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Robert has said on the forum that the next Kickstarter is in the planning stages, but that he'll have finished renders and cost quotes in hand before the campaign starts. One would hope the second one goes a bit smoother, because you can hardly call your mistakes learning experiences the second time around.

I don't recall seeing anything about the contents of the Kickstarter, but I'd assume it's Peace River and NuCoal at the very least. Utopia looks cool but as others have mentioned, there are very few Utopia players in general (it seems). Then again, getting Caprice into plastic seems to have increased interest in that fashion, so, maybe?

They could do Utopia as an unlock too, that way they'd only be "committed" to it if enough $ was raised.

I'm not sure how to post links and stuff, they posted it to their Facebook this morning.




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 warboss wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
If anyone is selling their pledge I might be interested in picking it up! PM me if you are.

At $60 msrp iirc, the single army pledges (and free rules download) are a reasonable alternative option especially with online discounts and free shipping if someone ends up carrying them. I don't have a model pledge (only in for a buck) but I asked a year ago about buying a quarter of a pledge and got no responses either.

I probably have more than I need depending on what parts you want, if you want to PM me.

I got forwarded this, from Facebook:

DP9 Gen Con News: Peace River, NuCoal, and Utopia Kickstarter in Development for 2017!
Following the success of the Heavy Gear Blitz - War for Terra Nova - Kickstarter, which made possible our new plastic miniatures for the North, South, CEF, and Caprice Factions of the game, we are happy to announce that a second Kickstarter is in development for 2017. This time, we’ll be making the core models for the Peace River, NuCoal, and Utopia Factions as plastic miniatures.

So yep, absolutely confirmed: DP9 joins the illustrious company of all the other companies that announce a KS before even fulfilling the previous one. Although in this case they have started selling the stuff, and they have only announced it, not started, and the chances for the first one to be fulfilled before this one launches are high.

As Smilodon says, I'n not sure of how big of a market there might be for it. I have 5 NuCoal squads mint in boxes that I got from a firesale, and I have not even touched the things...

That said, I 've come to realize that the NuCoal would have worked much better if they had amalgamated with the Peace River/Paxton refugees... it even works perfectly to create inner frictions!

Well, so long as you hold on to the glimmer of hope and keep buying into this, DP9 will keep on giving you the shaft that you pay them for.

Even continuing this thread, or building fan rules, just furthers their own crappy practices.

 Vertrucio wrote:
Well, so long as you hold on to the glimmer of hope and keep buying into this, DP9 will keep on giving you the shaft that you pay them for.

Even continuing this thread, or building fan rules, just furthers their own crappy practices.

Nah, I don't plan on. Anything I might end up doing (if anything at all it is) will be for the RPG, which is now outside their hands.

 Albertorius wrote:
Nah, I don't plan on. Anything I might end up doing (if anything at all it is) will be for the RPG, which is now outside their hands.

I too bought into Heavy Gear for the RPG when it was first available in 1995 (hides behind pile of HG/JC/T8/GK RPG books). I feel the RPG future for this has been abandoned as far as we can forsee. Has been years since my gaming group had any interest for this game...

Oooooo a NuCoal KS! I can't wait to see the 400 new hoverlaser gearstriders they get! And surely with Dreadnoughts coming it's the perfect time for NuCoal to get a landship fleet large enough to rival both poles.

(Wait they... don't already have landships, do they?)

 Albertorius wrote:
I got forwarded this, from Facebook:

DP9 Gen Con News: Peace River, NuCoal, and Utopia Kickstarter in Development for 2017!
Following the success of the Heavy Gear Blitz - War for Terra Nova - Kickstarter, which made possible our new plastic miniatures for the North, South, CEF, and Caprice Factions of the game, we are happy to announce that a second Kickstarter is in development for 2017. This time, we’ll be making the core models for the Peace River, NuCoal, and Utopia Factions as plastic miniatures.

So yep, absolutely confirmed: DP9 joins the illustrious company of all the other companies that announce a KS before even fulfilling the previous one. Although in this case they have started selling the stuff, and they have only announced it, not started, and the chances for the first one to be fulfilled before this one launches are high.

Thanks for the info. I'm actually ok with that in 2017. They can announce whatever plans they want as long as they don't actually take a crowdfunding penny in payment for them until fulfilling the already delayed and preempted for gencon sales kickstarter. If it's in 2017 (hopefully spring), it might not step on the toes of their licenseed landship game crowdfunding either with a good 4-6 months in between.

That said, I 've come to realize that the NuCoal would have worked much better if they had amalgamated with the Peace River/Paxton refugees... it even works perfectly to create inner frictions!

I never thought of that but that would have been a believeable major 3rd TN faction as the combined badlands force instead of magically expanding two relatively minor ones *poof* suddenly in global powers after major disasters. Combining the two also would have given them the model variety they'd need as a faction instead of jamming free rules for zero points into them.

 Vertrucio wrote:
Well, so long as you hold on to the glimmer of hope and keep buying into this, DP9 will keep on giving you the shaft that you pay them for.

Even continuing this thread, or building fan rules, just furthers their own crappy practices.

You're planning on showing them how it's done, right?

 Albertorius wrote:
I got forwarded this, from Facebook:

As Smilodon says, I'n not sure of how big of a market there might be for it. I have 5 NuCoal squads mint in boxes that I got from a firesale, and I have not even touched the things...

That said, I 've come to realize that the NuCoal would have worked much better if they had amalgamated with the Peace River/Paxton refugees... it even works perfectly to create inner frictions!

Or they could have just retconned those communities to be way bigger. Terra Nova is supposed to be something in to order of 300 million people, so if NuCoal has 8-15 million bodies, them having a real army isn't unreasonable when polar leagues run in the 30-50 million range. As it stands, NuCoal runs what, 3 million people, even though a big chunk of that is GRELs.

I'd love to paint a NuCoal army, but I'm so lazy in getting my other stuff painted it's unlikely to happen. I may end up speed-painting my Caprice plastics.

Nomeny wrote:
Maybe with a broader base of fans and plastic miniatures available there will be Utopia fans out there.

Yeah, but the Utopia minis are just awful.

HG is a Giant Robot game, and the Utopia stuff is *not* robots!

That said, I'm curious to see what sort of funding they'll get.

I got the impression Heavy Gear was sci-fi combined arms. Mecha, rather Robots. YMMV I'd imagine though.

Nomeny wrote:I got the impression Heavy Gear was sci-fi combined arms. Mecha, rather Robots. YMMV I'd imagine though.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Nomeny wrote:
Maybe with a broader base of fans and plastic miniatures available there will be Utopia fans out there.

Yeah, but the Utopia minis are just awful.

HG is a Giant Robot game, and the Utopia stuff is *not* robots!

That said, I'm curious to see what sort of funding they'll get.

You're both equal parts right and wrong. Heavy Gear is not a Giant Robot game but rather a robot game (they're not giant, even with the new stupid gear striders). Just look at any picture of a titular gear next to it's pilot and you'll see it has very little in common sizewise with Voltron, Robotech, or any real giant robot property. It is also not a combined arms game but rather it's a robot game that ALSO includes combined arms for variety. The difference is in the focus of the game. If you want to see what the focus is, just look at the name of the game and every cover of every edition to see what this IP is really about.

The non-robots exist just to make the robots look good.

I reeeeeally want to get into this.

Since you're a professional painter, I suggest taking a look at the differences between the plastics and the metals. There are some stylistic differences as well as design compromises to get them into plastics. I figure if you didn't know that already then you might want a heads up since you'll be looking at those figs for a while potentially.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The non-robots exist just to make the robots look good.

Unless it's a tank. Tanks do bad things to gears all the time. Part of the justification for gears is that Terra Nova has a lot of very rough terrain that even tanks struggle with.

No. It's not "Heavy Tank" (i.e. 1/144 Flames of War). It's not "Heavy Combined Arms" either. HG is a game in which the Giant Robots are the star, and everything else is secondary. Warboss is 100% correct about this being about the robots.

As for how "giant" they are, I'm guessing probably 99% of the time, it makes no difference whether the robots are Eva-sized or SM-sized. So I'm sorry if "Giant Robot (tm) (R) (C)" makes people feel bad. If it makes people feel better, I'm happy to refer to it as a "big robot" game, or a "large robot" game. or whatever the preferred nomenclature might happen to be.

John Prins wrote:
Or they could have just retconned those communities to be way bigger. Terra Nova is supposed to be something in to order of 300 million people, so if NuCoal has 8-15 million bodies, them having a real army isn't unreasonable when polar leagues run in the 30-50 million range. As it stands, NuCoal runs what, 3 million people, even though a big chunk of that is GRELs.

They could have done that, although it would have put in jeopardy all the rest of the population numbers of the zone, and IMHO there was no real reason to do so. Instead, they decided to move there millions of people via a secret journey through thousands upon thousands of kilometers of desert without much in the way of supplies and without anyone noticing until they arrived >_>.

Having the NuCoal on the 8-15 million people range would have put it in the same population values as the WFP, which would be way too much IMHO. 3 million is still the biggest power in the Badlands and much bigger than PR ever was (and they already buffed up a lot the pop numbers).

Well, I suppose that's one reason for NuCoal to go so heavy into getting gears, considering they can play a similar role to infantry. A gear heavy force would let them inflate the combat power of their limited population. And while a desert isn't the ideal combat zone for a gear (as said tanks would tear them a new one rather quickly), the gear's increased mobility over a foot squad would let them cover ground for patrolling and limited strikes without needing an APC component.

Finally came up with something to justify (at least to myself) for why NuCoal would have put so much into developing gears so quickly, if not their success at it.

As for numbers, here's a history tidbit for you. In 1776 the US Colonies had a population of 2.5 million. Of those, roughly 1/3 were pro-rebel giving a recruit able population of 833,333 people before factoring in whether someone was fit to join or not. Of that available population, the main Continental (Rebel) army could field about 27,000 men; not including smaller armies elsewhere in the colonies. Assuming we only count the main force as what to draw on, NuCoal could theoretically have an army of about 81,000 men. Not including sand riders or GRELs. That does include any logistics units however, so actual combat available would drop from anywhere to 1/2 to 1/5 of that total, though you could make up some of the extra logistics from the "other detachments" I mention but didn't include in the above 81k.

Not a world conquering force, but it's big enough not to be a complete push over (such as against raids and commando strikes), and I'd think that neither League would want the other to gain control of and would possibly join in to help fight off a major attack from the rival pole.

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Also, no I didn't notice all the Heavy Gear name references I made until after I posted.

John Prins wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The non-robots exist just to make the robots look good.

Unless it's a tank. Tanks do bad things to gears all the time. Part of the justification for gears is that Terra Nova has a lot of very rough terrain that even tanks struggle with.

Yeah, MBTs will clean up a squad of gears in the open, and gears holding objectives rather than attacking are wasted too.

If people are playing desert battles, plains battles, they are doing it wrong. Wargames need terrain.

A gear holding an objective isn't a waste. A squad of gears is.


And sometimes you have to fight out in open terrain. But neither plains of desert is actually table flat. There are alot more rolling hills and dunes in both than people typically acknowledge.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If people are playing desert battles, plains battles, they are doing it wrong. Wargames need terrain.

This is something people miss about Heavy Gear all the time. If you're playing with 'open' terrain in the majority, then you're playing a game that favors tanks. It works fine IF both opponents just bring gears to play, but once one guy decides to bring tanks vs gears, the balance gets thrown off. Give gears lots of cover and make it hard for tanks to move (urban, jungle, mountain) and it swings the other way.

This isn't like Battletech, where tanks suck because the game won't let them be good. The game is called Heavy Gear but tanks are still tough and have gobs of firepower, and they cost more than gears because of it. People mostly play Heavy Gear for the robots, so that's what you'll see people field most of the time.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If people are playing desert battles, plains battles, they are doing it wrong. Wargames need terrain.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. You have rolling hills, rocks, the occasional village on plains battles as well as dunes, rocks, pyramids, ruins, and oasis on desert tables.

 Albertorius wrote:



In that very same page, you can also find Fort William, largest city of the WFP:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_William,_Ontario

and so on and so forth.

That makes more sense. I thought they named it after the original one in Scotland. I didn't know there was anther one in Canada.

When was that one in Ontario founded? I wouldn't have thought that Scottish emigrés would have named their new settlement after the "Buthcer" Cumberland.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
When was that one in Ontario founded? I wouldn't have thought that Scottish emigrés would have named their new settlement after the "Buthcer" Cumberland.

It was originally founded around 1681 as french Fort Kaministiquia and abandoned around 1758-60 when New France fell. The North West Company restablished it as Fort William around 1784.


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 Mmmpi wrote:
Well, I suppose that's one reason for NuCoal to go so heavy into getting gears, considering they can play a similar role to infantry. A gear heavy force would let them inflate the combat power of their limited population. And while a desert isn't the ideal combat zone for a gear (as said tanks would tear them a new one rather quickly), the gear's increased mobility over a foot squad would let them cover ground for patrolling and limited strikes without needing an APC component.

Finally came up with something to justify (at least to myself) for why NuCoal would have put so much into developing gears so quickly, if not their success at it.

Smaller powers using Gears instead of more specialized stuff is absolutely logical, as you can make Gears do just about anything and you only need one pilot per Gear, even though they have significant limitations against stuff like tanks and the like.

Using Chasseur Hover Gears on the mostly rolling plains of the Barrington Basin, where they will be noticed miles away and are nowhere near as fast or as tough as PAK's Hovertanks, though... not so much, and that's even before taking into account the enormously expensive they are to operate or the fact that Erech and Nineveh joining the NuCoal is kind of questionable at best.

Also, so many new Gear designs coupled with them being so advanced (basically better than equivalent polar designs at everything) without previous experience other than refurbishings and no real budget, design or manufacturing capabilities to speak of compared with the rest of the world's design teams is mostly Deus ex Machina.

As for numbers, here's a history tidbit for you. In 1776 the US Colonies had a population of 2.5 million. Of those, roughly 1/3 were pro-rebel giving a recruit able population of 833,333 people before factoring in whether someone was fit to join or not. Of that available population, the main Continental (Rebel) army could field about 27,000 men; not including smaller armies elsewhere in the colonies. Assuming we only count the main force as what to draw on, NuCoal could theoretically have an army of about 81,000 men. Not including sand riders or GRELs. That does include any logistics units however, so actual combat available would drop from anywhere to 1/2 to 1/5 of that total, though you could make up some of the extra logistics from the "other detachments" I mention but didn't include in the above 81k.

Not a world conquering force, but it's big enough not to be a complete push over (such as against raids and commando strikes), and I'd think that neither League would want the other to gain control of and would possibly join in to help fight off a major attack from the rival pole.

The main reason for the NuCoal to ally itself is the PAK: a full infantry brigade and two hovertank brigades in active with the means to rapidly equip and deploy around 100.000 additional GREL troops and a total. That alone makes it a local power not to be trifled with.

Original NuCoal had around 550k inhabitants not counting Port Arthur that got retconned in the NuCoal book to around 1.35 million, not counting almost 200k from Erech and Nineveh (formerly 55k) or the 1.35 million of Port Arthur (formerly 370k). Personally, I prefer the former number because they make more sense with the rest of TN, and I'll be using that as my analysis will be for my Terra Nova (or in other words: Your Terra Nova Might Vary: Mine is Like This).

Given your above numbers, the NuCoal could have a theoretical army of around 5% the total population, or around 27.500 people, counting support personnel, which would be in line with army sizes per population in the rest of the globe. Given that they have a manufacturing base for some stuff (maily automotive) in Fort Neil, that Lance Point makes them independent, petroleum-wise, and that they would need to open new manufacturing plants to equipd too much people (or buy from other sources), I'd go for the 1/5th total combat personnel, with a larger pool of support, which would give us a total combat personnel of around 5.500, with a heavy slant towards Gears.

So, roughly, they could probably manage to field around 10 Gear regiments fully equipped, maybe a full armor regiment, 2-3 support battallions and probably a full infantry regiment deployed at company-level and fully motorized (You have Fort Neil there, so...). Which is quite a bit, all told.

Merging the with the Peacer River survivors, would give the NuCoal the lion's share of the PRDF (deployed mostly out of the city, but the whole air wings and the command echelons got blasted) and at the very least the main Paxton Arms's Skunk Works design teams, which would allow the NuCoal to develop and build assembly lines for their newer stuff.

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Also, no I didn't notice all the Heavy Gear name references I made until after I posted.

Heh ^^


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 warboss wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If people are playing desert battles, plains battles, they are doing it wrong. Wargames need terrain.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. You have rolling hills, rocks, the occasional village on plains battles as well as dunes, rocks, pyramids, ruins, and oasis on desert tables.

Agreed. "Desert" and "infinite plains" are not exactly the same thing.

 Albertorius wrote:

Smaller powers using Gears instead of more specialized stuff is absolutely logical, as you can make Gears do just about anything and you only need one pilot per Gear, even though they have significant limitations against stuff like tanks and the like. .

Gears are cheap thanks to mass production. The Polar powers benefit from this a lot (and Paxton, who supplies both polar and smaller powers). NuCoal probably doesn't have the volume to get the cost-savings associated with the really big production runs. It would have made a lot more sense for NuCoal to be using Paxton gears, as the price difference is enormous.

Still, I can see that being bootstrapped in relatively short amounts of time, but the bigger sticking point for me is research time for new gears. If they were just putting out cosmetically different knockoffs of Polar/Paxton gears, it would have made lots more sense.

Wait a sec, "Gears are cheap"?

A Gear is a highly-complex military machine. If we compare to the real world, the cheapest things the US used to field were armored HUMVEES at a cost of $200k each. They are being replaced by $500k-$1M MRAPs. If you move up the tech level, a Predator drones was $4M, and they are being replaced by $7-15M drones.

If we try to equate Gears to equipment, there is no way that a basic, mass-production Gear (e.g. Hunter) is less than $1M (like a MRAP). The sheer complexity of a Gear's articulation, miniaturization, motors and SMS suggests we're in the $4M range to produce.

That's about 20-25% cheaper than a M1 Abrams MBT, but it's not like fielding an infantryman with a rifle.

Plus there's the training aspect. Plus logistics, etc. Militaries are expensive, and now we're talking about land battleships?

Sure there's magic technology, but Gears are not rifles, and small countries are not outfitting 5% of their population with them. The economics just won't work. Pretending you have a whopping 50% of the population working, it's 10 workers per soldier. Each worker therefore shoulders 10% of the cost of the gear, or $500k taxes. That's 10X the current average American household income! And it assumes there's no bureaucracy or admin cost, no civil government.

I'm just not seeing it from a dollars and cents standpoint.