Battlefleet Gothic - RTS Gamenew vids page 9

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**Orlanth**

BFG on the PC! Ok, this has caught my attention.

This gets a reserved spot at the top of my buy-in list, and will have to suck bad fro me not to buy on release.

i doubt it will be shovelware, so far GW is licencing its games to small developers to sell via steam license, and not free play. It also will likely be PC based with console port second (if at all) because this is a minor license for the 40K fanbase, and not Star Trek or Star Wars.

**Panic**

yeah,
The timing of this is perfect!
I've never played BFG but always wanted to, so I bought a Ork fleet in December to give the game a go!

Panic...

**angelofvengeance**

Panic wrote:
yeah,
The timing of this is perfect!
I've never played BFG but always wanted to, so I bought a Ork fleet in December to give the game a go!

Panic...

Orks kroozers are good, but you've really gotta get them in close as quick as you can to use them to full effect. The escorts should do most of the legwork

*edit: Just seen your BFG post. Looks like you have escorts covered!

**agnosto**

Meh, pass. RTS isn't my thing; living in Korea killed any joy of RTS that I ever had due to "all starcraft, all the time".

**Accolade**

agnosto wrote:
Meh, pass. RTS isn't my thing; living in Korea killed any joy of RTS that I ever had due to "all starcraft, all the time".

How dare you insult that country's national pastime!

**agnosto**

Accolade wrote:
agnosto wrote:
Meh, pass. RTS isn't my thing; living in Korea killed any joy of RTS that I ever had due to "all starcraft, all the time".

How dare you insult that country's national pastime!

It certainly was when I lived there (1999-2004).

**DrRansom**

Riquende wrote:
It's a good thing GW have got the tie in physical product ready to roll on this to rake in the megabucks.

Oh.

This is the killer,, right?

Release the BFG computer game and a BFG box set, get some cross selling there. Such obvious market expansion, only a GW would not take it.

**juraigamer**

By the gods, YES

**Tannhauser42**

agnosto wrote:
Meh, pass. RTS isn't my thing; living in Korea killed any joy of RTS that I ever had due to "all starcraft, all the time".

I'm generally not a fan of RTS games, either, but if it has a nice slow pace to it (like BFG should, essentially being Age of Sail in space), then I'm good with that. I enjoyed Homeworld a lot.

**Ratius**

Very exciting news. Hope its executed to a high standard.

**Grey Templar**

Man, between this and Total War: Warhammer I've got things to look forward to!

Wyrmalla wrote:
Can you crash your ship into a planet is the question? =P

Best reason to pay attention to all your pieces.

"Oops, I stopped paying attention to my Emperor and now its stuck in a gravity well!"

**Elemental**

Iracundus wrote:
The proportions for the foreground cruiser in the 1st and 2nd picture look "off"". The bridge superstructure seems to big relative to the body of the ship and the windows of the bridge appear too big. The 2nd picture seems to show a stubby cruiser instead of a longer one. Finally the ram part of the foreground cruiser in the 1st picture looks too bulbous.

I am using the actual BFG miniatures and the BFG rulebook ship class artwork for comparison.

As for gameplay I hope it is a slower paced game more like Homeworld rather than spamming clicks or hotkeys all over the place. If nothing else, a slower paced game gives more time to zoom in and watch the ship details.

I can't remember where I heard it (maybe the Rogue Trader RPG, or some of the old White Dwarf battle reports), but each turn in the wargame was about half an hour. It also had a very big scale--the "average" ranged gun could shoot halfway from the Earth to the Moon. Keeping that sense of scale and time will be what determines if I check it out.

But very hopeful.

DrRansom wrote:
This is the killer,, right?

Release the BFG computer game and a BFG box set, get some cross selling there. Such obvious market expansion, only a GW would not take it.

Painful, and true.

**Iracundus**

You probably heard it from me as I have in the past quoted Andy Chambers on the BFG scale from the following site, which itself archived this from his posts to the old BFG mailing list:

http://www.wolfedengames.com/battlefleetgothic/scale.htm

I'm not sure if I've talked about scale before but here goes anyway. BFG works around an approximate scale of 1cm=1000KM for the planets and other tabletop features. Obviously this means the ship models are massively out of scale, an Imperial cruiser is NOT 9000KM+ long! The scale is basically there as a rule of thumb and I didn't worry about it too much when it came down to setting weapon ranges, ship speeds and so on. These were all done to create the right impression of distance on the tabletop. For example 60cm 'feels' like a long way and 30cm doesn't, the weapon ranges aren't defined by some pseudo-science calaculation of the energy dissipation rate of lasers (fairly obviously ) but to create an interaction between the (massively out of scale) models on the tabletop.

The more interesting question is perhaps how long is a turn, and that one I don't know the answer too - I'd guess somewhere between 15 minutes and an hour (quite likely telescoping so that at long range a turn is an hour but by the time you're within 15 cm its 15 minutes). This would make an attack craft capable of moving 30cm per ordnance phase capable of doing approximately 30-120,000 km/h. I've got no idea if this is realistic for starfighter speeds, or unfeasibly fast, incredibly slow or what , perhaps someone on the list could enlighten us all on this front (don't just tell us what it says it the Star Wars technical manual though!).

Any computer game will obviously have to take some liberties with the spatial and time scale else you will have specks shooting at other specks. To see all the detail on a ship, the ships will either have to represent sensor images or there will have to be some sort of firer and/or target cam mode.

**Grey Templar**

The BFG rules have always been clear that the models are not to scale with the distances being moved. That is why all measurements are made to the stem of the flight base, thats where the actual ship is. its also why ships are allowed to just move over each other or even occupy the same gaming space, they don't collide unless you are deliberately trying to ram or board.

The large template is what is stated to be the size of an earth sized planet and the small template is basically earth's moon or similar in size.

Earth has an approximate diameter of 12,742 km. Which is represented by a 5" template, or 12.7cm

So 1cm = 1000km is roughly spot on(short by about 3km) given the size of celestial objects of known size in the game.

So that means that each turn, a ship is capable of moving its speed in kilometers. If we assumed a turn lasted an hour, a reasonable assumption, then that gives even the slowest ships a base speed of 20,000km/hour. Thats only a little slower than the reentry speed of the space shuttle.(28,000km/hour) Other ships are much faster.

This also isn't top speed, its normal combat speed. A ship with speed 20 can, with the All Ahead Full order, go up to 44,000km/hour.

**Kosake**

AlexHolker wrote:
Looks pretty, but being pretty isn't enough. Hopefully the gameplay is a hell of a lot more compelling than it is in Sins of a Solar Empire.

Looks like nicely rendered still frames of dubious origin. I'm all for a BFG game, even if they just reskin the old startrek armada and remove the grotload of bugs from it, but i'd love to see some ingame footage first.

**Wehrkind**

Very interested, but I really wish it was turn based instead of RTS. All I really want the machine to do is keep track of the book keeping and set up for me, while looking very, very pretty.

**Grey Templar**

Wehrkind wrote:
Very interested, but I really wish it was turn based instead of RTS. All I really want the machine to do is keep track of the book keeping and set up for me, while looking very, very pretty.

I would be fine with RTS if you have the ability to instantly pause the action to micromanage.

**Wehrkind**

That's true, but it would be awkward for multiplayer. For me there would be a great value to being able to play a turn based BFG on the computer, especially if it was asynchronous (but that would be really tricky with Brace for Impact orders.)

Automatically Appended Next Post:
With friends, I mean. A turn based BFG with set up, book keeping and combat resolution taken care of by the PC would be a huge boon to actually getting to play games with friends when you have to work and take care of kids etc.

**Grey Templar**

Indeed.

Also, these pictures look like they're from within the actual game itself just by how some of the objects are rendered. And I am noticing that the ships are not all at the same level, so maybe the game will operate within a limited three dimensional space.

**AlexHolker**

Grey Templar wrote:
I would be fine with RTS if you have the ability to instantly pause the action to micromanage.

It would be better to make the AI controls good enough that you don't need to pause to micromanage. It should be an option for the obsessive, it should not be compulsory. For example, if you want your lead ship to Brace For Impact when it comes under fire you should be able to toggle the Brace For Impact skill so that they will automatically use it when they come under heavy fire, or leave it to be activated manually.

**Grey Templar**

Its less ability activation and more movement orders that pausing is better for.

**Marrak**

I played homeworld several times just to watch the ships interact with one another. The wonderful feeling of that (that few other games captured) is the different paces of combat between the capital ships and the smaller escorts and fighters. And when a truly large battle happened it was a sight to behold.

I have wanted another one (or spiritual successor) for some time. So I'll have some hope.

**e.earnshaw**

The name armada suggests more than one ship is under your control that's fine so long as its not just click here move all ships here like most other games based on clash of clans mechanic.

**Sinful Hero**

e.earnshaw wrote:
The name armada suggests more than one ship is under your control that's fine so long as its not just click here move all ships here like most other games based on clash of clans mechanic.

You mean based on the Warcraft mechanic? I believe it was one of the first to select multiple units to send to a specific point. It's been around a very long time.

**kestral**

Might check it out at some point.

**Wyzilla**

Grey Templar wrote:
The BFG rules have always been clear that the models are not to scale with the distances being moved. That is why all measurements are made to the stem of the flight base, thats where the actual ship is. its also why ships are allowed to just move over each other or even occupy the same gaming space, they don't collide unless you are deliberately trying to ram or board.

The large template is what is stated to be the size of an earth sized planet and the small template is basically earth's moon or similar in size.

Earth has an approximate diameter of 12,742 km. Which is represented by a 5" template, or 12.7cm

So 1cm = 1000km is roughly spot on(short by about 3km) given the size of celestial objects of known size in the game.

So that means that each turn, a ship is capable of moving its speed in kilometers. If we assumed a turn lasted an hour, a reasonable assumption, then that gives even the slowest ships a base speed of 20,000km/hour. Thats only a little slower than the reentry speed of the space shuttle.(28,000km/hour) Other ships are much faster.

This also isn't top speed, its normal combat speed. A ship with speed 20 can, with the All Ahead Full order, go up to 44,000km/hour.

It's more likely the turns take place over a minute or less given the fluff.

**sourclams**

Wyzilla wrote:
It's more likely the turns take place over a minute or less given the fluff.

Ehhhh the fluff is pretty inconsistent. In some, it's like a Star Trek episode where ship to ship battles are nailbiters with decisions made minute to minute and dramatic maneuvers that throw people across consoles or roller coaster arms-in-the-air WHOAAAAAAAAAA moments.

In others they're 'enemy sighted, six hours until engagement' affairs where every little thing evolves over the better part of an afternoon and it's all won or lost based on teams of people doing math.

**Kavish**

Please let this be good!

**His Master's Voice**

RPS had a first look piece on this that I haven't seen posted yet.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/21/first-look-battlefleet-gothic-armada/

**Thairne**

Well, this doesn't sound too bad, but a bit like their previous game (star... something something), which doesn't have to be for the worse.