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Hi everyone, I’m currently in the planning phases for a potential game for a miniature wargame rule set that I’ve been developing. My problem is that I have two ideas that I can’t decide between, it's like a parent choosing between their favorite child. So I’m asking for some help from the wargaming community. What follows is a few blurbs and some brief descriptions of the two worlds I have created, please tell me which one you think would appeal to the community the most.
Idea 1: AE Conflict
Genre: sci fi
Visual style: modern sleek sci fi like MERCS or Infinity

“Earth is gone, we don’t know how, we don’t know why, but the jump gate to the solar system won’t activate. It’s going to be four standard years until the light reaches the nearest colony in the alpha centari system and we find out just what happened, if we can last that long out here on the frontier. The United Earth Government never really ruled out here, as long as the “motherworld” taxes were paid Earth couldn’t have cared less about what happened on its colonies. Into the power vacuum stepped the only organizations capable of organizing the frontier: the chartered corporations. Now they’re essentially the only game in town, and tensions that had been kept in check by the threat of earth reprisal are reaching a boiling point. There’s going to be a war between the corporations, it’s just a matter of time now.”


Idea 2: Shattered Empires
Genre: Steampunk
Visual style: Bioshock Infinite meets Borderlands meets the Gold Rush

“the wastelands are no place for the weak. Ever since the day the sky rained fire and salted the earth mankind has retreated into twelve enormous city states and rarely leaves. Now there’s something out in these wastes that is bringing the desperate and the restless out to the wastelands in droves: Phyrinium. The stuff is practically magical, and every day we’re finding new uses for it. we don’t know where it comes from or what exactly it is, but a hunk of the stuff the size of your fist is worth more than most people make in a year. We do know that you find loads of the stuff near the ruins of the old world, and every day it seems that fights break out among the miners at the sites of just who’s claim is who’s. Now it looks like the city states themselves are interested in cashing in on the Phyrinium rush, sending entire armies out to claim rich deposits in the name of their city. One thing’s for certain: unless we find a new major source of the stuff to meet the rising demand people are going to stop paying for it in coin and start paying for it in bullets and blood instead.”

Bah just do up the combat system then build both games

My question is, are they the same style/scale of the game? Like would melee in the first game be the exact/similar to melee in the second game?

If the rules are the same and you're stuck on fluff, do them both.

Though in my opinion I don't like either of the ideas presented because you said MERCS (a game I'm not a fan of), and Borderlands (another game I'm not a fan of)

Genres.
It is Genres.

Alfndrate wrote:My question is, are they the same style/scale of the game? Like would melee in the first game be the exact/similar to melee in the second game?

If the rules are the same and you're stuck on fluff, do them both.

Though in my opinion I don't like either of the ideas presented because you said MERCS (a game I'm not a fan of), and Borderlands (another game I'm not a fan of)

yes they are both 28mm and run on the same game engine. essentially they are the same game rules wise.

the problem is I'm actually trying to get this game made like with actual minis so unless I can decide on a genre I'm essentially doubling my costs and cannibalizing my own sales. Also I did not mean to say that the games play like MERCS and Borderlands, just that they take some visual ques from them. I list those because "Modern Sci Fi" could mean a lot of things to a lot of people, and "Wasteland Steampunk" is equally vague, I just named those to give what I thought would be a more clearer picture of the aesthetic style of the game.

bu11etmagn3tt wrote:Genres.
It is Genres.

Curse my 7 year old cousin screwing with my spell check last thanksgiving. thanks for catching that, he decided to teach my word program a bunch of misspellings and I'm still trying to track down what exactly he screwed up.

 yeri wrote:

Alfndrate wrote:My question is, are they the same style/scale of the game? Like would melee in the first game be the exact/similar to melee in the second game?

If the rules are the same and you're stuck on fluff, do them both.

Though in my opinion I don't like either of the ideas presented because you said MERCS (a game I'm not a fan of), and Borderlands (another game I'm not a fan of)

yes they are both 28mm and run on the same game engine. essentially they are the same game rules wise.

the problem is I'm actually trying to get this game made like with actual minis so unless I can decide on a genre I'm essentially doubling my costs and cannibalizing my own sales. Also I did not mean to say that the games play like MERCS and Borderlands, just that they take some visual ques from them. I list those because "Modern Sci Fi" could mean a lot of things to a lot of people, and "Wasteland Steampunk" is equally vague, I just named those to give what I thought would be a more clearer picture of the aesthetic style of the game.

Borderlands is far from "wasteland steampunk" considering how little steampunk there actually is in Borderlands, and your first game can be described as "modern sci-fi" most of us can figure out what that means.

You say you want to make these games and sell them. You don't have sales atm so developing both of them won't eat into your sales until you actually start spending money on concept art, model sculpiting, casting, packaging, etc... If you don't have art, then it doesn't matter how the game plays, or what it's background is atm. You could have the best game ever written, but without art for it it's going to be really hard to sell it.

Have you looked into getting concept art done for iconic pieces of each game? Perhaps seeing your art direction will let you decide on which you actually like more. Out of the two of the games you've described above, it seems as if you prefer the second game over the first.

Edit: You should also fix your title now that you know about it...

I'm going to take a stab in the dark that this is yet another amateur game developer that has big dreams but little in the way of an actual path to achieving them... in other words he doesn't have the money to fund concept artists, sculptors, etc.

The OP has presented Dakka with no less than 4 wargame ideas that I can see based on threads he's created, and I knew that he doesn't have the cash, etc... It's just as someone that is doing the same thing he is atm, these are all thoughts that are going through my head and should be going through his.

 yeri wrote:

bu11etmagn3tt wrote:Genres.
It is Genres.

Curse my 7 year old cousin screwing with my spell check last thanksgiving. thanks for catching that, he decided to teach my word program a bunch of misspellings and I'm still trying to track down what exactly he screwed up.

I've seen issues with this. Best bet is to search for your OS and Spell Check (unless you're sure it's limited to one application) and there's usually a guide on a file to edit or delete to remove words added to the dictionary.

Anyway, neither idea jumps out at me, unfortunately. I may be getting old, but nowadays I want to know what makes a setting different from others, not the influences. Corporate warfare and steampunk are relatively common tropes these days. (Maybe combine the two of those for something more unique?)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I'm going to take a stab in the dark that this is yet another amateur game developer that has big dreams but little in the way of an actual path to achieving them... in other words he doesn't have the money to fund concept artists, sculptors, etc.

Yes, but... if you don't try you won't ever do anything. I like seeing stuff like this, although I do hope that any indie creators will be realistic about feedback received. (And I completely accept that my feedback, above, is the kind that should be considered and likely disregarded as it's very subjective.)

what makes these settings different? hmm... well now that you mention it the corporate steampunk does kind of sound awesome! if you think about it the period by which it was inspired was the era of the robber barons, the company town and the rise of workers unions. I think that might actually be a nice fit, thanks!

Have you finished any of the previous games you've 'teased' yet?

 Alfndrate wrote:
Have you finished any of the previous games you've 'teased' yet?

No comment, basically each of those games have run on the same core rules engine. So as I got advice and tested the game I felt the rules worked, but not with the setting I had. Because I started with the rules and made the fluff fit the rules. The rules favored ranged combat, but not high rates of fire. So I realized that I would need a setting where guns were common but not advanced enough tha everyone would have access to automatic fire. Thus the idea of a steampunk setting. Basically this whole thing is a process and you're watching it play out because I don't really have anyone IRL to bounce ideas off of so I come here to get feedback.

 yeri wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
Have you finished any of the previous games you've 'teased' yet?

No comment.

Proceeds to comment.

So which ruleset did you decide on, because each of these other plans/business ventures have all had a different "twist" to them to make them 'unique' so you could either try to make money off of them or sell the idea to a game company.

There are already a lot of modern sleek SF games on the market, and plenty of generic or specific figures for them, and the market is possibly overcrowded.

IMO you would be better off to do the Steampunk idea. I like the Bioshock Infinite art direction.

@ Alfndrate: I honestly don't know at this point. my mom threw out all my notes when I went back to collage (I think that's her way of telling me that designing and selling a game is not a real job in her opinion). so I'm basically having to start over from what's in my head.

@Kilkrazy: See that's what I was wondering about. I've been trying to figure out if the market for these ideas is in that happy medium where there is enough demand for a product to do well but not enough supply that I'll lose customers to "Shiny Game Syndrome"

Some free advice which is going to be worth exactly what you paid for it.

Decide if this is going to be a for profit adventure, or just something for fun. If its going to be the former, then you had better be able to look me ( figuratively speaking of course) straight in the eye and tell me why I should play your game instead of 40 K or war machine. Because that is what you are going up against.

If this is just going to be for fun however, feel free to do as you please how you please.

Kilkrazy wrote:There are already a lot of modern sleek SF games on the market, and plenty of generic or specific figures for them, and the market is possibly overcrowded.

IMO you would be better off to do the Steampunk idea. I like the Bioshock Infinite art direction.

I think steampunk is also quickly becoming overcrowded as well. It's becoming tough to come up with something original for these genres.

yeri wrote:@ Alfndrate: I honestly don't know at this point. my mom threw out all my notes when I went back to collage (I think that's her way of telling me that designing and selling a game is not a real job in her opinion). so I'm basically having to start over from what's in my head.

How did that collage work out? And designing and selling games is extremely hard to turn into a 'real job.' I'd love to design professionally and quit my day job to do so, but atm I don't get paid in a way that could support me/a family. Instead of looking at the end product (making livable money on game designing), how about you work on actually completing a project? Prove to you, your mom, anyone that has doubts you can actually do this, and tell them to stuff it by finishing a project.

Also if you don't want your mom to throw out your notes, use Google Drive and make everything digital...

 Phobos wrote:
Some free advice which is going to be worth exactly what you paid for it.

Decide if this is going to be a for profit adventure, or just something for fun. If its going to be the former, then you had better be able to look me ( figuratively speaking of course) straight in the eye and tell me why I should play your game instead of 40 K or war machine. Because that is what you are going up against.

If this is just going to be for fun however, feel free to do as you please how you please.

Alright then (looks Phobos in the eye)
1) it's going to be a lot cheaper than 40k or WM, you're not going to pay more than $320 MSRP for a maximum sized army, and that's if your army is nothing but units and you have no support abilities. four minis make up a unit and four units come in a box that sells for $20 MSRP so you're essentially paying about $1.25 per mini, $1.25 per plastic mini! you may wonder how the heck we can offer such low prices, and the answer is simple: our business model takes advantage of technology to create an extremely lean business where instead of hiring an in house artist we contract out our digital sculpting. that ultimately saves us a lot of money, meaning we can pass those savings on to you, our customers.
2) did I mention that the plans are to have the entire line in nice crisp plastic? not only that but currently our plans are to have those plastic minis made in America. we've been scouting manufacturers in the midwest and we may have found one that suits our needs. if you want a look at their work you can look at the Defiance Games marines to see the kind of work they do (not actually 100% sure if they're the ones that make the marines, but they for sure make those K'Nex you see in toy stores) that's right our product is going to be designed, sculpted, manufactured, and shipped to distributors entirely by Americans.
3) you've never seen a game like this before, this game combines the best elements of a tabletop wargame with the best elements of a trading card game to create an entirely new genre of games "the card based miniature wargame". Instead of simply placing your miniatures on the table at the start of the game you summon them onto the board by playing a specific card from your army deck. I currently have the poor man's "write the idea down and mail it to yourself" copyright in my hand while I wait for an actual copyright so you won't be finding this kind of game anywhere else.

Some thoughts:

Your costs seem 'optimistic'. Not impossible, just... Optimistic. Remember that $20 MSRP means that you're probably charging retailers $10. Unless you don't sell to retailers, which means you've lost a big set of 'advertisers' and up-front orders. Game Store retailers are pretty nice and easy to deal with. Imagine how dealing with Toys'r'us or Walmart would be. Distributors are going to expect this pricing as well (possibly better).

The Defiance Games guys seem to offer a similar price/model for what you're asking for. (They are doing 24 minis for 30 in the first set I looked at.)

Keep in mind that the one thing that hasn't really changed with plastics is that the set-up costs are still expensive.(You're looking at an expense in the tens of thousands of dollars range to get a mold made, and that is again being optimistic.) Plastics work great if you have the cash to invest up-front. But it's a lot of cash...

The card mechanic could be interesting, but I don't know if I'd consider it novel (FFG's Horus Heresy uses a similar mechanic to have units generated, albeit in a more traditional 'board' situation, and there's been several games that use cards as an 'initiative' role or similar.

Is the card-deck thing essentially a one-time-per-game, or do units respawn? For example, once I've played each card (summoned each unit) is the deck part of the game complete? Is it re-shuffled and used for initiative?

Is printing cards an additional expense?

The card mechanic sounds like it needs to make sense in-game. Miniatures gamers tend to be put off by abstractions, and this seems like a point of concern. For example, in Flames of War there's a couple rules detractors like to poke fun at: the scout/recon rules allow units to 'appear' close to other units, sometimes mid-fight, representing the units being in hiding. This bothers some people, as it allows for some logic-bending situations. Also, there's a special character that can 'revive' troops, and people refer to him as a 'Necromancer' because while the game intends this as pulling in other units or convincing partially wounded units to get back in the battle, it feels like units are being resurrected.

For your concept, if units 'pop' into the game, that's going to make it feel more 'game-like' and less 'wargame' which is a difficult balance at times.

Your talk of copyright makes it sound like your grasp on Intellectual Property may be a bit shaky. Copyright is the specific text of your rules. Specific mechanics are harder to protect, to my understanding.

My advice is to keep developing the concept if it interests you, but be willing to revise and cut if necessary. Having a neat idea is only a tiny part of something, developing it, being willing to accept criticism, and getting it out the door is the difficult part.

I think you need to consider whether the mechanics support the theme, and vice versa. So far it sounds like you've been using similar mechanics and just pasting a theme on? Normally it's nice if playing the game feels to a player exactly how they'd envision it when they read a fluff story or see a picture in the rulebook.

Also I'd say go with what genre interests you the most, instead of trying for market viability. When the designer doesn't like his genre, or isn't having fun making the game, it always shows through.
Similarly marketability is highly variable, and depending on your timeline who knows what will be "popular" or "cliche" by then. Look at zombies: People always SAY they are sick of zombies, then Zombicide comes out and still manages to rock it's Kickstarter.

In general I think you need to slooow your wild pipe dream down. Sure it'd be great to have a fully produced game. But maybe go for some lower hanging fruit first, like a finished game. Then worry about miniatures and so on.

Also there is no way I'd pay $320 for an army at this point in my life. There's just too many great small scale games that you can play with a few miniatures proxied from an existing collection. Or pay $35 plus a few $15 purchases and get a completely packaged game like X-Wing Miniatures.
I guess what I'm saying is I don't think you should be using 40k pricing as the baseline. $320 to "max out" the game is great compared to a 2,000pt Ork army, but it's terrible compared to rpgs, skirmish games, etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually after glancing at your posting history I want to revise my point.

In the last four months you've had half a dozen half-baked game ideas:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/536231.page
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/537782.page (this one you literally changed the entire fluff around after a week)
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/549602.page

So how about instead of hyperactively changing your entire game every month, you sit down and make a fully playable ruleset with a theme you like and have decided upon. Take one of these ideas across the finish line, instead of frenetically jumping from theme to theme.

 Balance wrote:
Some thoughts:

Your costs seem 'optimistic'. Not impossible, just... Optimistic. Remember that $20 MSRP means that you're probably charging retailers $10. Unless you don't sell to retailers, which means you've lost a big set of 'advertisers' and up-front orders. Game Store retailers are pretty nice and easy to deal with. Imagine how dealing with Toys'r'us or Walmart would be. Distributors are going to expect this pricing as well (possibly better).

actually distributors generally like to pay 40% MSRP for a product, then they add on another 20% or 30% before selling it to the shops. basically I'll actually pay them something like $8 per product. I've done the math on this and I've practically figured out everything possible in relation to sales. for example how many armies I need to sell per month to break even, or how many new players I need to bring in to mitigate player turnover per month

Keep in mind that the one thing that hasn't really changed with plastics is that the set-up costs are still expensive.(You're looking at an expense in the tens of thousands of dollars range to get a mold made, and that is again being optimistic.) Plastics work great if you have the cash to invest up-front. But it's a lot of cash...

yes I am aware of that, and I also have a potential financial backer for this: my family owns a holding company that may be interested in creating a business to produce and sell this game. also having started that holding company with a plastic siding manufacturer I can tell you that the dirty little secret is that plastic injection molds are not as expensive as you think they are. of course I'm going to be using ISO grade 104 molds made via the latest processes so if you make the part via the old method of trace and scratch by hand it may cost that much, but via a direct to digital machine milled mold it doesn't actually cost that much.

Is the card-deck thing essentially a one-time-per-game, or do units respawn? For example, once I've played each card (summoned each unit) is the deck part of the game complete? Is it re-shuffled and used for initiative?

it works like magic the gathering, it's fire and forget. basically each card represents the ability to call a resource to your aid. so a unit card in your hand means that your forces have a unit ready to go that just needs to get its supplies before you can send them out into the field.

Is printing cards an additional expense?

yes, but one I have taken into account and likely overestimated. I have also taken into account the effects on gross margin that getting books printed will have.

The card mechanic sounds like it needs to make sense in-game. Miniatures gamers tend to be put off by abstractions, and this seems like a point of concern. For example, in Flames of War there's a couple rules detractors like to poke fun at: the scout/recon rules allow units to 'appear' close to other units, sometimes mid-fight, representing the units being in hiding. This bothers some people, as it allows for some logic-bending situations. Also, there's a special character that can 'revive' troops, and people refer to him as a 'Necromancer' because while the game intends this as pulling in other units or convincing partially wounded units to get back in the battle, it feels like units are being resurrected.

For your concept, if units 'pop' into the game, that's going to make it feel more 'game-like' and less 'wargame' which is a difficult balance at times.

basically the cards are resources at your disposal. a unit card in your hand represents an actual unit at your disposal, you just need to pay resources to deploy them from your HQ. the basic idea of the game is that you have your HQ, your opponent has theirs, last one standing wins

Your talk of copyright makes it sound like your grasp on Intellectual Property may be a bit shaky. Copyright is the specific text of your rules. Specific mechanics are harder to protect, to my understanding.

actually the courts have upheld what is referred to as "poor man's copyright". also WotC has a copyright on constructable miniature games, so mechanics of a game have been protected before. my dad who is a corporate lawyer has advised me that what I've done is completely within the letter of the law.

1) Retailers are not distributors. You misread Balance's point, and distributors like to get x% of retail, but it's up to your negotiations with them as to what you sell it to them for.

2) Your family may have a company with a plastic injection machine, but you can buy those for like 200 bucks now, but those are from the 70 and the things you can do with them aren't all that great. As per Legoburner's trip to Wargames Factory the molds that the big boy companies are doing (Renedra, GW, and WGF) molds are 8k minimum because these companies have the capabilities to do undercuts which allows for greater detailing with a basic plastic injection mold, something that the lower end machines can't do. As someone also looking into plastic injection molding, I'd be looking at a few thousand dollars per sprue's mold. So let's expand that using your game of 4 models in a unit, 4 units per box. If I can expect to need 2 to 3 different boxes to play your game you're looking at that many sprues if you don't want to have completely different sprues per unit in the box. So 1 unique sprue per box. So let's say our sprues cost the bottom end of the number in Lego's visit to WGF ($8,000). That means you're looking at $16,000 just to do 2 boxes. Let's say you've managed to develop 4 factions with two boxes each. That's $64,000 just wrapped up in the molds, and that doesn't include the sculptor making the models ($1,500 per sculpt minimally at least from my estimates). Compare that to companies that hire a sculptor
to make a green, that green gets molded into a mold, a master is made and then that mold is used by a company (say Black Orc Games here in Ohio). You'll pay about 750-1500 for the sculpt, and a few thousand dollars to get the metal minis made. For smaller companies, metal and resin are far cheaper alternatives because they have a lower startup cost.

3) So how do the models interact on the table once I 'summon them'? Do I need cards to move them around the board, or do I pull out my tape measure? How do you balance the 'decks' against each other? Magic is extremely balanced in it's 'points' size because of math and probability dictating how often you might draw a card you need, coupled with the resources to play that card. If the cards serve no purpose other than to 'summon' models on the board, then why not just make a TCG?

4) It seems to me that you're a) trying to shoehorn this idea into a TTG when it'd be better served as a deck building game, TCG, or board game and b) you're putting the cart before the horse by spending so much time it seems on the production side of things and not the development side.

 yeri wrote:
actually the courts have upheld what is referred to as "poor man's copyright". also WotC has a copyright on constructable miniature games, so mechanics of a game have been protected before. my dad who is a corporate lawyer has advised me that what I've done is completely within the letter of the law.

You need to understand the difference between copyrights and patents. Game mechanics can NOT be copyrighted, but they can be patented. WOTC has patents on various game mechanics (for example, the "turn the card sideways to use it" mechanic from MTG).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 bosky wrote:
In the last four months you've had half a dozen half-baked game ideas:
...
So how about instead of hyperactively changing your entire game every month, you sit down and make a fully playable ruleset with a theme you like and have decided upon. Take one of these ideas across the finish line, instead of frenetically jumping from theme to theme.

This. Looking at your posting history does not inspire confidence in your business plan.

Wyrd also has a patent application out on their entire Malifaux ruleset.

 Alfndrate wrote:
1) Retailers are not distributors. You misread Balance's point, and distributors like to get x% of retail, but it's up to your negotiations with them as to what you sell it to them for.

From stories I've heard, distributors can also be very demanding. If they decided to order 100 units, you better get them 100 units on time or they may get very cross. But, of course, they can promote your product to retailers, who can then promote to gamers.

 Alfndrate wrote:

2) Your family may have a company with a plastic injection machine, but you can buy those for like 200 bucks now, but those are from the 70 and the things you can do with them aren't all that great. As per Legoburner's trip to Wargames Factory the molds that the big boy companies are doing (Renedra, GW, and WGF) molds are 8k minimum because these companies have the capabilities to do undercuts which allows for greater detailing with a basic plastic injection mold, something that the lower end machines can't do. As someone also looking into plastic injection molding, I'd be looking at a few thousand dollars per sprue's mold. So let's expand that using your game of 4 models in a unit, 4 units per box. If I can expect to need 2 to 3 different boxes to play your game you're looking at that many sprues if you don't want to have completely different sprues per unit in the box. So 1 unique sprue per box. So let's say our sprues cost the bottom end of the number in Lego's visit to WGF ($8,000). That means you're looking at $16,000 just to do 2 boxes. Let's say you've managed to develop 4 factions with two boxes each. That's $64,000 just wrapped up in the molds, and that doesn't include the sculptor making the models ($1,500 per sculpt minimally at least from my estimates). Compare that to companies that hire a sculptor
to make a green, that green gets molded into a mold, a master is made and then that mold is used by a company (say Black Orc Games here in Ohio). You'll pay about 750-1500 for the sculpt, and a few thousand dollars to get the metal minis made. For smaller companies, metal and resin are far cheaper alternatives because they have a lower startup cost.

I need to read Legoburner's article in detail. I think i skimmed it to look at the pics. I remember when GW was talking $100,000 a tooled mold not that long ago... Under $10,000 is not bad at all. Does $8,000 include assistance setting up the mold (I've heard there's some neat software to assist with layout and help make sure things work right before cutting a mold) or is it 8,000 to work from supplied files, and if it doesn't work right that's a sunk cost?

Plastic siding (while a valuable and undeniably useful product) seems like a big step from small, detailed wargame-quality pieces. It's just a big jump.

 Alfndrate wrote:

3) So how do the models interact on the table once I 'summon them'? Do I need cards to move them around the board, or do I pull out my tape measure? How do you balance the 'decks' against each other? Magic is extremely balanced in it's 'points' size because of math and probability dictating how often you might draw a card you need, coupled with the resources to play that card. If the cards serve no purpose other than to 'summon' models on the board, then why not just make a TCG?

The deck concept seems interesting, but very fidgety as described. The numbers from up-thread suggest a 'maximum-sized army' would be worth $320, built from $20 boxes. That's 16 boxes by my math. Each box has four units in it, so 64 total units. (Which at 4 models/unit would be 256 models for completeness.)

That's potentially a lot of models. And a HUGE buy-in, of course. So over the course of the game I'm slapping down cards from a hand. Are the unit-cards generic (Space marine Squad) or specific (Squad 99- Angry Blue Vikings)? What happens if my deck is exhausted?

Logistically, this sounds like a game that would require a side-board to play in a sane fashion. I'd need space for my hand, my deck, and all my Units ranked up to draw from.

One thing that has not been discussed is the game seems to be based around HQs... Are these a 'required' terrain piece? An upgrade option? A clever idea would be to make it so a Unit box could be used as a basic HQ fitting the game rules.

Now, let's step back and consider the demo experience. This is very important... Is the game playable with 1 box/player? (4 units, 16 models) If so, great! However, keep in mind that as-stated, this would be a 4-card 'deck' and probably not very interesting. If there's a 'hand' it means the hand probably contains all cards... So what's the difference between "Play a card to summon/deploy a unit' (note: 'Summon' makes a lot of people think fantasy'magic.) and 'pick a unit to summon'? At larger sizes there'll be some more interesting differences as a theoretical 4 hand-size means you'd have 4 out of up to 64 cards, but if those cards are generic, there's going to be lots of duplicates... So you could draw a hand of 3x Tactical Squads and 1x Terminator Squad... Which gives a relatively small bit of meaningful decision-making. And this brings me to another point...

As Alfndrate suggests, at a relatively 'simple' 2 boxes per faction, 4 factions, that's 8 units. So, basically, you've got a 'Trooper' and a 'Veteran' for each. Imagine 40k with just Tac Squads and Terminators; Ork Boyz and Knobs; Sisters of Battle and Seraphim; etc. Workable... But boring. You might have some tricks for this, which poses more questions: Do you want the game to be WYSIWYG? If so, will your 'Tac Marine' squad box (containing 16 minis) include multiple squad cards (more cardboard to make and pack) and alternate parts? If so, will the alt. parts cover every model ("OK, I need 16 spiky head pieces")?

 Alfndrate wrote:

4) It seems to me that you're a) trying to shoehorn this idea into a TTG when it'd be better served as a deck building game, TCG, or board game and b) you're putting the cart before the horse by spending so much time it seems on the production side of things and not the development side.

M:tG has been mentioned. While it outgrew his original scope a bit, the guy who created it (Richard Garfield) has some serious mathematics degrees. He put a lot of effort into the early M:tG sets, and weird issues still crept through.

I'd still encourage working on ideas like this, but I am pessimistic and harsh in comments like this because I've seen how tricky these kind of things can be. Getting rules (and rules only to a releasable state is a massive accomplishment.

 Balance wrote:
I'd still encourage working on ideas like this, but I am pessimistic and harsh in comments like this because I've seen how tricky these kind of things can be. Getting rules (and rules only to a releasable state is a massive accomplishment.

Agreed, I believe that On the Lamb Games was working on Endless Fantasy: Tactics a full year before I got brought in, which was September of 2012 and we only just released a 'promo-release' of the rules at GenCon...

 Alfndrate wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:There are already a lot of modern sleek SF games on the market, and plenty of generic or specific figures for them, and the market is possibly overcrowded.

IMO you would be better off to do the Steampunk idea. I like the Bioshock Infinite art direction.

I think steampunk is also quickly becoming overcrowded as well. It's becoming tough to come up with something original for these genres.
...
...

I agree, however modern SF is a lot more overcrowded, especially when you look at the available models.

If it was just a rulebook, there is always room for another rulebook and they are relatively cheap to publish.

More important than anything else is presentation. People are going to be more interested in your game if your market research, promotional materials, and especially your rules are presented in a clear, concise manner, with proper English, including no composition mistakes or spelling errors. That is more important to me than the genre of the game.

 Balance wrote:
[
From stories I've heard, distributors can also be very demanding. If they decided to order 100 units, you better get them 100 units on time or they may get very cross. But, of course, they can promote your product to retailers, who can then promote to gamers.

yea I'm aware of that, in fact most contractors we work with in the construction supply business are the same way. you don't get them the supplies they need exactly when they need it, well you're costing them a lot of money because they pay the union workers weather the job's being done or not. this is not my first rodeo, and I've basically been the apprentice to our international joint venture manager for a couple of summers. in fact that reminds me of a story of one of our joint ventures in Poland in the late 90s and early 2000s. we worked with a man who was at the center of Solidarity movement of the 80s, he'd spent some time as a political prisoner in what I believe to be a Siberian gulag and he had the prison tattoos to show for it. long story short the political climate there was so volatile we would only accept payments for goods in suitcases full of cold hard American currency. I still remember one day we were visiting the factory during one of these sales and a black sedan drives up to the gates, and three men got out. one had a pistol at his waist, the others were carrying AK variants. they said they didn't have the cash that day and that we'd have to accept a check instead. I don't know how long we stared them down waiting for the other shoe to drop, but eventually they realized we weren't going to budge and got back in their car and left.

anyways morale of the story is we can deal with any wargames distributor, because if worst comes to worst a wargame's distributor is unlikely to at best break your fingers until you agree and at worst torture and murder your entire family (and let me tell you: with certain segments of the population east of the Berlin wall that is a legitimate negotiation tactic.)

I need to read Legoburner's article in detail. I think i skimmed it to look at the pics. I remember when GW was talking $100,000 a tooled mold not that long ago... Under $10,000 is not bad at all. Does $8,000 include assistance setting up the mold (I've heard there's some neat software to assist with layout and help make sure things work right before cutting a mold) or is it 8,000 to work from supplied files, and if it doesn't work right that's a sunk cost?

Plastic siding (while a valuable and undeniably useful product) seems like a big step from small, detailed wargame-quality pieces. It's just a big jump.

no that's not bad, but the quotes I've been getting are something like $3500 for a class 104 mold (granted WGF and GW may be using a higher grade mold like a 103 or a 102, which are more expensive and to my knowledge I'm unsure if those can be machine milled yet) granted the quotes I've been looking at are not including the sculpting itself. for that I'm looking at a local art school to find some talented digital sculptors. because I'm compartmentalizing the job of sculpting and mold production my estimates have been around $5000 a sprue. or around 44 cents per sprue at production levels with half of that coming from the "mold depreciation fund" to replace the mold when it wears out

The deck concept seems interesting, but very fidgety as described. The numbers from up-thread suggest a 'maximum-sized army' would be worth $320, built from $20 boxes. That's 16 boxes by my math. Each box has four units in it, so 64 total units. (Which at 4 models/unit would be 256 models for completeness.)

That's potentially a lot of models. And a HUGE buy-in, of course. So over the course of the game I'm slapping down cards from a hand. Are the unit-cards generic (Space marine Squad) or specific (Squad 99- Angry Blue Vikings)? What happens if my deck is exhausted?

note I said that that's the maximum you will likely pay for an army. it's actually 15 boxes, $20 of that is for the HQ, and the more support cards you put in your deck the less it's going to cost you
honestly it's not a huge buy in for a game this size when you consider that my Skrone army at 35 points cost me about $367 and I was paying a 20% discount. once again because I can't state it enough: the more support cards you add to your deck the less the army will cost you, $320 is the maximum you will likely pay baring a dramatic change in the inflation rate.
most of the units are generic, but different types may have different special weapons, and some boxes will even be able to make multiple unit types in addition to the different special weapons (like for example if you could make the black 13th out of a basic box of gun mages)

Logistically, this sounds like a game that would require a side-board to play in a sane fashion. I'd need space for my hand, my deck, and all my Units ranked up to draw from.

well when you play WM you have a sideboard for your cards. in testing we haven't used much more space than a game of WM

One thing that has not been discussed is the game seems to be based around HQs... Are these a 'required' terrain piece? An upgrade option? A clever idea would be to make it so a Unit box could be used as a basic HQ fitting the game rules.

those are "required" terrain pieces and they are included in the price I quoted above (there's only 60 cards the HQ is also $20 and comes with a pack of support cards that are designed to work well with the HQ)

Now, let's step back and consider the demo experience. This is very important... Is the game playable with 1 box/player? (4 units, 16 models) If so, great! However, keep in mind that as-stated, this would be a 4-card 'deck' and probably not very interesting. If there's a 'hand' it means the hand probably contains all cards... So what's the difference between "Play a card to summon/deploy a unit' (note: 'Summon' makes a lot of people think fantasy'magic.) and 'pick a unit to summon'? At larger sizes there'll be some more interesting differences as a theoretical 4 hand-size means you'd have 4 out of up to 64 cards, but if those cards are generic, there's going to be lots of duplicates... So you could draw a hand of 3x Tactical Squads and 1x Terminator Squad... Which gives a relatively small bit of meaningful decision-making. And this brings me to another point...

there will be starter products that give you a minimum sized deck that is ready to play as soon as you can get the minis together. the starter is going to have a nice mix of units that will give you a basic but unique feel for the faction.

As Alfndrate suggests, at a relatively 'simple' 2 boxes per faction, 4 factions, that's 8 units. So, basically, you've got a 'Trooper' and a 'Veteran' for each. Imagine 40k with just Tac Squads and Terminators; Ork Boyz and Knobs; Sisters of Battle and Seraphim; etc. Workable... But boring. You might have some tricks for this, which poses more questions: Do you want the game to be WYSIWYG? If so, will your 'Tac Marine' squad box (containing 16 minis) include multiple squad cards (more cardboard to make and pack) and alternate parts? If so, will the alt. parts cover every model ("OK, I need 16 spiky head pieces")?

actually we're currently looking at an initial release of 3 unit boxes per faction and one HQ box per faction. with that it's possible that each unit box can make maybe 6 different unit variations and the HQ has 3 variations. using the quotes I've gotten I've already priced out an initial release of 7 factions with 3 units and an HQ each. when I presented the figures to the family company they weren't sure what to make of it because they thought I was majorly low balling them. I',m not, but in the grand scheme of things a miniatures company is fairly cheep compared to other types of business ventures.

@Jimsolo: agreed, in fact I'm giving a sales presentation in a few days so wish me luck.

First of all, I'm glad to see your passion for making your own game has not diminished.

Unfortunately....

1) You proabably shouldn't use "AE Conflict" since "AE Bounty" and "AE-WW2" are already titles of games made by another company. Coincidentally, AE Bounty is a sleek futuristic skirmish game, which leads me to think that maybe you haven't "done your homework" like I suggested on your previous game topic. http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/537782.page#5830784

2) You're still asking folks for advice without showing us a playable rulebook.

3) Talk of prices, distributors, profit, etc, are a bit premature.

Having beat you up a bit here, I'll reply to your initial question. I think that both genres have a fair bit of competition. However, if you could make a mass battle game work with affordable plastic minis, then I think that Steampunk is your best bet. As long as you can stay away from the Americana look of Wild West Exodus, and the fantasy feel of Warmachine you might find a good niche. There aren't currently any major 28mm steampunk mass-battle games like that. I realize that this might change your plans a bit as you included "gold rush" in your description, but going toe to toe with WWExodus is not a wise idea right now.

You're only competition would be Dystopian Legions, and not only is it a fairly expensive all-metal game, but it really seems to be aimed at the platoon level.