.

Again players can always run bigger games if they want.


Infantry will be handled as one unit per base, while they are going to be a support option don't expect a lot from them. The game is themed around quick moving mechanized combat, even the slow mechs have a good deal of mobility and IMO it's hard for troops to keep up when the battlefield is capable of dodging and walking speed is 30+mph. (Infantry isn't power armored) Tanks and ground vehicles are able to keep pace but will tend to be easier to hit as they are less manuverable. Helicopters and VOTL craft are the most mobile of the non-mech units but due to being aircraft they can't sustain damage like armor or mecha can.

 paulson games wrote:
Pretty much what Cyporiean said, it's much easier to attract a player base if there's not a high bar of needing a metric ton of models to play. If larger battles are wanted players can always expand the size of the game if they like.

The secondary issue is with the larger size of these models there's less table space. With the mecha being on a 60mm & 120mm bases it would be skin to playing 40k with everything using dreadnaught sized bases or larger. Factor in in sligtly larger terrain than 28mm stuff and a standard gaming table fills up very fast. The table space is the one downside of having large mecha models, where a smaller 1/300 game like battletech can use more units in the same space as it's half the size.

Again players can always run bigger games if they want.

As I have been collecting n and 15mm mechs for a little while now, my only criticism is that I cant get them fast enough.

I may need to buy some more n scale Japanese railway buildings, sounds like this game is going to rock.

Hungrily awaiting more detail.

Oh god, another very interesting looking game. I'm just going to start selling organs on the black market.


Looking forward to hearing more about this!

15mm is in scale with HO buildings, right?

And anecdotically, I used to have tons of fun with 4 mechs on the board. Just don't let that Axeman get too close.

Speaking of which, are there going to be close combat rules? Your mechs looks sensible aka not wasting resources on hands for giant fighting robots.

15mm "N-Scale" is 1/160 scale and there's plenty of terrain mostly made by japanese companies like Kato, Tomix, and Greenmax. The cool thing is many of them come pre-built and painted which are really well done, not anything like cheap clicky miniatures junk. if you really want to splurge you can even get stuff that has all sorts of built in lighting.

HO scale is 1/87 so it's a differant size. Some train moddlers use a mix of both as a way to make forced perspective for their tables.

If I can swing it I'd like to expand into making laser cut terrain for the game but that's a long term goal.

Physical combat between mechs will be limited, mostly kicking and ramming due to lack of ammo or other acts of desperation. Stomping tanks and infantry though will be more common place, afterall those squishies need to be shown who's boss

I should have a preview of the rough draft rules together by the end of next week.

Edit:Oops

15mm "N-Scale" is 1/60 scale and there's plenty of terrain mostly made by japanese companies like Kato. The cool thing is many of them come pre-built and painted which really relaly well done, not anything like cheap clicky miniatures junk.

HO scale is 1/87 so it's slightly smaller but can work ok for terrain. Some train moddler use a mix of both as a way to make forced perspective.

I think you have things backwards- as far as I've ever known, HO scale is larger then N scale; my father build both sizes extensively as train sets when I was a kid. N scale is the size of games like the clix-based Mechwarrior game, or Reaper's CAV mech game, I'm pretty sure.

As an aside, for terrain? If you are not bothered by using paper terrain, 28mm stuff like what is produced by Dave Graffam Games and the like can be made 15mm scale by printing it at 50%, or if you can't scale things through your printer, just print them at two pages per sheet. It's what I've done before.

Based on googling this is my understanding of what the sizes translated to

1:48 O scale
1:64 S scale
1:87.1 HO scale
1:160 N Scale

I think (not sure) that N scale is around the scale of Micro Machines, as my dad actually used some of them as civilian cars on his N scale set. (Boy, that was a long time ago- about 20 years).

 paulson games wrote:
Based on googling this is my understanding of what the sizes translated to

1:48 O scale
1:64 S scale
1:87.1 HO scale
1:160 N Scale

Correct.

Welcome to the great scale debate. I hope you like fractions, because we're going to do some cypherin'...

N Scale in the US is equal to 1/160th scale. In the UK it's 1:148th scale. In Japan, N scale is 1:150th scale. It's also called "10mm" in some wargaming circles as a general label.
Reaper's CAV and Wizkids' Clickytech were also in 1:160th.

There is also 1:144th scale, which is used in modeling (Hasegawa, Revell, etc) as well as Dream Pod 9's Heavy Gear, and some Bandai Gundam kits.

What is currently called "15mm" is best standardized, in my opinion, at 1:100 scale. Nice, neat, clean, and approachable, especially by metric types. A centimeter on the tabletop represent a meter. An inch is 8.33 feet. An average 1.8m tall human male is 18mm tall. An average 6ft (72 inches) tall human male is .72 inches, just under 3/4 (.75") inch. 1:100th is used by a number of companies, including Bandai for their larger Gundam kits, and a number of smaller model companies and miniatures manufacturers.
I'm 6'4" tall. 76 inches. 193cm. My tabletop representative would be .76 inches tall, or 19.3mm tall, unbased.

A 25ft tall mech would be 3 inches tall in 1:100th scale. (25ft x 12 inches)=300 inches. Divide that real-life dimension (300 inches) by 100 (the 1:100th scale part of everything), and your 25ft tall mech is 3 inches tall. 3 inches in metric is 76.2mm

That same 25ft tall mech in N scale would be ( (25ft x 12 inches=300 inches) divided by 160) = 1.875 inches tall. 1.875 inches times 25.4mm per inch equals 47.625mm in height on the tabletop.

Some folks will say 15mm is actually "TT" railroad scale, which is 1:120th. That's a bit too tiny for my taste.
Some will say 3mm to the scale foot (1:101.1 in fractional scale). Basically the same thing as 1:100 scale.
Others will say 1/8 inch to the scale foot (1:96th scale). Again, only a 4% difference. You're not going to be able to tell from across the table.

Honestly, N or 15mm, whichever you choose, size them how you like. Choose what fits best you and your intended market, and has the most support in the aftermarket. There's a lot of legacy 1:160th stuff out there, and railroad scenery is expensive but plentiful. 15mm/1:100th scale is coming on strong, but I'm biased, since a lot of my work is in that size range.

Here's a few Wikipedia articles that address the subject. Well, as well as Wikipedia CAN address a subject. There's a few loopy definitions and tidbits in there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scale_model_sizes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_model

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_modelling_scales

Best,
John Bear Ross

Paul,

From one creator to another.

No one is going to steal your concept art. Just put your logo and copyright (and website) above and below so that news websites can use your pretty pictures to help advertise the game for you, without the distraction.

It also means the name of the game, your studio name, and the website link will also be much more readable.

Besides, there's nothing to steal since you're already aping the look of Mechwarrior Online's mechs, which is a good thing in my opinion.

 Vertrucio wrote:
Besides, there's nothing to steal since you're already aping the look of Mechwarrior Online's mechs, which is a good thing in my opinion.

That's what I like about them, lol. The MWO designs are awesome.

Kinda wish someone would make models based on those for Battletech, but I guess no one cares. Some of the IWM stuff is okay, but the majority of it just looks so bad.

On one hand, I'm not a fan of the scale of the mechs (I prefer smaller mechs, feels more realistic, gritty, and faster paced than super big, slow, stompy robots), but on the other, I really like some of the designs.

I'd like to see where you go with this, there aren't many options for good mech miniatures out there.

Eh, I honestly think it's time for classic battletech to be replaced. As much nostalgia I have for the game and setting in all its iterations, it's dated and the mech designs exist purely based on nostalgia rather than good looks.

MWO does a nice job of updating them, but their designs are tied up with that game, we will not see those designs trickle back to the tabletop.

Paul here has a great opportunity to start something that will fill a niche that's been needed filling for a long time.

I know I'll be getting into the game when it comes out.

A new, refreshing look on mech games is most assuredly welcome, and the concepts look great.
I like the idea of interchangeable parts, I had always hoped that someone would put out a decent scale mech game along the lines of the old Chrome Hounds from Xbox, and this one sounds like it might be sorta close.

I am really interested in this. I do have a few questions.

What is 15mm scale? I only know of Battletech and 40K, LotR. How comparable is it to that?

My biggest concern is the lack of customability in games lately. One thing I loved about Battletech is you can make your own stuff. Everything almost. So will this game be more like Battletech where you can make your own stuff, but in friendly pick up games you use stock mechs or like more like 40K where you can't make your own stuff and units?

 paulson games wrote:
Pretty much what Cyporiean said, it's much easier to attract a player base if there's not a high bar of needing a metric ton of models to play. If larger battles are wanted players can always expand the size of the game if they like.

The secondary issue is with the larger size of these models there's less table space. With the mecha being on a 60mm & 120mm bases it would be skin to playing 40k with everything using dreadnaught sized bases or larger. Factor in in sligtly larger terrain than 28mm stuff and a standard gaming table fills up very fast. The table space is the one downside of having large mecha models, where a smaller 1/300 game like battletech can use more units in the same space as it's half the size.

Again players can always run bigger games if they want.


Infantry will be handled as one unit per base, while they are going to be a support option don't expect a lot from them. The game is themed around quick moving mechanized combat, even the slow mechs have a good deal of mobility and IMO it's hard for troops to keep up when the battlefield is capable of dodging and walking speed is 30+mph. (Infantry isn't power armored) Tanks and ground vehicles are able to keep pace but will tend to be easier to hit as they are less manuverable. Helicopters and VOTL craft are the most mobile of the non-mech units but due to being aircraft they can't sustain damage like armor or mecha can.

You can make reasons for why it's not as easy for you to make a larger scale game, but at the end of the day there's hundreds of these sci-fi skimrish scale table-top games that maybe 100 people in the whole country play.

Look at 40k. It's a bad game, run by an idiot company, that price gouges it's customers to no end. And still it's incredibly popular. Why? Because that style of game (larger scale sci-fi) is something people like and people want to play. We don't need a game with hundreds of models, but something more complex than "3-4 big robots with guns) is really what the gaming community wants. Something at least in the scale of 1000-1500 point Warhammer 40k games.

I understand it takes more resources and poses greater risk, but I see a lot of really promising games/IP (like this one) that just flounder around in obscurity because they're competing with hundreds of other games that are almost exactly a like. What the gaming community needs is somebody to step up to the plate and knock 40k off it's throne. The people who are playing that game want it to happen, they want another game to play. Everybody also says "well maybe in 4-5 years we'll up the scale" but they end up like all the other games just like them: "Who?"

Absolutely love some of the ideas here - the more realistic, gritty approach to mechs is something that hasn't been that common, especially at this scale.

I also have to ask, in-between this and the Infinity terrain you have been making, how on earth do you have time for all of this stuff?

Definitely looking forward to the KS being announced!

Are you looking for any play testing help?

What is 15mm scale? I only know of Battletech and 40K, LotR. How comparable is it to that?

Think of something nearly exactly in the middle and you aren't far off. Basically try to imagine 40K, but at 50% scale. A "15mm" human comes up to just below the waist of a 40K human, and instead of a base the diameter of a American quarter like in 40K, you can base them on individually a penny.

Here's some infantry from Rebel Minis, the mechs are right about the size of a Space marine model. Paulson's concepts sound like they'll be about twice the size - closer to a medium or heavy mech in Battletech when compared to a human (while these would only be a Light like maybe a Flea or Jenner mech), so they're cockpit would be looking over the balcony of the building behind.

I think this looks pretty cool but I have to echo prior sentiments, man do these look like MWO mechs. If I look hard enough I can even identify which Battlemechs from BT you based these off of.

That isn't to say they don't look cool and the miniatures won't blow IWM out of the water (IWM is so terrible it's sad), I just wonder if going for such a similar aesthetic is a good thing.

Speaking to game size, I would love something I can throw down a company v company fight on a 6x4 table (so 24 mechs). 4-5 mechs is nifty but sounds like it'll be a short game.