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remember the ship itself is just a representative of the model, not the scale of the model, the flying stem and base are the "ship", so if there is a scale change then a change of base is all that is required.

Since I have started playing Battletech I have stopped worrying so much about things like scale and have gotten more into the fact that all these games are abstract.

 catbarf wrote:

This is odd to me because it was a long-recognized issue that escorts were too vulnerable, particularly to strike craft. The massed turret rule was introduced specifically to stop assault boats from making escorts an endangered species.
[...]
Much larger bases, I guess? But then you start approaching parking lot battlefields, which is really no good for the sort of game BFG is.

You must have been blessed to never be on the receiving side of Eldar Hemlock Spam. Those 40pts f*****s were a menace ( and also filled a whole quarter of the board).

My theory is that most of us remember BFG so fondly because Imperium vs Chaos was really well designed and due to the cost of (Forgeworld!) metal and the lack of internet lists the abusive stuff rarely seen.

Just fyi i remember:
- Eldar Escort Spam
- Imp Nova Spam (fixed?)
- Imp Torpedo Spam ( fixed)
- Chaos Dreadclaw (boarding) Spam ( fixed)
- Necrons just being better at everything

I honestly cannot remember an open ( fair ) game of BFG without it only being Imp/Chaos. (That is: between competent admirals)

Just give me a plastic Repulsive class grand cruiser, and I'm in.

Formosa wrote:remember the ship itself is just a representative of the model, not the scale of the model, the flying stem and base are the "ship", so if there is a scale change then a change of base is all that is required.

Since I have started playing Battletech I have stopped worrying so much about things like scale and have gotten more into the fact that all these games are abstract.

Change of base has a significant impact on mechanics, though. You can have bases overlap, but then you lose multiple shields to blast markers. In a game that is so maneuver-heavy, you really need space to breathe.

Abstract scale is fine. The game already tells you that 1cm = 1000 miles and the models are just representative. But when you start changing gameplay elements to accommodate larger models, of course there will be gameplay consequences.

CoALabaer wrote:You must have been blessed to never be on the receiving side of Eldar Hemlock Spam. Those 40pts f*****s were a menace ( and also filled a whole quarter of the board).

My theory is that most of us remember BFG so fondly because Imperium vs Chaos was really well designed and due to the cost of (Forgeworld!) metal and the lack of internet lists the abusive stuff rarely seen.

Just fyi i remember:
- Eldar Escort Spam
- Imp Nova Spam (fixed?)
- Imp Torpedo Spam ( fixed)
- Chaos Dreadclaw (boarding) Spam ( fixed)
- Necrons just being better at everything

I honestly cannot remember an open ( fair ) game of BFG without it only being Imp/Chaos. (That is: between competent admirals)

My locals and I play BFG fairly regularly, so it's not really a rose-tinted glasses thing. Yeah, Eldar can spam escorts- they're an escort fleet, though, so that's not really exploitative so much as how they're designed to be played. Though I do feel that the way Eldar were designed is incongruous with the rest of the game and creates balance issues, so I much prefer the fan-made MMS ruleset.

Nova spam was addressed with the elimination of guessing (good riddance) and then a further tweak to scatter in I believe the 2010 update, torpedoes were fixed by the 2010 update changing all torps to use the strength-3 marker, assault boat spam was fixed by changes to attack craft, the addition of massed turrets, and the revision to killing escorts on 4+ rather than 2+. Some of those came later than others, but by the time GW dropped support they had patched the game into a pretty good state.

Necrons, eh, YMMV. They're deliberately overpowered, but come with such harsh VP conditions that if you can concentrate fire to take out one Necron cruiser you pretty much win right then and there. I thought they captured the Lovecraftian horror theme of oldcrons pretty darn well, and fighting them always has that sense of desperately hanging on against a superior foe, but I completely understand the criticism. I wouldn't mind a revision just to align them to the modern fluff if nothing else.

All that said, in the early days it was apparent that the game was balanced around Imperials vs Chaos, and the xenos factions were designed to face off against one of those core two, rather than each other. But that did improve as time went on. By the end of active rules support while there were still some bad matchups (Tyranids vs Eldar and Orks vs Eldar in particular) and some of the races were under-developed (Dark Eldar), for the most part BFG hit a pretty solid point of balance and the final version of the ruleset as encapsulated by BFG Remastered is very playable. There's still a pretty active community keeping the game alive with 3D printed models and not a lot of tweaks to the rules.

Playing a minor fleet (Orks, Marines, Eldar) you really had to control the scenario. They were optimised for certain things, broadly not full scale fleet engagements.

- Eldar Escort Spam - That was their fleet. As for effectiveness they beat other escorts, but died to cruisers. They needed pretty god admiraling and use of LOS blocking terrain like asteroid fields or they died to the first massed battery they encountered.

- Imp Nova Spam (fixed?) - Sort of. The revision meant they hit 1/3+ of the time. We instituted a separate fix of
Short range - Hit, hit, Miss, 1D6 scatter
Medium Range - Hit, 1D6 scatter, Miss, 2D6 scatter
Long Range - Hit, 2D6 scatter, Miss, 3D6 scatter

So they became an anti fleet weapon not a massed sniper weapon.

- Imp Torpedo Spam ( fixed) - Well We never thought it was a problem? The use of fighters on CAP negated torps pretty hard.

- Chaos Dreadclaw (boarding) Spam ( fixed) - Against escorts? Massed turrets and bracing against hit and runs seem to fix it for us, I hadn't encountered the 4+ rule above, where was that?

- Necrons just being better at everything - In general their VP conditions meant they were very hard to win with. However it wasn't fun being wiped by them, even if you do win. It was though true to their background at the time.

Nids - Would add these guys. Very odd fleet, easy to screw on scenarios we found.

 Formosa wrote:
remember the ship itself is just a representative of the model, not the scale of the model, the flying stem and base are the "ship", so if there is a scale change then a change of base is all that is required.

Since I have started playing Battletech I have stopped worrying so much about things like scale and have gotten more into the fact that all these games are abstract.

Sue. But how much bigger models can be made without upping size of base?

And if bases are increased board becomes more crowded and manouvering importance matters less. Much like what happened in 40k.

And more overlap of bases makes playing less convenientt as models bump into each other.

Yeah, I played Eldar. I would say that my overall experience is that they'd do well against a balanced force, but if someone geared up specifically for my fleet (i.e. battery spam)...it could get pretty ugly for me.

 Formosa wrote:

Since I have started playing Battletech I have stopped worrying so much about things like scale and have gotten more into the fact that all these games are abstract.

But battletech has a very rigid scale. The ground scale. The hexes car not for the scale of the model in them. Indeed they could be counters and are in many wargames.

Play battlefleet with hexes and I wouldn't care about model size. But currently the critical thing is the base, and the model on top getting in the way of putting things close to each other.

tneva82 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
remember the ship itself is just a representative of the model, not the scale of the model, the flying stem and base are the "ship", so if there is a scale change then a change of base is all that is required.

Since I have started playing Battletech I have stopped worrying so much about things like scale and have gotten more into the fact that all these games are abstract.

Sue. But how much bigger models can be made without upping size of base?

And if bases are increased board becomes more crowded and manouvering importance matters less. Much like what happened in 40k.

And more overlap of bases makes playing less convenientt as models bump into each other.

Going the other way, though, I don't think there'd be anything stopping The_Real_Chris printing a fleet where the ships fit within the base size, so long as the bases remained the same size as in the rules (and, for now, assuming he isn't just replicating the existing designs at a smaller scale, but using new/different designs for the ships, to avoid the questionable legality of such a move).

The_Real_Chris wrote:

habedekrai37 wrote:
interesting how the wishes and hopes diverge, hopefully we will soon know in which direction BFG will go

I just think bigger models are more realistic:

- more details
- old ships not usable
- harder to print yourself

something else:

There is always talk that the remake could be Horus Heresy only. Will we then change style? The iconic imperial ships from the old BFG are more from the post-HH era?

Bigger models are also terrible game pieces. Arguably the current models are too large to the extent we have to keep a supply of empty stands on hand to replace the ships with when they get too close. My 3D printer dream is printing my own fleets where the cruisers are the length of the base diameter so I don't get that problem...

Why? With Star Wars Armada, it works great with the large bases and models. It doesn't mean that the flying stem is so important in the remake of BFG. With larger models, the base may be more relevant than the stem

Hard disagree on that. Optimal firing range being shorter than the length of the ship looks dumb and plays dumb and nothing about having to get my sausage fingers to the dials in the base when every model on the table invariably clumps up in one solid ball in the middle works well.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
How much shelf space and SKUs they want to dedicate to it is probably more relevant then production/design capacity. It was a game sold in the days of blister packs. Which was great, as one blister was a flotilla of escorts. The primary way GW displayed products matched the way the game was sold/marketed/structured. These days GW is mostly boxes, with only a small section for clampacks

They could easily put 4 destroyers on a character sized sprue. But do they want to dedicate the shelf space to have every unit broken down like that? Would they rather have a normal units sized box with a “fleet support section” with 4 destroyers, 3 frigates and a light cruiser. All sharing a medium sized sprue. If they make them multi-build, you could have one box cover a lot of ground for a faction. I know the imperial and chaos cruisers did an excellent job of this in the prior edition, where one set of hulls made a LOT of options. Not sure how well this would scale down to smaller ships, or other factions.

Or they could hand out destroyers like tyranids get ripper swarms. Just toss an escort onto every ship of the line sprue, so you get the little guys hand in hand with the big ones! (this is a horrible idea)

Again the Dystopian Wars reboot is a good guide here. The typical box is a resin battleship and 2-6 sprues. There are currently about 3-4 sprues per faction. The most common sprue builds a cruiser (in any of 4-8 different classes and that's only counting hull stats and weapon layouts, not weapon choices of which each hardpoint has 2-4 , or can be replaced with a module that buffs something else) and about 2 smaller, usually monobuild support models (either a pair of frigates, destroyers, submarines...). The ratio of SKUs to different game elements is incredible. And these are sprues the size of a regular Specialist Games sprue with a 4x8" footprint, like Necromunda gangs.

This does seem the natural answer for any game where you need variety, but don’t want to commit a huge amount of resources.

The Imperial and Chaos BFG cruisers, and similar kits I’m passingly familiar with embraced this. And it worked. Same hull shape for easy visual recognition. Different gubbins to define different Classes (is that the right word?) and greeblies to personalise to some extent.

But BFG also got it a bit wrong. Show me to this very day the different Ork and Eldar Cruisers, and if I get it’s Class right, that’s luck more than judgement. Though I suspect someone still playing probably could fairly handily.

The imperial and Chaos ones were great though. Yes it took some learning to say exactly which was which. But visually, one could easily tell Lunar, Dictator and Mars for instance, were distinct classes. And those differences were Lances/Batteries/Launch Bays. So even if I didn’t know the ship’s exact Class? I got a key visual indicator as to what that/those ship(s) could do. Same with the Ram and Nova Cannon, not to mention dorsal Lance Batteries. All very simple but visually distinct touches which added a lot to the game experience. Provided nobody was proxying.

But you have to admit, the armada coffee table bases for big ships really adds to the visual appeal.

 privateer4hire wrote:
But you have to admit, the armada coffee table bases for big ships really adds to the visual appeal.

Eh. Let’s just say the Jury is out on that one, as it’s my second least favourite thing about Armada.

Actually. Third.

First is the price per ship (sweet Googly Moogly!)

Second is the pathetic first impression I got at a crappy SciFi convention (where the only guest anyone cared about cancelled, and they kept quiet about). The starter set being used seemingly had Factory Second ships. Wonky engines. Sloppy pre-paints. At that point I was playing X-Wing and had a decent collection, so knew FFG normally did decent models. But man. That’s the copy they demo’s with?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Expanding on the price because I think it might make an interesting discussion point?

I love SciFi starships. Blame Star Wars for that. And I’d be happy to buy the odd X-Wing model purely for display purposes, because they are Bloody Nice Models, and accurate.

If I could go back in time, I’d have kept some of my BFG models for that very reason. Well, the plastic ones metal BFG was trauma.

But Armada? Yikes. As you might know, my cash cannon is bored for GW’s prices. But the SSD is £215. After discount. £215!!! That is an Eff Off Price, through and through.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
How much shelf space and SKUs they want to dedicate to it is probably more relevant then production/design capacity. It was a game sold in the days of blister packs. Which was great, as one blister was a flotilla of escorts. The primary way GW displayed products matched the way the game was sold/marketed/structured. These days GW is mostly boxes, with only a small section for clampacks

They could easily put 4 destroyers on a character sized sprue. But do they want to dedicate the shelf space to have every unit broken down like that? Would they rather have a normal units sized box with a “fleet support section” with 4 destroyers, 3 frigates and a light cruiser. All sharing a medium sized sprue. If they make them multi-build, you could have one box cover a lot of ground for a faction. I know the imperial and chaos cruisers did an excellent job of this in the prior edition, where one set of hulls made a LOT of options. Not sure how well this would scale down to smaller ships, or other factions.

Or they could hand out destroyers like tyranids get ripper swarms. Just toss an escort onto every ship of the line sprue, so you get the little guys hand in hand with the big ones! (this is a horrible idea)

Again the Dystopian Wars reboot is a good guide here. The typical box is a resin battleship and 2-6 sprues. There are currently about 3-4 sprues per faction. The most common sprue builds a cruiser (in any of 4-8 different classes and that's only counting hull stats and weapon layouts, not weapon choices of which each hardpoint has 2-4 , or can be replaced with a module that buffs something else) and about 2 smaller, usually monobuild support models (either a pair of frigates, destroyers, submarines...). The ratio of SKUs to different game elements is incredible. And these are sprues the size of a regular Specialist Games sprue with a 4x8" footprint, like Necromunda gangs.

This does seem the natural answer for any game where you need variety, but don’t want to commit a huge amount of resources.

The Imperial and Chaos BFG cruisers, and similar kits I’m passingly familiar with embraced this. And it worked. Same hull shape for easy visual recognition. Different gubbins to define different Classes (is that the right word?) and greeblies to personalise to some extent.

But BFG also got it a bit wrong. Show me to this very day the different Ork and Eldar Cruisers, and if I get it’s Class right, that’s luck more than judgement. Though I suspect someone still playing probably could fairly handily.

The imperial and Chaos ones were great though. Yes it took some learning to say exactly which was which. But visually, one could easily tell Lunar, Dictator and Mars for instance, were distinct classes. And those differences were Lances/Batteries/Launch Bays. So even if I didn’t know the ship’s exact Class? I got a key visual indicator as to what that/those ship(s) could do. Same with the Ram and Nova Cannon, not to mention dorsal Lance Batteries. All very simple but visually distinct touches which added a lot to the game experience. Provided nobody was proxying.

Add another one to the pile of tragedies that is early-00s GW: they got that modular ship thing right, and years before the competition arose, but they just stuck to their 'pump and dump' scheme of letting non-mainline games starve with minimal to no support after the initial release. To this day, i'm kind of in awe that we don't have an 'official' Warhammer 40k space game - it's so prominent a part of the setting, has so much appeal both for existing and new players, and could deliver so many cool models, visuals and stories, but for some reason it just doesn't exist. It really boggles the mind.

And in a day before magnetising had become a thing.

Been years since I bought, let alone built a BFG ship so forgive me if the core hull wasn’t solid enough for days magnestisation.

Should have been fairly easy to magnetize. Or at least blu tack. I still have all my stuff - in fact think I have 3 peoples' old collections. A bit embarassed by the terrible kitbashes I did back then.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Should have been fairly easy to magnetize. Or at least blu tack. I still have all my stuff - in fact think I have 3 peoples' old collections. A bit embarassed by the terrible kitbashes I did back then.

I don’t have any unbuilt, but the hulls on the cruisers would be trivial if memory serves.

Prow guns and dorsal turrets might be a little harder. Very fiddly bits.

I’m actually pretty happy with my kitbashes of the day. But it was just Nurgle marking a few ships with GS and some nurglings, so not exactly precision work.

 Nevelon wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Should have been fairly easy to magnetize. Or at least blu tack. I still have all my stuff - in fact think I have 3 peoples' old collections. A bit embarassed by the terrible kitbashes I did back then.

I don’t have any unbuilt, but the hulls on the cruisers would be trivial if memory serves.

Prow guns and dorsal turrets might be a little harder. Very fiddly bits.

I’m actually pretty happy with my kitbashes of the day. But it was just Nurgle marking a few ships with GS and some nurglings, so not exactly precision work.

Spoiler:

Dorsal turrets you'd just pin, not magnetize.

The_Real_Chris wrote:- Chaos Dreadclaw (boarding) Spam ( fixed) - Against escorts? Massed turrets and bracing against hit and runs seem to fix it for us, I hadn't encountered the 4+ rule above, where was that?

- Necrons just being better at everything - In general their VP conditions meant they were very hard to win with. However it wasn't fun being wiped by them, even if you do win. It was though true to their background at the time.

Nids - Would add these guys. Very odd fleet, easy to screw on scenarios we found.

The 2010 FAQ is what changed escorts to being destroyed on 4+. It made a number of other gameplay changes to address long-standing problems, so is worth checking out.

Necrons and Tyranids are the two fleets that IMO could use some redesign. Necrons to play a little more normally, since a lot of people don't like winning on VP, and Tyranids to codify/revise the instinctive behavior system, which is a little 'fuzzy' and can be hard to fairly resolve.

(The fanmade XR ruleset makes some pretty big changes, but there are enough of them I don't like that I'm not super keen on it as a whole)

Dysartes wrote:Going the other way, though, I don't think there'd be anything stopping The_Real_Chris printing a fleet where the ships fit within the base size, so long as the bases remained the same size as in the rules (and, for now, assuming he isn't just replicating the existing designs at a smaller scale, but using new/different designs for the ships, to avoid the questionable legality of such a move).

Yup, smaller models on the same base sizes has no impact on gameplay. There's already a set of fanmade 3D files called Microfleet Gothic that basically reproduce the ships at half scale, so put those on standard bases and you're good to go. Though they're intended to be used with smaller bases (20mm for cruisers, 30mm for battleships, and multiple escorts on a single base) and all distances halved to play much larger battles.

 catbarf wrote:

Yup, smaller models on the same base sizes has no impact on gameplay. There's already a set of fanmade 3D files called Microfleet Gothic that basically reproduce the ships at half scale, so put those on standard bases and you're good to go. Though they're intended to be used with smaller bases (20mm for cruisers, 30mm for battleships, and multiple escorts on a single base) and all distances halved to play much larger battles.

That sounds right up my alley - i think most GW 'battle' games would be much better if you increased the table sizes by a factor of 2-4, or shrunk the models accordingly. It feels a bit ridiculous to talk about 'tactical manoeuvering' or even have transports when turn one charges are a thing and a lot of units can cross the table in a couple of turns. There's just literally no room to have skirmishes between infiltrators and scouts before the main armies meet, or do meaningful flank moves and so on.

Change of base has a significant impact on mechanics, though. You can have bases overlap, but then you lose multiple shields to blast markers. In a game that is so maneuver-heavy, you really need space to breathe.

Abstract scale is fine. The game already tells you that 1cm = 1000 miles and the models are just representative. But when you start changing gameplay elements to accommodate larger models, of course there will be gameplay consequences.

Yeah you are completely correct, a base swap would solve that issue though from old to new if they do indeed change the base size, if they just change the size of the models then its not a problem

just a guess but I do think the bases will change from the flimsy flying stand to likely use the new one.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

habedekrai37 wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

habedekrai37 wrote:
interesting how the wishes and hopes diverge, hopefully we will soon know in which direction BFG will go

I just think bigger models are more realistic:

- more details
- old ships not usable
- harder to print yourself

something else:

There is always talk that the remake could be Horus Heresy only. Will we then change style? The iconic imperial ships from the old BFG are more from the post-HH era?

Bigger models are also terrible game pieces. Arguably the current models are too large to the extent we have to keep a supply of empty stands on hand to replace the ships with when they get too close. My 3D printer dream is printing my own fleets where the cruisers are the length of the base diameter so I don't get that problem...

I would very much like Armada scale for fighters, cruisers etc. but I do not believe that will happen.

Why? With Star Wars Armada, it works great with the large bases and models. It doesn't mean that the flying stem is so important in the remake of BFG. With larger models, the base may be more relevant than the stem

For reference, last week's blatant teaser

 lord_blackfang wrote:
For reference, last week's blatant teaser

There certainly has been a lot of quite detailled starship art around Arks of Omen, but that may still be coincidence. I hope not, but it may. Then of course, with that whole storyline, about now would be an excellent time to release a BFG boxed set themed around Imperium vs. Chaos, possibly with a gnarly Ark of Omen as centerpiece model.

I hope they don't change the model size

Goose LeChance wrote:
I hope they don't change the model size

I would hope not but why would they release it otherwise - they want people to buy models.

On the other hand both Necromunda and Aeronautica can be played with old models....

As someone with large-ish fleets of all the BFG factions, I'm hoping, if they re-do it, for smaller ships without flight stands. I can't tell you how many ships remain in dry dock because those stupid thin flying stems broke off inside the ships (both metal and plastic), and had to be drilled out, etc. And the flight stand is fairly useless. They had you measure to the "stem", rather than the base, but there is no actual mechanical reason it couldn't be to the base.

But, this being GW, the ships will get larger, the prices will be real high, and the starter will be $250-$300 for two battleships and 8 escorts, for a fleet battle game. Cruisers to come a year later... oh, and played on the cardboard game boards, so it'll look like a parking lot... alright, I admit I'm just a little bitter...

 lord_blackfang wrote:
For reference, last week's blatant teaser

How is this a "blatant" BFG teaser? It doesn't even slightly hint at the game, just having spaceships isn't an indication of BFG being teased.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
How is this a "blatant" BFG teaser? It doesn't even slightly hint at the game, just having spaceships isn't an indication of BFG being teased.

You think it's normal to depict 40k units riding on the outside of spaceships? That feel like normal 40k marketing to you? Feel free to point out other examples. Meanwhile GW has been putting out pictures of Navy and Chaos ships in various contexts for the past few months after a decade of nothing. One of the recent posts was asking "how many ships do you think you would need to assault the Rock?" which interestingly introduces the concept of owning a fleet of ships to the reader.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
How is this a "blatant" BFG teaser? It doesn't even slightly hint at the game, just having spaceships isn't an indication of BFG being teased.

You think it's normal to depict 40k units riding on the outside of spaceships? That feel like normal 40k marketing to you? Feel free to point out other examples. Meanwhile GW has been putting out pictures of Navy and Chaos ships in various contexts for the past few months after a decade of nothing.

....When it's what happens in the arks of omen book that features Angron, that released very recently and is presumably where the art is from, yes, that's not something unusual.