Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

riker2800 wrote:Getting two targets inside the blast will not be that hard to pull off, but getting more than that will be fairly rare, unless you play against someone dumb.

Really. A 3'' radius template is a full inch bigger in diameter than the big Warhammer template, and by the rules you basically only need to touch ("any part of their base inside") a unit to hit it. In my experience, that's a lot of real estate, in game, and if you shoot intelligently you really can reach out and touch a lot of somethings. Or the enemy is so dispersed for fear of it that it really can't amass fire, which is also good.

A PEN 7 laser is quite potent, you still roll a base 4D6, you should be doing easily between 2 to 3 hits against trooper Gear, we don't want point defense turret to be death ray cannon!

We want it to kill things dead so as to stop being a menace, don't we? And we want to be able to use them effectively as gear killers in high cost sniper gears. Also, I'm not sure you can assume you'll be shooting in clear groud. What did you say about stupid opponents?

They shouldn't, since you won't calculate altitude, see section 17.0 how the general framework for the rules will work. Aircraft will simply cross the battle board at some point where you can shoot at them, so with range of 12-36, you will fire at them easily in the optimal range bracket.

Hm... that sounds really weird. Also, according to the alpha, section 17.0 refers to rotorcraft, and the one referring to aircrafts should be 19.0. There's also the fact that according to the rules the snap shot is done when the rotorcraft is crossing the center of the board, so you could be in optimal range... or too close. Or too far. It doesn't really say anything about what do you do if you're in cover and shoot outside (...what happens when you shoot outside cover with a laser, BTW? Do you do half PEN?).

warboss wrote:Just to be clear, average rolls between a 4+ GUN attacker with a beam and 4+ PIL defender results in 1 MOS without any further modifiers, not 2-3 which is a better guage than just naked hits.

riker2800 wrote:MoS 1 + PEN 7 - AR 6 = 2 hits which should be an easy average. However, tank can easily brace themselves without to much fear, adding another dice to the attack roll!

warboss wrote:Only if you assume there is no cover or other modifiers which tend to predominately favor the defender and more commonly don't require an action compared with attacker modifiers.

Yeah, you assume a lot. A whole lot.

riker2800 wrote:This is why you should use your tank gun then!

You get one shot with the tank guns. You'll note that a tank has 3 actions.

Also, laser will be mostly used when Gears are swarming you in the open, also, since it got the Fast Turret, its a weapon that can be used for reaction fire.

...assuming the enemy is an idiot, or the table does not have the suggested minimum 50% of it covered.

jedi76 wrote:All tanks should get a choice of firing AT or HE shells with the main gun really.

Yes. All rocket launchers should get the choice of getting AT rockets or IF rockets, too, but no such luck so far.

Also I'm not sure I like infantry on 40mm bases. I kind of feel they should be able to conform their bases to the terrain.
Using the three hex bases will let them fit better in a tight spot between terrain by lining them up. Every nook and cranny should be available to them.

I'm sure I don't. Too big, too unwieldy, I have waaay too many infantry units already based, and the 40mm bases don't fit in hexes, for when I want to play Tactical.

 Albertorius wrote:

Yeah, you assume a lot. A whole lot.

Not me, hopefully. I was just pointing out that stating a laser gets 2-3 "hits" in a vacuum without even considering the opposing test to reduce/negate it is not a good indicator of the weapon, especially when that step has more free no action modifiers for the defender and the next step (PEN vs AR) can swing quite badly for the laser depending on the range.

 warboss wrote:
Not me, hopefully. I was just pointing out that stating a laser gets 2-3 "hits" in a vacuum without even considering the opposing test to reduce/negate it is not a good indicator of the weapon, especially when that step has more free no action modifiers for the defender and the next step (PEN vs AR) can swing quite badly for the laser depending on the range.

Ah, sorry, I was taking about Riker ^_^. I was actually agreeing with you.

One thing I want to point out with the 3" radius, is that AFAIK, even in the new rules, you're not allowed to aim at terrain, and so the blast must be centered on a model. So if you're models are more than 3" apart (which they should be!), than getting multiple models in a single blast should be somewhere between uncommon and rare.

I mean, obviously terrain chokepoints, melee, or just plain forgetfulness, but much as in Blitz, once my opponent was aware of an AE threat, they would rarely let me hit more than one target unless I had very large AE (4"+) -- or I scattered, which is no longer in the game. And it was fairly trivial for him to avoid.

ferrous wrote:
One thing I want to point out with the 3" radius, is that AFAIK, even in the new rules, you're not allowed to aim at terrain, and so the blast must be centered on a model. So if you're models are more than 3" apart (which they should be!), than getting multiple models in a single blast should be somewhere between uncommon and rare.

I mean, obviously terrain chokepoints, melee, or just plain forgetfulness, but much as in Blitz, once my opponent was aware of an AE threat, they would rarely let me hit more than one target unless I had very large AE (4"+) -- or I scattered, which is no longer in the game. And it was fairly trivial for him to avoid.

Indeed, this is the point I was trying to make!

From Opinions thread on the DP9 Forums:

Bad_Syntax wrote:
"First of all let me say I'm not really active on the forum, and haven't played Heavy Gear much in a while. In a way, I may just be trolling here, and I apologize if that appears to be, but opinions were requested.

I have some of the old 1/87 scale miniatures. Maybe 10-20, I bought them when HG was getting started. I loved the game, and luckily didn't have too much of an investment when the scale got changed and players left the game en masse who did have a large investment. I liked the new miniatures, good molds, good quality, and unique designs that had flavor (unlike Battletech, where everybody gets everything, and designs are never standardized in any way).

So I got real into Heavy Gear. I inputted data on every unit, fought out landship battles, did campaigns, I *loved* the original Heavy Gear.

Then it went to Heavy Gear Blitz, and got dumbed down (or simplified if you prefer). I lost some opponents then, and wasn't real motivated to find them after that. I don't think I've bought miniatures since Blitz.

Then I see some new rules, and think AWESOME, NEW!. Then I download them, read them, and throw up in my mouth a little bit. The one thing I keep thinking is "why are they trying to make HG into 40K when we already have a 40K?". I know people want simpler games these days as attention spans have waned, but some of us can still read a book and don't mind games with depth. I see the simplicity with new games like Deadzone and Flames of War, and just can't see the appeal over going and playing COD on the XBOX, unless you just love painting I guess.

Right before Bltiz I started making a real time Heavy Gear game, top down view, that let everybody fight it out on a world. It wasn't officially sanctioned, but I had the talent to do the game (though I needed some help with art, and was willing to pay out of my own pocket for it). But since Blitz, the universe to me has just flat-lined in regards to depth, and my motivation moving forward was lost.

Back to my point. I have still kept up with the rulebooks, and bought everything new (and am still VERY disappointed to not have seen a book all about landships yet), but if this is the future of the rules, I'll be completely backing out of the game completely, and won't buy any more products. Hopefully I'm the only one, as I don't want to see ANY game system loose customers, and I wish DP9 the best, but this direction simply doesn't appeal to me in the slightest."

And Oubliette follows up:

"Well I have only really played one game of Blitz and will be having my first game of Alpha at the weekend. I really can't agree that the rules are "dumbed down", they still seem to have far more options and depth than most tabletop rules systems. They obviously aren't going to have the detail of a rule-set that was basically the combat rules for an (older style, rules heavy) RPG but then I wouldn't want to run a 15+ model a side scenario with most of those that I have ever known. Also I would rather have my complexity come in the form of additional options (EW) than in more detailed rules for things that aren't really required at squad level (hit locations, loads of stats for each weapon system). Horses for courses I guess.

Personally as a new player reading this and reviewing my thoughts on Blitz and L&L I am far more concerned that force composition, faction flavour and army building should be sorted out. I'd like to see all of the models stats and weapon loadouts reviewed so that they fit their original purpose using the new rules or it is made clear that the new rules changed them to the extent that a model needs to be retconned as to its role in a force.

The new army building looks okay if a little too flexible. I can't see why it won't result in the same issues as the pre FiF methods. If 4 gear units were too flexible before why isn't that the case any more? If spamming particular variants was an issue why has that gone away. I don't believe that it is possible to make all options equally good for the same TV, along with faction flavour it is the job of the army building rules to ensure that there is a good mix of units in a force which require a player to make the best use of a non-optimised force. YMMV.

Also whilst I understand the mechanics I can't see the rationale of the unit/support unit combo. Could someone give an example of a contemporary TOE that follows this pattern, that might help?"

-Brandon F.

Heh, the first guy's a bit nuts, but it does show how swapping away from the 1/87 models, to this day, still garners ire and negative feedback.

The guy seemed to really want his landships, which is a bit silly given that at the 1/87th scale (and even 1/144th), the things would be stupidly large, you'd need a small stadium to play the game. He should probably go play a game like Leviathans instead. (or continue playing fleet scale, I think the rulebook is still available)

Also a bit weird, as the rules are not very 40k like at all.

He's more than a bit nuts if he's the same guy using the same unique handle on the Robotech KS (which is likely given the similar mecha minis genre). He pulled his $1500 pledge on the kickstarter midway through after a stretch was reached because people didn't agree with his conversion house rules for the RPG. He then came back after he changed his profile name (but everyone could see his old comments still and caught him).

I could see a slight similarity to 40k rules in the previous damage incarnation (no pen vs ar but rather a firepower stat like 3+ for instance on bazookas similar more similar to FOW in my opinion).. but this version? I don't see it at all.

I mentioned that the 6+, 5+, 4+ wording of the Gears GUN, PILOT and other attributes would look 40k-like. It isn't 40k, obviously, but it looks it.

-Brandon F.

ferrous wrote:One thing I want to point out with the 3" radius, is that AFAIK, even in the new rules, you're not allowed to aim at terrain, and so the blast must be centered on a model. So if you're models are more than 3" apart (which they should be!), than getting multiple models in a single blast should be somewhere between uncommon and rare.

I mean, obviously terrain chokepoints, melee, or just plain forgetfulness, but much as in Blitz, once my opponent was aware of an AE threat, they would rarely let me hit more than one target unless I had very large AE (4"+) -- or I scattered, which is no longer in the game. And it was fairly trivial for him to avoid.

If your models are more than 3'' apart (or rather, if they're spread out specifically to counter Blasts instead of due to other reasons), taking into account the usual 4'x4' table sizes and the 50%+ of the board with terrain, they probably are not a threat (or will not be able to combine fire effectively, which amounts to the same). But well, horses for courses, maybe it's our playstyle.

Apparently now LLCs are PEN 6 and beam weapons only get their PEN reduced by 2 at suboptimal. Better, but I'm not really all that sure it is good enough.

...and they should be MLCs

Heh, I fail to see how being 3" apart somehow makes them suddenly weaker, we did just fine, on anything but super small tables (under 4'x4') But I agree, mostly pointless to bicker over.

Anyway, I do like that Dave seems to be listening to feedback and responding, and making some decent changes, that's more than we've ever gotten in the past. So I'm cautiously optimistic, there are still some rules that I think should be culled, like the weird offboard fire groups.

The Hun should be a LLC, the Visigoth should be a MLC.

ferrous wrote:

Anyway, I do like that Dave seems to be listening to feedback and responding, and making some decent changes, that's more than we've ever gotten in the past.

See my post about that. It's likely you are agreeing with him, so the changes seem good. That's not the same as him listening.

Personally, I look at the absolute insistence he's showing that his methodology is perfect, and at how much he seems to object to the very idea of explaining what the various component are supposed to be doing in any meaningful details, and I'm rather the opposite of optimistic.

EDIT: The simple fact that people are looking at the army list is a very bad sign: The army list depend on the basic rules. It's pointless to test the lists when the rules can be changed. For that matter, the lists are going to be based on some fundamental assumptions about how the game work. Those assumptions are not being tested right now.

People are still bitching about making hunters and jagers different, or what size laser gun does what... instead of fundamentals like the fact that additional cover is broken. Or that the L/M/H system is horrible for stats clarity. Or that ECM is terribly bloated with 3 seperate tables to reference. :/

What did you expect ? The playtest is unguided, and the expected effect of each rule is unspecified. Testers are going to focus on whatever's important to them; they won't try to find what's not working, since they can't know what is not working.

Instead, they will lock and focus on what's not to their liking, which just tell us their biases* and pre-conceptions. Some cares a lot about the fluff and will focus on that. Other will focus on the rules that matter to them, and whether or not they are working for them, not on the fundamental rules and not on whether or not they are working correctly.

End results: lots of comment on various subjects, and the comments on any given subject have lots of hidden biases and assumptions.
The comments on the impact of cover, for example, depend more on the tables used by the testers and on how lethal they want to game to be than on the rules.
If the problem is that the rule are targeting a different level of lethality and terrain use than what a player expect, then their feedback must be interpreted with that in mind. The solution might be to change some other rule, not the one they are complaining about.

*for example, I care a lot about methodology, organization and procedures...

 Killionaire wrote:
People are still bitching about making hunters and jagers different, or what size laser gun does what... instead of fundamentals like the fact that additional cover is broken. Or that the L/M/H system is horrible for stats clarity. Or that ECM is terribly bloated with 3 seperate tables to reference. :/

About the "additional covers is broken" here something you need to keep in mind, the goal of the game is to make it more mobile, if additional cover were not added to the defender defense roll, while you'll ever want to move your Gear? Since you could stay where you are and shoot trough any cover, that will make for boring games.

I've been playing those Alpha rules since last August with two buddy of mine, and never we complained about to much cover, we move our Gears.

Also, with those new rules, reaction fire and CP giving out of activation has been toned down, making for easier aggressive movement.

ECM rules make sense and works easily, but yes they might look to complicated, since there is so many options...

The funny thing is that some people says the game has been dumbed down...



Automatically Appended Next Post:

mrondeau wrote:
What did you expect ? The playtest is unguided, and the expected effect of each rule is unspecified. Testers are going to focus on whatever's important to them; they won't try to find what's not working, since they can't know what is not working.

Instead, they will lock and focus on what's not to their liking, which just tell us their biases* and pre-conceptions. Some cares a lot about the fluff and will focus on that. Other will focus on the rules that matter to them, and whether or not they are working for them, not on the fundamental rules and not on whether or not they are working correctly.

End results: lots of comment on various subjects, and the comments on any given subject have lots of hidden biases and assumptions.
The comments on the impact of cover, for example, depend more on the tables used by the testers and on how lethal they want to game to be than on the rules.
If the problem is that the rule are targeting a different level of lethality and terrain use than what a player expect, then their feedback must be interpreted with that in mind. The solution might be to change some other rule, not the one they are complaining about.

*for example, I care a lot about methodology, organization and procedures...

We are talking about a game, people should build army, get on a table, plays games and report, simple as that. Then, you see the pattern...

riker2800 wrote:

We are talking about a game, people should build army, get on a table, plays games and report, simple as that. Then, you see the pattern...

No, you don't. You don't see the pattern, because of the noise. I have been designing and testing complex systems for years. You don't test anything remotely complicated that way.

For that matter, DP9 has been "testing" that way for years. It never worked before, to the point where the game and the company is dying.
All the recurring problems, that somehow make it through the "tests" times after times ? That's why they are making it through the tests! The tests are not testing anything.

 Killionaire wrote:
People are still bitching about making hunters and jagers different, or what size laser gun does what... instead of fundamentals like the fact that additional cover is broken. Or that the L/M/H system is horrible for stats clarity. Or that ECM is terribly bloated with 3 seperate tables to reference. :/

Yeah the LMH system is currently stupid. Either use the existing LMH values for everything, or just discard them and have the Pen value right in the weapon code, like BZ7 or AC8. Which from what I can understand, is what he actually had during the closed playtest(and even had a few existing references in the public release), but then waffled back because of player complaints.

Though the problem with Pen codes for everything has it's own drawbacks, its still better than the hybrid they have now, where half the weapons don't use LMH anyway.

@Mrondeau, you're probably right, I do wish the testing was a bit more directed. "Lets test feature X this week, post your AARs here and give feedback"

What do you think is broken with additional cover?

What do you think is broken about Penetration?

What do you think can be done to clean up ECM?

I'm going to go post these questions on the forum.

-Brandon F.

mrondeau wrote:

riker2800 wrote:

We are talking about a game, people should build army, get on a table, plays games and report, simple as that. Then, you see the pattern...

No, you don't. You don't see the pattern, because of the noise. I have been designing and testing complex systems for years. You don't test anything remotely complicated that way.

For that matter, DP9 has been "testing" that way for years. It never worked before, to the point where the game and the company is dying.
All the recurring problems, that somehow make it through the "tests" times after times ? That's why they are making it through the tests! The tests are not testing anything.

Difference here - defined scope and repro isn't going to work when conducted by a diverse group. Essentially, you want to apply your own methods of testing to a group that, in all likelihood, is not versed in the concepts of structured testing.

While this style of noisy testing may not be to your liking, it does have a point. There is still viable data to be mined from it, if you assume the submissions are inherently biased. Getting people talking about a subject alone can yield results.

If everyone was capable of following a concise scope and action plan, I probably wouldn't have a job.

ncshooter426 wrote:

mrondeau wrote:

riker2800 wrote:

We are talking about a game, people should build army, get on a table, plays games and report, simple as that. Then, you see the pattern...

No, you don't. You don't see the pattern, because of the noise. I have been designing and testing complex systems for years. You don't test anything remotely complicated that way.

For that matter, DP9 has been "testing" that way for years. It never worked before, to the point where the game and the company is dying.
All the recurring problems, that somehow make it through the "tests" times after times ? That's why they are making it through the tests! The tests are not testing anything.

Difference here - defined scope and repro isn't going to work when conducted by a diverse group. Essentially, you want to apply your own methods of testing to a group that, in all likelihood, is not versed in the concepts of structured testing.

While this style of noisy testing may not be to your liking, it does have a point. There is still viable data to be mined from it, if you assume the submissions are inherently biased. Getting people talking about a subject alone can yield results.

If everyone was capable of following a concise scope and action plan, I probably wouldn't have a job.

Here's the thing: it's not working. That test procedure, that whole way of doing things is just not working for them, and never worked. They are in a hole, and instead of trying something new, they just keep digging. That's simply insane.
I'm not complaining about the procedure because I don't like it. I'm complaining about it because it does not work.

I cannot agree with mrondeau more. Opening testing occurs usually when all the rules are done. It is the last test to see whether there is any unforeseen error. Reaper Warlord, for example, takes 5 years to streamline and relatively balance all thhe fractions in their 2nd edition. HGB has a much more complicated system than that. It will take more than a miracle to achieve that in such time frame. And very unfortunately, all the players who tried the alpha rules give a bias opinion.

I'm sorry, but I am asking these questions everyone here is asking, and I am getting some thoughtful responses.

Where's the bias?

I'm going to jump in on a few of these issues, since they are my decisions directly and I can provide context for a few of these changes.

Albertorius wrote:

So, tank should move forward and fire at target in sight. For real indirect support, use Ostrogoth, Water Dragon, Spitting Cobra (Arty, Support, base one).

That's your position, and as such is an opinion, not a statement of fact. Having weapons that behaved differently made for very different playstyles, which helped to see the factions as, well, different. That is dead and killed now.

As for the others... the Ostrogoth is a long-range, batallion level support unit, the Water Dragon is a water terrain support unti for gear regiments, and the Spits are regular close-range support for Gear regiments. The Visigoths had their own close-range support up until now, which made them play differently.

I was the one who decided that field guns should not have IF. There's a couple of reasons for it, and while I identified this as a major change in the impacted models I felt the benefits outweighed the 'damage' to the Visigoth's (and Voltgier's) capabilities in the Blitz era. This may simply boil down to a decision you simply don't agree with, unfortunately. But here's the rationales.

First, the scale / range argument. It's true that in both Blitz & Tactical, field guns could perform indirect fire. And in reality, a tank such as the Abrams can perform indirect fire. IIRC HGB/HGT, there was no limit on the range of the indirect fire - you could fire indirectly immediately beside your model, if you wanted. However, in reality most tanks have a shallow elevation - the Abrams is +20 / -10 which is a typical range. This means that 'indirect' fire is practically limited to long range engagements, against targets behind relatively low cover or targets far away from said cover. The drop shadows for such attacks would be huge. From an 'immersion' angle, the Visi and Volti models don't appear to allow very high elevations for their cannons - and so should suffer under the same restrictions. The question becomes - should be add specific rules to account for this (drop shadows, only fire at extreme range, etc)?

The second issue with the Visi / Volti having IF is that it creates a cognitive dissonance for the player, which hinders their ability to map their expectations onto the model. A model's design should reflect it's purpose on the table, IMO. Take two players without any knowledge of the background, hand them an Aller and a Stormhammer and ask them what they think those models should do. I'll put good money down that the player will say that the Aller is a tank designed to smash things, while the Stormhammer is an artillery piece designed to sit back and shell things. And because the Aller is 'bigger' than the Hunter, it should 'tougher', right? Because bigger means tougher, as a common expectation. One major goal for the changes in Mecha Attack - which became HGBv5 of whatever they are calling it - was to make sure that dissonant elements were minimized as much as possible. A Mammoth should absolutely be tough as nails, because it looks like it is. Same for a tank, you should be able to roll up and smash things down. A model's form should closely align to its structure unless it simply can't be fixed any other way.

I took the two considerations above and split the weapons into field guns and artillery guns. Field guns are direct fire cannon that you typically see on tanks, whereas artillery cannons have a pronounced elevation and fire indirectly. The split made is to such that a player can look at the model's statline and know what it's role is definitely, without needing to remember the minutia of each weapon. The weapon name reinforces that - artillery cannon is very easily parsed as 'indirect' because people think of artillery in that fashion. Weapons do not change how they work from model to model - only the PEN value changes - so players can easily start building up a map of what each weapon is good for and go from there.

Originally the Visi and Voli were supposed to be roughly equivalent to the Aller, since their form and price were all equivalent. Since the Aller's rail gun was deemed to be the 'better anti-heavy armor weapon' and they needed something extra for their cannon, so they got HE and AT rounds they could choose from, making them a bit more multi-role than the Aller. While Blast:3 isn't much, it's enough to give them a good anti-Gear punch in certain situations where the Aller can be more easily overwhelmed. Additional tweaks such as indirect rockets for the Visi we never got around to, but it's certainly something that could have broadened the model's role and given it more punch. As for the laser, it should probably be a MLC, but I don't know how Dave is mapping the weapons, honestly. There was an initial, rough mapping SLCs to LLCs, LLCs to MLCs, HLC to HLC. But I dropped that very early on, and I'm surprised to see the letters back.

At any rate, that's the reasoning behind why the Visi and Voli lost IF from their main guns.

EDIT: This was a response to BrandonKF's post. Also, except for overfitting and confirmation bias, I'm using the terminology in a metaphorical way below.

Sampling Bias: The testers test what matters to them, and some subsystems will be under-tested or even untested, while other will be over-tested.

Biased estimator: There's no way for a tester to know if something is working as intended or not, so they will use their own judgement and common sense. Their own judgement is their own, and common sense is not actually common. The same subsystem will be reported as too weak, too strong, and ok, whether or not it's working as intended.

Confounded variables: There are a lot of interactions between subsystems. A problem can easily mask another. A working subsystem can easily appear not to work because of a problem in another subsystem.

Overfitting: Some testers have been testing for a while. The game is already fitted to them. It works very well for them. Any continuing feedback from them does not add any new information, and is essentially useless.

All of that means that the feedback is ambiguous and can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. This brings us to the only bias that really matters in this case.

Confirmation Bias: When interpreting the feedback, the designers will tend to interpret it to fit their preconceptions and opinions. Sufficiently ambiguous feedback can be interpreted however they want. With unambiguous feedback, the impact of confirmation bias is reduced. Ideally, with reliably quantifiable feedback and proper statistics, it can be removed almost completely.
However, while that ideal case is not always possible, all other measures to reduce the feedback's ambiguity should be taken.

A testing procedure works if the feedback can go against against the designer's opinions.
"I think that this is perfect, and work very well, but the tests all came negative. It needs to go."

EDIT: Do not post before 10:00 AM or the fourth coffee, whichever come last.

Albertorius wrote:Another thing that I've realized when cross checking this:

If one of every two weapons in the current lists have different damage, range or special qualities than the ones in the weapons tables... why in sweet hell are you guys still using weapons tables? Those don't help, only confuse.

The original intent was that this was absolutely not the case. Weapons were completely the same from model to model with only the exception of PEN values (or whatever the flavor du jour of damage was). So you knew that an autocannon was an autocannon was an autocannon, only the 'relevant targets' changed. To be fair, there were choices that had to be made about whether a weapon should be made into a new type, given a prefix or simply absorbed into an existing type of weapon. The autocannons are a great example of these - should a VHAC be simply a high power autocannon (PEN 7 for a HAC vs. PEN 8 for a VHAC), or a high rate of fire with lower damage (a HAC's PEN 7 but burst 2 instead of burst 1)? Do you make a new weapon type (GAC) or a prefix or trait (Gatling)? How does that fit with AA autocannons? So there's some give in take on this point, and maybe his approach is simple to mix traits onto weapons that need it.

I'd be surprised if range was changed from weapon to weapon though. That should generally accepted as something that shouldn't change at all. But then, I feel that the range attribute still needed work (with more time I would probably have dropped extreme and reworked suboptimal slightly). But c'est la vie.

ferrous wrote:And finally, I totally agree with the charts, they need either stick to the L/M/H from the table, or just drop the L/M/H entirely and just append the Pen number to the weapon. In posts by Dave, it sounds like they used to do the latter and the LMH stuff is there to try to appease dissenters.

I don't know about why the L/M/H stuff was brought back, but yes - it used to only be PEN based. The major frustration with that approach was unit updates. Changing every case of a AC:6 to AC:7 could be a real PITA, whereas changing LAC from 6 to 7 is fairly easy. The choice to use prefixes might be to help playtesters while the system is getting shaken out, honestly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Albertorius wrote:

Yes. All rocket launchers should get the choice of getting AT rockets or IF rockets, too, but no such luck so far.

The reason for some models getting AT versus IF rockets was to 1) keep the weapon's purpose clearly identifiable and 2) simplify the various rockets types in HGB to one or two 'types', if possible. Whereas most HGB/HGT weapons had minor variations in their range or attributes, rockets were all over the board on range, rate of fire and purpose. You have everything from VLRPs with short range but high rates of fire to HRPs with very long ranges and high rates of fire, with many mixtures between them. If we want to simplify the rocket types, one type simply won't cut it - the range for a VLRP or LRP is simply too limited to represent a MRP or HRP well. So there were three types created - AI rockets, AT rockets and Arty rockets, mapping roughly to VLRPs, LRP/MRPs and HRPs. AI and Arty rockets were indirect, whereas AT were direct.

The latter distinction was completely arbitrary, but we ran with it because it helped define units a bit more strongly. Most of the Gears have TMWS - we couldn't remove weapons, so instead of tweaked the rockets to give the models specific niches. A Grizzly uses its HGM for indirect, while the MRPs are for cracking armor in close and the HAC is used for general anti-vehicle work. The Spitting Cobra now has AT rockets and Arty rockets, each with a different role, and more closely matches the Grizzly's profile as well. The Chevalier variants with LFGs becomes the indirect support option (artillery guns), the variants with 3x MRPs become more nuanced as close range assault, etc.

Additionally, if you allow rockets to work in either mode, you have a harder time making them work across every chassis in both modes, without them being the 'go-to' weapon. In HGT and the fluff, their general strength was limited by their very limited ammo. However, here was never a clean way that we found to use ammo with large model counts in game (25-30 per side) and since MA was designed to fit that scale we had to work without limited ammo constraints. For a skirmish based game you could (and probably should) make different design decisions but that's any additional reason why rockets are implemented they way they were.

 Albertorius wrote:

Also I'm not sure I like infantry on 40mm bases. I kind of feel they should be able to conform their bases to the terrain.
Using the three hex bases will let them fit better in a tight spot between terrain by lining them up. Every nook and cranny should be available to them.

I'm sure I don't. Too big, too unwieldy, I have waaay too many infantry units already based, and the 40mm bases don't fit in hexes, for when I want to play Tactical.

Infantry on 40mm bases allows an entire platoon to work as a single entity, and you don't have to worry about activation spam. That was an issue in previous editions - large numbers of infantry could swamp your opponent's activations - and this also meant that you didn't need the various combined model rules in play. Infantry were essentially another 'Gear' and took damage a bit differently, and had some special rules for how they dealt with terrain. However, infantry were designed after Gears (the primary stars of MA) and vehicles, and didn't get the attention initially that they probably needed. I suspect Dave would be amenable to any points you have about Infantry.

mrondeau wrote:


Here's the thing: it's not working. That test procedure, that whole way of doing things is just not working for them, and never worked. They are in a hole, and instead of trying something new, they just keep digging. That's simply insane.
I'm not complaining about the procedure because I don't like it. I'm complaining about it because it does not work.

Without having sufficient data to go on, I can only conclude your view on it is just that - your view (and I'm not saying that to be a dick or anything - I seriously don't have much info on DP9's colorful history). But, if you are correct and they continue to follow a course that does not yield results then there wouldn't be a point in complaining about it. It's not something you can change, despite your efforts. As such, continuing to expend energy complaining or theorycrafting an inherently broken design approach isn't very constructive - it's just going to make you mad

Your time is better spent collaborating with another core group of people with similar adhesion to testing procedure and SME's in the arena of tabletop mechanics. There seem to be a lot of them here. From there, brew your own house rules and generate a sub-genera of using their mini's with your own system. Give HG's relative obscurity in the US and lack of draconian requirements at play locations (cough GW cough) it would be pretty easy to introduce these rules to other folks. Who knows... If they work well, maybe DP9 will (finally?) get the hint and go that route.

From my perspective, I see new rules that - for the most part - aren't horrible. Yeah, there are stupid posts (mine included) on fluff or whatnot that shouldn't really be relative at this phase of the testing... but it's an open test. Open alpha/betas are *always* a chaotic torrent of relevant and irrelevant data. There's already been an update to the rules as a milestone only a month or so after they dropped right? I take that as forward progress, even if it's in a direction that you or others may not agree with.


Anyway - good hunting!





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Side note...

I proxied HG miniatures with infinity's rule system. I think the Infinity folks were really onto something with the orders pool and the ARO. Too bad I can't find *anyone* around here who plays :(

 warboss wrote:

Just to be clear, average rolls between a 4+ GUN attacker with a beam and 4+ PIL defender results in 1 MOS without any further modifiers, not 2-3 which is a better guage than just naked hits.

Hurm... not sure exactly where you're getting that. Specifically, the distribution that I setup was:

~/personal/hg/mecha-attack-arena/tnplus>./calc_opposed.py 4D_4 2D_4 MoS: | -1 | +0 | +1 | +2 | +3 | +4 | +5 | +6 | +7 | | 17.61% | 13.86% | 17.37% | 16.91% | 13.76% | 10.07% | 06.33% | 03.02% | 00.94% | ~/personal/hg/mecha-attack-arena/tnplus>./calc_opposed.py 2D_4 2D_4 MoS: | -1 | +0 | +1 | +2 | +3 | +4 | +5 | | 41.28% | 17.44% | 15.28% | 11.34% | 07.87% | 04.55% | 01.85% |

Which means that 1) on average, you're hitting (MoS0) far more often (> 81% of the time versus > 59%) and you have a higher distribution of the larger yields (+2, +3, +4). You should not be assuming that a laser (4D6) over a basic weapon (2D6) is only adding +1 MoS - you should probably consider it as +2 or +3.

That said, I wasn't satisfied with the way that lasers were implemented and I'm happy to see Dave refining them. The +2D6 was added to try to reflect their 'always hits' and 'highly precise' nature over autocannons but I always felt it broke down the mechanics too much. Some other mechanic would probably have been better, but determining exactly the way lasers should work never really worked out, IMO. C'est la vie.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ncshooter426 wrote:
I proxied HG miniatures with infinity's rule system. I think the Infinity folks were really onto something with the orders pool and the ARO. Too bad I can't find *anyone* around here who plays :(

I agree about the AROs, but disagree about order pool. But yeah, the next system I come up with most certainly uses ARO, it's a great mechanic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Killionaire wrote:
instead of fundamentals like the fact that additional cover is broken.

Cover was never quite right from my perspective. I never managed to get it *right*, because it's hard to nail down the various perceptions of cover in HG's setting. Typically, cover works to make success less likely by increasing the target number that you need, with soft cover (bushes) adding less than hard cover (rocks). If you can't see your target, you can't shoot them - so a thin wall protects you as well as a steel bunker. Infinity modifies that slightly with the addition of bunkers, but ignores the material type. This construct works in almost all cases, and nobody really complains (much) about it.

HG has a slightly different heritage; you can shoot through materials, sometimes at a fairly minor penalty. The penalty was rooted more in detection (like Infinity) but also mixed in material density as well. This matches somewhat to reality, where you can penetrate some cover with specific types of weapons, but makes it a bit complicated to map in practice because now you have different expectations in play. How much cover ensures that you're completely protected? How many material types do you map? This also leads into the question of how you want the game to play - do you want turtling to be a viable strategy, or is there always a risk of damage when you're in cover? There's not necessarily a right answer here, just a perception - and what we ended up going with was trying to make cover fairly strong without making you completely safe while within it. At that point, you got +1D for light, +2D for heavy and +1D if there were more than one instance. But I could be remembering incorrectly and it was +1D per each additional, it's been a while.

Effectively, this strategy helps models with decent augments take good advantage of cover, without making them completely safe within it. A Jaguar with light cover was only rolling 3D at a 3+ roll, and you can still botch a 3D roll. A Hunter with heavy and light cover was getting 5D at 4+, but still needed most of those to be 4+ in order to make their DEF roll 'untouchable'. However, it has the flaw that big models can't defend effectively behind heavy cover (+2D) because of their 6+ augment. This is the critical failure of this approach - models gain more benefit from cover the better the augment, so low augment models don't benefit. In practice however, everything should want cover, from a tank to an infantry man. And there's little way to achieve that in this system without using something like a flat value for cover that is used if you roll too low, or modifiers to the defense roll, or similar.

The additional +1D per instance may be an attempt to weaken that 'not completely safe in cover' ideal of the above system, and try to make things more 'reliable'. I'm not sure though; adding the +1D to elite models changed their interaction with cover significantly. I'm sure Dave has an approach he's shooting for at this point, but I'm not aware of it. I would have liked to have spent more time to refine cover, and try to tie the various ideals about cover together - but oh well, didn't happen.

 IceRaptor wrote:

 warboss wrote:

Just to be clear, average rolls between a 4+ GUN attacker with a beam and 4+ PIL defender results in 1 MOS without any further modifiers, not 2-3 which is a better guage than just naked hits.

Hurm... not sure exactly where you're getting that.

Simple arithmetic just like the analysis of the post I was responding to. It wasn't meant to list each and every possible outcome %. A 4+ gun @ 4d6 = 2 success. Defending 4+ pil @ 2d6 = 1 success resulting in final MOS1. Obviously the above treats all successes as the simplified same (not true) but it the point was to show that just counting gun "hits" without ever considering defense rolls let alone the pen/arm interaction is NOT a good way to evaluate the effectiveness overall of a weapon. Thanks for the more detailed analysis in any case. I would note though that the Mos1 is the most likely individual success in your analysis as well.

Effectively, this strategy helps models with decent augments take good advantage of cover, without making them completely safe within it. A Jaguar with light cover was only rolling 3D at a 3+ roll, and you can still botch a 3D roll. A Hunter with heavy and light cover was getting 5D at 4+, but still needed most of those to be 4+ in order to make their DEF roll 'untouchable'. However, it has the flaw that big models can't defend effectively behind heavy cover (+2D) because of their 6+ augment. This is the critical failure of this approach - models gain more benefit from cover the better the augment, so low augment models don't benefit. In practice however, everything should want cover, from a tank to an infantry man. And there's little way to achieve that in this system without using something like a flat value for cover that is used if you roll too low, or modifiers to the defense roll, or similar.

Since you've got excel handy, what effect would cover changing the augment instead of dice have? I.e. a mammoth in partial cover gets a 5+ instead of an extra d6. Super maneuverable units would then not benefit from tons of cover as much as the augment caps at 2+ but they're already quite hard to hit at that point.

 warboss wrote:

Since you've got excel handy, what effect would cover changing the augment instead of dice have? I.e. a mammoth in partial cover gets a 5+ instead of an extra d6. Super maneuverable units would then not benefit from tons of cover as much as the augment caps at 2+ but they're already quite hard to hit at that point.

It doesn't help on its own - you need to both decrease the augment as well as add dice. Without the additional dice, you don't get the reliability of cover that you need (which is the point of cover in the first place). We never tried doing both (decreasing augment as well as adding dice) because there was a severe kick-back against modifying augments; people hated them in the first place and putting in place a system where you 'improved them' by going 'lower' got negative responses. It's certainly an option, but still a bit clunky - checkout the differences here:

Defending at +2D6 w/ a 6+ augment ~/personal/hg/mecha-attack-arena/tnplus>./calc_opposed.py 2D_4 4D_6 MoS: | -1 | +0 | +1 | +2 | +3 | +4 | +5 | | 50.99% | 19.83% | 16.11% | 08.51% | 03.37% | 01.00% | 00.18% | Defending at +2D6 w/ a 6+ augment reduced to 4+ ~/personal/hg/mecha-attack-arena/tnplus>./calc_opposed.py 2D_4 4D_4 MoS: | -1 | +0 | +1 | +2 | +3 | +4 | +5 | | 68.53% | 13.86% | 08.77% | 05.00% | 02.65% | 01.00% | 00.18% |

It's a good step, but you really need to do something like 'soft cover grants aug 4+' while 'hard grants aug 3+' or something like that, where you can always use your augment if better. But again, that depends on how 'strong' you want cover to be.

 IceRaptor wrote:

It's a good step, but you really need to do something like 'soft cover grants aug 4+' while 'hard grants aug 3+' or something like that, where you can always use your augment if better. But again, that depends on how 'strong' you want cover to be.

I'd definitely not be a fan of a firm augment based on the cover as it wouldn't ever benefit agile units. I want them to occasionally benefit from cover within reason but not become unhittable. With just a 3+ for cover, anything "better" than a hunter just won't benefit with those schemes. At least with a benefit to augment, they'd get some but with a hard limit. I'd personally be fine with the THACO style cognitive dissonance of something "lower" being "better". In the end, it's no different from the system in the alpha anyways and the most popular scifi game uses something similar (saves).