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 Albertorius wrote:
"Prior to the destruction of Peace River, hostilities between both the North and the South were flaring once again"

...who the flying feth has written this

Well, going by the credits, it's either Robert, or Saleem...

Well, that's just upsetting (yet predictable) that Lion's Wrath seems to be so haphazard.

I suppose it's to be expected, with the emphasis on trying to produce workable future rules. But god, there's so many issues with the 'alpha'. Overly complex electronic warfare for one, and that insane resistance to naming weapons in a reasonable manner.

I mean, there's arguments that weapons on a statcard should read 'Paxton Arms 20mm M6 Autocannon (LAC)' instead of just fething 'AC:7'.

Really? (facepalm)

 warboss wrote:
I imagine Smilodon will do the same thing after his cooling rods contain the reaction.
edit: From the free preview table of contents on DTRPG

Actually, my first response to reading the table of contents on that DTRPG preview was to laugh myself silly for about ~five minutes or so.

Because, after getting told by Saleem that I had insulted Robert by telling him he was wrong, and why he was wrong, about many of his mandated decisions made without consultation I see that most all of the silly put into the book by Saleem that he wouldn't let anyone touch got removed by Robert anyways.


Apparently I earned a free copy, and I was going to give it away as I don't need it, but either to due to vindictiveness, or more likely incompetence, on the part of the generalissimo the Pod didn't issues codes this time and instead tied it to specific emails "to see how it all turned out."
Wonder how long it'll be before the Pod überfans drop in to try and rebut the first 1 out of 5 star (no, was not done by me) review, which is more than a little accurate.

Oh well, maybe I'll download it for laughs.
Or not.

When told it was a privilege to have my name appear in an industry product and thus I should mend my attitude I asked for my name to be completely removed... which I notice they managed to get wrong too.
As well as misspelling it in the tester credits to boot.

 Killionaire wrote:
But god, there's so many issues with the 'alpha'. Overly complex electronic warfare for one, and that insane resistance to naming weapons in a reasonable manner.
I mean, there's arguments that weapons on a statcard should read 'Paxton Arms 20mm M6 Autocannon (LAC)' instead of just fething 'AC:7'.

Yeah, that one even took me aback.

As well as the suggestion that people should once again repaint bits or rip apart completed miniatures because the people in charge can't get things into any semblance of coherency, after refusing to let anyone help with that who would've done a much better job of catching those kinds of little things.

After the Pod has called so many times during the process for the field guides that things simply cannot be done to certain miniatures because of what the box / blister contains, or citing dubious "production" issues, what they are doing now to make these model loadouts and force lists is utter BS.

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So... the Lion. Hm. Never quite expected a Gear of the size of a Grizzly to run quite that fast, TBH. Or to have +1 Man O_O

Yeah, I really dislike how the weapon 'table' is ending up. I'm totally okay with ditching the VL/L/M/H/VH monikers. Sure you end up with standardized range bands that way, but the majority of them all had the same ranges anyway. But doing the weird half-assed measure, with some things being a LAC, somethings being a LAC5 is just extra cruft. Just go AC5, AC7 or whatever. I can't recall if he also has some with shortened range bands either, I'd have to double check infantry agms ranges. (Though I always hated that conceit, seems like such a gamey 'fix' for agm infantry being too powerful)

I do agree that Dave seems like a terrible choice for making the lists. I'm lukewarm on him for rules, but for actually making the lists, his lack of familiarity with Heavy Gear tends to really creep in. Forgotten models, renaming variants, adding weapons options to factions that don't normally get them, declaring entire swathes of southern models "Counts As" (Or as I like to think of it, "I can't be arsed to make a statline for all those models") I never felt like he really grokked the factions and what made them unique. Of course that last Peace River booked cacked things up anyway, with it's showering of gifts and oddball unique rules.

There have been more posts in this thread about the new ebook, than on the actual DP9 boards...

At the risk of being that guy.

Which of the books has information about the Silverscale? The model looks cool but it doesn't exist in the main book. I figure it's a scout/ECM thing, but at the moment I don't even know what it does.

 HudsonD wrote:
There have been more posts in this thread about the new ebook, than on the actual DP9 boards...

Folks probably realized that why should they bother over there, as TPTB will just delete anything remotely critical about how he went about things.
To probably include even questions about what is a typo and what isn't in the book, because wow, this a total Charlie Foxtrot in execution.


I did deign to download it - and the first big thing is that Saleem and then Robert completely changed how the datacards were set up to work, I guess maybe to save space in an electronic format, but didn't change how the option line swaps were worded in the combat groups to reflect doing that.... as well as quite often reordering the options out of what little order they had to begin with...

It might be kind of hard to fit in a Jaguar Wildfire here and there when it's now only found on the Fire Jaguar, or ditto for a Hunter Wildfire that is now found only on the Assault Hunter. Which I notice got missed on pretty much every datacard for their special [AE 2] trait MPZ as well.


The "Scimitar" got a TV rebate of around 20-40 points, depending on what did actually get removed or what ended up being a typo here.
But I notice they kept the (3x) laser version as well as (R)eloads for an energy weapon, and added a weapon that doesn't exist instead of just using the HVS.

Mammoth TV got totally mucked up, in that they gained things again but lost cost.
As did some Thunderhammers, as per usual it's impossible to tell what is intentional or an error.

But by the Prophet, they left in the Behemoth "$$$ grab" model.

 Chemical Cutthroat wrote:
At the risk of being that guy.
Which of the books has information about the Silverscale? The model looks cool but it doesn't exist in the main book. I figure it's a scout/ECM thing, but at the moment I don't even know what it does.

Your best bet is to try and get a copy of Southern Vehicles Compendium 1: Gears & Striders. IIRC the only other place is a few similar blurbs on one page of Forged in Fire.

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 HudsonD wrote:
There have been more posts in this thread about the new ebook, than on the actual DP9 boards...

To be honest since it was promised to come out the end of this month I hadn't been expecting to need to check on it until the June-July time frame.

I've just skimmed it and I dunno, no real initial impressions of note. I wish the "Metal Cat" had a bit more of an imaginative name given how it seems to show up everywhere.

 Chemical Cutthroat wrote:
At the risk of being that guy.

Which of the books has information about the Silverscale? The model looks cool but it doesn't exist in the main book. I figure it's a scout/ECM thing, but at the moment I don't even know what it does.

Of the current crop, you'd be needing the FiF book, as it is a southern design (a variant of the Basilisk)

Excellent. Thanks guys.

MrThud wrote:
I wish the "Metal Cat" had a bit more of an imaginative name given how it seems to show up everywhere.

With a very few very rare exceptions, pretty much all of the time whatever the test folks get handed from the devs & Pod for each project is what the names are going to be unless they themselves end up changing them at some point.

For whatever it's worth, there is a link to some player's reference guides in my DP9 sig, that is pretty shot to s**t in parts by what TPTB chose to do rather than stick with what got handed in, but still enough to at least see what the swaps were supposed to do and what equipment the models were supposed to have.

Weasel Mk 2 should not have a [Sat Uplink] along with (10) Detect & [ECM/ECCM 4], but oh well, just another typo right?


I see they also kept the Caprice knock-off Strider infantry transport, only the weapons are now even more grossly overpowered by using the standard Thunderhammer loadout - and where exactly does everyone sit?
Including those phantom specialist teams the infantry attachment can't even take in the first place.

And why does the *AAC variant have a completely different name from every other variant with that loadout in the entire book?

Not to mention the attached infantry was already allowed to buy upgrades from the platoon option page, except this was apparently too complex, so now there is also an option line allowing the exact same thing.


Apparently as part of the same process, in places too numerous to mention single lines and similar wordings intended to clarify or further define special rules have been removed for the sake of formatting.
Yet, the Pod does not at all like to answer questions about rules once they have published any product....

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Just a reference that took me a while to get... when Smilodon says TBTB, it means "the powers that be".




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Smilodon_UP wrote:

I see they also kept the Caprice knock-off Strider infantry transport, only the weapons are now even more grossly overpowered by using the standard Thunderhammer loadout - and where exactly does everyone sit?

So that's is what happened to the special transport? And the wolf strider became the scimitar gear strider?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Smilodon_UP wrote:

Apparently I earned a free copy, and I was going to give it away as I don't need it, but either to due to vindictiveness, or more likely incompetence, on the part of the generalissimo the Pod didn't issues codes this time and instead tied it to specific emails "to see how it all turned out."
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I guess I didn't earn one...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Smilodon_UP wrote:
I already noticed one error on the back cover alone - in the field guides there is no such thing as a generic force. During army construction players must choose a sub-faction, and that ruling has been in the construction flowchart for every book, including this one. But still, it was tried initially to make this possible in the last book, except it doesn't work at all well with the field guide format. And the idea was dropped.
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I'm actually ok with the generic list part since I'm not a fan of "locking" models behind a subfaction paywall, especially with the ridiculous double vet slot tax on EVERY fire support and some strike/recon/ranger squads that was submitted. It is a bit of a moot point now seeing as I had initially hoped the generic list would get players around the horrible double vet slot tax mechanic on generic units. I'm really glad that mechanic apparently got dropped according to a little birdie who I asked who bought the pdf. The loathsome mechanic I was referring to earlier in this thread was a FIF SRA style "double vet slot required" tax that was on GENERIC units instead of the faction specific ones. If you wanted to use your generic FS/Strike/Ranger/Whatever squad and it had a faction specific replacement, you had to pay two vet slots for each unit to unlock one generic one fully to veteran status... unless you bought one of the faction specific ones filled with models that nobody wants like bears, tigers, etc. That has apparently been toned down to just requiring generic ones to be veteran which, while I don't specifically like it, is at least reasonable. I'm glad the pod saw the light of day on that one; I would have thought that my multiple messages about how every single starter set they've ever sold for the north would be "taxed" an extra vet slot or more (depending on which sublist and which starter) would have convinced them back in January but I guess it took a while to sink in. In the end, I'm glad for the change.

As for the it's/its discussion on the official forum, I submitted about a dozen examples of that particular systematic mistake as well as advised them to search and replace the entire document for it but I guess that was forgotten about during the intervening 5 months.

 warboss wrote:

 Smilodon_UP wrote:

I see they also kept the Caprice knock-off Strider infantry transport, only the weapons are now even more grossly overpowered by using the standard Thunderhammer loadout -

So that's is what happened to the special transport? And the wolf strider became the scimitar gear strider?

It would seem that Saleem wouldn't let it be given up, but the Wolf, as a counter to the Naga, is completely gone, yet still mentioned in a few places as well as the Light Strider squadron it used to form.
Which completely gutted the Ashington Royal's exclusive UMFA Strider squad, even though the name was kept while simply inserting the Gear-Strider in place of the Mammoth and Wolf.

The GS squadron is now [Core] in Armor regiments, rather than how the Light Strider had been [Spec], so I guess no one ever told them at what PL people actually play HGB! most of the time.
I can't even begin to imagine how TPTB went from trying to name it the Lion to calling it Scimitar.

 warboss wrote:

 Smilodon_UP wrote:

Apparently I earned a free copy, and I was going to give it away as I don't need it, but either to due to vindictiveness, or more likely incompetence, on the part of the generalissimo the Pod didn't issues codes this time and instead tied it to specific emails "to see how it all turned out."

I guess I didn't earn one...

hrm, I guess it was intended then to rub my nose in the final product.
Too bad the execution is rather, er, subpar, which quite takes away from whatever it is was intended to prove?

 warboss wrote:
As for the it's/its discussion on the official forum, I submitted about a dozen examples of that particular systematic mistake as well as advised them to search and replace the entire document for it but I guess that was forgotten about during the intervening 5 months.

Yeah, there is no way this ever got even a once-over check.

The Airborne Dragoon combat group is totally screwed up, plus managing to copy + paste the WFPA swaps from Hunter Para models to Dingo models for the AB squadrons without noticing how that affected the AB Dragoon CG type.

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I don't think it was intended. For a playtester, I didn't actually "play" much so I'm not too surprised that I didn't get a free copy especially since I joined the group specifically to try to prevent players getting screwed over again. I tried my best to find mistakes, broken combos, stupid ideas that lowered player collection utility, and lastly typos like the its/it's situation in the final version you handed in. I only got a single playtest game in and didn't turn in the 8 page report about it so I'm not surprised I didn't warrant a freebie (despite being one of the most active members on the mailing list after joining). That doesn't endear me to those in charge. In any case, I don't think you got it to rub your nose in it but rather you probably were just on a list of those important enough to warrant it and you never got taken off. That is obviously a guess though so YMMV.

 Smilodon_UP wrote:

Or not. When told it was a privilege to have my name appear in an industry product and thus I should mend my attitude I asked for my name to be completely removed... which I notice they managed to get wrong too. As well as misspelling it in the tester credits to boot.

Wait... They put your name on a product without your consent, and specifically after you asked not to be credited ? If I was in your place, screaming would be occurring right now. Lots of it, in fact, until the PDF is updated.
Might be my engineering training, but you do not attribute work to someone if they are not willing to sign on it.

warboss wrote:
You may want to tread lightly in that case...

http://www.contentfac.com/copyright-infringement-penalties-are-scary/

If anyone looks and desires to have their models credited, I'm more than willing to do so.

I also try to make sure I don't 'claim' copyright. Instead everything on Flickr is posted under Attribution NonCommercial. I've also taken a point of notifying folks on DeviantArt when I use their stuff.

Chemical Cutthroat wrote:So the DP9 Forums are under Martial Law that squashes any dissent, so the passionate folks that don't want the game to fail, or disagree with the design choices.

Viva la resistance?


But! I mean, you guys love the setting, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Reading through (I couldn't read everything, ya'll are rather verbose and I'd be here for weeks), but BrandonKF is sorta doin' his own rule writeup? How's that going?

And for those of you who have armies and play, what do you do? I'd rather skirt the developer drama if at all possible, as I'm a fan of the games I used to play, not whatever ruleset or stuff is currently flopping around. Landships and squads of Gears slugging it out in the wastes was always awesome. Still is.

warboss has his own write-up that's rather complete on his Mecha Blog. Mine isn't complete, and it's a hash-up. Infinity with Heavy Gear.

-Brandon F.

As someone rather intimate with Infinity, I find that appealing. But I'll make sure to look at what warboss has written up as well!

The gears a turning in my head now, (ugh pun), and I have all sorts of crazy plans. We'll see what the gaming group thinks this weekend.

 Chemical Cutthroat wrote:
As someone rather intimate with Infinity, I find that appealing. But I'll make sure to look at what warboss has written up as well!

The gears a turning in my head now, (ugh pun), and I have all sorts of crazy plans. We'll see what the gaming group thinks this weekend.

Lots of puns with Heavy Gear.

I'm still waiting to do a meme with the words "Gears of War, Eat Your Hearts Out".

-Brandon F.

 Killionaire wrote:
I mean, there's arguments that weapons on a statcard should read 'Paxton Arms 20mm M6 Autocannon (LAC)' instead of just fething 'AC:7'.

I hope no one's pushing for a Paxton Arms LAC on Northern gears.

Or Southern gears, for that matter.

Paxton sells to everybody. Easy to describe written-off chassis getting PA weapons for themselves. Cheaper, more durable, and easy to find ammunition.

-Brandon F.

 Killionaire wrote:
Overly complex electronic warfare for one

That one is probably at least partially my fault. I tried to make EW more of a 'first-class citizen' and the initial drafts of the rules were fairly rough. I wanted to work on them more, but never was able to polish them down. However, that's assuming they haven't changed significantly since my incarnation of rules - I've not checked the Alpha in some time so I don't know how much divergence there is.

 Killionaire wrote:
I mean, there's arguments that weapons on a statcard should read 'Paxton Arms 20mm M6 Autocannon (LAC)' instead of just fething 'AC:7'.

What a waste. That's what it started as! Why can't they just do the simple thing and be done with it. feth.

And frel. And keff and kark.

-Brandon F.

 IceRaptor wrote:
What a waste. That's what it started as! Why can't they just do the simple thing and be done with it. feth.

A large part of that though is probably because they only accept a certain kind of player into their valued player-base, to inform their "decisions" and direct where they focus their efforts, if at all.
But enthusiasm can only carry things so far without having a plan to get there, nor without the willingness to hear opinions contrary to what they hold.

And this isn't mean-spirited, but rather just an additional observation; AL13N also has reason to be happy, because all but nothing for his own faction got touched from what he signed off on as a tester.
Or, to be more accurate, it wasn't touched this time.

 warboss wrote:

 Chemical Cutthroat wrote:
If someone is interested in Heavy Gear...

I say wait for the "beta" rules to come out this summer and, if they're free or very cheap ($5), try them out. If you like the mechanics, buy some models. The core rules are mostly seemingly nailed down at this point for better or worse but the army lists are still completely up in the air.

Depending on what they plan to charge for the beta rules (if anything... don't know personally), I wouldn't even recommend buying them if they cost more than $5. You'd basically be paying DP9 for the honor of testing their rules for one year at which point your purchase would be worthless (normally with dp9, you get two whole years of value out of a rulebook before they abandon it). In all honestly, just wait for the final version to shake out in 2015.

Dream Pod 9, Inc. wrote:We are working on a new edition of the game, which is in Alpha playtesting right now, we plan on releasing a small b&w printed book for $15 at this summer's Gen Con and it also be available as a free pdf download. That way players can start using the new rules and help us with playtesting. The final rulebook is planned for the summer of 2015, that way it will have about 8 months of additional beta testing before it has to go into final layout. We want to make sure we getting everything right before we release the final edition.
May 19 at 3:21pm

.... sheesh, You sure did call that one.

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Eumerin wrote:

 Killionaire wrote:
I mean, there's arguments that weapons on a statcard should read 'Paxton Arms 20mm M6 Autocannon (LAC)' instead of just fething 'AC:7'.

I hope no one's pushing for a Paxton Arms LAC on Northern gears.

Or Southern gears, for that matter.

Polar armies have been using Paxton weaponry for centuries, now. It is a weapons manufacturer, after all. It would be like not wanting to issue MP5s to a SWAT unit because they're german.

Even then, that on a datacard? sheeesh

The northern pdf has some nice as well as bad surprises compared with what I had seen previously from my late night looksie. The removal of the double vet tax on stock units is a big improvement (requiring them to be veteran isn't ideal but is acceptable) but it is balanced negatively for me by the removal of the only two models I was looking forward to (namely the two now missing striders). Replacing one of the models with a gear strider just rubs salt in that minor wound given my distate for the class of vehicles in general but I can't say I'm surprised they went with it given recent history. It's a bit bittersweet but also ironic that I bookended the silhouette era as a playtester both on the original supplement (1st edition RPG jungle drums) and the final one (Lion's Wrath).

Also, a second review of the PDF went up on DTRPG. I'm actually impressed given the reviewer that he only gave it 4 stars. I'd disagree personally about the difference in power between LW and FIF (or even TPS) though as I consider them to be roughly equal. Blood Debt is the only overpowered outlier to the point that if I ever face a paxton player I'd ask him to spot me an extra 10% TV to cover the special abilities that he doesn't pay anything for. I would also point out that the north (or at least the UMFA) actually PAYS for army wide special abilities.

Any comments on how new rules are turning out? Would it be better to use a 'Heavy Infinity' type as I haven't managed to play a game of Heavy Gear yet with the current/old/ihavenoidea rules and I'm semi-familiar with the Infinity ones?

(I have a reasonable number of northern and southern mechs and units, but never played a game with them).

 Daba wrote:
Any comments on how new rules are turning out? Would it be better to use a 'Heavy Infinity' type as I haven't managed to play a game of Heavy Gear yet with the current/old/ihavenoidea rules and I'm semi-familiar with the Infinity ones?

Brandon and Warboss' take on Infinity Gear - are pretty nice. You'll get a more Infinity feel from them, if that's what you're looking for. The Silhouette rules have a beauty of their own, but expect to have a learning curve as you start figuring out how to make the different pieces work well together. Either way, hope you have fun!

 Daba wrote:
Any comments on how new rules are turning out? Would it be better to use a 'Heavy Infinity' type as I haven't managed to play a game of Heavy Gear yet with the current/old/ihavenoidea rules and I'm semi-familiar with the Infinity ones?

(I have a reasonable number of northern and southern mechs and units, but never played a game with them).

I sat down with all my rulebooks last night, and along with some browsing of BrandonKF's rules, started working on some ideas of my own.

But my goal isn't to try and replace the rules, I'm just adapting the setting to a rulesystem that I'm more experienced with. For lethality and whatnot. Certainly not for balance reasons! That truly must be the most frustrating thing about game design, trying to give cool abilities/units while maintaining balance. Right now I'm just working on the weapon charts and adjusting the statlines to something different, and then crossing them over so they still have any special rules represented properly (or almost properly). Damnit Excel!

I could post links to stuff once I have it more concrete if anyone is interested. I might bug this thread's massive depth of knowledge at times if that's alright.

BrandonKF wrote:
Paxton sells to everybody. Easy to describe written-off chassis getting PA weapons for themselves. Cheaper, more durable, and easy to find ammunition.

The Polar nations should have plenty of incentive to support their own arms industries. For instance, going to war with Peace River (always a possibility) could easily cut into the availability of LACs if they were using Paxton Arms models. Plus, the simpler Paxton Arms stuff - a LAC, for instance - is, according to the fluff, just knock-offs of equipment designed and produced by the Polar Nations.


NorthCo, Shaian, Keimuri, and Riley, should all be selling LACs by the bucketload to the Northern nations. And their Southern counterparts should be doing the same for the Southern nations.