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Thanks for the explanation, although I am not entirely convinced that having so many bands is necessarily the best implementation (I only have effective range / long range in my game). For a game like HG, pretending that you're going for "realism", there are still the core RL drivers of ROF, caliber and muzzle velocity that can be traded for whatever the conventional weapon might be. Then you have exotic stuff like lasers and missiles. I think there are plenty of differentiators even without implementing non-realistic range bands and completely unrealistic maximum ranges.

Defense-wise, yes, this is gamey, and it gets to the core combat mechanic. Structurally, my mechanic is similar, but simplified via implicit subtraction.

I dispute that realism wouldn't be fun - in a game like this, one can apply more grit (ranges) to offset areas where it's not desirable (mass MANPADS). In the real world, energy weapons are strongly affected by atmosphere. We don't have small anti-tank lasers because the energy required to punch through the air and then a tank' takes a bigger battery than what a tank can carry. That said, Infantry should be assumed to all carry a single IED / Bazooka teams in a world of Gears, but what an unassisted human can carry compared to a walking tank would be of less power and capability.

Realism shouldn't be conflated with complexity, nor simplicity with gamey. One can have realistic, simple games, and the Command and Colors games are excellent for being realistic in the sense that units behave properly, and the flow of the battle is correct. Proper tactics are generally rewarded. Then there are unrealistic, overly-complex games, of which old HG is a pretty good example.
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Note that I'm not blaming you for how it came out - I get that you were still trying to make it HG-like, which necessarily carries over a lot of old mechanics and stats.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I think there are plenty of differentiators even without implementing non-realistic range bands and completely unrealistic maximum ranges.

Sure, there could be. I'm not disputing that. The compromise solution - the weird range bands like 6-18"/32" are not something I'm going to passionately defend, because I didn't like them when I was making the game and would have preferred to refine them away as time went on. Even a two range band split needs to be carefully tweaked IMO, because if you make it too hard to land a shot at long range, what's the point of having long range in the first place? Just ditch it and make the player's life simpler. It was retained largely because it seemed like HG fans were traditionalists, who would want to retain a simulation of realism even if it was a clunky mechanic.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

I dispute that realism wouldn't be fun - in a game like this, one can apply more grit (ranges) to offset areas where it's not desirable (mass MANPADS). In the real world, energy weapons are strongly affected by atmosphere. We don't have small anti-tank lasers because the energy required to punch through the air and then a tank' takes a bigger battery than what a tank can carry. That said, Infantry should be assumed to all carry a single IED / Bazooka teams in a world of Gears, but what an unassisted human can carry compared to a walking tank would be of less power and capability.

I was talking about the 'realism' of the Heavy Gear universe. If you take the background material as 'true' and try to make a game that's 'realistic' to the technology they have. They do have lasers that can kill tanks at a kilometer or so. They have ubiquitous electronics that are standardized - which means there's no reason every missile wouldn't have at least some guided capability. Ranges for sensors and missiles are weird, I'll freely admit - you can detect objects a few kilometers away, but their missiles are in the single kilometer range (whereas the 1970s hellfire has an operating range of 8km).

What I mean is if you follow all of the 'in-universe' realism to it's logical end, you get very boring encounters. Whomever detects the other person first wins, and there are threats that there's just no counters to. You'd have to build the game around the scenario where Gears are supposed to have a role - like a dangerous environment for infantry, that's too unstable for conventional vehicles to have a role. Which might work, might not. In the end I think you have to flex the in-universe 'realism' in order to give Gears a place to be.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Realism shouldn't be conflated with complexity, nor simplicity with gamey. One can have realistic, simple games, and the Command and Colors games are excellent for being realistic in the sense that units behave properly, and the flow of the battle is correct. Proper tactics are generally rewarded. Then there are unrealistic, overly-complex games, of which old HG is a pretty good example.

Absolutely. People thought old HG was a 'realistic' game because they had weapon ranges that looked 'normal' to military eyes, and because there was lots of detail in damage tracking. But it was a good example of the system rewarding number-crunching, instead of tactical decisions. It was more about what you brought to the table, rather than how you used it. And while there some element of that which is realistic (small arms can't hurt a tank), it doesn't make for a good tactical game.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Note that I'm not blaming you for how it came out - I get that you were still trying to make it HG-like, which necessarily carries over a lot of old mechanics and stats.

No worries, I fully own up to the decisions I made. The game was meant to be a refinement of the old system, not a whole new system - because ultimately I (an outsider) had to pitch it to people who were part of the old guard. There wasn't a desire to 'rock the boat' from the inside, and as an outsider I didn't feel like a wildly new system would be accepted. So I hedged my bets and compromised, which is why the system is less dramatically different than people could have expected. The biggest gain was to remove multiplication / division which was the most common complaint I heard in 4+ years of demoing, and I think the system does that well. There was significant resistance to the idea of dropping the opposed roll, for instance - which means there are certain things you just have to live with.

But an entirely new system, from the ground up that tried to weave in the background more strongly? That could be really interesting.

The only reason I have near / far range in my game is because players expect it, even thought it barely makes any sense at 1/144 scale if "realism" is to factor at all. Especially with HG typically played on sub-40k-sized boards. The 7+ foot corner-to-corner shot on a 4x6' board is barely 1,000 ft (0.3 km) - that's basically point blank for anything with modern targeting and fire control.

If you look at the tech level of the HG universe, and take it as being higher than our own, then everything always hits, and the only question is the quality of the shot based on intervening terrain and luck of what part specifically got hit. I agree that 40k & HG gamers won't want that sort of game.

One of the guys I game with is an ex-tanker, and I used to be big in to the WW2 stuff. It is very hard using the world "realism" when we look at 1/100 Flames of War, 1/144 HG, or 1/56 40k ranges and distances. What I see is sham detail masquerading as "realism", when true realism pushes all of that stuff back by an order of magnitude. I agree that working the min-max stats tables makes for something of a worse game.

As in the other thread, you did a good job, and removing the multiplication was a good move.

The same is true in videogames. I enjoy world of tanks but a shot at the maximum spotting distance in that game (450m) was considered a close range shot in WW2. You take it for what it's worth and hopefully have a fun time.

Indeed! I love watching Girls Und Panzer. Even though none of the actual driving & fighting has a lick of realism in it. It looks great and is entertaining, though...

Maybe we need to rebrand minis wargames as playing out the video game / anime adaptation of a "what if" encounter?

What it comes down to is that the game developer has to decide how to resolve the action in the game. We throw around words like "realism" and "technical" when the reality is, in modern day warfare, just about all the equivalent HG weapons would be able to shoot anywhere on the table with accuracy and "hitting power". The "sci-fi" weapons would be even more deadly. So the game designer has to deal in the abstract, and that comes down to how complicated to make the resolution system.

It could be as easy as each Gear has a stat, you roll some dice, and compare that to the stat of the enemy Gear. If you hit, you do a fixed amount of damage. It could be made even simpler- you get X amount of dice, and for every dice that rolls 4 or more, you hit and do damage. The damage can be easy or hard as well- a gear could have X amount of hit points, and when those points are gone, the gear is inoperable.

Or it can be made hilariously complicated, starting with the pilots skill at shooting, which is calculated during the army building phase. Next, it's modified by the targeting system in his gear, and the ECCM being generated. Next, how fast the Gear is moving could influence the shot (though you would think a computer would be able to compensate for that. After all, they already do in a modern Fighter), and finally, the weapon the Gear is using could have an effect on the shot- range bands! So that's what, a primary stat and four modifiers right there! Now, we can use a "versus" resolution system where the defender has a defense value that has a bunch of modifiers, (pilot defense skill, gear computer telling him how to dodge, how fast his gear is moving, ECM, is he behind cover, etc. etc. and both the attacker and defender roll dice, and either compare the dice to each other, or to some attack or defense number to count up successes. This is an active-style combat system and works fairly well when you only have 1-2 combats a turn to resolve. When you start adding in many, many combat resolutions, it becomes cumbersome. Really, there is no upper boundary for how complicated a resolution system can be.

You need to have a balance somewhere in between, but again, the game designer has to envision what the combat will be like: Fast, anime style combat where Gears can dodge lasers (which would be impossible in real life), or slow, ponderous murder machine gears that plod across the battlefield, shooting at each other, damaging each Gear piece by piece until its no longer functional or blows up.

Once the primary vision of how combat should be in this particular universe is set, then the game developer can start writing the conflict resolution system for the game. A really good game will have a cohesive and intuitive resolution system that can be applied anytime something on the board must be resolved: Whether it be shooting an autocannon at a Gear, or figuring out if your gear can climb a cliff or not. Having multiple resolution systems clutters up the game and makes it harder to play.

Basically, you have to decide what the focus of the game will be (gear on gear combat? Or army vs. army combat? Combined arms? Tanks? Infantry? Air? Space? How do they fight on Terra Nova? Fast, anime style, slow, lots of maneuvering, how do they fight?), then how "big" the game will be (1-2 models per side, units of models, whole armies...), and finally, how long you want the game to last. The game developer is making the "ideal" game, under "ideal" circumstances. Then they can start writing the rules. Periodically, they should review it, and look at the how the game scales when it strays from this "ideal" game. There should be some parameters set early, lest the final game spirals out of control.

At least, that's the way I would approach making a new version of HG. /shrug

@Tamwulf - that is precisely the case, and I'm agreed on all points.

Also, having a design brief and AOS as my starting template helped a lot in making KOG light as my hyper-streamlined counterpoint to Heavy Gear.

I think the guys behind 1-page 40k are doing good work, but it's a pity they completely branched the unit points costs.

Yup, I Tamwulf is right on all points. I found it best to aim for a 'verisimilitude' of realism, if for no other reason than the target audience (HG Fans) have a simulationist bias. I'm more in the gamist camp, myself - so there was a mismatch. I was trying to make a game that reflected the story descriptions more than adhered to the rule legacy, and I think in some ways it achieved that. We'll see where it goes from here.

This is pretty interesting. I'm curious about missions and scoring, and other game parameters that would presumably inform the pace and development of play when determining the kinds of processes and procedures that should take players through a game.

Nomeny wrote:
This is pretty interesting. I'm curious about missions and scoring, and other game parameters that would presumably inform the pace and development of play when determining the kinds of processes and procedures that should take players through a game.

Missions and scoring would be one of the last, if not the last things, to work on. Once you have a solid foundation of how to resolve conflict, you can establish the "parameters" of winning. Do you leave it up to the players to decided who wins? Do you play for a fixed number of turns, or until you've had enough? Last man standing? Mission cards like "destroy the enemy's ECM" or do you each get tokens, and you place the tokens on the table, and then score points for "picking up" the token? Is the game time limited? Here is where a strong "fluff" background can come into play, as well as the "vision" of what the game should be. Again, the Game Designer has to deal in the abstract, because actual, real world military missions are NOTHING like what you might think (unless you were in the Military and saw the entire process from beginning to end- planing, prep, equip, train, execute, after action, etc. etc.).

The HG:B mission system was pretty snazy, I will admit. I liked it! I'd like to see something like it continue into the new edition. Having objectives to fulfill and points to score makes for a much better play experience then "kill the enemy".

 Tamwulf wrote:
Having objectives to fulfill and points to score makes for a much better play experience then "kill the enemy".

Too true! What's funny is how long it's taken players to accept this, and the HG random mission generator is not bad.

Although, in some ways, I'm starting to think that the pendulum has swung too far over to the other side, simply for the sheer amount of time it takes to figure out what you're fighting for. GW's 40k 7E mission generator becomes rather painful with all of the random things you're supposed to check for just to get started, and adding in mysterious objectives and/or Maestrom keeps the annoyance going every turn.

There's a happy middle ground between running around like a chicken with it's head cut off, and only killing stuff to kill stuff.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:
Having objectives to fulfill and points to score makes for a much better play experience then "kill the enemy".

Too true! What's funny is how long it's taken players to accept this, and the HG random mission generator is not bad.

Although, in some ways, I'm starting to think that the pendulum has swung too far over to the other side, simply for the sheer amount of time it takes to figure out what you're fighting for. GW's 40k 7E mission generator becomes rather painful with all of the random things you're supposed to check for just to get started, and adding in mysterious objectives and/or Maestrom keeps the annoyance going every turn.

There's a happy middle ground between running around like a chicken with it's head cut off, and only killing stuff to kill stuff.

What I strongly dislike about 40K Melstrom Missions, is the sheer randomness, how some are impossible to fulfill, and how they give your opponent zero chance to react. Case in point: "Successfully manifest a Psykic Power"- so all I have to do is cast a spell? Awesome! And very easy for some armies, and impossible for others (Tau, Necrons, Bugs, any army that doesn't take a Psyker). "Slay the Warlord" - again, what if that Warlord is a Bloodthrister? Good luck. How about "Take Objective 3"- and it just so happens that Objective 3 is on the other side of the table behind my opponent's lines. I could suicide a deep strike squad and hope I get close enough to take it, or right it off as "impossible". Or how about "Take Objective 4" which one of my scoring units is presently sitting on- and my opponent gets no chance to react or stop me.

There are all kinds of House Rules for Melstrom missions, Basically, nice idea, implementation needs some work.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. What I would like to see in HG:B would be a similar mission system to the last one, but halfway through the game, a player can decide to "Change" his objectives. For example, halfway through the game, it becomes obvious they can't win the game with the current objectives, so the player decides to change to "save the commander and one other gear" which could be those units survive until the end of the game, or they manage to reach a certain extraction zone. These "Changed Objectives" are worth fewer points then the "Primary" objectives, but they give the player a chance instead of zero points.

It would be great if a player could generate a random objective and get full points for achieving it, or pick an objective, and get fewer points for it, but it's more "achievable" for that player. And have a couple secondary objectives.

IMO, Maelstrom is something of a disaster, and I don't think anybody actually plays it as written - they all appear to apply house rules to remove "impossible" objectives (which go hand in glove with which armies were taken).

I'm not sold on the idea of the Field Commander simply changing his mind mid-game. I think Major v Minor v Draw covers that. If you're getting beat, and Major is out of grasp, then you need to refocus strategy for Minor or Draw, and adjust tactical play accordingly.

IMO, for a generic mission generator, the HG thing is fine for getting games started, but I don't think they're "balanced". Nor do the ideas of "secret" with "re-rolls" really work together. But it's not a big deal.

I really enjoy Maelstrom, and I think it's pretty important to keep the null results to both balance out the armies, make it work. The Maelstrom Warlord traits exist so that players have the option to mitigate risk, after all. I think the combination of ongoing scoring and random draw helps to spread the game out over the board. I'd liken it to the implementation of random game length from 4th edition to 5th edition 40k as a massive improvement over the Eternal War missions.

For the short time my old group played 7th before giving up on 40k, we did sharef objectives meaning each player drew them and had first crack on the new ones but ultimately both players had a chance to accomplish them.

Maelstrom is a very different way of playing the game, and it absolutely needs to be played RAW, keeping the "impossible" objectives as unscorable. It also requires a physical deck, which is more expense. But the whole thing devolves into just so much randomness...

Actually you don't need the deck, they're just handy. It's kind of cool how they work like that, in that you can either roll on the book tables or use cards. You can even make your own cards. The Renegade ITC rules do an interesting variation with a list of 14 Maelstrom-style objectives where the players can pick two of 1-12, or trade them in for 13 or 14, and scoring them at the beginning of the next player turn. My local group found they were a little difficult to use and so we made cards. Seems easy enough to play a partial Maelstrom deck of cards with players choice.

I've tried Maelstrom without cards, and it was really cumbersome and painful. Maelstrom definitely needs cards. Saying you can roll dice for Maelstrom is like saying, well, you can play 40k with standees instead of minis...

I quite liked whichever edition of HG it was that gave each side a different "mission priority" for their objectives; one side might be running low on fuel and supplies so really needs to capture that supply dump, while the other side is looking to observe the enemy strength, but it's not really that important to them. That affected, IIRC, the sort of off-table support available and morale thresholds.

I liked the idea of the PL system and how it interacted with the missions but unfortunately its implementation in actual practice was flawed, especially in how it was used to build certain armies. It artificially boosted some builds and crippled others when it pigeonholed them into certain PL's based on what went where (core, auxilliary, etc) via the regiment force organization system.

 warboss wrote:
I liked the idea of the PL system and how it interacted with the missions but unfortunately its implementation in actual practice was flawed, especially in how it was used to build certain armies.

I'm with warboss - I really liked the ideal of Priority Levels, but hated the implementation. It was such a cool concept that ended up just being a major hindrance to army building.

Agreed: Like it very much in theory, but the execution turned out botched.

What, you mean a system where the Priority level added incoherent restrictions to list building and did not actually change the difficulty of the mission, or the availability of support options, was botched ?

We are talking about taking 30 seconds to realize that the worst case was needing 1 more OP for a major victory, IIRC.

For the benefit of the people reading this thread, and that might not be familiar with the old PL system, lets use compare it with 40K army building, around 5th edition, before formations and all.

Regular PL is like CAD, You need one HQ, and 2 troop choices. Ok
Certain army variants can have some specific squads that change their requirement. Lets say you play Blood Angels, your assault squads are now troop. Awesome !
So far, so good.

The PL (Priority-something) system was intended to represent increasingly "more important" missions, with better troops assigned, and more important objectives.
So lets say you're playing high PL, well, instead of needing 1 HQ and 2 Troops, you now need 1 HQ and one Elite, and your troop choices are 0-2. Most people would like that more, except that, once you mix that and the above, you gain armies that have bonuses (stronger squads as core choices) that turn to maluses. Brilliant.

In case some white-knight comes around to explain us that this was a feature, not a bug, when I mentionned this to the game writer that this system was penalizing certain armies, his reply was ... complete surprise. He hadn't noticed the issue at all during the writing and "testing".
The issue was never solved (simply adding "Army Y may count X as core choices" instead "Army Y counts X as core choices" would have solved it), and a brand new, different system was released 2 years later anyway, with its own new sets of weird bugs, issues and imbalances.
That's DP9 for you.

 HudsonD wrote:
For the benefit of the people reading this thread, and that might not be familiar with the old PL system, lets use compare it with 40K army building, around 5th edition, before formations and all.

Regular PL is like CAD, You need one HQ, and 2 troop choices. Ok
Certain army variants can have some specific squads that change their requirement. Lets say you play Blood Angels, your assault squads are now troop. Awesome !
So far, so good.

The PL (Priority-something) system was intended to represent increasingly "more important" missions, with better troops assigned, and more important objectives.
So lets say you're playing high PL, well, instead of needing 1 HQ and 2 Troops, you now need 1 HQ and one Elite, and your troop choices are 0-2. Most people would like that more, except that, once you mix that and the above, you gain armies that have bonuses (stronger squads as core choices) that turn to maluses. Brilliant.

In case some white-knight comes around to explain us that this was a feature, not a bug, when I mentionned this to the game writer that this system was penalizing certain armies, his reply was ... complete surprise. He hadn't noticed the issue at all during the writing and "testing".
The issue was never solved (simply adding "Army Y may count X as core choices" instead "Army Y counts X as core choices" would have solved it), and a brand new, different system was released 2 years later anyway, with its own new sets of weird bugs, issues and imbalances.
That's DP9 for you.

And, on top of everything, having an higher PL was not actually making the mission harder.

It's kinda speaking volumes to me when their rulebook update over the weekend there had the following:

The July 17th update mainly adds the bookmarks and table of contents page links that were missing from the earlier update, plus adds new chibi gear artwork and other photos to the rules section, and fixes all the grammer and typos that were found.

Idk if the misspelling is intentional but either way it's acting the maggot. Are their QA guys (If they exist) just sitting around drinking milk from bags?

Unfortunately, Robert can't write for gak (seriously, most non-native english speakers I know write better in english than him, or at least with less obvious mistakes). But AFAIK, Robert is not the writer of the book, but Dave, so... dunno? I haven't paid much attention, TBH ^_^


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mrondeau wrote:
And, on top of everything, having an higher PL was not actually making the mission harder.

Srsly. With the excision of the Morale rules, priority got weird fast.

 Albertorius wrote:
Unfortunately, Robert can't write for gak (seriously, most non-native english speakers I know write better in english than him, or at least with less obvious mistakes). But AFAIK, Robert is not the writer of the book, but Dave, so... dunno? I haven't paid much attention, TBH ^_^


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mrondeau wrote:
And, on top of everything, having an higher PL was not actually making the mission harder.

Srsly. With the excision of the Morale rules, priority got weird fast.

What ? Morale was less important with higher PL: the thresholds included PL.
Of course, Morale was essentially: kill the CGL to break to CG, otherwise waste time rolling dice to ultimately do nothing.

IIRC, in the first Blitz rules Priority was only on the mission types, and it was only related to Morale, as in low priority missiones had worse morale thresholds.

 Zaku212 wrote:
It's kinda speaking volumes to me when their rulebook update over the weekend there had the following:

The July 17th update mainly adds the bookmarks and table of contents page links that were missing from the earlier update, plus adds new chibi gear artwork and other photos to the rules section, and fixes all the grammer and typos that were found.

Idk if the misspelling is intentional but either way it's acting the maggot. Are their QA guys (If they exist) just sitting around drinking milk from bags?

There is no QA group at DP9, and there hasn't been for a long time - that's a big part of why Arena died. This living rulebook is getting some form of QA only because a dozen or so people are posting typos on the forum, but that's it.