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Because Eternal War and Maelstrom just don't cut it, here's my first attempt at a mission package that does not suck:

Preparation

Random Placement: 1d6 to determine which tile, 4d6 for X and 4d6 for Y. Origin is bottom left and tile 4 is above tile 1.

1. The amount of terrain is random: It covers a rectangle that is 48" by 16+1d6".
2. Terrain uses Random Placement
3. Don't forget to place the Valuables and Objectives


The Game

1. 6 Turns flat
2. No Seize the Initiative, no modifiers to Go First
3. Night Fighting starts on a 6+ any game turn, and lasts until the game ends. Other Events triggering the night trigger the "standard" night and prevent this modified night fighting from occurring (there will not be two nights within a few minutes of battle). If you rolled night vision + first turn is night, you may choose to forgo first turn night to let 6+ night happen.


Scoring

Random Placement: 1d6 to determine which tile, 4d6 for X and 4d6 for Y. Origin is bottom left and tile 4 is above tile 1.

1. Valuables: Random Placement, 1d6 Valuables worth 4+1d3 point each rolled on placement. These can be claimed, transported a maximum of 12 inches per turn by any unit within coherency of them, and must be taken to the player's board side to score their points. A unit can take a Valuable and move it 12 inch through the unit in a conga line if it chooses to, the Valuable must end up in unit coherency though.
2. Kill points: based on army points remaining. The winner receives victory points equal to the difference in points expressed as a percentage of their remaining force (I win with 1000 vs 500, I get 500 / 1000 or 50% - > 50 points). Not on the board is not equal to destroyed, you may use your flyers and Deep Strikers as they're meant to be used.
3. Objectives: Random Placement 4 Objectives worth 8+1d6 points each rolled on placement.
4. No Slay the Warlord, First Blood, Line Breaker or Maelstrom

Dude, 22%-32% terrain coverage? Are we seriously pulling out our calculators and geometry identities for that one?

This sounds like the Eternal War mission with the different valued objectives. I'd probably fix the amount of objectives or vary it based on army points, say 1 obj per 250 points (eg 1k points game has 4 objectives, 2k points has 8 objectives). And since there are no secondaries,I'd either fix their values or make it d3 points so there isn't a super unfair setup where I roll 6 vp and you roll 1 vp.

The old school kill/victory points is interesting, I wonder if there's an easier way to implement it.

Yeah...

I mean, I guess if you and your group are really down with math then that's cool.

Personally, I'd rather just split the table up into one-foot squares and require X amount of the squares to be covered. Seems a lot more simple, if less precise.

It's very easy to do percentages. I'll just take a note of how many inches square of pure terrain that amounts to.

I also thought placing terrain using random placement could be nice as well, with minimum spacing between terrain pieces of course.

Points KP aren't really hard.
d6 objectives are rolled on creation, but it may become 4+d3 to limit variability.

I'll test it soon and then improve.

The bunker covers 5% more. No worries, i'll just cut the wall off and it's gona be fine!

Other than that i also don't like 2d6 point values for objectives.

Btw, why don't you like maelstorm? It actually encourages variety and tactical movement.

 koooaei wrote:
The bunker covers 5% more. No worries, i'll just cut the wall off and it's gona be fine!

Other than that i also don't like 2d6 point values for objectives.

Btw, why don't you like maelstorm? It actually encourages variety and tactical movement.

Of course you don't have to be percentage accurate, like you're not in most games you install terrain for. No reason to be silly here.

Those 2d6 points were more for scale than accuracy, I changed all those highly variable values to something more reasonable.

I did the same for the amount of terrain, same concept just a lot easier to implement.


Maelstrom is greatly imbalanced and plain wrong.

Imbalanced because:

Some armies have mobility, others have staying power, others have nothing that matters in Maelstrom.

Some objectives are easy for some armies, impossible for others (like I could win a challenge as Eldar... or even destroy a unit in CC).

TO drawing is everything. If you draw three good objectives and your opponent draws one hard and two impossible, the game is done for at Turn One.

Plain wrong because:

Some armies just can't win Maelstrom

You can win by running around the board capturing pretend objectives even if you lose 90% of your army in stupid ways in the process.

There is no "long term" objective. Six turns of 40K represent about 3 minutes of real combat, do you really think you're going to change objectives every thirty seconds, and every single one of those objectives will be worth losing one sixth of your army to catch ?

Maelstrom is terrible, Eternal War is barely better, that's why I believe better missions would greatly improve the fun and balance factors of the game.