jmccarroll
Assault Tripod
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" The only good Martian, is a dead Martian "
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Post by jmccarroll on Jun 25, 2024 20:16:55 GMT
I am not talking about 1st or later edition models. I am talking about the ratio of certain classes to use other classes.
As I said before, there should be some limit to army building. Perhaps saying you most use X amount of models to use this or that model or in a 100pt you may get X amount of models.
The game is yours, so limiting certain models by forcing the purchase of other models people don't like may discourage people.
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Post by terrance on Jun 26, 2024 16:21:05 GMT
US Forces I used the PDF for US forces from the Abby Normal Website. Here is what I have come up with. I was after a tank platoon with attached infantry. Field Commander with a field gun battery and rough rider troop attached. 30 points and 7 command tokens. Line Infantry Company command, 2 Veteran Line infantry platoons. 51 points with 7 command tokens. Armored Cavalry Company command, a MkII Tank Platoon with the command vehicle upgraded to a MkIII. 77 point and 7 command tokens. Total of 158 points and 22 command tokens. As an aside, I will be playing with the models I have. The Martian Raider Tripods will be Reaper Tripods or other small tripods no longer supported by the rules. We will see if I end up buying a few Raiders to fill any gaps. Also, and maybe GrageBay9 can confirm this, I heard that the more restrictive rules for army building are intended to give the humans a more realistic military organization, and to restrict tendency to build way overpowered Martian armies. I willl note that the games we played with the old rules nearly always were decided on the last turn or so and could have gone either way until the last dice were rolled. But maybe our group is a bit less munchkin than others.
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Post by GarageBay9 on Jun 28, 2024 6:01:59 GMT
I am not talking about 1st or later edition models. I am talking about the ratio of certain classes to use other classes. As I said before, there should be some limit to army building. Perhaps saying you most use X amount of models to use this or that model or in a 100pt you may get X amount of models. The game is yours, so limiting certain models by forcing the purchase of other models people don't like may discourage people. Ah, gotcha. I read what you wrote differently than you meant, sorry. As soon as you said "having to buy models you don't want smacks of Games Workshop", I kinda saw red and went all "it'll be a cold day on Mars before we make you spend money to rebuy models for no reason like GW does". You were talking force construction, not business ethics. My bad. 😆 Also, and maybe GrageBay9 can confirm this, I heard that the more restrictive rules for army building are intended to give the humans a more realistic military organization, and to restrict tendency to build way overpowered Martian armies. I willl note that the games we played with the old rules nearly always were decided on the last turn or so and could have gone either way until the last dice were rolled. But maybe our group is a bit less munchkin than others. It was a tradeoff of some solutions we went with to address issues we saw when we broke down some of the economics of 1st edition. In 1st edition, a whole bunch of units never got used. They simply didn't - not if you actually cared about winning or at least having a shot at it. Competitive Martian armies were almost entirely Assault tripods, for example. That was part 1 of the problem. Part 2 is that when it came to the actual out-of-pocket cost for a player to build a force in 1st edition, there was a huge disparity between the cost of a Martian army and the cost of the human armies. A viable Martian army could hit the table for roughly $200. An equivalent force-point value on the human side was almost triple that, at least when you used the competitive units. You could use cheaper ones, but the monetary savings wasn't much and the performance loss was a lot. So nobody did. There were also issues where the manufacturing cost was out of whack on our end, when we were looking at physical production, and that's part of why we went with 3D printing. I do want to emphasize, the army construction rules are intended to allow two random people to sit down at a table, throw models together into an army, play as cutthroat as they can get along with, and reliably have a nominally balanced game. But there is nothing that says you absolutely are required to use point-balanced forces for your games. Besides needing to agree to solutions for some of the mechanics issues like Martian Tri-Link networks generating command tokens (if you don't have enough Tripods to form a Tri-link, anyway), you are absolutely free to play forces of whatever composition you want against somebody that's willing to fight them. That setup is ripe for some really cool scenarios, too. I come from tabletop BattleTech, where some of my favorite scenarios are lopsided breakouts, escapes, and last-stands, so believe me, I understand not wanting to be constrained by every battle having an exactly equal point value, or being constrained by proscriptive force construction rules... especially when a lot of games turn around and sell scenario packs where the official scenarios don't follow those rules.
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Stryker
Drone
I think we're going to need a bigger tank!
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Post by Stryker on Jun 28, 2024 19:39:38 GMT
There use to be a player who had a website that would help you set up a force and point totals. In a lot of the Conventions I run AQMF at, I have to modify point totals as I add in damaged Tripods or Human units missing part of a unit. This makes the play feel more like you are into the battle and not just starting out the battle fresh.
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jmccarroll
Assault Tripod
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" The only good Martian, is a dead Martian "
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Post by jmccarroll on Jun 28, 2024 21:55:57 GMT
"It was a tradeoff of some solutions we went with to address issues we saw when we broke down some of the economics of 1st edition.
In 1st edition, a whole bunch of units never got used. They simply didn't - not if you actually cared about winning or at least having a shot at it. Competitive Martian armies were almost entirely Assault tripods, for example. That was part 1 of the problem.
Part 2 is that when it came to the actual out-of-pocket cost for a player to build a force in 1st edition, there was a huge disparity between the cost of a Martian army and the cost of the human armies. A viable Martian army could hit the table for roughly $200. An equivalent force-point value on the human side was almost triple that, at least when you used the competitive units. You could use cheaper ones, but the monetary savings wasn't much and the performance loss was a lot. So nobody did.
There were also issues where the manufacturing cost was out of whack on our end, when we were looking at physical production, and that's part of why we went with 3D printing.
I do want to emphasize, the army construction rules are intended to allow two random people to sit down at a table, throw models together into an army, play as cutthroat as they can get along with, and reliably have a nominally balanced game. But there is nothing that says you absolutely are required to use point-balanced forces for your games. Besides needing to agree to solutions for some of the mechanics issues like Martian Tri-Link networks generating command tokens (if you don't have enough Tripods to form a Tri-link, anyway), you are absolutely free to play forces of whatever composition you want against somebody that's willing to fight them. That setup is ripe for some really cool scenarios, too. I come from tabletop BattleTech, where some of my favorite scenarios are lopsided breakouts, escapes, and last-stands, so believe me, I understand not wanting to be constrained by every battle having an exactly equal point value, or being constrained by proscriptive force construction rules... especially when a lot of games turn around and sell scenario packs where the official scenarios don't follow those rules."
Thank you that does explain a lot. My bad on the GW comment. I should of withhold ed any negative comment until I have the rules in-front of me.
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Post by terrance on Jun 29, 2024 14:10:45 GMT
Thanks GarageBay9 for the background on the design philosophy. I never saw the out of pocket issue in building armies because I went way deep on the first Kickstarter. Got everything that was available, so the out of pocket cost near came up when setting up a game or needing new models. ![:)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/smiley.png) As far as some models never getting on the table, there is some truth to that. We never played tournament style, but always from a scenario that was nearly always part of a campaign. In doing that I sometimes wrote scenarios that mandated the use of some of those models (Martian especially) that would not show up in a strictly competitive game. Also we sometimes had games that represented the humans desperately pulling together anything they could lay hands on to halt a Martian advance. There was usually no attempt in those cases to balance the game, although some thought was made to giving the humans enough to have a fun game. Stryker, I have never started a game with damaged tripods. Nice idea, I'll have to keep that in mind in the future.
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Post by terrance on Jun 29, 2024 14:12:00 GMT
Here is a pic of the Human force for next week's game. The detailed list is given above. ![](https://i.postimg.cc/4dGpmRhQ/temp-Imagekp699q.avif)
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Post by terrance on Jun 29, 2024 14:12:45 GMT
And here is a pic of the Martian force. The Reaper and Slavers are standing in for Raiders. ![](https://i.postimg.cc/tJCPNdk1/temp-Imageqn5y4s.avif)
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Post by terrance on Jul 6, 2024 20:00:55 GMT
Here is the initial set up for the humans. A command post for the infantry platoon is missing in the pic. ![](https://i.postimg.cc/d1tq75jX/temp-Imagen-Hql6-F.avif) And here is the initial set up for the martians. One set of drones is on the wrong triad. ![](https://i.postimg.cc/Kzqmtt9Y/temp-Image5k-N6rc.avif)
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Post by terrance on Jul 6, 2024 20:18:57 GMT
Game results were mixed. It took 2 hours to play 2 turns, which was not an unexpected result. Two of the players had nearly scanned the rules so we spent a lot of time looking things up. At the end of 2 turns the humans had lost a MkIII tank and a MG element. The Martians lost 2 raider tripods and 2 drones. It is hard to give a reasonable evaluation with only 2 turns but the comments were, 1. Martians seemed underpowered, 2. MGs seem over powered. the two tripods lost were both taken down by MGs, 3. Drones are way slow with only 6 inches movement, 4. Martians are very deficient in command tokens. Now before that sounds too critical, we are pretty certain we were doing significant things wrong. We realized at least 1 tripod was taken out using the wrong range for the MGs, giving them rapid fire at 24 inches instead of 18 inches. With more study we should be able to come up with a Martian force that has more firepower. And the martian player was being way too cautious with the drones. I would use the drones as a screen and push them forward until they are out of control range in which case they automatically continue to advance and shoot. The human player has to contend with that threat and the tripods move up to get into range and shoot. The Martians only got 2 command tokens at the end of the first turn as they only have 2 active tri-links. and they would have gotten only 1 token the end of the second turn as one try-link was taken down. We are struggling a bit with Martians testing for morale. Kind of stuck on the old rules in which the martians never took morale checks. One of the players questioned martians taking shock tokens. He felt they should be so heavily armored they would be immune. I think it is OK and think of it as needing to deal with minor damage; rerouting power, rebooting systems, etc. No matter how heavily armored a vehicle, is concussion and other effects can temporarily take systems off line, etc. Here are a couple of pics at the end. First looking to the left from the human side, then looking to the right. ![](https://i.postimg.cc/Cx1Xf93b/temp-Image-V9-Tkn-E.avif) ![](https://i.postimg.cc/bwBM03PW/temp-Image-RUZV1a.avif)
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Post by terrance on Jul 7, 2024 19:51:16 GMT
I took a look to compare the US and German stats for comparable unit types. The German rifle ranges are shorter than the US ranges on the currently available PDF. And more importantly the machine guns reduce their range to 18” and only have rapid fire 2. This should reduce the tripod killer aspect of MGs and will be incorporated into our games in the future.
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jmccarroll
Assault Tripod
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" The only good Martian, is a dead Martian "
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Post by jmccarroll on Jul 7, 2024 23:10:58 GMT
Always thought MGs were over powered, More fire power than a Mk 1. Thanks for the wright up!
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Post by terrance on Jul 11, 2024 14:15:10 GMT
The group will run another test game in a few weeks. This time I will revise the US troop stats to be more comparable with the new rules, using compatible German troop types as a guide. I don't expect to replicate what eventually comes from Abby Normal, but it should be good enough for now. I will post the info when it is ready.
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Post by terrance on Jul 15, 2024 15:37:39 GMT
The only change I ended up making to the US data cards is to machine-guns. I made them the same as the German machine guns by removing the 24" range and sweep ability, reducing the rapid fire from 3 to 2, and adding +1 power. I wrote them up as new data cards and made a PDF, which I would post but I am not finding the "attach" button. Has this been disabled?
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Post by David N.Tanner 07011959 on Jul 15, 2024 19:37:26 GMT
"Add image to post"
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