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What with KoW being a huge success there really is no alternative to 40k yet, and while the game I am trying to fiddle with isn't that sort (well maybe 2nd ed, all the stuff I dug up was from 2nd ed and I really enjoy all the cards lol) I am curious just to see what people would want to see in a 40k esque game (or 40k itself).

I found my ideal scifi game. GRUNTZ. A nd i'm having my tournies blood bowl sculpter make a gw tac squad in 15mm(but as the marines will be "true scale", they will be 18mm). I'm having 25 10 man tac cast, so if interested...pm me.

What's Gruntz, do you have a link for a website?
I am more interested in having my own brand of space marines made (more beakie like by the concept art).

http://www.gruntz.biz/p/about.html

It's mostly played in 15mm, but can be played larger.

15mm SF has been around as a thing for ages.

I imagine I'd keep my game at 28mm, 15mm is cool and all but doesn't work with the ideas I have. Which seems to be a smaller skirmish game, debating on how big though.

The space marines i'm having done for GRUNTZ will have beakies and reinforcement studs.
I am having 2 different troopers with boltguns, a sergent with bigass power fist and plasma pistol, a trooper with a heavy bolter(newer style firing from the hip with ammo linkage to backpack ammo hopper) and trooper with heavy plasma gun(again, newer style, firing from the shoulder) cast.
if i can "break even", i will have a few termies sculpted and cast. I will have the green of the first trooper with boltgun done by the end of january.

Maybe you should look into Maelstrom's Edge and Gates of Antares. Both are small mass skirmish games like 40K used to be before Apocalypse.

bound for glory wrote:
The space marines i'm having done for GRUNTZ will have beakies and reinforcement studs.
I am having 2 different troopers with boltguns, a sergent with bigass power fist and plasma pistol, a trooper with a heavy bolter(newer style firing from the hip with ammo linkage to backpack ammo hopper) and trooper with heavy plasma gun(again, newer style, firing from the shoulder) cast.
if i can "break even", i will have a few termies sculpted and cast. I will have the green of the first trooper with boltgun done by the end of january.

In my idea thing these space marines aren't like the super GW style, they're slightly enhanced but mostly just convicts from a harsh prison planet who are used as the elite shock troops to fight the more dangerous enemies (like space vampires and psycho robots).

What would I want to see..

A game where its not over until the end, where there is a chance to pull victory from defeat if you take a chance and it pays off, but where generally the result is within the bounds of what you expect.

Random stuff being handled in a way it can be mitigated and is plausible, e.g. drop ships scattering but able to correct to a level, blasts being off target, but not missions changing every few minutes.

The chance to win on the table, not in the list building phase, indeed a list build similar to how Chain of Command handles it would be very nice (you have a core force, what goes with it is decided by the mission and how good you are relative to the enemy, but you never end up taking stuff thats useless).

Perhaps hidden missions, and you play the mission, the enemy is simply something else to cope with while trying to do your job.

Avoid a d6 based system, either D10 or D100 to allow for a range of modifiers to actually matter


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh yes also, a background that has a level of logic and it internally consistent would also be nice, can be weird and fanciful, but having a level of logic to it - e.g. if the only way to get FTL communications is a courier play that through on what impact it has

I like to use the space of the tabletop. I like some room for manoeuvre and tactics other than target priority.

Rules:

Pre-measuring
Fast play
Customisible
Able to cope with infantry, small and large vehicles / creatures

Fulff
Sweeping background
Looks and reads cool
Hot girls

+lots on pre-measuring, or have a system that needs no measurement outside attacks - e.g. no need to measure command distances that provide a way to get a tape on the table.

Preference is to allow free measuring, play your opponent, not see who has the better ability to judge depth and distances.

'Guess ranges' lead to too many silly situations

 Mr Morden wrote:
Rules:

Pre-measuring
Fast play
Customisible
Able to cope with infantry, small and large vehicles / creatures

Fulff
Sweeping background
Looks and reads cool
Hot girls

Whats something that looks and reads cool in your opinion?

Some diversity in the models/art/background. It kinda sucks that I can only find black heads from ultraforge and that the majority of female models are really just pinups. It could actually make the game a bit more appealing to folks that are interested in but have been alienated by the hobby.

 Llamahead wrote:
I like to use the space of the tabletop. I like some room for manoeuvre and tactics other than target priority.

That's a problem with playing in 28mm, really.

Space Marines who actually kick ass with their most basic, numerous unit, the tac squad.

An emphasis on IFVs over mechs. Even if they are relegated to a fire support role in the actual game, I enjoy the idea of fully motorised forces where everything piles into a convoy when you need to move. If you're going to have mechs, I'd want them to get some form of hauler too.

 nullBolt wrote:

 Llamahead wrote:
I like to use the space of the tabletop. I like some room for manoeuvre and tactics other than target priority.

That's a problem with playing in 28mm, really.

This is why Dropzone Commander is great. The speed of the dropships, scale of the models and size of the battlefield makes maneuvering a tactical part of the game.

I would like a fast-paced mech focused game. The majority of combat is taken care of by giant mechs (think Gundams), but objective taking, position securing, etc... could be handled by boots on the ground.

The closest I've seen to this is Dropzone Commander, but the mechs in the game are just a tad too small, and far too slow for my liking.

Alternatively, any sort of game that lets me use my ever growing collection of Gundam kits would be nice >_<

Since we're using 40k as a point of comparison, I quite like the overall rules and themes for most of the 40k armies. I would just like it if the fluff was more consistent and a bit less over the top, and the rules were cleaned up and made tighter, so that it would be easy to interpret them and play without constant rulebook references.

I would also not want to see multiple variations of the same army (Space Marines), but different branches (SM vs SoB vs IG) would be fine.

As far as scale goes, I actually like the 1500-2000 point scale in 40k, as it feels like more than a skirmish without getting huge.

One thing that I would definitely want is the ability to personalize my army. This is heavily connected to how focused your game is on named characters and how much room you leave for people to come up with their own fluff.

Lastly, I would rather there not be must-have models (some basic troops are the exception and understandable).

To go a bit deeper into rules, I would prefer it if when designing each army it was decided exactly what that army is intended to do and then constructed with that in mind. I think this would allow there to be less rules bloat for each army if you knew exactly what you wanted them to do, so that you would be less likely to cram more and more rules into them. Essentially, what I'm trying to say is keep it simple. I would rather have an army with just a couple of simple, unique rules that provide depth to the army rather than turning it into a complex mess.

 Rainbow Dash wrote:
What with KoW being a huge success there really is no alternative to 40k yet, and while the game I am trying to fiddle with isn't that sort (well maybe 2nd ed, all the stuff I dug up was from 2nd ed and I really enjoy all the cards lol) I am curious just to see what people would want to see in a 40k esque game (or 40k itself).

For Sci-Fantasy and Pulp-Sci-Fi I want rules that are fast, bloody, short page count and easy to understand. I'm not against expansions, but I also want a reasonably priced rulebook that includes enough unit lists to play right from the book. 2nd edition 40k (and most other editions of 40k) go the opposite direction from all of that. Basically I want Sci-Fi rules that are as streamlined, short and fast-playing as KoW.

To that end, I'm really looking forward to the upcoming Warpath rules. The first Warpath 1.0 (KoW in space!!!) rules are still played by my friends and I once in a while for apocalypse-ish size games with our old 40k armies. They are fun for big massive games where you want plenty of abstraction to keep the action moving, but I wouldn't play them for platoon or small company level games.

The new Warpath will reportedly have a "warpath" ruleset at that same game size and a smaller platoon level set called "firefight". If they continue in the vein of KoW and Warpath 1.0 I think I may have my Sci-Fantasy/Pulp-Sci-Fi rules covered by the middle of 2016.

The most important thing in any game , is a clear focus on the end game play by the developers.

As there are many great skirmish rule sets out there for 28mm models.
And loads of great battle game rule sets for 10 to 20mm models.

Perhaps a well defined intuitive rule set for 28mm battle games to replace the mess that is 40k would be nice.

A rule set with focus on quick resolution of detailed unit interaction for 40k models would be cool.

From what I have seen of Warpath battle game, it is fast play, but has not got enough detail in the unit interaction for my liking.(But others will have a ton of fun with it I am sure. )

Oops, thought this was the video games forum for a moment there.

 Rainbow Dash wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Rules:

Pre-measuring
Fast play
Customisible
Able to cope with infantry, small and large vehicles / creatures

Fulff
Sweeping background
Looks and reads cool
Hot girls

Whats something that looks and reads cool in your opinion?

40K
Space 1889
SLA Industries
Babylon 5

Making great progress with my little game, tossed together some minis for it, will have to buy some catachans or something...

Basically it's like some weird Warriors esque story where you gotta get back to your home (using the LRT under construction in Ottawa currently, though in the game its finished-to get there after a power outage).
So far it's just humans, but further "expansions" will have monsters, zombies, naked cat girls, etc.

Chainsaw was too overpowered, still some things to iron out (shooting in combat, solo play vs multiplayer) but who doesn't want to fight some gangs on the stupid Ottawa LRT?!

Solo play seems much simpler then multiplayer. Might have to figure out a timer system.
Multiplayer works on a hex system in combat, with miniatures so far while the solo just has a card with a lumped profile, eventually I'll need to get the cards printed so I can do major playtesting.
Looked at Necromunda a lot to get in the mood, though always thought Necromunda could be a tad complicated at times.
What do you folk think?

Proper ranges (almost) everything on a modern battlefield should work all the way to the table edge

high lethality if the target is hit

Casualty treatment/retrieval (or big penalties if you don't try) when professional soldiers get hit their squad mates usually try to retrieve and treat them unless there is a very good reason not to

(you can have aliens where this is not the case, but at least the human' faction should have to)

pretty much dump hand to hand and 'charging' (no chain/laser/power swords etc)

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Proper ranges (almost) everything on a modern battlefield should work all the way to the table edge

high lethality if the target is hit

Casualty treatment/retrieval (or big penalties if you don't try) when professional soldiers get hit their squad mates usually try to retrieve and treat them unless there is a very good reason not to

(you can have aliens where this is not the case, but at least the human' faction should have to)

pretty much dump hand to hand and 'charging' (no chain/laser/power swords etc)

The year is 2020, there is none of that.
And this game probably features more hand to hand considering the gun situation in Canada (in one of the planned expansions there is a militia that does fight in sort of formations and what not, obviously to emulate how that would work, but for the core of it, most of the people are gangs not trained soldiers. So far with hand to hand the rules aren't all that different, save some dodge attacks I have planned (or something) it doesn't follow the WS, BS style at all, I found that needlessly complicated.
So far its a sort of weapon has d6 (or whatever dice) shots and every 4+ causes a point of damage to your HP, (sometimes there are modifiers, some use templates, some are broken bottles so have additional rules, etc).

So it's not 40kesque at all.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Proper ranges (almost) everything on a modern battlefield should work all the way to the table edge

high lethality if the target is hit

Casualty treatment/retrieval (or big penalties if you don't try) when professional soldiers get hit their squad mates usually try to retrieve and treat them unless there is a very good reason not to

(you can have aliens where this is not the case, but at least the human' faction should have to)

pretty much dump hand to hand and 'charging' (no chain/laser/power swords etc)

I can see why you would want to avoid any of these in game design- unlimited range risks making maneuvering unimportant at larger scales (above 15mm), and the high lethality combined with this means that you are likely to just remove have games boild down to "First to shoot wins". Casualty Evacuation would be tediously involved, and it's an easy handwave to say that non-combat medical drones are running around, but since they are not directly involved in combat in any way they are not represented on the table. Some melee rules have their place for extreme close range around an objective or something.

Have a look here.

http://www.anvilindustry.co.uk/AFTERLIFE

Awesome models too. Black ops troopers are amazing.

As for me, and what I want in a sci fi game.

Simple. Clear focus and direction. Professional, maintained consistent and coherent design philosophy. (Ie no chopping and changing direction mid way through a release cycle and different people in charge with different views on power levels etc )

I don't mind what scale is used. But the gsme mechanics should suit the scale. Whether it's mass battle (drop zone commander), skirmish based (infinity) or large skirmish, the rules should adequately reflect the scale.

I would also be careful about not putting in 'too much '. 40k suffers because it has grots in the same game as city block spanning Titans. The biggest thing in a skirmish or large skirmish scale gsme for example in my mind should be something like an apc or walker (so rhinos, Razorbacks, dreadnoughts, crisis suits and sentinels would all be fine. Tank squadrons and large/super heavy tanks - not so much).