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I'm designing a small squad tactics miniatures game for 2+ players. Objective: "have something to play with friends," maybe "share with people online," super maybe someday dream of releasing it for money. Most design is handled by me, with input and playtesting by a few other parties. I'd like to see if anyone here is interested in discussing it, offering ideas, or assisting in playtesting.

Goals of the project:
* 2+ players (currently 2), small squads of models (3-5).
* Games should be completed in 2-3 hours sans setup.
* Tactics and maneuvering should be important, rather than just army design.
* Each unit has a variety of weapons and abilities to allow lots of options on the battleifield.
* Unit construction rules (a la Battletech, as one example).

Other Stuff
* There's fluff, but it's being written as the game is designed so the fluff supports cool design, rather than trying to force the design to support the written fluff.
* Future setting: interstellar travel, mix of familiar and crazy technologies (like nanoconstruction, force fields, contra gravity, teleportation).
* Models are power armor suits (no cool name for them, at least yet): small squads of elite forces teleporting in and shooting it out over tactically significant locations.
* Construction based around space limitations in locations, each item takes up a certain amount of space and some can only be mounted in certain places.
* Variety of weapons with various modifiers (some pierce cover, some destroy cover, some cause status effects, etc). Goal is to create lots of different ways to design, play, fight.
* Variety of subsystems that give suits abilities: force fields, damage reduction, increased mobility, providing targeting info for friendly suits, etc. Abilities are activated for free, but time or consumables must be used to reset them. Again, goal is to create lots of different ways to design, play, fight.
* Board type is flexible at the moment: hex, grid, or measuring. Hex and measuring work pretty well, both have differing advantages.
* Board size currently 3'x4' or 4' square. Game works best with a lot of terrain, although terrain can be drawn on a hex mat and works pretty well.

State of the Rules:
* Rules currently in Alpha. A lot of the basics are in but still being tweaked, which is what I want to focus on before I add much more.
* Rules are moderately complex. I wanted options and tactical complexity, but with those comes rules complexity. Simplifying it a little is a goal. Simplifying it a lot is not.
* Rules currently readable, but written by one dude and probably suffering some formatting / editing / missing rules / it's an alpha issues.
* A variety of planned and potential rules that haven't been implemented yet (let's get the basics working first), with the goal of creating more tactical options/more interesting gameplay.

I'm hoping to find people interested in discussing rules, brainstorming, building suits, and playtesting. Also looking for people willing to tell me when things don't make sense, when they can be done better, when they're woefully unbalanced, and when something (including the whole game) is just boring. Hopefully won't need a lot of that last one.

So, anybody interested in getting involved in this project?

Sure, I always wanted to playtest a game. There are 3 adults in our house, so got a ready-made group.

Send me your rules/alpha materials and I'll take a look.

Good luck with your game!

Just adding my 2 cents...

For high tactics and maneuvering you need range modifiers or some kind of limitation for ranged combat so the models have to move into the best shooting position. Hold the weapon ranges low... no model should be able to shoot over the whole table... same reason as the range modifier. Use D10 or D20 to easily calculate the chances in percent. Those bigger dice give you the possibility to implement criticals (1 is a critical miss, 10/20 is a critical hit) and let something very bad happen on a critical miss or have some kind malfunction rate. Why? If the chance to hit is equal or smaller than the chance for a malfunction you better think twice if you shoot or move closer.
The core for tactics is decision. If you have to estimate the outcomes of many different ways to solve a problem you can add a high tactics value to your game.
Give your models secondary purposes. Your models should be able to do more than just kill enemies or hold position. Have some kind of secondary objectives through that you generate VP. You may generate VP through killing others, but you should generate VP through performing other things aswell. And don't give any advantage for annihilate your opponent's whole warband. The punishment for the annihilated one is big enough, don't endowe his/her opponent further. Dark Age (the best tabletop skirmisher ever made imao) was a good example for that. I recommend to have at least a look into that beautiful game. It was highly tactical though the ruleset was very streamlined. It was 5-20 models per side and a game lasted an hour without setup. It was fast to learn and easy to play. And your skill was much more important than listbuilding or luck.

http://dark-age.com

I am not sold on secondary objectives by model as that can lead to static play. After watching many games of Batman, it bothers me that you can score more points by doing nothing than by doing something. However, I can be convinced.

Here are some things that might spark some interest here:

False Granularity of d20:
https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2017/03/wargame-design-false-granularity-of-d20.html

The Futility of Realistic Weapon Ranges: https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2017/04/wargame-design-futility-of-realistic.html

Creating Tactical Play:
https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2018/07/wargame-design-creating-tactical-game.html

My two cents to add to what Lord Royal and Easy E have already pointed out:

You will have a problem combining "awesome free building of powerfull elite" with practical gameplay. "Powerfull" is only felt if the damage output is high in relation to defence. Fundamental principle of small skirmish games however is having either low, fractional damage output (you have that in both Battletech and Necromunda, just implemented in vastly different ways) or plenty of ways to mitigate damage/exposition to danger by manouvering/hiding/stacking modifiers and countermodifiers/reactions etc (like in Infinity for example).

There is also a significant caveat to having plenty of customization options - if you can always find a better tool to do particular job and not rely on mastering how to use a narrow set of tools efficiently, then game is usually difficult to comprehend at first, but then trivial to win/build optimally and shifts heavier towards pre-game considerations rather than towards deep tactical play. Not only GW games but also original X-COM games and all sorts of later clones/sequels suffer heavily from this. Having plenty of build options is great for world building and immersive fluff but games are usually more tactical when there is plenty of available moves/countermoves while keeping build options rather limited.

@OP - there is a lot of advice here that you may very well do better to ignore.

If your game is using large models (e.g. 30mm tall) with high-power weapons on a small board (3' x 4'), they absolutely should be able to shoot corner to corner... if they can line up the shot, which can be a lot harder than it sounds if terrain is heavy. There is a fallacy that weapon ranges should be designed around maneuver on a totally clear table. I say, let the ranges be unlimited and let terrain dicatate who can shoot at what. Better yet, have an effective range mechanic that degrades accuracy and/or damage with distance, rather than a flat maximum range.

If your game intends to have randomness and luck figure prominently, to encourage "memorable" results, then a flat distribution from 1d6 is preferable to something fine-grained and bell-shaped like 3d10.

And so on - the key question is to what extent any given decision fits with the sort of gaming experience that you intend to deliver.
____

followup - you would do better to size your game for 3'x4' vs 4' square. American "standard" kitchen tables are 3' x 5', so a 3'x4' board fits just fine; however a 4' square requires a dedicated gaming table. If your intent is for this to be a game for hardcore gamers, by all means, require a 4' deep playing area. OTOH, if you are designing for more of a mass market / casual audience, then you should plan on something that fits comfortably on a regular kitchen table.