#Indie+Alternative Wargaming

1 messages · Page 3 of 1

sleek trail
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Thats completely fair

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I mostly agree but allllso minis agnostic i think is healthier for the hobby, especially for small creators

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In the age of the printer

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Its pretty ideal

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that said if by some unholy miracle i make something popular enough to warrant it im commissioning custom stls

next pilot
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I wonder if we’ll see male ghost 3d print minis from the community

sleek trail
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Male ghost

left onyx
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It's "Maleghast", which is latin for BAD SPOOKY

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(Not technically accurate, "ghast" is Germanic in origin)

sand bobcat
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♂️ 👻

sand bobcat
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still don't like how much less Orange it is, but, it looks okay now that I put lenses on it.

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cc @native portal

native portal
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Nice! I liked it when it was more vibrant but this has a nice realistic finish

sand bobcat
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yeah, i'm gonna try to get more vibrant with the other guys x_x

sudden halo
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Yeah, I agree on the brighter orange. May be worth going back and highlighting or doing another coat. Love the lenses and the grey shoulder accents.

sudden halo
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I mostly just wish we got more realistic proportions across the board. I personally really dislike heroic proportions, and they're so prevalent. At smaller scales you have to do some adjusting to make things thicker so the model isn't extremely fragile, but at 15mm+ that's barely necessary and at 28-32mm it's really just an (unfortunate IMO) style choice.

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At least in the age of digital design, rather than hand sculpting where it remained a speed and casting consideration.

native portal
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6mm ftw

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easy to 3D print

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And at a scale where it all blends together anyway

sudden halo
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Also so easy to paint!

native portal
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if you look any closer than this, they look like dogshit

sudden halo
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And if you mix in some GHQ moderns you can make some really good looking infantry stands.

native portal
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but you'd have to crane all the way down

native portal
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and some civvy objective marker

sand bobcat
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fifteen cents a dude

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(it is also way cheaper) (15mm is already dirt cheap)

native portal
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I bought a TON of 15mm ww2 stuff on deep sale

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and I've never assembled it

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because like bar, I cannot find people to game with

autumn sun
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Great thing about stuff at 6mm/8mm is that you can get away with just some washes or contrast paints and bam, done.

sudden halo
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Left is some Battletech stuff I did, right is stuff I was starting for a homebrew game that wound up going a different direction

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native portal
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ooooh!

sudden halo
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Terrible lighting in here, I need to get some better pics tomorrow or something.

native portal
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I've resorted to digital micro-scale stuff for now

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but if I'm ever in a better spot (aka my kid is grown) I'll set up a local scene

sand bobcat
sand bobcat
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15mm and smaller is the only scale range where I will accept having to paint several infantry

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in any larger size: fuck these guys. the mech model is right there

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first thing i painted in infinity was my Maghariba Guard because that was the only model I was actually interested in

native portal
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yessssssss

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love MA.K

sand bobcat
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i technically have a huge backlog for that """game""" (they did eventually release a ruleset???) but nobody around here wants to paint 15mm

native portal
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so much wargaming is so varied

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that you're just playing tag

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'Oh my god a wargamer'

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'Oh I love wargames'

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'I play 15mm'

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'I play 6mm'

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'...'

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insert 'I play warhammer' vs 'I play other stuff'

sand bobcat
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i collect both 😌

native portal
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or time period

next pilot
sand bobcat
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tbh i'm calling it male ghost,

left onyx
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Damn, I’m never gonna get BAD SPOOKY to catch on

sand bobcat
# native portal or time period

in the 2 months that I've been in this new city, I've gotten one person to get back into heavy gear, and watched another heavy gear-haver get into dropfleet commander with a handful of other people.

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if i'm lucky, they'll like it enough to try dropzone commander, which I actually have an army for

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i did meet some people who play battletech at least. they're trying to encourage me to join their alpha strike tournament but i don't know the game well enough for that 😵‍💫

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also none of my models follow the alpha strike Basing Rules (tm). I refuse to use bases that aren't even big enough for you to handle the miniature without touching it

native portal
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damn

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and yeah I hate toosmall bases

sand bobcat
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redirecting battlemech rambling to the battletech thread

sudden halo
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Oh, I also have some Pipermakes Tau proxies I printed in 15mm laying around. I figured I could get some more RPG/boardgame friends to try wargaming and make my 40k friends happy with OnePageRules for its simplicity... I just decided we'd do 15mm cause it all looks better that way and I'd just print everyone armies. That was a failed project for sure. Don't commit to printing 8 people who don't know a ruleset armies for it.

sudden halo
sleek trail
spring geyser
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This just made me realize that, at 15mm scale, my mechs would be roughly 28mm, lmao

sleek trail
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Depends how big a mech is relatively, i think

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12 ft tall mech would be 28mm in 15mm scale i think

sand bobcat
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In a lot of games you'll see the "main" kind of model being something that's like 3-4cm in most directions.

sleek trail
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If my maths right

sand bobcat
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15mm has single infantry on 20mm bases, which is pushing it IMO but is still manageable

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i do prefer 25mm and larger for base size

sudden halo
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I think our broad cultural idea of a game piece is between one and two inches tall, which is why smaller scales tend to not take off as much unless they have mechs or some other primary game piece in that size realm.

sudden halo
sleek trail
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Flat pieces often exist though

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Esp in board games

sudden halo
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They are pretty fiddly, probably wouldn't trust another person to take them on and off the bases. They're pretty strong, but resin can be brittle and angular forces could easily snap them.

sudden halo
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Though I know the painters among us tend to cringe at someone grabbing a mini directly, especially if it's not with a delicate hand, it is very common.

flat crow
sleek trail
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I love the big wide hat look that is standard for toffs now

flat crow
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well i mean its a common hat for officers so it makes sense lol

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its also the sorta hat napoleon made famous

sleek trail
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Yeah but its still good

flat crow
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for sure

spring geyser
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Rough draft of the base stats that will appear on unit cards in Daylight Stars

- MOVEMENT - range (in inches) unit can move
- ARMOR - target number of d6 roll needed to penetrate unit's armor, might be higher than a 6 thus need modifiers to pen
- DISCIPLINE - General level of training/experience of the unit, determines a lot of other things; scale will be either 1-3 to 1-5
- MORALE - How much the unit "wants to be there" irrespective of training; used for morale checks, obeying orders, etc.
- ACCURACY - Target number the unit needs to hit on a d6 roll to hit with their attacks; might have this be determined by DISCIPLINE, OR might have this be per weapon instead
- SPOTTING RANGE - range within which the unit can SPOT enemies (need to be able to SPOT themselves or have an ally SPOTTING to target enemies with attacks)
- OBSERVABILITY - Target number enemy units need to roll 2d6 UNDER to OBSERVE (and thus be able to do AIMED FIRE or TARGET DESIGNATION to the unit)
- HEIGHT - height of the unit with respect to terrain (determining e.g. what they can get cover from)

NOTE: One major factional distinction of the Elysian Commonwealth will be that their units have lower MORALE than you'd expect from their DISCIPLINE, since they're mostly externally motivated (by pay, social advancement, etc.)
NOTE: Very good ACCURACY will be common, especially for VEHICLES; advanced fire control systems means stuff like tanks should basically never miss unless something is penalizing their aim rolls (and will thus frequently have ACCURACY ratings of 0+ or 1+). HOWEVER, penalties to this will be quite common.
NOTE: I may give units options to be taken at different levels of DISCIPLINE for different costs, a la Bolt Action


For HQ/COMMAND:
- INITIATIVE (name undecided) - Number of ORDERS this unit can contribute per ROUND
- RECOVERY - Number of STRESS MARKERS this unit removes at end of round; remaining STRESS MARKERS will penalize the number of ORDERS they contribute on the next ROUND
- LEADERSHIP - Bonus the unit gives on morale tests to obey ORDERS it gives

NOTE: HQ/COMMAND units will generally have higher INITIATIVE than RECOVERY


For VEHICLES
- CREW - number of CASUALTIES the VEHICLE can sustain before being considered DESTROYED; VEHICLES will have very heavy, permanent penalties for each CASUALTY

NOTE: Taking CASUALTIES is a potential result of rolling on the Vehicle Damage Table, or an effect of certain weapons```
spring geyser
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also, in rewriting what I've got so far, I'm paying way more attention to formatting this time

2023-10-28_16_06_58-Daylight_Stars_Wargame_Rules_-_Google_Docs_Mozilla_Firefox.png
native portal
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Formatting good

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Especially for wargames, which really need to move faster and in more concrete ways than rpgs

spring geyser
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and while Daylight Stars is indeed a good name, I'd still like a name for it that better conveys what the game is actually about (hard sci-fi wargame)

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I might just do Daylight Stars: Bloodstained Regolith or Daylight Stars: Mud & Lasers or something

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also, I've entirely disassociated Action Dice from Orders, as of the latest revision; I still need something to draw from a bag to represent orders, though

sleek trail
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Or just dont like

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Designate it

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Say "two different coloured similarily shaped and sized resources to represent each teams orders"

spring geyser
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yeah, I'll probably just call them "ORDER TOKENS" instead

spring geyser
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I also kinda need a snappier name than "AUTONOMOUS ACTION"

sand bobcat
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A2 (stands for autonomous action)

spring geyser
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lmao

sand bobcat
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is autonomous action like, actions models do automatically?

spring geyser
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do without recieving an ORDER

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you still control them (though options are very limited)

sand bobcat
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infinity called them "automatic reaction orders", which got shortened to ARO everywhere but the definition

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in infinity they were only reactions, but in your game if they're not only reactions, calling them A2s is like, genuinely probably fine

spring geyser
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basically the way it works is that in each round, each player takes turns giving orders until they're out of orders to give, and then remaining units that have yet to activate can "act autonomously"

sand bobcat
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autonomous actions feels good to me, honestly.

spring geyser
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hmhm

sleek trail
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Automatic actions

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If it makes you feel better in my current draft a core part of the action economy has the name CAR ACTIONS

spring geyser
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lmfao

sleek trail
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Always in caps

fallen rune
spring geyser
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What I have so far, in the new doc with the better formatting
mostly, I just rewrote what I did so far, with some extensive changes to how stuff works

sleek trail
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I will read this in the morning

sand bobcat
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checking some 6mm infantry I bought and they'd actually be 2.2m tall in-scale 😔 (they're 8mm tall including the helmet)

hollow crypt
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Basketball players

sand bobcat
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bigger than that! it's 7.2 feet in-scale

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oh hm, "Z scale" for model trains is 1:220, which I guess is the intended size

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which...is sometimes called 6mm....................

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"zz scale" (because it makes you sleep) is 1:300 which is the NATO Gaming scale

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1:220 is 0.73x the size of 1:300 and 😵‍💫

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well my game isn't supposed to have infantry anyway, infantry are cringe

hollow crypt
left onyx
sand bobcat
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the battletechers I play with were talking about the measure-and-move ruleset also being "Map scale != model scale", which i personally think is absurd,

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i actually did this for some battlemechs, to disastrous results

native portal
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I love them but they wear actual camo so half the time you've got bases that May Contain Traces of Dude

hollow crypt
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Yeah, for the diorama side that’s awesome

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For gameplay… not even a bit

sand bobcat
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lol

sand bobcat
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bizarrely enough, my sci fi tanks are actually shorter than the abrams

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like by a long shot? they're all like 23mm long models, while the abrams would be 26.4mm long in 1:300

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that being said, they're right on the edge of 15mm wide while the abrams in 1:300 would be 12.2mm wide

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alright well a 20mm x 30mm square should be good enough to put a hard limit on both how big the wacky tank sculpts can get & still accommodate how every real world tank is actually 1m wide and 30m long

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my basing philosophy is "if you can't put your fingers JUST on the base to move the model, the base is ineffective"

spring geyser
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should i rename TASK DICE back to ACTION DICE even though it collides with AUTONOMOUS ACTION a bit

sand bobcat
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Do you ever spend action dice on autonomous actions? either way I think keeping Task is a good idea

spring geyser
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TASK DICE just mark what the unit is currently doing

sand bobcat
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yeah, keep it as task then

sleek trail
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Trying to figure out how to devise and convey a compelling aesthetic

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Like. Wargames live and die on aesthetic. Turnip28 is a great example of this because its got an aesthetic that can be easily converted out of readily avaliable historical minis

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How do i do that for modern/low-cyberpunk...

sand bobcat
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people will use infinity minis, i figure.

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ariadna's aesthetic is already basically modern tech.

spring geyser
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idk
in my case I do plan to get some of my 3d artist friends to make models for 3d printing

hollow crypt
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Which I assume exist

spring geyser
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since the hard sci fi - high sci fi + biomechanical horror aesthetic of my stuff is Rather Different

hollow crypt
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Oh, standees are also a pretty good option imo, depending on scale

spring geyser
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I think I might actually go with ACTION DICE while clarifying that ORDERS and AUTONOMOUS ACTIONS are both kinds of ACTIONS

sleek trail
sleek trail
sleek trail
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But yeah i want a unique/memorable aesthetic of my own in some way

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Probably incorporate some stalker-esque Horrors

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Anyone know if anyones made bootleg death stranding minis in 28mm

sudden halo
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There are definitely some sculpts on myminifactory that have that vibe.

sleek trail
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I think doubling down on zone horror and also non-fighty roles for guys might be a way to go. I def love my shootbangs and of course cool vehicles are the heart

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But i gotta figure out what the game is about as well

sand bobcat
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good to figure out that the small end of tau mechs is pretty reasonable in my proposed system. I'm trying to make sure the size scale accommodates some things that are larger than battlemechs, but I was getting a little nervous poking at some of the tau things and seeing them be like, 50mm wide, 60-70mm tall. But their old sculpts are like 50mm tall on 40mm bases and the new ones are 50x50, basically. Which is well within reason and thus would give GW Customers something to kitbash towards.

sleek trail
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whats the size variance in your system?

sand bobcat
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Figuring that out has been part of my design, lol. But I think 55x70 (infinity TAG size) will be the upper limit

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smallest mechs are 40x40

sleek trail
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but representing stuff far bigger, i assume

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than tags

sand bobcat
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oh, yeah.

sleek trail
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ive been thinking about how to contrive my system so i can put a szalamandra in it, as thats my favorite model in any game

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probably make it avaliable to an elites faction and also worth three guys in terms of activations and space

sand bobcat
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The scale's 1:300, so a 40mm x 40mm mech is already huge (taking up a map-space 12m tall and 12m wide). My main issue with going significantly larger is that most of these sculpts don't really have an array of armaments that feels like they're that big

sleek trail
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yeah, they feel firmly mini-mecha

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esp tags

sand bobcat
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I might knock it down to 1:285 because that makes them slightly (insignificantly) more reasonable and because the whole reason for my investigation into vehicle base sizes was trying to accommodate a 1:285 abrams. (Which would put a 40mm tall mech at 11.4 metres, lol)

sleek trail
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the only stuff in that category that really feel that big are probably adeptus titanticus titan

sand bobcat
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the szalamandra's very cool. i'd say it depends mostly on your setting

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if walking machines are practical and commonplace, I feel like having a TAG isn't really a step up at all

sleek trail
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probably going to belong to the one very cyberpunk faction

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i think aesthetically theres a bit of a reverse infinity going on with my mental image at the moment

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i.e one very tech-brained faction

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and the rest are ariadna

sand bobcat
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oh, nice. i think that would totally work.

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you don't have to support the entirety of Nomads anyhow, you just want the szalamandra; so it can easily be the most advanced/weird commonly-used thing in the setting, and you can totally retool its actual functionality. (in infinity it can eject the pilot(???), it doesn't have to do that in yours.)

sleek trail
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yeah almost certainly

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that factions also going to be one with the most fucked up like

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"vehicle"

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in this case actually being an orbital satillite beam cannon whos "shadow" moves like a vehicle

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so a mech is a nice sort of consolation prize

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i should stop thinking of cool faction stuff and work on core mechanics, thougj

sand bobcat
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hah, i'm imagining like, a clear acrylic template with a crosshair on it

sleek trail
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effectively. my mental image was a base with a diorama of a laser smashing into it, terrain flying out

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but yeah everyone gets a FREE CAR so if your car is a space laser might as well get a robot

sudden halo
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not that its all that different from 1:300, definitely usable together, but most "6mm" stuff is 1:285. Catalyst's Battletech stuff is a little odd in that its 1:265 for some reason.

sleek trail
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I wonder how the Xmm notation came about

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Instead of just scale ratio

sudden halo
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for infantry based games its a better shorthand for how big to expect things to be, since a human is a good reference. scale ratios tend to also indicate that all pieces will be in scale with each other, and likely that the ground scale will match the piece scale

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and most games don't have either of those things be strictly true.

sleek trail
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This is true

trail fulcrum
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40k is 28mm my ass

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32 IMO

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:p

sudden halo
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40k is GWScale

sleek trail
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Standard humans are generally 28mm

trail fulcrum
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Infantry is on a different scale than vehicles

sudden halo
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vehicles are also squished kind of, and there's basically no ground scale defined at all

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40k is very distinctly Game Stuff rather than scale models.

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other than GW games, until the early 2000s 1 miniature = 1 soldier was pretty uncommon in miniatures. Most historicals used a rank of 4-5 minis to represent a unit of hundreds

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which is part of why you see the distinction between diorama hobbies like scale modeling and trains using scale ratios, and miniature wargaming mostly using the mm height of a soldier.

sleek trail
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To be fair trains do have letter scaling

sudden halo
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true

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they got their own weird thing

fallen rune
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the Xmm scale is helpful because you can just measure the height of models to tell what they are I think

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It's tricky to visualize 1:N scale

sudden halo
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i don't know how that came about. i think it has to do with the gauge of the tracks, maybe?

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1:N is useful when you're working with vehicles and scenery, but it winds up only being relevant to a few wargames. Most care much more about the gameplay spaces, and even a lot of historical simulationy games are in pre-vehicle eras so the Xmm tells you most of what you need to know right away.

fallen rune
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Trains are a different world though

sudden halo
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I've been learning somewhat more about them, since Heavy Gear is close enough to N scale that it works for scenery a lot of the time. 10mm games are even closer

sand bobcat
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I feel like most "only known as #mm" wargaming scales basically exist because those companies weren't even really making realistic humans either. So they just said "a guy is this tall" as an excuse to fudge everything else.

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As much as I'd like to champion Heavy Gear for doing better, it's been demonstrated that some models are just...not the right size. 😔 My poor Accos (who are also some of the best-looking designs on my shelf)....

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Also the Marus, those things are fucking puny.

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Overall though, I really appreciate the explicit 1:144 scale for Heavy Gear. It makes it clear when something isn't right, which also lets me do some more satisfying kitbashing.

sleek trail
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Which train scale is most comfortable with 28mm

sand bobcat
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depends on how tall a 28mm person is

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i don't mean to be facetious, this is genuinely the central question

sleek trail
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I think generally 28mm assumes ~6ft dude, no?

left onyx
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Of the common scales, 1:64 is probably the best which puts a 28mm mini at 1.79 m tall (5'10")

sand bobcat
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that seems reasonable.

left onyx
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(1:76 gives a height of 2.17 m, 1:48 gives a height of 1.34 m)

spring geyser
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update on my WIP wargame: I have added the list of standard orders, auto actions, and reactions
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SHRCth1abptjBESOiGjICp-9w70rljt-Di2HiyOnJWg/edit?usp=sharing

Google Docs
Daylight Stars Wargame Rules

INTRODUCTION HEADING 2 HEADING 3 HEADING 4 This is a test of the Syne font. I am using this to reference what the font might look like as part of a paragraph body. This is something in inconsolata which has been changed to a different font. PLAYING THE GAME PREGAME - Things you’ll need! Before ...

left onyx
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And if you want to use live steam models, you're probably stuck in 1:76 or 1:45 unless you go bigger

sand bobcat
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though my infantry were 1:220 and i wonder if anyone does 1:285 infantry. blah

sudden halo
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GHQ has kind of been the standard for "6mm" stuff, for a while, and they do 1:285. they have a game that i've never heard anyone play but they provide a lot of models for military college "wargames" and simulations. They also sometimes call their stuff 1:300, or at least say its usable at 1:285 and 1:300, probably since its the nato standard. https://www.ghqmodels.com/

sand bobcat
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fair enough. yeah it probably does not matter lol

next pilot
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have people here seen much of idls of torment, heard about and it seems interesting

native portal
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Never heard of it, what's the pitch

next pilot
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demons fighting over human souls in hell

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models are a high level of horror, bunch of them raen't stuff I'd share here for that reason

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also while they used to jave good images to share on their site, they don't anymore

sleek trail
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Anyone know any compelling solutions to activation parity in alternating activations games?

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I know malifaux uses a pass token that if im understanding correctly lets you pass a turn and thus activate in reaction to people, which then becomes a resource you can gain and use

sudden halo
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the main two i know are pass tokens, or the Battletech "once one players remaining activations are double the other's, they must activate two units each time" type system

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I guess the other is going to some type of initiative based system

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but that's not quite the same thing

native portal
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You can do things like the double unit thing, you can give (popular in historicals) tokens to activate from officers only, or officers and veteran units

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You can give units tests to activate or to activate fully

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You give activations based on force construction, you can stagger them based on speed or unit type or veterancy

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Lots of things you can do

sleek trail
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yeah im more curious about the spread of ways people have approached the issue

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cause its a fun issue!

midnight vine
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If there’s scoring beyond taking out the entire other side you can make scoring while you have less units more profitable

sand bobcat
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as much as I dislike the idea of additional tracking bits, i think pass tokens are probably the best solution

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alternatively you can do what I proposed as a competitive rule in heavy gear:

  • winner of initiative decides either to activate the first group of the round, or to activate the last group of the round. Loser of initiative gets the other option.
native portal
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If I had a game with really differentiated factions I'd have em activate weird

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unit type initiative would be good

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Scouts and light vehicles first, vehicles next, light infantry, heavy infantry, support weapons etc

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You'd need all kinds of stuff to deal with duck and shoot though

midnight vine
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I like fucking with scoring

sand bobcat
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type initiative is a fun idea too. it warrants some careful categorization but some common wargame design failures on that front are just bad design imo

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also they're not Recon (???)

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but this faction's airdroppable hovertank is recon

midnight vine
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makes sense

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I understand

twin mountain
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It'll sort itself out

sand sonnet
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Kill team has a type of ARO you can only do when your opponent is activating more models than you.

weary cradle
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isnt that technically sorta how bolt action does it

twin mountain
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That's how @spring geyser is doing it too iirc

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Though personally I prefer decks of cards

sand bobcat
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oh true there's always Bag o Tokens (or card deck)

twin mountain
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Yeah if you wanna distribute X and Y evenly just randomize them eyy lmao

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This post brought to you by a sleepy mathematician

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Time to go take a shower

sand bobcat
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if you want to keep initiative as a mechanic, you could do something like, "winner gets Veto Tokens"

spring geyser
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Yeah I'm doing it that way
I considered doing a deck of cards but didn't want to because:

  • shaking up a bag of tokens is easier than shuffling a deck
  • I figured it would be helpful to physically mark which units have activated thus far and it makes sense to use the same thing as drawn to decide who gets to activate
sand bobcat
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spend a token to veto the card to a discard pile, which sits face up; once the main deck is done, the discard pile activates

tepid steeple
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Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack is built primarilyish for 3 player games and has a thing where units targetted for an attack will activate immediately after their attacker if they have not already activated before returning to alternating order

twin mountain
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Iirc you're using colors of dice?

spring geyser
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The other advantage of drawing from a deck or bag to determine who goes is that it's random, but each draw is not independent, so if someone goes the other person is more likely to go

twin mountain
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Which is fine if you're just using two colors

spring geyser
twin mountain
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Super workable then

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I was working on a game design the other day where like

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Teams of fantasy fighters, like a dnd versus game? And each unit had a bunch of activation cards corresponding to how fast they were

sand bobcat
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aah i can't get excited about game design i gotta spend the next like 50 minutes doing work stuff. THEN i have lunch and can design

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closing disporp

twin mountain
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So if you're a fast rogue you have 3 cards in the deck

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Oh you're a slow tank you have 1 card in the deck

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So it's like, tilted distribution

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It's still random but you can expect faster units to probably come out first

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Lots of interesting stuff you can do with this design

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Excites me

spring geyser
twin mountain
#

A related design is like - if each unit gets two actions per round, make each card one action

#

They put two cards in the deck

#

So you don't even get full turns

spring geyser
#

And again, because it's intrinsically weighted, it's not as frustrating as you might think random turn orders would be

#

Every time someone takes a turn they're less likely to get the next turn

twin mountain
#

Yeah it's a solid design

#

It does create some interesting effects if you do it vivi style

#

With every token working on every unit

#

Then you get a kind of lateral cheerleader effect

#

The more units you have just off in bumfuck nowhere, the higher your chance you can chain activate your two strong units right in the front at the start of the round

#

It's why I broaaadly prefer each unit having its own unique card

#

That way big armies are just messy

#

They're activating all over the place

#

And you can use officer effects and stuff to coral and transfer activations

#

Anyway Bag O' Turns is cool design and I definitely wanna play with it more

#

Shout-out to Aeon's End for doing it in a card game space

#

Fully deterministic deck orders but the turn order is random and that's where the variance comes from. Juicy

midnight vine
#

I'm trying to remember how the marvel skirimish game did it, I think it was you could just pass till you had equal activations remaining

twin mountain
midnight vine
#

ye, it's not bad, if a bit boring

twin mountain
#

Solid yeah

#

Means if you're out numbered you have control

weary cradle
midnight vine
#

there's a bit of fun stuff in there with skill expression

#

I said it earlier but I think in games where there's another way to score beyond just killing, making the other way to score gain more points if you have less models than the opponent is a cool comeback/team building mechanic/gimmick

spring geyser
#

That works if the assumption is that both players will have roughly the same number of units starting out but breaks down if that's not the case

#

As it ends up encouraging players to stick to "elite" options

twin mountain
#

Yeah cheerleading is a thing we all know from infinity

#

Anyway if you want to encourage people to bring big armies, vivi's style is great

#

The bigger the army the more fine control you have everywhere

spring geyser
#

Mine is company-scale, so yeah

#

Incidentally, I have realized the flames of war bases are perfect for my wargame, and will just dictate the use of bases matching those dimensions lol

#

Will need one additional kind of base for especially large units

sand bobcat
#

this is basically nothing and i'm late but I will say one more thing: the fun thing about "winning initiative just gives you an advantage on the randomized initiative" is that you don't have to re-roll initiative ties

#

we must end the era of games that do 2d6 opposed rolls on initiative and then force you to reroll ties ( 😠 )

#

just. fucking. normalized dice rolls where you reroll ties. inexcusable, [both of the games that I play]

sand bobcat
# twin mountain So you don't even get full turns

This has me imagining a vehicle game deck initiative like:

  • each vehicle has a manueverability rating which determines how many cards they get
  • each vehicle has a speed rating (this is how far they can move when they activate)
  • at a design level, you divide [intended total movement per round] by [maneuverability] to get Speed
twin mountain
#

You can do all kinds of things

#

That same design I mentioned - one idea I had was that you shuffle the activation cards and deal them facedown in a row

#

One player can peek at every even card

#

One player can peek at every odd card

#

Both players know half of what's gonna happen in what order

#

or maybe each unit is fast/normal/slow (or they have fast actions, normal actions, and slow actions). 3 cards per unit in the deck

#
  • fast units (or units wanting to use fast actions) activate on first card draw
  • normal units (or units wanting to use normal actions) activate on second card draw
  • slow units (or units wanting to use slow actions) activate on third card draw
#

so you have a stacked deck with 2-3 bands of speed that mix into each other

#

and like, if you draw some slow unit's cards early now it's a threat

#

it can activate at any time

#

you can see it coming

#

this whole design space is cool as hell

sand bobcat
#

😌

#

this might have good synergy with games with low model counts (stuff like Infinity and HGB which tend towards like, 15 small models on a 4x4 board) because you nominally have plenty of space to put stuff on the table if necessary

#

so blind deck --> visible hand accumulating potential activations, worst case scenario you could put the cards down in your deployment zone to free up your hands/keep things visible for the other player

#

i mean of course malifaux players would probably have even more, relevant experience to speak to that part of things

#

legion's got a bunch of tracking things going on too though AFAIK it goes the other direction where you play on a comparatively skinny table and then you use the extra space on conventional wargaming tables to put all your cards and stuff

sleek trail
#

Wow thats a lot of thoughts

#

My current plan for what i was working on was activation parity at the start of a match, i.e. everyone always starts with 7 dudes, 7 activations

#

So ill probably just end up going with pass tokens as that can adapt to shifting model counts as the game goes on

#

Two actions per activation, some units (power armor, mechs, tankettes) might get more than one activation at the cost of taking up multiple dude slots

#

I dont want random turn allocation because of how the CAR MECHANICS work

#

As thats already a fucky activation scheme

sleek trail
#

Swarm army was gonna have micro-squads that activate and act as one unit

#

Being skirmish-scale

twin mountain
#

strike trigger was 3v3

#

I don't make 'wargames' I make moba teamfight games, broadly

#

my current project taking up spare brain cycles is 2v2

#

so I can afford to put a lot of stuff into each unit

sand bobcat
#

hell yeah.

#

i'm cursing myself by trying to make something with one(1) detailed unit per side but also wanting to suggest in-universe consistency between it and the chaff. but I will post more off in GDD

sleek trail
#

More models more models more models

#

I actually do think chess has a pretty ideal model count

#

And type variety

sand bobcat
#

I like small model count games 😔

#

I will only paint double-digit models at once if each one takes like half an hour.

sleek trail
#

50% chaff, 1 leader, one Deathstar (queen), 2 defensive heavies (rooks), 2 weird restrictions (bishops), two oddball niche use units (knights)

sleek trail
#

7+cool car i think is what im going to go with as "standard"

orchid leafBOT
#

we find that 16-20 units gives a satisfying amount of things to consider whit each action

sleek trail
#

Ive found a good number of units in 16 count feel a bit superfluous

#

But most of my experience with that size is infinity

#

Where some units are supposed to be superfluous

#

So that might be why

orchid leafBOT
#

I don't think superfluous is the word i would use, but i do think having redundent units in a comp helps make it so your not compleataly wrong footed after the first casuality that can happen in tighter unit comps.

sleek trail
#

Fair

#

Hmm

sleek trail
#

Oooh! Pass tokens can have associated CAR ACTIONS

#

Like guys do.

#

So even if you pass you can still move your car

#

Maybe even the third pass token you take gives you some kind of move you normally cant take

#

As a catch up mechanic

sleek trail
# 
Every unit may take two actions on their turn. Some units may have access to unique actions based on their equipment or abilities.
Declare (and if necessary, perform) your first action. Units eligible to take a Reaction may declare their so in response to your first action. Then, declare your second action. Resolve the reaction and the second action simultaneously, with Face-to-face if required. If your second action provokes additional Reactions, resolve those after your second action.
Moving as your first action moves up to the unit’s first movement value. Moving as your second action moves up to the unit’s second
You can only measure line of sight for the unit’s second action from where your unit finished its movement, if it moved. You cannot shoot from any point during your movement! 
Units may react if you entered their line of sight or Reaction Zone during your movement, even if the active unit’s final position is not within the line of sight or reaction zone. ```
#

rough writeup of turn sequence and associated items. definitely needs some clearing up to actually be rulesworthy but it outlines the actual series of actions i think well

twin mountain
#

this is really complicated and weird

sleek trail
#

its me trying to like.

#

ok so in infinity. you do your first action, people declare aros, you declare your second action and you resolve the face to face

#

it makes sense in my head

#

if you move twice

twin mountain
#

why is the second reaction not also an interrupt

sleek trail
#

cause you cant react

twin mountain
#

here the first reaction interrupts the first action but the second reaction does not interrupt the second action

sleek trail
#

like if you move, then move again

#

you can provoke reactions again but you have no remaining actions to do anything about it

twin mountain
#

what do you mean do anything about it

sleek trail
#

your second action is allowed to be declared in reaction to Reactions

twin mountain
#

the first reaction still happens before the first action, and the second reaction happens after the second action. like your reaction algebra is different in both cases

sleek trail
twin mountain
#

do two moves

#

what happens, show me the sequencing

sleek trail
#

yeah doing that

twin mountain
#

in fact let's go to #game-design-discussion after this tbh

sleek trail
#

yeah, sorry

twin mountain
#

we should probably keep this thread for discussing wargames in general

sleek trail
#

We love wargames

#

ill do the second one in there

sleek trail
#

So i read a post recently by that fellow barcode linked a couple days ago

#

About wargames often repeating the same basic kinds if tactical layout (vietnam era warfare, swords and sandals fantasy, boats), just in different settings

#

And bemoaning the lack of different schema

#

And settings

#

Lemme see if i can find it

twin mountain
#

Omg was gonna mention Achron and they mentioned it

sleek trail
#

Im so glad that game exists. Probably never gonna play it

#

The tech approach is really compelling, though. I dont think i know any popular wargames that go tech-first. Tends to be setting that implies tech

#

I guess not many wargames really go for a core mechanic approach either, though

sand bobcat
#

My own core mechanic is mostly a feel thing, even. 😩

sleek trail
#

Do mechs count as a core technology?

sand bobcat
#

I want to say "no". In a lot of settings that I usually like, mechs don't even define how warfare is fought, they're just kind of a component of things that gets an inordinate amount of screen time.

#

Battletech is kind of bad for that because the only things that are largely unique to battlemechs is jumping and kicking.

#

I guess they can climb elevation a little better than ground vehicles?

#

Like, they decided everything could be 100 tons, and that meant tanks could be as large and heavy as mechs, and they'd be considered equally practical and equal candidates for fusion engines, and at that point you're justifying mechs against tanks even within the bounds of your own fiction.

hollow crypt
#

I think the one thing they have going for them is durability

sand bobcat
#

In Heavy Gear, mechs are smaller or equally large as tanks and are implicitly super-flexible machines (notice the similar justification) but there's nothing that really powerfully demonstrates their necessity, whether through model statlines or otherwise.

hollow crypt
#

compared to ground vehicles they're fuckin tough

#

mainly just because they don't get m-killed by everything

sand bobcat
#

Yeah, rules-wise CBT has tanks rolling a critical chance every time they're hit while battlemechs get internal structure. Though that also disappears in Alpha Strike...

#

I hear that the vehicle motive hit table even got revised for whatever reason, which made them less likely to get tracked. But that's a question for the btech thread I think

#

I kind of appreciate Iron Harvest's whole thing because they just don't ask the question and instead every vehicle is a mech

#

so mechs are the aesthetic and there's not like, this overarching presence of competing ground vehicles that aren't mechs

#

i haven't eaten an actual meal in like 4 hours which is probably a problem. i'm rambling without actually structuring my point. the rice is cooking i promise

sleek trail
#

Nah im following you

sand bobcat
#

i think that heavy gear needs to do some more work, both in setting and in game mechanics, to demonstrate why and/or where mechs are so good without just saying "oh Duelists (ace pilots) can only be in humanoid mechs [which is a rule that some factions break anyway] [I play the faction with spider-mechs, and intend to play another one that lets me make the weird bipeds Duelists]"

sleek trail
#

I love me some spider tanks

sand bobcat
#

in classic battletech, vehicles get crit a lot so you tend towards the fire support ones; but if it wasn't for that, well, they move and shoot in the same way with the same initiative and the same mechanics as mechs

#

in heavy gear blitz, mechs don't instantly die in melee, and that's about it

#

infantry are better differentiated from vehicles and mechs than mechs are differentiated from vehicles (and thus, they're like, fun to play/throw into forces as a conscious, gameplay-level decision)

sudden halo
#

I think where mechs count as a core technology is when you lean into the customization. Not that other vehicles can't be, but the modular nature of mech loadouts is one of the major cultural motifs(? not quite right) around them. Lancer feels like mechs because you're building them, Battletech's mechlab is a huge part of the appeal of the video games, though custom mechs don't come out on the tabletop much. Heavy Gear does a lot of it on the RPG side if not the wargame side.

sand bobcat
#

I feel like mechs are better RPG/video game fodder because they're always solo-operated things. In those contexts, it matters less if a mech does the same stuff as another vehicle, because what's important is that one player can get "in the role" of piloting one without having to somehow fill in the blanks for the rest of the crew.

native portal
sudden halo
#

Yeah - Walking fighter jets is a great "I'm the dude" excuse in setting compared to like a tank that needs a crew

native portal
#

so vehicles appear solely as like ambusher/ranged support/light support

#

lots of SRM/LRM boats and the occasional tank

#

rather than the nasty ass 90 ton tanks that actually exist

sand bobcat
#

Well, except for Living Legends. As pictured.

#

(it's 80 tons)

sudden halo
#

I think the turn based one you can't, but you can kick one for way too much affect

sand bobcat
#

Yeah. I figured that part was like, implicit crushing, though they still have full armour i think.

#

Which means until you actually melee them they're potentially beating the hell out of you like a mech can.

native portal
#

I mostly play the mechwarrior games so I don't see many tanks and when I do they fucking melt

sand bobcat
#

mhm.

native portal
#

But yeah it can be a vibe killer when you're like

#

'why the fuck are we building mechs again?'

sand bobcat
#

i think HG's "they're the most flexible" idea can work, though if they don't bring back turning rules for tanks in HGB 3.2 I'm going to be very irate

#

they also need to nerf hovertanks because a floating abrams is just as evasive as a mech that is so small that the pilot's head is behind the mech's head

#

also you can drop it out of an airplane

#

on the game design side of things, you can enforce peoplemechs' supposed utility by having objectives that require Rapid Use Of A Forklift

#

so, i dunno, a votoms can skate in and force open a door to the Valuable Goods Warehouse

#

preferable to shooting a hole through the whole warehouse with a tank cannon

#

related objectives: pick up the Valuable Box (instead of exposing tank crew to load it onto the tank) (there's a competitive-ruleset mission that requires this, it's nice enough)

sand bobcat
#

https://i.imgur.com/q8vg8WN.jpg Took me like 40 mins to do some black dots.
The good news is that the Martian Orange basecoat really neutralizes the Black Lotus so it's not literally blue.

Imgur
sudden halo
#

I love the Black Lotus, it's a perfect nighttime color or like moonlight shade.

#

But it's definitely not a neutral black

sand bobcat
#

it's so fucking blue. >:(

#

i just want someone to put out an actual neutral black contrastlike so I can paint these guys in peace.

#

the orange basecoat will do for now.

#

still impressed with myself on the maru though. good little guy.

#

proud of the decision to turn the cockpit indent thing into a gigantic cyber-eye-thing.

sudden halo
#

One of the GW ones is neutral I hear, but for black you can probably go with a standard color or like a dark charcoal grey. Most things you want black don't benefit too much from the contrast properties. As long as the model isn't primarily black.

sand bobcat
#

I gotta get some makeup brushes and then like, drybrush-highlight every colour or something.

sudden halo
#

Primarily black minis would help to have a good contrast like. Black is hard, it normally looks weird when natural light hits it unless you have some type of color tint. Kind of like white - you mostly want to use black adjacent colors and then maybe wash the recesses.

sand bobcat
#

thought for future heavygearlike.

  • tanks are the strongest but they are Non Action Guys. they stand in one fire lane and nothing goes there Or Else.
  • mechs do all the running around.
spring geyser
#

aesthetically, it's also big on weird biomechanical shit

sudden halo
#

Mechs are the most mobile things and are good enough against small arms to beat most infantry without dedicated weapons. They beat light vehicles and put the hurt on tanks if they can get side/rear/top armor shots.

#

They wither eventually to small arms though and are easily mission killed by anti armor weapons if caught in the open.

#

Infantry teams can be specialized for a lot of different things but are slow as Christmas unless they make themselves vulnerable to anti armor weapons by using transports.

#

If I do air, it works very similarly to mechs, except instead of being able to use cover it's just very hard to hit with certain weapons. Weaker to small arms and dedicated counters though.

#

Get even more mobility in exchange for basically always being in LoS and being kind of overcosted for its offensive potential.

left onyx
# sand bobcat i just want someone to put out an actual neutral black contrastlike so I can pai...

I got curious and poked a bit, Tale of Painters did a big spread of swatches, GW Black Legion and TAP Grim Black look slightly cool to me here, while GSW Deep Black looks very slightly warm, but all three more neutral than Vallejo Black Lotus
https://taleofpainters.com/2023/06/top-tip-visual-comparison-of-all-61-contrast-23-speedpaints-24-gsw-dipping-inks/

Tale of Painters
Stahly
ToP Tip: Visual comparison of all 61 Contrast, 23 Xpress Colors, 89...

In this updated post, you will find all my hand-painted and professionally photographed paint swatches for all 61 old & new Citadel Contrast paints, 24 Dipping Inks by Green Stuff World, Speedpaints 2.0 by The Army Painter, and now also all 23 Xpress Colors from Vallejo. This should make it easy to find the perfect "one coat" colour for your nex...

tepid steeple
#

black templar is good

sand bobcat
#

gsw paint... hm hm.

sand bobcat
#

pretty much true neutral according to the eye dropper, leans warm which is what I'm looking for

#

i refuse to buy GW paints. those stupid bottles are basically consumer-side sabotage

#

i mean, on top of being built by the Hobby Monopoly

autumn sun
#

GSW products are good but the company is on the scummy side.

#

Notably sent Vallejo a C&D over the use of "colorshift" in a line of paint. Also sold a texture roller that had the Black Sun on it; when called out they claimed to not know and eventually stopped selling it. Allegedly would decline orders from anyone with a chinese name, regardless of location in the world, for reasons that aren't clear (but could be either due to just outright racism or thinking someone in China would copy their work).

#

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTEk9WO0srE Also does a bunch of copyright nonsense.

YouTube
Hellstorm Wargaming
The Green Stuff World Scandal just got worse.

Try not to abuse IP law Challenge: Impossible.

Support a We Print Miniature Brush Rinser: https://https://weprintminiatures.com/

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sand bobcat
#

ah rip.

#

i remember the black sun thing, forget if that went anywhere.

#

well, shame to hear about that. i have a personal beef with AK for being kinda chuddy in presentation but the biggest beef is with that book they published about how to better depict...IRL massacres

sudden halo
#

Yeah, I've avoided them as well. I hear really good things about some of their stuff but there's enough choice I hadn't needed to try anything.

#

I've mostly got ProAcryl and ScaleColor stuff these days, with a smattering of Vallejo (Xpress and mediums) and Citidel (contrast and technicals), and I feel like my paint collection is in the best, most useful state its ever been in.

autumn sun
#

We're honestly spoiled for choices when it comes to paints.

#

Mine is similarly a scatter-shot of brands. Lots and lots of Reaper paints, some vallejo and GW, P3, Coat D'Arms.

sudden halo
autumn sun
#

Haha, god, yeah trying to paint with craft paint sure was a thing you did sometimes.

#

Well, still do for terrain anyway.

sudden halo
#

But also, it really is so nice. Living in more rural areas growing up it really was Walmart craft paint until we got a Hobby Lobby and then we had a few colors of Vallejo you could get. Well until it came out that they were donating to bad things and paying terrorists for Christian relics.

#

Painting techniques have come a long way to match though. Base, detail, wash, drybrush was top tier painting. Now there are so many more resources to learn from and the level of painting across the board is way higher.

#

You just don't really see the model that looks like it's melting from the mega thick paint that often these days.

autumn sun
#

Conversely, the bottom floor for painting is better because it's so easy to get a basic paint job down.

#

Stuff like Contrast means you can slap on a color and it's just...it looks fine! You can leave it there and it's good!

sudden halo
#

It's awesome. It's helped so much to get some friends into the hobby. Most of which have decided they liked painting and want to make it specifically a hobby, but having Contrastalikes out there as an option made the thought of painting a lot less scary.

spring geyser
#

One thing I always make sure to tell people about mini painting is "don't bother with metallics from anyone but vallejo"

sudden halo
#

I really like the ScaleColor Metal and Alchemy line of metallics.

#

But that's not bad advise, I've had a bad time with so many metallic paints over the years. I still haven't tried the ProAcryl ones even though I adore their other paints cause why chance it?

#

It's got to the point where my of my schemes don't incorporate metallics at all, lots of "polymer" looks or NMM attempts.

spring geyser
#

I'm not sure exactly what's going on with Vallejo metallics that makes them so good but they always create a far nicer, more even finish that looks way more like actual metal
I assume the particles in suspension are much smaller than in other metallic paints

sudden halo
#

That's usually it, really fine pigments.

spring geyser
#

Taking what that one article said to heart about how SF wargames tend to just be WW2 or Vietnam in space, I think I'm gonna actually emphasize the fact that EWAR is supposed to be an incredibly important aspect of war in the setting and make comms and radar and stuff actual mechanics

sand bobcat
spring geyser
#

Comms stuff actually naturally slots in with my emphasis on OFFICERS having to ORDER units to do stuff

autumn sun
#

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNHPAjkTDsA today in "why didn't I fucking think of that."

YouTube
Black Magic Craft
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sleek trail
sudden halo
sudden halo
spring geyser
#

But yeah, the reliance on orders to do even really basic stuff like "move your units" means naturally if there's a way of preventing orders from getting to a unit, that unit is pretty crippled

sand bobcat
spring geyser
# spring geyser Taking what that one article said to heart about how SF wargames tend to just be...

rough concept draft of one such EWAR mechanic:

Command units have a TRANSMIT STRENGTH characteristic that dictates the transmission strength of their comms.
The effective transmission strength relative to a unit is equal to the transmitter's TRANSMIT STRENGTH, minus the distance, minus noise from jamming (more on that in a bit), and minus terrain effects it has to transmit through
If the effective transmission strength is less than 12, when issuing orders, player must roll 2d6 under effective transmission strength for unit to actually recieve the orders

Jamming works similarly, with a JAMMING STRENGTH that decreases with distance and terrain effects
Jamming affects the RECEIVER, not the transmitter!
If a unit is jamming and an order is issued to a unit that can be affected, the effective transmit strength is reduced by the effective jamming strength

#

gonna work comms relays in there too

#

this is a rough approximation of IRL radio comms jamming, with the 2d6 roll in there to cover stuff like operators being able to filter out jamming noise

sudden halo
#

Played some rounds of infinity this weekend. I forgot how much I like it, despite it's problems.

#

Also tried alternating activations Infinity, worked without major incident, though we played pretty small demo-type forces and the CodeOne rules.

#

Broad conclusions are it is a way slower game, and it loses some of its vibe. You cant quite try to execute a plan like you can normally. It does feel good to be able to answer things, but I don't know yet if I feel like some of the tradeoffs are worth it.

#

The match went really one-sided, I had a single drop troop with a spitfire that failed to die, even being directly activated against 3-4 times. My opponents dice were ridiculously bad.

#

So it wasn't really a representative experience.

sand bobcat
#

Well, that is a pretty Infinit-y experience,

#

getting erased by a single jump troop.

sudden halo
#

True, it's the exact thing that alternating activations should help with

#

But the dice gods said nay, this shall just feel like slow infinity today Sataniahaha

sleek trail
#

Love infinity

#

Its so fucking stupid its perfect

#

Genuinely

sudden halo
#

It manages to capture the gunfight feeling more than a lot of things do, though in that cinematic "we're watching John Activeturn" way, to steal Barc's phrase.

weary cradle
#

doin some more work on my untitled SEA fantasy skirmish game
wanted a fairly simple wound system for it but with somethin more interestin than a minus to all stats

image0.jpg
trail fulcrum
#

Oooh!

#

Are there any 'heroic' stuff?

#

Wait hmmm

#

Using tokens to track the denied action?

weary cradle
weary cradle
trail fulcrum
spring geyser
#

Breaking out my pdf copy of the NAVAIR Electronic Warfare and Radar Systems Engineering handbook to review my knowledge of the subject before trying to develop radar mechanics, lol

weary cradle
#

theyll all get like an ability to ignore getting wounded 1/battle, determined by faction

sand bobcat
trail fulcrum
#

Like actual leadership stuff

#

(They bought the datukship didn't they)

sudden halo
# sand bobcat https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-sy3s-liyscWfOWMAMlNl1X0WHpna29f/view what do y...

I like most of this. My personal feedback on each change;

Rerolls: I'm still of the mind that we should remove the reroll decision point as much as possible, even if it means something like Vet gives +F on everything, but the point of this doc is minimum changes to base rules to make the thing happen.

Reactions: I think we can probably allow the jamming reaction on the active players turn in response to an order, since that hardly gets used anyway. Other than that its fine, good changes. Might allow some units to Fire Mission more than once based on a keyword or something if I was making a pass at the whole rosted to go with this.

Traits: Gut feeling is it nerfs precise too much compared to Burst, but with the Agile change thats probably okay and most Burst weapons needed help anyway. Everything else is good balance wise, though I might consider ways to get rid of the exceptions on Burst and AP to remove exceptions bloat. Best I can come up with is a separate keyword that allows the 1 minimum damage instead of it being built in to AP, but that's out of the scope of the doc.

Weapons:
All good changes. Panzerfausts will still suck, probably? The accuracy and AP changes help them out, maybe enough to get them out of the dumpster.

#

For 1.5 pages double spaced I don't know if there's any way to do better. You understand the game in practice better than the designers a lot of the time.

sand bobcat
#

oh, for the record all rerolls are now just +F, but I also updated taht document like 5 times after posting it

#

the jamming thing is reasonable, it wouldn't be a lot of space/complexity to jsut add it in as another reaction exception. As for fire missions, basically the idea is to further narrow the space in which you can have Huge Fire Missions without completely rewriting the fire mission section. IMO, that needs to be done, but is out of the scope of "i want to fix as much as possible while introducing as little extra rules as possible".

#

In practice, the Burst thing just means that rotary cannons only get +2d6 in optimal range, which (after like 5 different attempts at doing differently) ended up being the cleanest way to keep them in line.

sudden halo
#

That's what came to mind, but with their piddly damage I don't know that they even need that. RLs would but they lost +R on advanced.

sand bobcat
#

oh, as for weapons. Yeah, PZs and HGs are probably still bad, but I think being able to, EG, Stable + combat speed use those stinkers Directly at 12" range will open up a lot of functionality for them

sudden halo
#

Though that's also more of a look at the whole roster thing. Rotaries feel overcosted and wimpy right now for the most part, but I understand that thats because they were super dominant for like 15 generations of Heavy Gear

sudden halo
sand bobcat
#

Like IMO, if you can at least get 2d6 on a dam10 hand grenade on the primary target, without having to abandon all hope of cover, then at least the "free" hand grenades might see some use.

#

Plus the standard defense setup of "cover and ECM+" is just 3d6 +1F instead of 4d6, which should do a lot to make 2d6 weapons actually stand a chance to hit.

#

welll, actually, that's not necessarily true, you should still have the same chance to outroll the grenade 🤔 just less of a maximum roll for the defender.

sudden halo
#

If you changed ECM+ its not in the doc you linked, it'd still be 4d6. 4d6+1F if agile.

sand bobcat
#

ah fuck, thanks.

#

Okay, updated it. Conscript is now -1d6, railgun is dam5/6/7. Went a little feral with HG/PZ rangeband buffs.

#

At 3-9/18 you can definitely hit something with PZs and HGs.

sudden halo
#

ECM and Smoke nerfs are good, but I think they should be compensated by making the order pop smoke or raise ECM without it costing an action.

#

Would also make regular ECM carriers way more attractive, instead of making it a points sink.

sand bobcat
#

true.

sand bobcat
#

https://litko.net/collections/miniature-bases-and-base-bottoms/products/miniature-bases-rectangular-20x30mm-1-5mm-plywood-100
😌

LITKO Game Accessories
Miniature Bases, Rectangular, 20x30mm, 1.5mm Plywood (100)

Laser cut precision. Same size every time. No warping like you can get with injection molded bases. Made of durable 1.5mm microplywood. This intermediate thickness keeps the focus on your mini, not the base. A little difficult to pick up by the base. Individual pieces... no sprue to cut away, no flash. Less work to bas

native portal
sand bobcat
#

gotta figure out how to order this without spending six thousand dollars in shipping.

#

pain pekoe.

image.png
native portal
#

Oooof

sudden halo
#

yikes

#

a lot of litko stuff is on amazon if you can stomach padding daddy bezos' pockets

#

not sure about those specifically

hollow crypt
#

if it's a US problem, there's theoretically package forwarding services from the US to canada which might be cheaper?

weary cradle
#

hmm thinkin abt how to minimize size advantage for my skirmish game
current thought is to give smaller-sized gangs reactivations, thus allowing them to match up to the larger ones, but im worried abt the logistics for fights that aren't 1v1s or 2v2s

autumn sun
#

I have no idea what game I'd use these for but I still want 50.

flat crow
#

You could probably use them in turnip

#

Or as gloomspite proxies

sand bobcat
#

they are gnot gnelves. they are gnot gnoblins.

calm mantle
sudden halo
sand bobcat
#

Hell yeah.

sleek trail
#

Not to say that you shouldnt do more, but dont feel like you have to

weary cradle
#

oh fair yea
im not doin this cuz i hafta, i just think a 3/4-player free-for-all would be fun and i wanna see if i can make a game that allows that

sand sonnet
#

Moonstone handles multiplayer reasonably well.

sand bobcat
#

Depending on how competitive your game is, I think multiplayer is easier to handle than activations.

#

It mostly gets more complicated. You could make it practically symmetrical in terms of balance, but most easy routes to 2v1 or what not make it a 1v1 game where one player is two people instead.

weary cradle
#

ic ic
was moreso thinkin of handlin 1v1v1s and the like

weary cradle
sand sonnet
#

The objective of the game is to pick up Moonstone, whoever has the most after 4 turns wins and you always play so there's not an even distribution among the players, so you're either ahead and defending, or chasing for the piece of Moonstone that will kick you up over your opponents.

#

It also reduces the model count.

#

A normal 1v1 game is 6 models a side, 1v1v1 is 4, and 1v1v1v1 is 3 models.

#

So same number of models, just more chaos in the scramble to grab stuff.

tepid steeple
#

was briefly checking out turnip28 and am very pleased to know you can play a bunch of mutineers carrying around an effigy of execution that lets you encourage the enemy to mutiny themselves

weary cradle
#

like 1v1 is 4-8, 1v1v1 is 4-6, 1v1v1v1 is 4-5

sleek trail
#

Something im planning for my fixed unit count game is having some units represented by multiple models

#

To have a "horde" faction

#

They activate as one unit but are basically a mini-squad

#

In a skirmish game

weary cradle
#

ah so sorta like maleghast thralls

sleek trail
#

Yeh

weary cradle
#

i just think differing squad sizes is a neat playspace to fuck around in
idk maybe i dont even have to close the activation gap if i tune the balance right

sand sonnet
spring geyser
#

Does anyone know of any examples of wargames with in-depth EWar mechanics? I'd like to reference them for my own (even if I'm mostly hewing to realistic EWar I'd like to see how others handle it)

tepid steeple
#

infinity has some ewar and rules are free

calm mantle
sand bobcat
#

I like infinity's ewar, though for game design purposes it's probably easier to explain than to read.
Heavy gear's cover system basically lets you designate terrain pieces as "hardEST cover" that blocks sensor/ewar "line of sight" on top of bullets.

tepid steeple
#

honestly just didn't feel like I knew it well enough to explain it well haha

spring geyser
#

Also, I had an Interesting™️ idea for a mechanic that would enhance the feeling of "issuing orders and your troops execute them":

  • When you issue an order to a unit, you can also provide them with a MOVEMENT TARGET. If you do, designate a point on the board as the MOVEMENT TARGET.
  • Whenever a unit activates, if they have an active MOVEMENT TARGET, they must move a distance up to their SPEED and at least half of their SPEED. They must end this movement closer to the MOVEMENT TARGET than they begun.
  • if a unit ends its movement within 1" of its MOVEMENT TARGET, the MOVEMENT TARGET is resolved; remove it from the board and the unit is no longer compelled to move until it has a new MOVEMENT TARGET assigned
#

This would make it so units can continue to move on rounds they aren't issued orders as long as you designated the place for them to move to in advance

midnight vine
#

interesting

sudden halo
#

little more painting today, got started on another gear. also finished basing some infinity stuff i'd painted 90% of like 5 years ago

20231102_171823.png
spring geyser
#

EWar really is so fucking cool and it's said so many games just handwave it

#

i guess because most people really do not have the frame of reference to understand it

native portal
#

and people find 'not being allowed to do X' annoying

#

you get similar complaints about good stealth rules

left onyx
#

When you think about it, half of ewar is stealth and anti-stealth over the extended EM spectrum

sleek trail
#

Also i feel like ewar is still very new

spring geyser
#

yeah

#

like I said, most people really do not have the frame of reference to understand it

left onyx
#

And the other spicier half is "fuck your computers/electronics"

spring geyser
#

(hacking isn't EW)

sleek trail
#

I mean in some senses it can be

left onyx
#

Oh I mean like hardware-unfriendly energy weapons, not software side stuff

spring geyser
#

Wacky stuff like Gate Pull Off is so cool though once you understand how it works

#

ah

sleek trail
#

In the sense that brute force jamming is technically a hack

sand bobcat
#

I doubt it has much to do with trying to do something realistic. Shooting has been around for like 150 years and none of our games do it realistically.

spring geyser
#

("window stealing" or "gate pull-off" is a deceptive self-protection jamming technique which relies on the way radars maintain target-lock by filtering signals outside a specific "window" around the target's return; the SP-Jammer projects an image of the target's radar return over the target, gradually brightens it to be brighter than the actual return, and then manipulates the image to pull away from the target's real location, tricking the locking radar into following the image. Once the target is outside the locking radar's window, the SP-Jammer shuts off and suddenly the locking radar doesn't see anything at all because it's filtering out the target return!)

sand bobcat
#

like, for example, could that be turned into a coherent game mechanic when most games are well within visual range? ;v

left onyx
#

Though anti-radiation weapons are also arguably in the ewar umbrella too

spring geyser
#

Yeah, that's also a thing, EW is almost by definition a beyond-visual-range thing
most radars will burnthrough at ranges generally considered "visual"

#

which is why for my game I have my maps effectively represent 6km x 9km

sleek trail
#

I think that offmap abilities can be allowed but only if players make units for em

sand bobcat
#

for something at least vaguely related to ewar, I think you could do something along the lines of...

  • ewar affecting guided weapons
  • ewar affecting indirect weapons targeting things outside of LOF
#

or yeah, that could work too, offmap support stuff being barred by being at some ewar disadvantage

#

i have vague plans to rip off nebulous for my mech game - missiles being dramatic high-damage limited-ammo things that are entirely dependent on the state of ewar

spring geyser
#

oh, im doing that for my game too, lol

sand bobcat
#

(have some conventional vehicles be satellite-dish-looking nonsense, tanks can shoot at those instead of just shooting at the enemy mech, etc.)

sleek trail
#

Ive been thinking if i want to include battlefield hacking and/or ewar in my game

spring geyser
#

battlefield hacking is a fun way to flavor magic spells for a sci fi setting but it is in no sense realistic lol

sleek trail
#

Its skirmish and dudes scale so easy to not have

sand bobcat
#

i think that if you're making a technically-oriented game (ie, one that's not really dependent on models; ie, a hex-and-chits game), you have a lot of options

sleek trail
spring geyser
#

i think the closest thing to "battlefield hacking" IRL is deceptive jamming

sleek trail
#

Also watch dogs cool

spring geyser
#

given Gate Pull-Off is effectively a mirror image spell, lol

sleek trail
#

Also also i think it could be a cool paradigm to gate ATGM usage until later game, you have to hack off ecm

sand bobcat
#

(the other trouble with off-map support stuff in a models-based game is that it's creating importance for stuff that's basically independent of the models themselves. Some people are cool with it but it's usually pretty limited because those games are oriented towards making on-table models do stuff)

sleek trail
#

Yeah

#

I wanna move little guys around

sand bobcat
#

infinity's hacking stuff is pretty much dependent on dropping repeaters everywhere; there's a "Spotlight" program that basically acts as a shooting buff implying that having network repeaters around lets you track enemy troop movements and give your guys an edge against them

sleek trail
#

It also lets you used guided stuff

sand bobcat
#

yeah, that & some very specialized, almost-universal missile bots are as far as it gets outside of the "hacking" paradigm

spring geyser
#

I also think a lot of "hacking" stuff would be better flavored as conventional EW but your average nerd knows WAAAAAAAY less about EW than "hacking" (even though they know very little about hacking)

sleek trail
#

Gotta face it

#

Hacking is sexier

sand bobcat
#

well i think there's some precedent for impressing random nerds with simple ewar ideas

#

if they're not used to realistic ewar concepts mattering, then doing anything approximating that is a novelty.

spring geyser
#

I think a lot of the math of EW is actually quite easy to gamify too

#

convention is to use log units for everything, and everything multiplies, so you end up with everything just being a + or - in log units

sand bobcat
#

aside: imagining somehow spoofing the radar signal of a 15m tall mech

#

no good sir we lost track of the mountain

spring geyser
#

it should be fairly easy if you can accurately-enough simulate how radar would bounce off of it

sand bobcat
#

just like, do math with log removed, then translate the final number to 10^n?

sleek trail
#

Do not make me do anything more complicated than addition

#

Make a table

spring geyser
#

the sensitivity of radio systems is also in log units

#

the way I'm using it is to re-define units to be relative to "attenuation of radio signal through 100 meters of air" since that's the distance 1" represents in my game

that way i can have the power attenuation just be 1 per 1"

#

My current rough sketch of how comms will work is:

  • A unit's comms systems will have a POWER, SENSITIVITY, and FILTERING stat
  • A unit will only be able to pick up transmissions where the RECEIVED POWER is equal to or higher than the SENSITIVITY; RECEIVED POWER is the POWER of the transmitter minus the distance (with some terrain counting extra for this)
  • when jamming, jamming systems also have a POWER; if the RECIEVED POWER from the jammer exceeds the RECIEVED POWER from the transmitter, the receiving unit must roll 1d6 + FILTERING; if the result exceeds the difference between the recieved power from the jammer and from the transmitter, it successfully receives the message
#

I might make jamming depend somewhat on the relative position of the jammer, transmitter, and reciever, as well

sand bobcat
#

this could be cool, though as a note, giving a piece of electronics 3 stats in a tabletop game feels like ewar may very well be the entire game in and of itself

spring geyser
#

yeah I mentioned before that I plan on making EW kind of the Main Focus of my game system

sand bobcat
#

ah, understood. nice then.

#

to your question way earlier about games that do ewar - i feel like I've heard of a modern air combat game that did a lot of this because it was trying to be realistic, but I don't remember its name. @native portal does this game exist

spring geyser
#

which makes a whole lotta sense from a flavor perspective too since almost all the weapons are lasers, particle beams, hypervelocity coilguns, or guided missiles

native portal
#

dudes who can't see each other shooting random oo-rah names missiles at each other like two kids making up new rules in a game of shootout

#

nuh uh I have a forcefield

sand bobcat
#

bro you telling me you don't enjoy two wings of fighters launching six-billion-dollar missiles at each other, J-turning, and then waiting 1-3 minutes until both they and the other fighter wing are dead?

native portal
#

uhh well my uhhh m-merlin missile goes through forcefields

spring geyser
#

lmao

sand bobcat
#

It is good that war is so cringe, lest we grow too fond of it.

native portal
spring geyser
#

I personally think it's really cool when you understand how it all actually works but it's so removed from ordinary people's frame of reference

native portal
#

this should be a fucking wargaming motto

#

I would describe air-to-air combat as a niche genre in the already niche wargaming

#

I have my own niches, like certain time periods that no one wargames

sand bobcat
#

The Check Your 6! rules and supplements will let you fight any aerial engagement from WWII through 2000 or so.
there is no fucking way this ruleset is realistic

native portal
sand bobcat
#

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/34413/airwar-c21-2nd-edition okay, I think i found it
also lol someone just linked it with "Enjoyable." as their comment

BoardGameGeek
AirWar: C21 (2nd Edition)

From the publisher's website:

AirWar C21 (2nd edition)makes the complex subject of modern air combat so disgustingly simple that it is ideal for beginners and experienced gamers alike. After a couple of games reference to the rule book will become occassional with players concentrating on shooting down their opponents rather than ploughing thro...

native portal
#

I see nothing wrong here

sand bobcat
#

god, fuck team yankee

native portal
#

while I'm meme posting

napoleon.png
sand bobcat
#

cripes, lol

#

the realism thing is honestly kind of whatever, what bothers me is it's vaguely modern and hard to get away from Wow Cool IRL Militaries, which is...especially ghastly in a modern context when you can get Israel Flag Dice for your IDF Army

native portal
#

Yeah there's a reason I've not played modern wargames in a while

sand bobcat
#

anyway i think airwar C21 is the game I was thinkign about but it's time to check if it has anything ewar-y

#

fuck that's good actually

pic5084164.webp
#

pipecleaners as missiles + trails

#

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/58227/AirWar-C21-max this game is unfortunately 12.17usd that I am unwilling to spend but you track missiles between turns and I know someone around here has played either this game before or another game like it. maybe #tabletop-discussion would help you track them down

native portal
sand bobcat
#

lol 10min15s in he drops a tape measure on the board and wrecks the missile locations

#

i'm hearing: while missiles are on their way in, surface radars can deactivate their radar to try to shake (presumably antirad) missiles (5+ to lose the missile). so that's something

twin mountain
native portal
#

thank you senpai

hollow crypt
#

oh wait lmao

#

well I stand by it

#

Missile threat is very fun with like

#

50's to 70's era planes

#

past that the cool mechanics stop existing

next pilot
native portal
#

in that I have actually read it

#

50s-70s is still in the cool missiles and dogfight era

native portal
sand bobcat
#

oh shit forgot i have heavy gear tomorrow

hollow crypt
#

I've played mostly in that era, but the few modern (ish) games I've played I was very unimpressed by

trail fulcrum
#

I walk in with a simple plan

#

look at my opponent's army and figure something otu in like 20 minutes

#

well the 5 minutes before deploymnet

#

and then try to outscore them

autumn sun
sudden halo
#

Acherons fall looks pretty awesome

#

It won't fill my fleet battle need but it might cover my space captain one.

autumn sun
#

I've joked that naming-wise it clearly has connection to the since-closed MMO Asheron's Call.

sudden halo
#

I thought the same thing lol

spring geyser
#

There should be a sci fi naval warfare game that isn't naval warfare in space

#

Like actual naval warfare

flat crow
#

Isn't that battlegroup?

spring geyser
#

No I mean
Like on an ocean

flat crow
#

Oh

#

Dystopian wars?

#

That's definitely scifi and is actual ocean navies

#

Though it may not be the sci-fi flavor you want

spring geyser
#

Interesting, though not quite what I was thinking of

#

Also, another fun fact about how using log units in radio calculations makes them surprisingly easy to translate to tabletop mechanics:
A signal that is half the absolute strength of another signal will be exactly 3 decibels lower (decibels being log units)
So I can have it so when you attempt to scan multiple enemies at a time, you just get -3 to radar power for each enemy beyond the first

spring geyser
#

I should make jamming more effective against targets that have been spotted/identified to represent narrowing of the jammer bandwidth on the target receiver's frequency range

sudden halo
#

Needs something color wise to break it up I think. Maybe finishing the basing will do that though.

sand bobcat
#

Could do more (small) panels in purple?

#

It's bright enough to stand out without obliterating the dark blue, I'd say.

#

But definitely finish the base first. Subtle schemes are sensitive imo.

sudden halo
#

I could. The purple toes are mostly a nod to all the old HG art, but it's a great color. Thinking lighter gray for the joints, and maybe something on the v engine. The base should go a long way though.

#

There are a lot of small panels that look kind of decorative I could pop out in some way.

twin mountain
#

Does each player just control one ship?

sleek trail
#

Wait this is infinity

#

What the fuck

#

Hopefully more supported than CBs other kickstarters

spring geyser
#

I'm like
Actually considering using d10s instead of d6s for my wargame

hollow crypt
#

d10s are cool

weary cradle
#

d10s do be cool

next pilot
#

CBs?

spring geyser
#

Actually, I do think I will stick with d6s
I read a paper on the statistical analysis of dice systems in tabletop games and think I came up with a fairly cool one which gives the statistical qualities I want:
Roll a number of d6 equal to [rating], then take the second highest. Add the number of sixes you rolled to the result as well

twin mountain
spring geyser
#

Yeah, 2 will be the minimum

sudden halo
#

Hopefully there's more Nomad ships coming in the stretch goals. I'm pretty excited about the game but it's bunk that the spaceship faction has only one ship and it's in an expansion.

sleek trail
#

yeah

#

nomads bestmads

sand bobcat
#

(the one on the left got gibbed by the tank's omnidirectional-grenade-launcher weapon. rest in fucking pieces)

sudden halo
sand bobcat
#

10 total vs 31 😩

#

the voltigeur is the only good heavy tank, but he took two and this one was completely isolated, so I killed it (last attack being a 3-damage rear melee by one of those marus, lol)

#

i've kind of changed my tune on my kadesh duelist, I think it's actually worth it so long as you very specifically maximize its output the way I did

sleek trail
#

Hell yeab

spring geyser
#

Okay, draft of everything that might appear on a unit card for Daylight Stars:

📎 message.txt
#

I'll get to an actual layout soon-ish

#

note I renamed DISCIPLINE to QUALITY to better encompass UNMANNED units, and eliminated the concept of observation rolls; visual spotting is now binary, you either can or can't, but you need an actual LOCK ON to do AIMED FIRE now

#

guided missiles will be handled entirely separately from other weapons, need to work out how exactly though

#

Also, incidentally, I mentioned the Elysian Commonwealth having some special rules to represent their bloated, inefficient, nepotistic chain of command - here are two:

  • BLOATED BRASS: Elysian Commonwealth forces must take two OFFICER units where they would ordinarily be allotted one. Elysian Commonwealth OFFICER units are generally subpar compared to other factions.
  • NEPOTISTIC CAREERISM: For each OFFICER unit, designate them as YOUNG or OLD. In the ECAF, it's a guarantee that any young OFFICER you see is the relative of someone important, making a brief stop up on their way to higher, cushier positions; give YOUNG OFFICERS -1 to RECOVERY, to represent their unpreparedness for the role. Not all OFFICERs are someone important's kid, though; but the ones from the ranks of the common folk have a long, grinding career ahead to have a chance of advancing, and quickly learn that showing initiative means you get blamed when things go wrong and get the credit stolen when things go right; give OLD OFFICERS -1 to INITIATIVE.
sleek trail
#

Will all factions have factionwide special rules?

sand bobcat
#

"must take too many commanders" is fun

sleek trail
#

Hey, its redundancy

sand bobcat
#

One thing I'd say is I strongly endorse the card games/lancer/infinity practice of keeping lore text separate from rule text. You did say this is well before any formatting so no worries there. In my own documents, I put all lore and examples in italics.

spring geyser
sleek trail
#

Flavor text rules but it should be distinguishable

#

But it is the best way to do lore in games imo

#

Lets people put a world together in their head

#

As they learn rules

spring geyser
#

yeah

#

it's only mixed in here because I wanted to convey the in-universe logic behind it in a discord message

autumn sun
#

Otherwise you get shit like Mordheim where there's no breakdown on reading things, leading to stuff like the Sword of Rezhebel spell being the title, described as "flaming" in the description, and not at all mentioning it as being a flame weapon in the actual rules portion.

sleek trail
#

Turnip28 has a couple fun asides in the rules that elucidate lore

#

My favorite being "snobs do not block line of sight (they tend to be ducking)"

autumn sun
#

That's a good example, yeah

#

Or how hobgolbins in WHFB 6th ed could "lap around" enemies because they're sneaky back-stabbing gits, and they illustrate that in the rules.

sleek trail
#

Generally i think if its not denoted in a seperate space than the rules text specifically it should be stuff that doesnt have any possible implication

#

And also a bit funny

autumn sun
#

Yeah. Gotta inject a little humor into things.

sleek trail
#

Wargames are inherently silly

twin mountain
#

jangles keys to distract her

twin turret
#

haha

#

looks neat

twin mountain
#

Okay it's 1 to 3 ships that makes sense

#

Each ship looks super intense to manage

sleek trail
#

That seems a good amount for a ship game

twin mountain
#

It's a captain level game

#

Yeah

sleek trail
#

Esp one as complex as this one

#

Real Corvus Belli moment

#

Tbh

twin mountain
#

It's got a proper naval combat game turn structure

#

No igyg

tender wadi
#

As in phases?

sleek trail
#

I dont think they are actually meaningfully married to igyg

#

Its just that like

#

Thats how infinity works, its tuned to be that

sand bobcat
#

they're working on some fantasy game too, but i dunno what its activation structure is.

twin mountain
#

Yeah phases

sleek trail
#

But like, A! was AA iirc

twin mountain
#

Simultaneous phase stuff

#

And yeah aristeia was AA

sleek trail
#

Shame its oop

twin mountain
#

Tabletop sim is never out of print uwu

sand bobcat
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Are phases a naval game standard? 🤔 interesting

midnight vine
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oh is that game dead?

sleek trail
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It never appealed to me but it looked rad

sleek trail
#

Which makes sense tbh it always felt like it had a more limited lifespan

twin mountain
sleek trail
#

Every naval game ive seen has phases

twin mountain
#

Many many naval games have stuck to the genre standard of simultaneous movement planning then alternating shooting

sleek trail
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Either AA ones or simultaneous ones

twin mountain
#

It's a structure I basically think of as Naval Game Phases

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Even the star wars x-wing and armada games use it

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You simultaneously dial movements then activate shots in pilot skill order

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It's just, like, good

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The first game to do it struck gold and nobody wants to break something that fucks

sleek trail
#

It hits the feel of space boats properly

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Imo

twin mountain
#

Simultaneous movement planning fucks

sleek trail
#

I wonder what the first game to do it was

twin mountain
#

Get that exceed energy

sleek trail
#

Probably a historical

twin mountain
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First game I knew that did it was Full Thrust

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Which was aaaancient

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Space penises from the 80s

tender wadi
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I'm pretty sure it's even older than that, chances are this was based on Actual War Games by The Navy

twin mountain
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Wouldn't be surprised

sleek trail
#

Does dystopia wars do phases?

sudden halo
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Even ones that don't have you planning simultaneously tend to have movement separate from shooting. I think it fits vehicle combat a lot better.

midnight vine
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in the navy

tender wadi
sleek trail
#

Being the only not-space-boats naval fantasy game i know

tender wadi
sand bobcat
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alternating shooting with immediately-applied results might potentially fix my issues with stuff like battletech's handling of Phases

tender wadi
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What are your issues with Battletech?

sand bobcat
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oh i have many,

tender wadi
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I personally thought that game did things well actually

sand bobcat
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i guess in battletech simultaneous shooting isn't too awful because almost nothing dies in one hit

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and technically you're supposed to declare everything, THEN resolve everything

tender wadi
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Yeah, do people not do that?

sand bobcat
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sorry, i'm zoning out all of a sudden, stressing about something else

tender wadi
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Ah, okay

sand bobcat
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it's one of those things where it mostly just bothers me from a feel standpoint

sand bobcat
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2.5 hours later but: the way we were playing alpha strike was the worst possible implementation, where you'd resolve all of your shooting first if you lost initiative, adn then the other person would plot their own shooting afterwards

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but i'm pretty sure that's not standard play so it's unfair to hold that against AS

tender wadi
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That is completely not how you're supposed to do that

sudden halo
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That's how the people I play with do it too. It's not the best but I don't mind it too much. Or at least it's far down my list of things that bother me in Battletech.

sudden halo
#

Little bit of work on a father knight while I watched a movie. Trying to knock out some of these models I've had on a shelf half painted for 5+ years before getting into new ones.

20231105_012516.jpg 20231105_012531.jpg rn_image_picker_lib_temp_9c196916-e3a1-491e-bf4a-2bdc373c4751.jpg
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PanO are pretty fun to paint. I initially only got them cause I started with Icestorm and wanted a demo force to rope my friends into the game, but they've grown on me a lot. Some times you just want heavy infantry with BS14 and no fancy tricks.

sleek trail
#

Bah

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Anvil of an army

sand bobcat
#

thinking about making a Heavy-Gear-style game and thinking about how Infinity has a lot of "probably inspired by Something Else" models and I wonder how much wargame design comes from "I want to use X design in another setting".

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of course at some point it might also just be "I want to compete in this area", like when infinity released what is basically the battletech Catapult as an Ariadnan TAG.

spring geyser
sleek trail
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Damn

sleek trail
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im curious

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might be better in #game-design-discussion though

sand bobcat
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glad to see the progress 😌

spring geyser
sleek trail
#

what is movement measured in?

#

whats the difference between tracked wheeled and legged movement

spring geyser
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Wheels have more trouble with rough terrain but are typically faster, legs care least about rough terrain

#

Movement is measured in inches

sleek trail
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i wonder if that might be better suited as a trait on the unit than as something attached to movement

sand bobcat
spring geyser
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lmao neat

sleek trail
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We need more fucked settings

#

Underwater is a prime space for games and yet

tepid steeple
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yeah

spring geyser
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revised for compactness and clarity

2023-11-05_16_00_45-Daylight_Stars_Wargame_Rules_-_Google_Docs_Mozilla_Firefox.png
sand bobcat
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oh wow, i didn't know you had this much going already :o

sleek trail
#

How many units a side are you planning?

spring geyser
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roughly company-scale so like 15-20?

sleek trail
#

Will all of them be as complex?

spring geyser
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Yes, though you'll see a lot of recurring statlines (e.g. all or most of a faction's vehicles having the same radio comms, for example)

sleek trail
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Makes sense

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Im just a bit overwhelmed, lmao. Hard sci fi is right

spring geyser
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like half of it is the electronics, and that's something i think will be unfamiliar to most wargamers, lol

sleek trail
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Indeed

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I think once i have another statline to compare it to it will make a lot more sense to me, figure out where it sits in relation to other options

sand bobcat
#

I find numbers to be straightforward, but type stuff is tougher I think. Interested to see where it goes.

sleek trail
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Or rather

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Roll over

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Values

sand bobcat
sleek trail
#

You know what i mean

sleek trail
spring geyser
sand bobcat
#

the rubber-black is achieved by painting their "black lotus" xpresscolor over that orange, and the dark blue is Black Lotus on its own over a light grey

#

i'm unlocking advanced techniques bro.

tepid steeple
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realised that the reason I can't find the stuff I hated about infinity is not because I was going crazy but because since they started revamping stuff they've gotten better taste

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like

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from this

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to this

midnight vine
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i like the new one better tbh

tepid steeple
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that's what I mean!

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they're so cool

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I love it

midnight vine
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ohhh i misread your initial message

tepid steeple
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haha

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I love this design so much

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I don't think the mini quite gets there but still really cool

sudden halo
#

Ive sort of torn, I like both sets a lot. Agatha is an awesome character design and model, but I miss the sexy anime nuns. The earliest sculpts sucked and we're kind of grognard horny but the late N2 early N3 ones hit a better balance for me.

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Now the Observance has lost some of what made them fit with Bakunin to me. They are the best played straight battle nuns in the business.

tepid steeple
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that's fair

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the grognard horny was what I meant by hate

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and the fact that they then had product descriptions like 'this sexy woman breasts boobily on the battlefield and everyone's like wow she's hot'

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but also I'm definitely new to infinity in general

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not having really known them any other way I think the fact that the battle nuns live on spaceship sex murder party is kinda hilarious

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in a good way

spring geyser
#

Infinity is still far too overwatch in aesthetic to me

sudden halo
#

I suppose it was opposite for me, since I was into infinity before Overwatch. I hadn't really made that connection with Infinity proper but it's an obvious inspiration for Aristeia

sudden halo
#

The cool 90s cyberpunk anime vibe they're going for demands a little horny but their early attempts didn't have any understanding of things like focus or nuance.

tepid steeple
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yeah exactly

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like I'm not against cyberpunk vibes but it was just so egregiously gazey

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im really glad it's getting better though!

sudden halo
#

Same. They're one of like 3 studios that make models with normal proportions, and the only one in scifi, so they've been my favorite for a while just on those merits.

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But it's nice to be able to say that unqualified rather than "well, just don't look at xyz and it's a good line"

#

Malifaux uses normal proportions and Kingdom Death uses normal proportions whenever they're not using horny proportions.

If anyone knows of other minis lines that eschew heroic proportions let me know.

sand sonnet
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Shatterpoint is true scale with 40mm models.