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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.


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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.