Testing Out The New Troop/Weapon Stats

CaulynDarr and I got together for another test game today, where we tried out the new weapon ranges/modifiers, the new (smaller) armor penetration chart, and the new model stats. Certain things felt better, but overall we were missing the range to hit things, and the more compressed armor stats just didn't feel right. On the bright side though, we did finally get into some melee.

Infantry Weapon Stats Are Done

Wow! It's not every day that I spend all morning answering comments and shooting emails back and forth about the project. That last post of mine really generated some energy!

Anyway, I've finished stat-ing out all of our initial infantry weapons for the game. These lists don't include every weapon we'll ever have, and not every unit will have access to the stuff you see in these lists, but it gives us a starting good point.

WarStrike: Something Not So Awful?

Over the last week, I've noticed that we've gotten a crap-load of hits from the forums (paywalled) over at SomethingAwful.com. So being a curious monkey, I snuck over to see what the discussion was all about.

Nothing I saw there surprised me all that much. But I realized that it's been so long since the project started, that people who come here for the first time don't understand some of the basic design decisions that we made back then (or what's happened to other competing projects since). So I'll take this opportunity to shed some light on why we're approaching the design of the game in the way that we are, and shed a little more light on where we're planning on going.

How Model & Weapon Stats Will Interact

When I talked about getting rid of the separate "Ballistic Skill" of 40K, and just going with one "Weapon Skill" for both shooting and melee, Johnwhytenz suggested having WS modifiers for weapons. An idea I wasn't so sure about. That's because I'd previously played around with the idea of having a '+BS' stat for weapons to tweak their accuracy up or down, but had discarded it as being too complex.

But in reality a weapon's accuracy plays a huge roll in how easy or hard it is for a soldier to hit their target, and giving them the same chance to hit with a pistol as a shotgun just wouldn't be right. Nor should a human have the same chance to hit a target with both a fist and a sword. So I rethought how a model ought to interact with its weapons. In doing so, I think I've come up with a workable system that not only works for ranged weapons, but melee weapons as well. Without requiring nearly as many special rules to reflect weapon differences.

Weapon Ranges & Controlling The Field

One of the original design goals for WarStrike has been to increase the average range of weapons over that of 40K, but now I'm beginning to wonder if that's a good idea or not. Why? Read on.

Ballistic Skill: Do We Need It?

Ok, I keep going back and forth on this, so I'm just going to ask: Do we really need a separate Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill for each model?

First Test Of New Grenade System

CaulynDarr was pretty busy last week, so we didn't get to have a test game until yesterday, when we finally tried out the new grenade system. How did it go?

Beginning A Game: Basic Concepts, Part 1

Continuing with my revamp of the 'Getting Started' rules, I'm concatenating a bunch of stuff that was in 3 separate sections into one section called "Basic Concepts". Here's the first 2 pages, with a new explanation of how the rules are presented, and what happens when 2 rules conflict.

Locking Down How Grenades Might Work

The Grenade; Col. Charles H. Waterhouse

Ok, I've been thinking about grenades some more. So here's a more formal breakdown of how they might work, which incorporate some of the feedback from my last post on them, and gives us the chance to have typical "action movie moments" with them.

What You'll Need To Play: Part 2

Here's the last 2 pages of the 'What You Need' section. Next I've got some more ideas on grenades to write up before tomorrow's testing.

What You'll Need To Play: Part 1

I'm revising some of the introductory chapters that had a first pass a year or more ago, but which need updating now to reflect changes (in both gameplay and graphic design) to the game since.

The Creation Myth Of The Republic

Take the basic creation myth of the ancient Greeks, mix in a little modern cosmology, darken the origins/character of the creator, add a dash of female empowerment to his betrayal, and you've got how the Republic's Church of Man (or CHoM for a wink to Herbert fans) thinks that the universe came to exist. Which is to say that they think all of creation was screwed (quite literally) from the beginning. No, they're not a very happy people. :)

Added An Extra Step To The Shooting Phase

I've started cleaning up the mess of notes and changes that is the current Shooting Phase chapter. Anticipating good things, I've added an additional step to the phases' sequence. It's more of a placeholder at the moment, and the final wording of the rule will depend on how our grenade tests go this week. :)

Making Grenades More Interesting To Use

Grenade Painting, Layne Rowe 

Grenades are one of those weapons that are absolutely essential to modern warfare at the scale that we're simulating, yet when modeled realistically they also tend to bring the flow and action of a game to a screeching halt. Which is why 3rd Edition 40K ditched the ability to throw them, and just let them affect a unit's assault abilities and initiative. A shortcut that left a lot of us 2nd Edition players annoyed, but which at least kept the game from getting bogged down by every unit throwing out small blasts each turn.

So the question is: Can we simulate the tactical advantages of grenades more realistically without the downsides of scattering small blasts everywhere? I have some ideas...

Quantifying Blast Scattering: The Odyssey

Things went to hell this week, as everyone in the family (except me) either has the stomach flu, or bronchitis. Oh, and I have to move my parents from their apartment to assisted living at the same time. Joy.

Less annoyingly, I've also been busy attempting to quantify the average number of models hit by large and small blast templates. After trying some (very time consuming) manual methods, I finally broke down and wrote a script to do the hit testing automatically in a 3D graphics program. Which isn't a whole lot less time consuming to set up and run, but is at least far more accurate.