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.

ferrous wrote:
They've pretty much painted themselves into a corner. Due to stupid patch fixes and short term thinking, along with other imbalanced variants being added, they really have to invalidate some models and combat groups.

Example: Those all MBZK squads.

And I agree with mrondeau, they really needed to ensure that models and weapons have well defined roles. Blitz was terrible at this, because generally the higher damage, more accurate weapon was better versus everything, and superior in every way.

I had to bold and underline your quote there. Isn't this true in any game? I mean, read that part again. Would you rather have the higher damage, most accurate weapon suck? LOL I get what you are trying to say though. I found that anytime I could take a more accurate weapon over damage, I would. As a few people have posted in this thread, the modifiers were more important than the dice or damage. Getting +3 or +4 to hit was often more important than a x25 damage weapon with a -1 accuracy modifier.

I long argued that the MBZK was the most stupid weapon in the game and by making it so ubiquitous amongst the gear squads, you were guaranteed to see it every time you played. The only other weapons that came close to the same amount of play time were the indirect Fire weapons. So yeah, who ever made up the brilliant idea of using a metal tube with a dumb rocket, and giving it a HUGE range band, +1 accuracy, and x20 damage was a fool, and the person that allowed it to be taken by just about every Gear in the game was an idiot.

And you know what? In the new beta rules, they did it again. The Bazooka ties with the Railgun for most damage. The ranges for it are 3-12/24, and it has AT- so lucky for anyone using it, if you hit a Gear, Strider, or Vehicle, you will be doing +1 penetrating damage for every die you roll that equals or exceeds your pilot skill. It's the standard weapon on the Gear "Destroyer" variant, and only costs +2 more TV over the base Gear. Thanks to the new army creation rules, you can have an entire force with MBZ's once again.

 Tamwulf wrote:

ferrous wrote:
They've pretty much painted themselves into a corner. Due to stupid patch fixes and short term thinking, along with other imbalanced variants being added, they really have to invalidate some models and combat groups.

Example: Those all MBZK squads.

And I agree with mrondeau, they really needed to ensure that models and weapons have well defined roles. Blitz was terrible at this, because generally the higher damage, more accurate weapon was better versus everything, and superior in every way.

I had to bold and underline your quote there. Isn't this true in any game? I mean, read that part again. Would you rather have the higher damage, most accurate weapon suck? LOL I get what you are trying to say though. I found that anytime I could take a more accurate weapon over damage, I would. As a few people have posted in this thread, the modifiers were more important than the dice or damage. Getting +3 or +4 to hit was often more important than a x25 damage weapon with a -1 accuracy modifier.

I long argued that the MBZK was the most stupid weapon in the game and by making it so ubiquitous amongst the gear squads, you were guaranteed to see it every time you played. The only other weapons that came close to the same amount of play time were the indirect Fire weapons. So yeah, who ever made up the brilliant idea of using a metal tube with a dumb rocket, and giving it a HUGE range band, +1 accuracy, and x20 damage was a fool, and the person that allowed it to be taken by just about every Gear in the game was an idiot.

And you know what? In the new beta rules, they did it again. The Bazooka ties with the Railgun for most damage. The ranges for it are 3-12/24, and it has AT- so lucky for anyone using it, if you hit a Gear, Strider, or Vehicle, you will be doing +1 penetrating damage for every die you roll that equals or exceeds your pilot skill. It's the standard weapon on the Gear "Destroyer" variant, and only costs +2 more TV over the base Gear. Thanks to the new army creation rules, you can have an entire force with MBZ's once again.

Pretty sure what I bolded was his point.

 Tamwulf wrote:
So yeah, who ever made up the brilliant idea of using a metal tube with a dumb rocket, and giving it a HUGE range band, +1 accuracy, and x20 damage was a fool, and the person that allowed it to be taken by just about every Gear in the game was an idiot.

I'm not sure where you're getting the above from. The Mbzk has never been +1 accuracy nor does it have a huge range band. It is the same range band and accuracy as the stock garbage LAC on trooper gears that no one takes and tries to immediately get out of using via swaps. Is the Mbzk powerful? Absolutely because there was no way of divorcing accuracy and damage and it had great damage along with mediocre accuracy. Was the ability of the north to spam it an issue? Absolutely... but two of the three things you said were incorrect.

 Tamwulf wrote:

And you know what? In the new beta rules, they did it again. The Bazooka ties with the Railgun for most damage. The ranges for it are 3-12/24, and it has AT- so lucky for anyone using it, if you hit a Gear, Strider, or Vehicle, you will be doing +1 penetrating damage for every die you roll that equals or exceeds your pilot skill. It's the standard weapon on the Gear "Destroyer" variant, and only costs +2 more TV over the base Gear. Thanks to the new army creation rules, you can have an entire force with MBZ's once again.

That's... interesting. Under the MA rules, 'Zooks were 8/10/12 weapons; they were Gear killers, not tank killers. Their short range (3-12") gave them 1D6 at range, versus 2D6 for most opponents, so shots beyond 12" weren't reliable at all. Zooks still had AT, but AT was an 'exploding' dice on a damage roll (this was back when the damage roll was popular) which served to give you 'swingy' damage results. Railguns on the other hand 8/11/14 weapons... but their damage went straight against structure, not hull. And they had 12-36"/72" range, which made them dangerous from all over the board. So a railgun needed fewer shots to core you, and were dangerous against all targets. 'Zooks were mostly useful against the lighter tanks and Gears.

Interesting how they have changed things.

As far as having an entire force of MBZK's... I believe they added +1D to most model's DEF rolls. That's going to make it fairly hard to hit with a 'zook unless you're within 12". Braced can extend your range out to 24" - but reduces your DEF, so you have a greater chance of taking damage. Now, that said - I don't know what they did with braced; it used it be severe to try to prevent 'bunkering' in cover, but if it only subtracts -1D6 then in cover you're probably fine. I'd have to check the existing rules to know for sure... and I really can't be bothered.

 Tamwulf wrote:

ferrous wrote:
They've pretty much painted themselves into a corner. Due to stupid patch fixes and short term thinking, along with other imbalanced variants being added, they really have to invalidate some models and combat groups.

Example: Those all MBZK squads.

And I agree with mrondeau, they really needed to ensure that models and weapons have well defined roles. Blitz was terrible at this, because generally the higher damage, more accurate weapon was better versus everything, and superior in every way.

I had to bold and underline your quote there. Isn't this true in any game?

Nope, think W40k, for example. They have a Good versus single targets/ Good versus squads mentality going. Heavy Bolters, Chainguns, etc are all better versus hordes like orks, while a twin linked lascannon is going to be really good at killing one ork, and great at killing high value targets like armored vehicles. There are legitimate reasons to take the Land Raider Crusader, Redeemer or default standard one. If it was Blitz, you'd only ever take the one with the biggest guns.

What I'm getting at is that weapons have clear roles in other systems. But in Blitz, their isn't. The higher damage gun is the better gun to use against ALL targets. The minor exception is infantry, but if a weapon is anti-tank, it's actually a great anti-gear weapon. So it's better to just load up on the cheapest high damage weapon you can get your hands on.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 warboss wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:
So yeah, who ever made up the brilliant idea of using a metal tube with a dumb rocket, and giving it a HUGE range band, +1 accuracy, and x20 damage was a fool, and the person that allowed it to be taken by just about every Gear in the game was an idiot.

I'm not sure where you're getting the above from. The Mbzk has never been +1 accuracy nor does it have a huge range band. It is the same range band and accuracy as the stock garbage LAC on trooper gears that no one takes and tries to immediately get out of using via swaps. Is the Mbzk powerful? Absolutely because there was no way of divorcing accuracy and damage and it had great damage along with mediocre accuracy. Was the ability of the north to spam it an issue? Absolutely... but two of the three things you said were incorrect.

Have they fixed that for Beta? Something I've been annoyed with for years is their blindess to how gakky the MAC and LAC are, and how everyone just swapped those guns out as soon as possible. That Saleem post about how to use LACs just made me want to slap him for his willful ignorance, as it was basically rules on how to play the game period, and if you replaced the weapon being fired with anything other than a LAC, it would tend to result in overkill for the target instead of a box or two of damage. The fact he had it in his sig was just a constant reminder of his arrogance.

ferrous wrote:

Have they fixed that for Beta? Something I've been annoyed with for years is their blindess to how gakky the MAC and LAC are, and how everyone just swapped those guns out as soon as possible. That Saleem post about how to use LACs just made me want to slap him for his willful ignorance, as it was basically rules on how to play the game period, and if you replaced the weapon being fired with anything other than a LAC, it would tend to result in overkill for the target instead of a box or two of damage. The fact he had it in his sig was just a constant reminder of his arrogance.

To be completely honest, I have no idea. I know that making each weapon useful within its own role was an initial design goal though. Beyond looking to see how army construction works, I frankly haven't looked at the game mechanics since I lost interest around January (?). That is why I tend to shy away from commenting on them as I don't know exactly what changed and stick to complaining about other stuff I did read. As for the LAC, Saleem is full of those ironclad ideas and almost nothing changes his mind when he is set on it (not reason, common sense, or math). I had to convince him during northern playtesting that the cheetah was the standard northern recon unit as he was arguing it wasn't; it took a word for word quote from L&L proving it to stop him trying to restrict the cheetah behind subfaction walls further. It is kind of scary for the chief playtester...but at least he did a bang up job upping the power level for the faction he plays almost exclusively (Paxton) at no TV cost.

Arrrg. Someone mentioned Saleem. I had managed to forget my pure hatred of him.

He's an expert at filtering and ignoring feedback. He does not understand how testing works. He does not understand why single-player games are not actual tests. He does not understand how, on a game where terrain matter, vassal based tests are worse than no tests. Vassal encourages hex-style movement with abstract terrain. It ignores the size of the physical model, the flexibility of real movement and it affects timing for reaction.

He argued that a shorter range is better than a longer range. That's an argument he made. Literally. No, I'm serious. For him, a shorter range was better than a longer range.

Yeah...that's him. He was railing against a suggestion I made because he thought one weapon was completely overpowered in combo with another but a functionally identical in effect weapon ( when you looked at typical ranges and rolls) was totalky fine. The weapons only differed at extreme ranges and MOS but he was convinced one was too powerful.

It also didn't matter to him that the exact squad loadout I was proposing was available on BETTER gears in the Paxton pdf but yet was too powerful on less capable gears in the North. Apparently, what was good for the goose was NOT good for the gander.

Saleem. Easily the most incompetent person to ever be listed in DP9 books' credit sections, and there was competition for that title !...

mrondeau wrote:
It ignores the size of the physical model, the flexibility of real movement and it affects timing for reaction.

He (Saleem) yelled at me once during a VASSAL game when I said I wanted to reaction fire at a HAPC during it's movement, which of course ended up within melee range of my model making it impossible to do much anything against anyways.

So it's not very surprising to me at all that melee still has such a focus in how the Beta rules ended up. I didn't notice that the number of free strikes a model could use got capped, either. Probably never will though, has to be able to be abused.



(...from the Robotech thread.)

 warboss wrote:
The new rules largely shed that unnecessary stuff (except for the very unbalanced sublists that are heavily RPG inspired and just repeat the EXACT problems that plagued HG balance for the past decade) [..]

No kidding, you'd think by now, after the last ~8 odd years, the Pod as an organization would be able to get miniatures force construction right. Or at the very least, somewhat consistent.
And the constant turn-over of personnel is definitely not solely to blame, because folks question those kinds of things both during "testing" and after publication. It's a listening problem, along with a boneheadedness problem.

It literally has been like for every Blitz!-era book TPTB each think to themselves, "What if I/we do [Z] for this one even though I/we did [Q] for the last one, and [J] for the one before that?" along with other comparable examples of utter silliness.

Yet the Pod folks always keep asking why, and whining about, that no one trusts them to do anything.


Gee, I mean, like, go figure....

_
_

Wasn't the September errata supposed to come out this week? Did it get delayed? I haven't checked the forums much this week since Monday so may have missed it.

 warboss wrote:
Wasn't the September errata supposed to come out this week? Did it get delayed? I haven't checked the forums much this week since Monday so may have missed it.

Interestingly enough more than a few folks are posting on the DP9 forums in a not so complimentary manner.

As per usual though, the update is "Coming Soon (TM)," and also as per usual something Paxton is getting yet another tweak even though everything else is behind "schedule."

Dave 20 Sep 2014 at 12:48 AM wrote:The Argos will be getting a facelift in the rules in the September update so it better reflects its status as the Kodiak of Peace River. It will be increasing in TV, AR, ACT, and GUN while losing the autopilot trait. The exact details will be out soon.
This is one bad ass Gear.

_
_

Why the hell does the Argos need "a facelift"? (Other than to trim its goatee.) It just came out!

 Firebreak wrote:
Why the hell does the Argos need "a facelift"? (Other than to trim its goatee.) It just came out!

Beats me. I also found a very weird thing to say of it that it is "the faction's Kodiak". That's what the Cataphract was supposed to be, you know...

 Albertorius wrote:

 Firebreak wrote:
Why the hell does the Argos need "a facelift"? (Other than to trim its goatee.) It just came out!

Beats me. I also found a very weird thing to say of it that it is "the faction's Kodiak". That's what the Cataphract was supposed to be, you know...

Yup, the reason we have gearstriders is because Paxton made the Cat as their response to the big gears of the polar factions. I just hope that they're too busy/don't care enough to change that in the blitz rules. The argos is strong enough and if they gave it two actions, the kodiak and king cobra would be pathetic in comparison. The argos is plenty powerful in blood debt with as the only big gear with those large weapons and a +1 FC especially the shamshir variant with a Hbzk and AGM as my fav loadout for it). The lack of a second action is the only thing balancing it out compared with the Kodiak Destroyer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Smilodon_UP wrote:

As per usual though, the update is "Coming Soon (TM)," and also as per usual something Paxton is getting yet another tweak even though everything else is behind "schedule."

Thanks for finding that mini-update. As for the beta, I think it is best to characterize the reception as mixed. In all honesty, there have been plenty of responses on both sides of the fence and others sitting right on it undecided. I do think though that the sample size is a bit smaller than I expected. In any case, we'll see publicly with the kickstarter just how many folks are still interested in HG at least to the extent that they're willing to back a project of this type. I really am curious to see how many backers that gets even a bit more than the actual total funding.

Cataphract, Argos and Uhlan. That's three gearstriders/Kodiak equivalents...
Imagine where Paxton would be if they hadn't been, ya know, nuked.

Come on, Hudson. You know very well that if they don't make the rules for new models so much better than existing ones for a likely discount (especially for the favored pod faction), it'll be game over, man! Game over!

 warboss wrote:
Come on, Hudson. You know very well that if they don't make the rules for new models so much better than existing ones for a likely discount* (especially for the favored pod faction), it'll be game over, man! Game over!

*Offer only valid for the first 6 months, until we change its rules.

 Albertorius wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Come on, Hudson. You know very well that if they don't make the rules for new models so much better than existing ones for a likely discount* (especially for the favored pod faction), it'll be game over, man! Game over!

*Offer only valid for the first 6 months, until we change its rules.

Terms and restrictions apply. Nerfing not valid for the chief playtester's faction if he has anything to say about it.

 Firebreak wrote:
Why the hell [..]It just came out!

 Albertorius wrote:
Beats me.

 warboss wrote:
The argos is strong enough and if they gave it two actions, the kodiak and king cobra would be pathetic in comparison. The lack of a second action is the only thing balancing it out compared with the Kodiak Destroyer.

 HudsonD wrote:
Imagine where Paxton would be if they hadn't been, ya know, nuked.

Dave 20 Sep 2014 at 12:48 AM wrote:The Argos will be increasing in TV, AR, ACT, and GUN while losing the autopilot trait.

The Pod never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Because it's easy for folks to get excited over yet another special model for a tiny special snowflake faction that consistently gets better things than any other primary faction, no matter how little sense any of it makes, right?

"We at DP9 understand that if a whole ~6 [half dozen] people say they like something, then everybody else likes it too. (TM)"

_
_

I would point out for clarity that my comment quoted above was in regards to the blitz rules and Dave's changes refer to the Nublitz ones. That said, I agree obviously with the above as they frankly didn't need the argos. They already had another gearstrider in the works and stole the only new strider the north was going to get; isn't that enough? Well, it's the last day of the week and no rules so I guess they're late and pushed back.

Yeah, apologies for the confusion.


I don't understand (apart from it likely being due to yet another silly "Saleem said" change) why all the sudden the Argos has to match the Kodiak & King Cobra when it was perfectly OK (within the field guide anyways) since testing ended last May'ish.
As I understood during testing for BD, mostly repeated in the vehicle fluff entry, the Argos was supposed to be a high-technology heavy trooper or enhanced strike version of the W4 that likewise ended up similar to what TPTB later did with the Lion.

So to the best of my knowledge it was never intended to be anything but what it ended up as: a single-action size [7] model with [+ ATK].
But of course then, it's Paxton - all bets are off and retcons can be done at whim, game balance and the setting be damned.
I suppose as well that eventually the Red Bull will go from mounting the [VHFG] to one of the "naval, because we say so (TM)" weapons.


Funny too how several non-infantry models got [Stabilizers] in the Beta, but the models that should have had it (Verder, Stinger, Lightning Thunderhammer, Red Bull, et al) either due to weapon size or game balance don't anymore.
Maybe, just maybe, the reason folks who see a game being played as they walk by can't tell that the 5-6 metric ton Black Claw [or, insert other model name here] isn't a mini of a power armor suit is because of the DAS (Dumb as gak) bi-pod on it's rifle?

Except of course being consistent about that would make sense, and require either Dave, Robert, or Saleem to have same.

 warboss wrote:
As for the beta, I think it is best to characterize the reception as mixed. I do think though that the sample size is a bit smaller than I expected. I really am curious to see how many backers that gets even a bit more than the actual total funding.

I notice Dave and Robert, along with the ardent Pod supporters, have pretty much overtly and/or covertly chosen to gloss over mentioning how many folks have gone silent, walked away, or been driven away since the first Alpha forum talks back in January.

I still think the fact that TPTB consider less than a dozen folks, with a core of maybe half that, an acceptable means of rubber-stamping (i.e. creating) a supposed to be entirely new ruleset kind of telling.
That even some of those people are more and more starting to openly question decisions that have been made or are being made is rather funny to me though, especially when they parrot things talked about here over the past 40+ pages.

_
_

That is part of why I'm curious just how big the potential market will be shown to be with the KS. I was genuinely shocked by how the vote to "allow" palladium to sell Robotech at Gencon at the expense of backers went on that kickstarter and how it didn't reflect at all the general sentiment in the comments and here at dakka. I'm wondering if the same thing might be true of HG as well.

The amount of people voting in the various DP9 polls is a good indication of the audience that's still motivated enough to click something...

 warboss wrote:
I'm wondering if the same thing might be true of HG as well.

That would seem to be the company's only hope at this point - excepting of course that the last few Pod folks haven't changed their counter-productive behavior one iota since forever.

Even if the rules were functional and consistent, I think what all has been done to the setting over the Blitz! years has been more than enough to kill the good things about HG.
Without that depth, folks might as well be playing the game with an alternative ruleset anyways, which is what the Alpha/Beta started out as in the first place.

Clearly things didn't have to turn out that way.
Too bad the company making the game can never quite grasp that concept, because there surely isn't a brick or cluebat big enough to get that through to the Pod "leadership."

Personally, I don't think Dream pod 9 is worth spending even just a single dollar on simply to be able to comment on their KS how badly they've bungled things for so long.

 Smilodon_UP wrote:
Personally, I don't think Dream pod 9 is worth spending even just a single dollar on simply to be able to comment on their KS how badly they've bungled things for so long.

Well, you don't actually need to spend a dollar to comment in a KS. You can always cancel your pledge afterwards...

Reckon it's the plan of a lot of Robotech's pledgers in case Palladium ever does another one.

Less than 100 people have any idea what's currently going on with Heavy Gear. The poll's at 81 votes right now. 81 people could be bothered to click a couple things. That is not the turn out a 20 year old company with a continuous product should expect. Nostalgia for HG2 alone should bring in more than that.

I whined a fair bit about the Pod treating this like a brand new startup, but honestly? What the hell else are you going to call it, with the way they behave?

Obviously NuCoal didn't go over as well as hoped. There was actual promotion for the game back then and things seemed incredibly exciting (even if I did hate the introduction of NuCoal, it was all exciting.) But apparently there was no customer retention after that, heck, maybe not even any conversion from prospective TO customer in the first place.

An important question the Pod needs to ask itself now is what happened to all that communication and promotion, and (possibly more importantly) how come it apparently did nothing to retain new players?

 Albertorius wrote:

 Smilodon_UP wrote:
Personally, I don't think Dream pod 9 is worth spending even just a single dollar on simply to be able to comment on their KS how badly they've bungled things for so long.

Well, you don't actually need to spend a dollar to comment in a KS. You can always cancel your pledge afterwards...

Reckon it's the plan of a lot of Robotech's pledgers in case Palladium ever does another one.

And give up the chance to post for years to come as the project is inevitably delayed with each disappointing update? No, that is worth $1.00 and I won't be pulling my pledge.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Firebreak wrote:
Less than 100 people have any idea what's currently going on with Heavy Gear. The poll's at 81 votes right now. 81 people could be bothered to click a couple things. That is not the turn out a 20 year old company with a continuous product should expect. Nostalgia for HG2 alone should bring in more than that.

I whined a fair bit about the Pod treating this like a brand new startup, but honestly? What the hell else are you going to call it, with the way they behave?

Obviously NuCoal didn't go over as well as hoped. There was actual promotion for the game back then and things seemed incredibly exciting (even if I did hate the introduction of NuCoal, it was all exciting.) But apparently there was no customer retention after that, heck, maybe not even any conversion from prospective TO customer in the first place.

An important question the Pod needs to ask itself now is what happened to all that communication and promotion, and (possibly more importantly) how come it apparently did nothing to retain new players?

I agree with Hudson's post that the polls might give us a possible idea but Palladium forum polls and general participation (whether Robotech related or any of their other RPGs) rarely even hit half that total and yet they got 5,000+ backers amounting to a several orders of magnitude difference. Do I expect a HG KS to generate the same numbers or anything even remotely close? No... Robotech was based on a worldwide TV phenomenon during the 1980's with a popular show, toys, comics, and more offering (at that time) a great deal on a boatload of minis. That isn't the case with HG. It would however indicate a potential problem with using forum participation for a failing game as the yardstick for the success of a KS. Using the HGA videogame failed crowdfunding isn't great either as it is a completely different genre of games and was fraught with mismanagement. The funding and design goals were ridiculous for the value of the IP and the size of the active fanbase and the preparation seemed to have been done during the course of an evening... and the website didn't even work after a 40+ day countdown. I think we're in uncharted territory at this point in terms of figuring out just how many of us fans there are out there willing to potentially support the game and company again.

As for Nucoal, the few tidbits I heard from insiders was that it actually sold quite well and buoyed the company for a while in a way that only a new faction with new minis and a new book and rules that were frankly broken at the time (due to it being the only book using the "new" tv for almost a year and then the fixes for other factions were just bandaids).

 warboss wrote:

I agree with Hudson's post that the polls might give us a possible idea but Palladium forum polls and general participation (whether Robotech related or any of their other RPGs) rarely even hit half that total and yet they got 5,000+ backers amounting to a several orders of magnitude difference. Do I expect a HG KS to generate the same numbers or anything even remotely close? No... Robotech was based on a worldwide TV phenomenon during the 1980's with a popular show, toys, comics, and more offering (at that time) a great deal on a boatload of minis. That isn't the case with HG. It would however indicate a potential problem with using forum participation for a failing game as the yardstick for the success of a KS. Using the HGA videogame failed crowdfunding isn't great either as it is a completely different genre of games and was fraught with mismanagement. The funding and design goals were ridiculous for the value of the IP and the size of the active fanbase and the preparation seemed to have been done during the course of an evening... and the website didn't even work after a 40+ day countdown. I think we're in uncharted territory at this point in terms of figuring out just how many of us fans there are out there willing to potentially support the game and company again.

As for Nucoal, the few tidbits I heard from insiders was that it actually sold quite well and buoyed the company for a while in a way that only a new faction with new minis and a new book and rules that were frankly broken at the time (due to it being the only book using the "new" tv for almost a year and then the fixes for other factions were just bandaids).

Good points, all. I suppose the forums aren't that useful for judging popularity after all. There will always be people who know nothing about the forums, but still play and love the game.

What I more wondered about NuCoal is that, however popular and exciting it was, that doesn't appear to have stayed with the game. NuCoal was certainly a shot in the arm for sales and popularity, but it looks more like it was a bandaid, and not a cure, so the Pod should be looking at why that is. Yes, exciting new factions that get all the best toys sell, but maybe don't have staying power.

Firebreak wrote:
Good points, all. I suppose the forums aren't that useful for judging popularity after all. There will always be people who know nothing about the forums, but still play and love the game.

What I more wondered about NuCoal is that, however popular and exciting it was, that doesn't appear to have stayed with the game. NuCoal was certainly a shot in the arm for sales and popularity, but it looks more like it was a bandaid, and not a cure, so the Pod should be looking at why that is. Yes, exciting new factions that get all the best toys sell, but maybe don't have staying power.

warboss wrote:(...)
I agree with Hudson's post that the polls might give us a possible idea but Palladium forum polls and general participation (whether Robotech related or any of their other RPGs) rarely even hit half that total and yet they got 5,000+ backers amounting to a several orders of magnitude difference. Do I expect a HG KS to generate the same numbers or anything even remotely close? No... Robotech was based on a worldwide TV phenomenon during the 1980's with a popular show, toys, comics, and more offering (at that time) a great deal on a boatload of minis. That isn't the case with HG. It would however indicate a potential problem with using forum participation for a failing game as the yardstick for the success of a KS. Using the HGA videogame failed crowdfunding isn't great either as it is a completely different genre of games and was fraught with mismanagement. The funding and design goals were ridiculous for the value of the IP and the size of the active fanbase and the preparation seemed to have been done during the course of an evening... and the website didn't even work after a 40+ day countdown. I think we're in uncharted territory at this point in terms of figuring out just how many of us fans there are out there willing to potentially support the game and company again.

As for Nucoal, the few tidbits I heard from insiders was that it actually sold quite well and buoyed the company for a while in a way that only a new faction with new minis and a new book and rules that were frankly broken at the time (due to it being the only book using the "new" tv for almost a year and then the fixes for other factions were just bandaids).

First things first. Nucoal killed, or at the very least crippled Heavy Gear. "But it was their best sale in a long while !" I can already hear some saying. Yeah. It was a brand new line of minis, released at the height of DP9 marketing efforts. And it sold well. Duh. This was a time when DP9 also got that deal for a battlefoam bag, a line of reaper paints and big names were putting HG back on their catalog. That's not a coincidence...
Perfect Storm was also a poorly written unbalanced mess, but really, who cared, as long as it was full of pictures, and the minis were cool ? Unfortunately, DP9 took that as a sign that the new book formula was lightning in a bottle, and went on to try it on the South and other factions...

When it comes to the Robotech KS, PB didn't market it to PB fans, they (wisely) marketed it to the much larger audience of Robotech/Battletech fans. The DP9 boards give a good indication of the remaining fanbase, but there's no reason to assume they'll be able to tap into another market, especially after they've burnt so many bridges.