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Nomeny wrote:
That would be finding out that Gears aren't "kings of the battlefield."

I'm pretty fething sure that the huge overgunned "Tank Strider" I showed earlier is the king of the battlefield and crushes any Gear you throw up against it.

And since we're playing fething semantics games, it's not a "Gear", because "Gear" isn't in its description.

But you know what? It's definitely a giant robot.

Oh, it's definitely a giant robot. You're just not going to do well with that giant robot if you try to do a stand-up fight with an MBT.

 Alpharius wrote:

 warboss wrote:
They aren't the "kings of the battlefiel" in HG either... they're just the most versatile platform in the universe fluff in that they can do almost any job but that doesn't mean there aren't more specialized things that are even better suited for those jobs. They're the swiss army knife in a violent world that also has handguns and rocks. Plus.. like bow ties and Fez's, giant robots are cool.

I like the size/scale here, but I'm looking for something that lets you use 'robots' (Gears!), vehicles and infantry in a game.

Is...this the game?

HG is 1-2" tall and 1/144 scale - it's a great gaming scale! Everything looks good on the battlefield, with room to maneuver, etc. HG has been consistently let down by sub-par rules being over-fiddly with an excess of hair-splitting. That said, the current beta is clearly less terrible than any of the predecessors.

For pure gameplay, CBT is probably better. But if you really like the HG models, and you really need to play by the official rules, then that's that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nomeny wrote:
Oh, it's definitely a giant robot. You're just not going to do well with that giant robot if you try to do a stand-up fight with an MBT.

I'm not sure about that...

You lost me there - what's CBT (and DON'T Google that term at work!)?

Also, are there infantry units in Heavy Gear too?

 Alpharius wrote:
You lost me there - what's CBT (and DON'T Google that term at work!)?

Also, are there infantry units in Heavy Gear too?

Classic Battletech... the great granddaddy of mech games. As for the rest... oh my. You weren't kidding.

Yup, infantry on foot, infantry in APCs, infantry on dirt bikes/atvs/lizards/motorcycles/jetbikes, alien clone infantry, cyborg infantry, etc. Plus aircraft (fixed wing and rotor), buildings, tanks, trucks, etc on top of small, medium, large and extra large robots (and not just bipedal humandoid ones but four legged as well).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Alpharius wrote:

 warboss wrote:

Nomeny wrote:
That would be finding out that Gears aren't "kings of the battlefield."

They aren't the "kings of the battlefiel" in HG either... they're just the most versatile platform in the universe fluff in that they can do almost any job but that doesn't mean there aren't more specialized things that are even better suited for those jobs. They're the swiss army knife in a violent world that also has handguns and rocks. Plus.. like bow ties and Fez's, giant robots are cool.

I really have to start paying more attention in here...soon?

I like the size/scale here, but I'm looking for something that lets you use 'robots' (Gears!), vehicles and infantry in a game.

Is...this the game?

(I do miss Space Marine/Titan Legion... )

It's not on the figurative or literal scale of Titan Legion but rather more like Dropzone commander with a focus on robots (but still all the other types of vehicles additionally). The problem traditionally with HG has been the people who make Heavy Gear. The company (DP9) has consistently over the years gone out of their way to screw over customers (stores, distributors, and gamers) for the sake of some short term sales. You're in pretty much the same boat as the rest of us in that you'll have to see if the new rules agree with you when the final version for now shakes out in a few weeks. Luckily, it should be a free download so it won't cost you anything to check them out.

Don't get too hung up about the "combined arms" thing. It's a cool feature and is usually expressed in reasonably believable ways, but with no mechs, the game doesn't exist. They are the stars and the selling-point, whether or not they're all-powerful in-game.

Besides, you can always just not take tanks and squishies in your army.

 Alpharius wrote:
You lost me there - what's CBT (and DON'T Google that term at work!)?

Also, are there infantry units in Heavy Gear too?

As above, Classic BattleTech; sorry about the confusion - I thought it was common knowledge among giant robot fans. Maybe we need to add "CBT" to the automatic acronym list?

If you Google "Heavy Gear NuCoal" I think you'll get a picture of every single kind of thing that exists in the HG universe. I gak you not.

 warboss wrote:
The problem traditionally with HG has been the people who make Heavy Gear. The company (DP9) has consistently over the years gone out of their way to screw over customers (stores, distributors, and gamers) for the sake of some short term sales.

You're in pretty much the same boat as the rest of us in that you'll have to see if the new rules agree with you when the final version for now shakes out in a few weeks. Luckily, it should be a free download so it won't cost you anything to check them out.

Of course, we're all (ex-?)GW gamers here, so corporate mercenary opportunism isn't entirely a new thing to us. And it's not like Privateer Press and the rest don't do shake the money tree, either.

The latest version of the HGBTTWGLRBB (Heavy Gear Blitz Tabletop Wargame Living Rulebook Beta) should be available on DriveThruRPG for download, and you can totally PnP playtest with GW's Space Marine models as proxies for Gears.

I personally like my desert zealot warrior GREL Monks riding dinosaurs armed with blasting lances as my preferred infantry in my NuCoal army.

My favorite factions:
Black Talons
Paxton
NuCoal

Factions I'm looking forward to in the new rules set:
CEF
Caprice

Yikes... That trio is also a list in order of the most broken blitz era factions! Albeit ones with cool fluff and models (and one of which I'm also a player and another I used to play). Hopefully they won't make players wince in shame with Nublitz. The cheese is still there but toned down.

And yet, none of those are in the KS... I wonder why that is. Maybe they could do another KS for "the good stuff"... You know, "top tier" forces that categorically outclass the current stuff being KS'd. Maybe restat things to make them an even easier "easy mode"?

Kinda like Necrons & Tau >> CSM & IG.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
And yet, none of those are in the KS... I wonder why that is. Maybe they could do another KS for "the good stuff"... You know, "top tier" forces that categorically outclass the current stuff being KS'd. Maybe restat things to make them an even easier "easy mode"?

Kinda like Necrons & Tau >> CSM & IG.

They're not in the kickstarter because they were never the core factions like the polar forces and the Earth invasion fleet. Part of the cheese problem was that they specifically tried to flesh out incomplete 8-10 model lines/ factions with broken rules for forced variety to match 20-30 model lines. Unfortunately, differentiating those few models with added special benefits (and no comparable disadvantages) turned out as badly as layering on the cheese sounds like it would. That's not entirely the case now but the roots of it are still there. Some of the Nucoal subfactions rules of only upsides (as opposed to polar factions getting ups AND downs), Talons getting multiple special rules for a pittance, and freebie split fire every bazooka and almost free EW bonuses for Paxton are there...just toned down half way.

Sure, yes. OTOH, if I were Tamwulf, I'd be kinda peeved that my all-conquering forces are still metal-only and not as all-conquering as before. Just look at how the ex-CSM 3.5 players behave...

Been mathhammering the HG core opposed dice mechanic:

The +/-Xd6 bonus/malus appears to be very close in effect to simply adding/subtracting +/-1 from the final total.

Numerically, it seems like one could just generate attack total + strength vs defender total + armor with fewer dice for greater clarity.


Also, is it just me, but the math suggests that it takes an average of 6 rounds of LAC / LRP shooting for a Jaeger to Destroy a Hunter? That seems a bit excessively weak.

It's hard to math hammer the new system because of the different mechanics. An extra d6 for instance on defense on a grizzly is only a 1/3 chance of a bump of +1 to your highest number... but that same extra d6 on a cheetah is a 5/6 chance of a +1 bump to your defensive result... and those calculations don't take into account the possibility that the extra die gives you your highest result and the OTHER results are used to determine +1 bumps. And those same extra 1d6 are only a 1/2 chance of an attacker bump of +1 from a hostile hunter. I don't think we can any longer make generalizations about what extra d6's mean without specificing exactly what the target and attacker are (which defeats the purpose of a generalization).

I'll have to leave it to someone better at excel that myself (haven't reguarly used it for calculations in 15+ years) but the math on your hunter on jaeger action isn't that simple. Even on an MOS of zero, you have a 50/50 chance of one point of damage. With burst, the LAC attacker is getting 3d6 to the defenders 2d6 which 50% of the time given an additional point of damage as well. If you get the target down to 2 hitpoints, it's now crippled and rolls less dice making it even more likely to do those last two boxes in one average roll of 3d6. I don't have any basis in mental mathhammer to offer up any concrete evidence/data but it feels like it's not as simple as 1d6=+1.

I would have personally preferred an even deadlier form of mechanics where an average of three shots from a like model should kill the same but it got nerfed a bit from the concept stage under Ice Raptor to the alpha version first seen.

I did Monte Carlo simulations of 1,000+ totals, along with an exact calculation of the 2d6 result. I included the calculation of the highest result along with the extra successes. That's why it bumped by +1 (roughly) rather than +0.5 for the 4+ success.

As I exactly specified above, it was Jaeger LAC / LRP (4+ Gun) v Hunter (4+ Pil) - the basic case. I did include Burst:+1d6 for the LAC, as it's built into the gun.

The typical Jaeger LAC / LRP result is just 1 Hull. If we apply -1d6 Crippled and the 50/50 for MOS:0, it makes the average kill 5:1 rather than 6:1. That's essentially the same as far as I'm concerned.

Based on the Monte Carlo simulation, statistically, it actually is as simple as +1d6 = +1 for the case I examined.

I'll muck about with other units, but I was mostly looking for anecdotal experience of whether the HG lethality is high or low. I suspect deliberately, artificially low, due to the RPG roots of not wanting to take out PCs...

I agree that lethality should be higher, and KL lethality will be dramatically higher, 2:1 vs HG's 6:1.

What is monte carlo simulation and where can I get some? I only know monte carlo for old movies, car races, gambling (I assume that one applies), and girls gone wild princesses in the 1990's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method

In my case, I made a huge table of pseudo-random Xd6 rolls, that I find the result and the adders, and calculate the total. I then calculated the average of 1,000+ trials for [3+, 4+] x [3d6, 4d6, 5d6] after calculating the exact result for [3+, 4+] x [1d6, 2d6].

It's not perfect, as there is some statistical error; even if I increase to 10,000 or even 100,000 trials, the error gets smaller. However, in a game that rolls maybe 100 tests, it's close enough to characterize the results for high level analytical work.

And FWIW, going from 4+ to 3+ adds roughly 0.7 to the final total. Numerically, one might as well add +1 for the 3+ over the 4+. At least, assuming that I've made no systemic error in calculating my totals (based on the examples in the rules, I think I'm doing it correctly).

Also, adding dice has the Ork effect, where the results get more and more consistent, and therefore predictable. Rolling 5d6 for a 3+ skill gives a vastly more consistent total than rolling 3d6 for a 4+ skill.

My observation is simply that, for the result that the Pod is getting, the HGB mechanics may be unnecessarily complex.

I've been cheating on you, John. Despite your fetching profile pic, I've been discussing statistics with another gearhead behind your back.

Here's an interesting dice roller made up by Steve on the official forums. I've been arguing for a buff to rifles and he posted his roller as well as an explanation of how to enter the data and read the output. I don't have the know how to check his programming but it's nice to crunch some numbers.

http://dp9forum.com/index.php?showtopic=17468&page=2#entry301558

Thanks for the pointer. I have no idea as to the specifics going on in that thread, as I don't think any of my models have Rifles.

However, it is relevant that the typical damage ranges from 0.5 up to 1.2 - that bit is consistent with the numbers I was getting, and reinforces the notion that we are looking at 5-7 shooting attempts to destroy an enemy gear.

According to his roller, a hunter at optimum range firing with an LAC at another jaeger in the open does an average of 1.47 damage with a 64.4% chance of doing any damage. On average, it should take it 4 turns to destroy its twin. The LRP is roughly the same, whiffing a bit more often but doing a bit more damage on average... and has the added benefit of AE 4" to hit multiple targets. This is assuming that a weapon with the traits ballistic and indirect is not forced to use indirect but can instead just fire with ballistic. From my reading of the rules, that is the case just like in old blitz (that you can fire some indirect weapons directly). I wasn't expecting that.

Hm. I did a rerun of 1,000x Jagers shooting (4+) LAC (3d6) shooting at Hunters (4+ 2d6), incorporating both MOS(0=0.5) and max(6) damage, and got an average 1.45 damage.

That's essentially similar to his 1.47 calculation, so it's a nice cross check. Mechanically, this is far more involved than what 40k, etc. require for resolution.

I really like the look of that painted Southern Army!

Now I'm wishing I'd actually gone in for more than $1!

Maybe you can find someone who'll be willing to split off a portion of their pledge?

Or just buy it at retail in a few months. It's supposed to premiere at gencon. Bigger pics btw over here at this thread:

http://dp9forum.com/index.php?showtopic=17471&hl=

Wow the paint really, uh... really highlights the... the uh... Well, the terribleness of the Mamba and the Iguana. And their hilarious, disjointed monkeyarms. I do really like the Jager, though.

Every time I look at the plastics, the tiny baby hands just slay me. Also the misshapen heads.

The optional gun bits, esp for the Junglemower Support, look good. Vibroblades are terrible.

It makes me smile a little to see that the brawler mamba uses the same underhanded grenade launcher position as I converted mine into years ago.

 warboss wrote:
It makes me smile a little to see that the brawler mamba uses the same underhanded grenade launcher position as I converted mine into years ago.

That's... the way it is supposed to go, that one

And holy gak, yeah, I didn't really notice the tiny hands. They've gone back to the old tac minis in that regard, and then some. Also... is it me or the Mamba's back feet are waaaaaay too long?

I think there's a reason why they no longer show the plastics alongside the metals.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I think there's a reason why they no longer show the plastics alongside the metals.

Heh, probably for the better. For them. Anyways, if they are cheap, they are good enough to start with.

What "cheap" means in DP9ese remains to be seen, though. As much as it remains to be seen how many stores can they convince to carry their range, given their past history with gaking over stores.