Heavy Gear Kickstarter Musings and Robotech Update

The Robotech Kickstarter I posted about last time is still going strong and likely to reach $500,000 tonight with a free Khyron in an Officer's Pod to celebrate.  If you haven't checked it out or only checked it out in the first few days, feel free to click the link below and take a peek as they have added plenty of designs in the meantime.

Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter Link

Since I've been following the Robotech Kickstarter, I've also been thinking about the kickstart that I believe Heavy Gear needs.  Most gaming kickstarters tend to be glorified preorders that simply cut out the middlemen (stores, distributors) and pass on some of the savings to consumers but the core original idea of the platform is to fund things that otherwise wouldn't get funded.  Almost every time a discussion about increasing the output of Heavy Gear products or revamping the game completely comes up on the DP9 forums, some fanboy brings up the fact that DP9 has only a small core of full time employees that can't handle the added workload and the company can't afford the increased pace anyways.  A kickstarter for a truly new edition (and not just a minimal Locked and Loaded revision every 2-3 years for full $$ price) would help both of those problems as the earned funds could pay the salary of another full time employee.  That is a change and effort that I would indeed support assuming that the scope of the project was broad enough and re-examined everything about the game from the ground up.  No turning the whole herd into sacred cows though!

The proposed change that I suspect would be the most controversial would be simply rebooting the entire universe ala Battlestar Galactica.  The Scifi channel didn't just take the Richard Hatch BSG proposal that simply continued the 1970's show into the new millenium but rather revamped the original into a modern show that still kept the core feel and ideals of that original but updated everything else.  Heavy Gear needs that type of change if it wants to be a more successful wargame.  Right now, every possible change for an existing army (especially the North and South) is buried under literally thousands of pages of fluff and history for an RPG that has effectively been abandoned by its maker for almost a decade.  When the RPG first came out around 1994, it had the unique "hook" of a real time advancing storyline for the world that aged with us.  Despite how good that was in the RPG, the wargame doesn't need that and instead suffers from it.  Take a page from the comic book industry and reboot the Heavy Gear wargame as an alternate universe set at the end of or right after the first Earth Invasion.  Mold the universe and the fluff around what the wargame needs instead of  continuing to shoehorn the wargame into a decades old RPG universe.  If the RPG is no longer weighed down by it's own rules and fluff, why the heck is the spin off wargame that didn't need 90% of it in the first place?

Take the time to re-examine the rules and pick either a skirmish game or a full scale wargame... you can't have both if you want to do a good job!  Right now, Heavy Gear is a skirmish game effectively as the complexity of the rules leads most players to play games of less than 15 models per side (infantry not included of course) in order to finish a game in one evening... but it pretends to be a wargame in its army building portion with 5 gear squads as the core unit.  That dichotomy is the main reason this blog exists as I couldn't finish a full wargame sized battle in a single evening and wasn't satisfied with what I was given in the size game I could finish.

Finally, update the production and materials to the current millenial standards of plastic sets.  Take the opportunity that the release of the upcoming video game gives you to revamp the look of the models to modern robot aesthetics.  People who will be crossing over from the video game will be expecting modern scifi robots and not early 1980's VOTOMs.  As much as I personally like the classic look (and I really do), they don't sell the game as effectively as they did when they were first released.  The Xacto update from the frequently goofy looking Tactical minis was a great move but that was almost a decade ago and the game needs another makeover.  Keep the older minis as officially "legal" in the rules but revamp the design to better match the aesthetics shown in the video game concept art. (I'm not a fan personally of what they're showing for the south but the concept art for the Hunter is kick ass.)  New startups are using kickstarter to raise funds and coming out with plastic lines from the get go.  Take the time and effort and redesign the core minis in the North and South for the rebooted universe/timeline in plastic for an upcoming big starter set of 40+ minis.  Include revised Hunters/Jaegers, Iguanas/Cheetahs, Mambas/Jaguars, and Grizzlies/Cobras in plastic along with the new rules in a wargame style big boxed set like the upcoming Robotech game or like GW has been doing for almost two decades.

I want Heavy Gear to grow and I think the kickstarter platform gives DP9 the opportunity to create the changes needed with less financial risk.  You can't please everyone and you'll inevitably lose some core fans with the scope of the changes above but you'll likely bring in newer fans as well.  I've frequently criticized DP9 for pointless changes that decimated player collections (minimally revised rulebooks that invalidated editions after 2-3 years released for over a decade, tactical minis making the old RAFM ones obsolete and out of scale, etc) but I'd support financially a truly new edition that was worked from the ground up as a wargame.

Robotech Kickstarter in progress!

While I'm not a fan of Palladium and some of the rather dubious choices they've made over the past 15 years, I am an unabashed fan of Robotech and Palladium is running a Kickstarter for the upcoming Robotech minis game.  The first era covered will be Macross and the kickstarter runs to May 20th and the initial rush funded the first goal in less than three hours.  Long live the 80's childhood nostalgia!   :)

FUNDED!

Linked Weapons and IF

An interesting discussion started last week as a result of the GU6 release that gave me some fresh ideas on how to approach further changes.

The first is regarding indirect fire.  I've always found it odd that mortars that can actually shoot almost straight up vertically had a minimum range requirement but artillery pieces that have a much lower max angle of elevation didn't.  The recent changes in minimum range got me thinking about that and I've decided to extend the minmum range restriction to all indirect firing weapons.  This means that most rocket pods, field guns, and other IF capable weapons will now no longer be able to fire INDIRECTLY within half their short range (remember that I've change the terms for range and "optimal" is now short).  The weapons will still however be able to fire directly within that range though.  Weapons with the actual MR trait will still not be able to fire directly and have no firing option within half short range (unchanged from Blitz! and GU).

Indirect Fire:  Add "Weapons choosing to use the indirect fire option may not fire at targets within half their short range.  The may still fire at targets at under half short range if the weapon does not have the MR trait and therefore can use the direct fire rules."

The other interesting part of the discussion was regarding how to make the linked fire rules make a bit more sense conceptually.  Right now, firing two MRP9s at full ROF plays completely differently than firing a MRP18 at full ROF despite the RPG tech explaination (and rules) of them having the exact same number of rockets firing.  In addition, firing linked weapons and rolling well is like winning the lottery as a single 6 die roll means that the rocket will do alot of damage, be either on target or deviate only a little, AND not get you an Out of Ammo result on either pod.  Feral on the DP9 forums came up with the good idea of using all the dice rolls for the results similar to how combined models work.  I really like this idea and will expand on it with the rules below.

Linked Weapons:  Weapons that have this option may be fired together as part of the same action using one of the two options below.

      -For each linked weapon fired, assign one of your rolled attack dice results to it; this result counts as the result for the attack as well as for determining out of ammo results for that weapon.  If the weapons were fired indirectly, use the highest dice roll for determining scatter for all linked weapons fired.  The defender rolls his defense dice once and applies it to each individual weapon attack roll.  Any extra attack dice results are discarded and any weapons having no available attack dice to be assigned are considered to have rolled one lower than the lowest attack die result for all purposes including both OOA and damage.   

      -Designate one weapon in the link as the primary weapon.  For each additional identical linked weapon fired, you may add half the ROF (round off) to the ROF of the primary weapon.  You may then use the modified ROF for the purposes off the attack roll that the target or targets will defend against once only for the linked attack.  Add +1 per linked weapon after the primary to the target number for OOA checks and use the highest die rolled for OOA checks for all the linked weapons fired. 

 For example, a grizzly with att2 rolls a 5 and a 3 for his linked MRP attack with full ROF using the first option above.  The defender must then roll once and determine the damage versus the 5 and 3 individually using the normal modifiers and the 3 result causes an OOA result for that one MRP. 

If the same grizzly instead had two targets 5 inches apart that it wished to attack, it could use the second option to make a singe combined ROF attack versus both models (not normally possible with the standard MRP).  Using the same dice results as above, scatter would be deternined by and the target would roll versus the single result of 5 for the linked attack.  The 5 would also be used for determining OOA for both pods which in this case would mean that they're both out of ammo (due to the +1  modifier for the check for two linked weapons).  The grizzly fired its full payload on the gamble of damaging both models. 

While the above is not perfect and does still have a bit of a lottery win feel for linked weapons (a single 6 using the second option is accurate, damaging, and has no OOA result), I think it portrays the feel of firing linked weapons on the scifi battlefield a bit more accurately as well as more in line with firing those same weapons separately using two actions.  I'll be testing the above out hopefully in the next game (and will likely use that as the primary flash! variable instead of the larger game size I was planning).