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 Gorlack wrote:
One word to sum up the release of this: "professional". I have been absolutely blown away by the polish this game seems to have. While I'm not in the market for a new game, I hope this pans out. More competition will only sharpen the rest of the companys out there.

 RiTides wrote:
It's more about thread derailment - criticism is welcome, it's just joke posts or repeating the same thing over and over that can get sticky.

Hope to see this moderated in GW threads as well then!

As always, summon the mod squad as needed.

 Gorlack wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
It's more about thread derailment - criticism is welcome, it's just joke posts or repeating the same thing over and over that can get sticky.

Hope to see this moderated in GW threads as well then!

If you see joke posts or repetition in GW threads, click the little triangle. Even the mods can't keep up with a new page every half hour to an hour in the GW threads.

Well, sorry for derailing the thread into mod responsibilities

There are 21 mods and admins excitedly reading this thread, so it is going to be seen pretty heavily by the mods compared to the other threads which get 1 mod reading them occasionally, but nothing outside of Dakka's usual rules and terms has or will be applied to this thread.

Sorry I didnt respond to your PM judgedoug - I was flying from the US to the UK. If you recall in the PM I sent you (asking you to tone it down after you posted 8 consecutive short posts on your opinion of the wrists of that one model), the very next line after the bit you quoted from the PM was: "Feel free to start a thread elsewhere if you want to discuss it further as we are not trying to censor anything." As it states, feel free to start a new thread in the misc miniatures forum to go into in depth critique. We are happy for anything to be discussed in this thread, but want to keep things fairly on topic regarding the release so any spin off topic that runs more than 2 pages that is not related to the announcement, we'll likely ask people to take it to a new thread.

There is absolutely no legal or ethical reason that we need to remain impartial towards our game - we have complete ownership of Dakka and nobody to answer to, but we choose to remain impartial and not moderate differently because Dakka is our hobby and passion and we dont want to break it.

 judgedoug wrote:
Well, sorry for derailing the thread into mod responsibilities

I was reading your earlier posts, and if you're worried about 'bias' towards this game on these forums, then on Page 5 of this thread, Yakface gives his take on it.

I was worried as well about bias towards the game and criticism.

But, considering its their forum, and their game, I'm slightly impressed at the neutrality that has been shown in this regard. I doubt if other companies would allow criticism of their products on their own official forums.

Moved over from a different thread where t'was posted in err.

 Vermonter wrote:
So - is that a Karist Ninja jumping out of a teleportation portal to ambush an Epirean robot programmer towards the right side of the image?

And are those bat-winged, multi-eyed creatures Karist "angels?"

The ninja-y dude is a Karist shadow walker, and yes both the large and small creatures are Angels of different sizes/maturities. The largest Angel there with huge wings was unfortunately too much plastic to be a tool that we could afford to make, but there's still something cool on that front yet to come

The artwork is nicely done. Keep that artist around!

I'm not a fan of the look of the contractors. They just don't do it for me, whatever it is. However, I really like that first Karist trooper. Imposing and interesting model. I wouldn't want to run into that in a dark ally or even a Fudruckers.

 legoburner wrote:
The ninja-y dude is a Karist shadow walker, and yes both the large and small creatures are Angels of different sizes/maturities. The largest Angel there with huge wings was unfortunately too much plastic to be a tool that we could afford to make, but there's still something cool on that front yet to come

Oooooooh. "I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it ......" [trails off in awkward silence]

The Angels would be a lovely model to build, I wonder if you could put LEDs in for the eyes ...... [drifts off in to a daydream]

PS Please show us robots, I love robots.

Has there been a price point per model discussed yet?

I am (as stated previously) a huge fan of mechs.

How much of my soul will I have to sell to get into this game's mechs?

Prices haven't been released yet. All we know so far is that the Kickstarters "sweet spot" is $110.

Can we ask about upcoming factions? There are two types of factions I'm hoping we'll get to hear about in this thread. One: an authoritarian regime that is a glass hammer force, bringing overwhelming force to bear on all critical spots to quash the resistance. The other is space bugs.

Any chances?

 Vanguard-13 wrote:
Has there been a price point per model discussed yet?

I am (as stated previously) a huge fan of mechs.

How much of my soul will I have to sell to get into this game's mechs?

Just the right amount

I am going to have to get some Karists, but then if the Mechs are cool I will have to get those too. Decisions decisions.

On a more serious point, I get the vibe from the game setup that it is far more feasible to own a good fieldable army in most factions rather than GW where you end up filling a whole room with miniatures for just one army. The predominant modeller/collector (me) is going to be happier to get on board with that as long as the price is not extortionate. But stuff costs money to make, it's up to us whether we buy them I suppose (unless they are just too cool to be able to leave them un-bought ).

I have a few questions about this universe.....


Are you going to open it up similar to gamesworkshop allowing people to tell their own stories in their own pockets?

Will their be offical lore and unoffical lore?

Will you leave certain things to ambiguity?

Exactly when do you plan to put up the kickstarter?

My apologies if this has already been cleared up, but if I understand correctly, most of the steel molds have been made and the sprues are finalized. So the KS will be about recouping those expenses, or about funding production and distribution? I ask because if you don't have the burden of funding all those steel molds, which will lead to long, momentum-killing stretch goals, you will have a tremendous advantage over your competitors. It would enable you to start with a solid deal right from the beginning, rather than take what has more and more frequently become a slow, torturous route to a final sum that falls well short of a million dollars.

I presume and hope you've done your homework, analyzing as many other KS campaigns as possible. You certainly ought to be far more versed in this stuff than I am. But I wouldn't assume, despite everything you have going for you, that the road to KS success will be clear; regardless of quality / merit, you need to pitch this just right to make it happen. I'm not trying to be cynical, I just don't want to see this campaign launch with high hopes and end with bitter disappointment.

 legoburner wrote:
There are 21 mods and admins excitedly reading this thread, so it is going to be seen pretty heavily by the mods compared to the other threads which get 1 mod reading them occasionally, but nothing outside of Dakka's usual rules and terms has or will be applied to this thread.

Sorry I didnt respond to your PM judgedoug - I was flying from the US to the UK. If you recall in the PM I sent you (asking you to tone it down after you posted 8 consecutive short posts on your opinion of the wrists of that one model), the very next line after the bit you quoted from the PM was: "Feel free to start a thread elsewhere if you want to discuss it further as we are not trying to censor anything." As it states, feel free to start a new thread in the misc miniatures forum to go into in depth critique. We are happy for anything to be discussed in this thread, but want to keep things fairly on topic regarding the release so any spin off topic that runs more than 2 pages that is not related to the announcement, we'll likely ask people to take it to a new thread.

There is absolutely no legal or ethical reason that we need to remain impartial towards our game - we have complete ownership of Dakka and nobody to answer to, but we choose to remain impartial and not moderate differently because Dakka is our hobby and passion and we dont want to break it.

Perhaps someone can start a thread discussing model design compared to other companies and have a link in the OP saying "please keep model critique and comparisons here for the sake of keeping the news thread less busy for news posts." That way people don't think they're being edited and baned for dissenting opinion.

So how is warehousing/distribution being handled? You said you were dealing with 3 plastics manufacturers, so are you having all materials shipped to one central location that will assemble the starter boxes? Do you have warehouses/fulfillment operations set up/lined up in the USA/UK? Does your team have logistics/fulfillment experience?

Since it seems like your group came together via Dakka that means that you are all spread out, so is there going to be one physical location for your operation or will you continue to run the business in "the cloud" and rent out warehouse/fulfillment services as needed?

Do you plan to continue using three plastics companies or do you plan to find just one that is the best fit for your needs?

ORicK wrote:
In regard to the rules: now i know a bit more, i am even more interested!

I always call Epic the best game i know.
A 28mm type game of the same quality is exactlyt what is still missing. Something that feels realistic and balanced in it's own scale of warfare.

The only thing i am "worried" about in this type of abstraction is that the equipment, weaponry and skill of the individual model is of less importance, and thus the individual minature.
And the individual miniatures is what many love in this hobby.

Dystopan Legions from Spartan games does the same thing.
It's OK, quite balanced and it works.
But somehow on the skirmish scale it feels strange that the individual model is not that important. For me the type of ruleset does not feel quite right.

I hope this one will feel better. Just a bit more Inquisitor, Infinity or (yes i write this ;-) 40k, and a bit less Dystopian Legions.

While Epic was certainly an inspiration for the overall feel of parts of the game, the actual process of resolving shooting does *not* echo Epic. Each model in a unit generates its own shooting dice based on the weapon they are firing and then you roll them all together (much like 40k pre-7th edition). You will need different colored dice or just roll them in seprate batches to keep track of which weapon is hitting/missing when you're dealing with a unit firing different weapon types.

So yes, each individual model in the unit does matter, particularly when it comes to them firing. When a unit takes fire, the entire unit gets hit, so there is the abstraction that you're using the most common defensive characteristic amongst the models in the unit (should they vary between models in the unit) and then for the most part the owning player gets to choose which model in the unit gets removed as a casaulty (representing other models in the unit being able to pick up special weapons, etc, dropped by their dying compatriats).

 Asherian Command wrote:
I have a few questions about this universe.....

Are you going to open it up similar to gamesworkshop allowing people to tell their own stories in their own pockets?

Will their be offical lore and unoffical lore?

Will you leave certain things to ambiguity?

Exactly when do you plan to put up the kickstarter?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'in their own pockets' but we are definitely friendly to people who want to write fiction in our universe (as long as they acknowledge that it's a Maelstrom's Edge story and don't sell it themselves, for obvious reasons). We are also going to be looking for content for a regular short fiction ebook collection, and I am very keen that people will be able to submit their own Maelstrom's Edge stories to that and we will publish the best ones.

We have been very careful in setting up our lore (we have hundreds of thousands of words of background text in our internal wiki). We don't plan to have any official/unofficial lore (although you might need to be more specific with your question as I'm not entirely sure I've understood exactly what you want to know) - that's why we're being very careful in releasing lore on this thread - we'd rather not say something that might contradict other things later.

We definitely want to keep some parts of the universe ambiguous, both in terms of having a few mysteries for people to puzzle over (like the origin of the Maelstrom) and also in terms of the motivations of the factions - I've been very passionate throughout our design process in trying to make each faction identifiable and not clearly the 'good' or evil faction - this makes for better fiction as if the characters have believable motivations you can make more interesting stories, but also it appeals to me as a gamer because people can have genuine debate as to which faction is 'the right one' in terms of their motivation and actions.

The kickstarter will be very soon! Lego is in charge of all things logistical so I'll leave him to answer those kind of questions.

 Vanguard-13 wrote:
Has there been a price point per model discussed yet?

I am (as stated previously) a huge fan of mechs.

How much of my soul will I have to sell to get into this game's mechs?

Model point values will be one of the very last things to be finalized, still pending some heavier playtesting that we'll (hopefully) generate post-kickstarter once we (again hopefully) have a much larger pool of interested people willing to try out the rules and give feedback than we did when it was completely under wraps.

However, the goal is hopefully that you'll be able to play a decent game with what comes in just the starter box. Combine two of them and you'll most certainly have enough models to pick from to make a fully standard (recommended) sized game. Any models you purchase beyond that will be to allow you to try out different force builds.

So although the final details are still a bit up in the air pending the Kickstarter, you hopefully will get about 2/3 of a 'standard' force size for each faction in each starter box set.

 darrkespur wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
I have a few questions about this universe.....

Are you going to open it up similar to gamesworkshop allowing people to tell their own stories in their own pockets?

Will their be offical lore and unoffical lore?

Will you leave certain things to ambiguity?

Exactly when do you plan to put up the kickstarter?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'in their own pockets' but we are definitely friendly to people who want to write fiction in our universe (as long as they acknowledge that it's a Maelstrom's Edge story and don't sell it themselves, for obvious reasons). We are also going to be looking for content for a regular short fiction ebook collection, and I am very keen that people will be able to submit their own Maelstrom's Edge stories to that and we will publish the best ones.

We have been very careful in setting up our lore (we have hundreds of thousands of words of background text in our internal wiki). We don't plan to have any official/unofficial lore (although you might need to be more specific with your question as I'm not entirely sure I've understood exactly what you want to know) - that's why we're being very careful in releasing lore on this thread - we'd rather not say something that might contradict other things later.

We definitely want to keep some parts of the law ambiguous, both in terms of having a few mysteries for people to puzzle over (like the origin of the Maelstrom) and also in terms of the motivations of the factions - I've been very passionate throughout our design process in trying to make each faction identifiable and not clearly the 'good' or evil faction - this makes for better fiction as if the characters have believable motivations you can make more interesting stories, but also it appeals to me as a gamer because people can have genuine debate as to which faction is 'the right one' in terms of their motivation and actions.

The kickstarter will be very soon! Lego is in charge of all things logistical so I'll leave him to answer those kind of questions.

Yeah let me clarify what I mean by 'pockets'. I am referring to pocket universes where people make their own universes within the universe you create. I had that happen to one of my projects a long time ago. People took my world and started to make their own characters and worlds. In game design we call this transmedia worlds. Where it expands to more than one form of media. Most often this happens in very big worlds that are bigger than life. Pokemon, Warhammer, Halo, warcraft all these games are transmedia worlds. Sorry I probably goofed up before by saying pockets as not everyone is included into the vocabulary I use to define things, thats my bad. But in short I mean places where players can write their own interpretation of the worlds you guys create?


What I mean in unofficial and official lore is that some books and some series they produce so much material from so many authors. That there is contradiction in the base lore between authors. Such as warhammer 40k where authors rarely conclude on how tall a space marine is or different historical figures, or whole different interpretations. I am asking in that are you planning on trying to keep everything the main studio (Maelstorm Games) as official lore and anything written outside of studio as unofficial or will you deem them official lore if they write for the company and have the companies blessing? Because some universes do that. Every author even they don't try to perceive the world differently cannot exactly copy a writer who wrote about the same universe. I had a 'client' (Professor) who wanted me to write in a certain way but I wrote it in a different manner because i perceived his world completely different. Though its up to your team how you do that. I think that is more of logistical question.

Thank you for the responses so far! I love talking to other designers and writers!

As I know the design processes are extremely exhausting and play testing is frustrating to perform sometimes. As is writing and editing all of which i have experienced in the past year or so. Except a bit quicker as our due dates are usually at the end of each week. (Though not trying to compare to anyone, your guys job is probably far more exceedingly professional, difficult, and way better presented than any of my peers could hope to be. My teacher and professors I will probably inform about this project.)


Anyway good on ya thanks for the reponses.

So Whens The Kickstarter

paintwhore99 wrote:
So Whens The Kickstarter

 legoburner wrote:

Krinsath wrote:
How long of a campaign are you guys looking to run? That'd really help with planning out monies.

End of April to start of June so that we cover 2 pay days for most people. Going over 30 days is a bit of a no-no, but we are confident with Dakka's traffic numbers and proper pacing that we can get away with it.

 Janthkin wrote:

paintwhore99 wrote:
So Whens The Kickstarter

 legoburner wrote:

Krinsath wrote:
How long of a campaign are you guys looking to run? That'd really help with planning out monies.

End of April to start of June so that we cover 2 pay days for most people. Going over 30 days is a bit of a no-no, but we are confident with Dakka's traffic numbers and proper pacing that we can get away with it.

Is there anywhere to just submit our banking information lol

 Asherian Command wrote:

What I mean in unofficial and official lore is that some books and some series they produce so much material from so many authors. That there is contradiction in the base lore between authors. Such as warhammer 40k where authors rarely conclude on how tall a space marine is or different historical figures, or whole different interpretations. I am asking in that are you planning on trying to keep everything the main studio (Maelstorm Games) as official lore and anything written outside of studio as unofficial or will you deem them official lore if they write for the company and have the companies blessing? Because some universes do that. Every author even they don't try to perceive the world differently cannot exactly copy a writer who wrote about the same universe. I had a 'client' (Professor) who wanted me to write in a certain way but I wrote it in a different manner because i perceived his world completely different. Though its up to your team how you do that. I think that is more of logistical question.

One of my main jobs is keeping the lore consistent between sources. I think the way we approach it is anything written by us, or for us, is official, and fan fiction will be unofficial. And of course, you can't use our IP to sell your own product. Otherwise, we really don't mind people writing stories etc.

I'll be changing jobs in a few weeks so bridging two pay days will really help me get on board.

Stormphoenix wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

What I mean in unofficial and official lore is that some books and some series they produce so much material from so many authors. That there is contradiction in the base lore between authors. Such as warhammer 40k where authors rarely conclude on how tall a space marine is or different historical figures, or whole different interpretations. I am asking in that are you planning on trying to keep everything the main studio (Maelstorm Games) as official lore and anything written outside of studio as unofficial or will you deem them official lore if they write for the company and have the companies blessing? Because some universes do that. Every author even they don't try to perceive the world differently cannot exactly copy a writer who wrote about the same universe. I had a 'client' (Professor) who wanted me to write in a certain way but I wrote it in a different manner because i perceived his world completely different. Though its up to your team how you do that. I think that is more of logistical question.

One of my main jobs is keeping the lore consistent between sources. I think the way we approach it is anything written by us, or for us, is official, and fan fiction will be unofficial. And of course, you can't use our IP to sell your own product. Otherwise, we really don't mind people writing stories etc.

Goodluck to your endeavors! Which by what I have seen you will succeed!

Everything sounds awesome, I'm really looking forward to backing this on Kickstarter.

However, there is one thing that is really bothering me:

"cybel"

How is this pronounced?

Thanks!

ziggurattt wrote:
Everything sounds awesome, I'm really looking forward to backing this on Kickstarter.

However, there is one thing that is really bothering me:

"cybel"

How is this pronounced?

Thanks!

Sigh Bell. Like the name of a 4 year old beauty pageant runner-up.

Unless you're thinking of:



I know I am.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

Sigh Bell. Like the name of a 4 year old beauty pageant runner-up.

Unless you're thinking of:



I know I am.

You see, I was thinking shoe-bill.