Only Four Errors? WTF?

[Adam]

So Dragonlord and I playtested Infinite Frontier again on Sunday. This was the total sum of fixes:

Toughen ARC Commandos
Wounds inflicted on a unit carry over to the support
Change Sniper to Scoped on Commandos
Tone Seraphs back down

Only four? I'm starting to really love this game. Once I've written those fixes into the rules, I'm going to go over the two existing army lists and try to polish them up a little, give each unit a more defined or unique role (like I did to the BX Commandos), and add tactical special rules to make them usefully so.

I'd like to say I'll then go on to write new army lists, but the DoS mech creator is really crying out for some tender loving care, so rebalancing that's the next step. Sigh. (In all fairness, what I'll probably end up going on to do is play BattleForge on my computer. )

[dragonlord]

Aside from the fact that I'm not Ollie, I agree, IF is definitely becoming a more balanced and smoother game (I'm actually beginning to remember some of the rules too! ;D).

[Adam]

I am a fool. *edits initial post* I do apologise.

So, I've brainstormed up some ideas and have started on the process of tweaking things. The Clone list was the easiest to come up with ideas for, as it already has a defined playstyle. I'll get to the CIS ideas in a moment. Most of the initial jotted-down ideas (done during a lecture...) were balance changes, but the necessity for speeder bikers (and by extension, STAPs) to have something interesting besides the normal bike rules was noted. Spotters or disruptive grenades came to mind, although more ideas are of course useful/welcome.

Then, when I was looking through the army list, I hit on something. After adding new weapon options to Clone Commandos and Jet Troopers (sniper operative and flamethrower-toting fire troopers respectively), and tweaking some points costs, I realised that I needed to define roles for each unit. It's harder than it seems.

The PCA program tells me Jet Troopers should be a basic 12 points for four guys. They're Swiftness 10 and Speed 7, but have a 10" range on their guns instead of the (nine-point, five-man, Sp5/Sw9) Clone Troopers' 14". Is that three points' worth of difference? Less firepower at a shorter range; if both units move forward twice and open fire, they'll be able to reach the same target - a total range of 24" in both cases - except the Clone Troopers will get more shots, causing 25% more damage as a result. Jet Troopers can run away more easily, and get a lot of benefit from the Veteran rule granted by the Sergeant upgrade (especially with Airborne, but the PCA doesn't take that into account), but running away when your weapons are short-range doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

It's notable that in our playtest game, the two units of Jet Troopers I had didn't really do a lot. They were hardly all-destroying. In fact I'm not sure they caused any casualties at all. Bit of a waste of 34 points. Add to this the fact that for 17 points you can instead get a Clone Trooper squad with two rocket launchers or chainguns and it isn't really looking good for the jump infantry. All the evidence points to making them cheaper. How do I justify this?

This is where unit roles come in. The Clone army list has four unit choices, one of which (Gungans) has a totally different set of uses and which I'm very satisfied with. I like my resilient cannon fodder/trailblazing Speed 6 scouts. The fact that Gungans have pathetic armament doesn't really factor into things; 12 points for eight of them is a reasonable price in my opinion. But for the other three?

Clone Troopers are obviously fire support and troops of the line. They have good mobility when using their blaster rifles, although they're slowed by the heavy weapon troopers when it's time to bust out the bigger guns. They're versatile (those rocket launchers are a godsend when your opponent has a big, threatening vehicle like an AT-TE), numerous, and quite cheap. They can also be enhanced by AT-RTs, although it seems to me that you're better off saving the points in most builds (especially if you have trailblazing Gungans).

Jet Troopers are the assault troops. What's that, you say? They don't even have melee weapons? So what? ;D Infinite Frontier's combat system means all kinds of unlikely units can take on the assault role, and Jet Troopers are definitely the more melee-focused of the three Clone units in this category. They're fast-moving, short-ranged, able to get into position easily, can augment their squads with flamethrowers, and once per game can pull off the potentially-devastating Pounce (if you have both flamers still alive, that's 12 Pr6 rolls to hit on a six-or-more-man unit).

Clone Commandos... hm. Squads upgraded with an Operative - a sniper capable of marking targets - are quite good at sitting back and shooting from a safe, covered position, and their forward deployment lets them take that position before the game even begins. Alternately, squads with an AT-RT can move freely through cover, lobbing mortar rounds into enemy infantry and pressing the attack. When the entire unit had Sniper, that turned out to be a bit much. Sitting still (in cover, of course) gave them all +3 to hit. Alan and I had five Commando units between us. Guess what they did? Scoped reduces this effect somewhat, although you can get a bit of it back using the Operative. Even so, it's hard to find a role for Commando units. I guess they're in that middle ground between assault and fire support - they can do either.

Thinking about all this really helps get a perspective on the situation. Jet Troopers really struggle to compete with Clone Troopers in the damage department, and in this case, the increased speed doesn't make that much of a difference compared to the lack of range and heavy firepower. So they're going to be cheapened - perhaps to 10 points for the base unit of four, assuming Clone Troopers stay on 9. Commandos, on the other hand, have an excellent long-range option (especially with the four point Operative upgrade), a brilliant special rule in the shape of their namesake, anti-armour charges for helping put the hurt down on vehicles, and benefit massively from AT-RTs.

And then there's army roles. I mentioned the CIS earlier (a loooong way back...) and the difficulties thereof. The thing with the CIS list is that it blends up-front, lethal hammer units (Sith, droidekas, MagnaGuards, BX Commandos) with slow infantry phalanxes (all the troop choices). It also makes use of field artillery, which needs to be spotted-for by units close to the enemy, and doesn't otherwise pack much long-range shooting. Its basic infantry have no heavy weapons, relying on elites and vehicles to take down enemy tanks.

How to mix this all together? I wrote a list down, looking at what each category did:
- Heroes: fast, mostly; in-your-face, universally.
- Elites: droidekas = fast then pillbox; MGs = reasonable speed but short-ranged; BXs = in your face from turn one.
- Troops: slow, numerous, good damage absorption/output.
- Bikes: fairly boring, but useful (STAPs badly need an injection of interest...)
- Vehicles: reasonable amounts of kickass, reasonable resilience; Hailfire Droid is field artillery

Looked at like this, it suggests forward defence. The classic hammer and anvil, except that the anvil is the hammer, and vice versa. Get into range, stop, and break the enemy over you like a wave over rocks. Essentially, the way droidekas work, expanded over the entire army.

One way to do this is to add a Command Link rule. This can come on some units automatically, be granted to others via upgrades, and be distributed by yet others. A new troops choice, OOM droids - a unit of three officer droids - existing only to hand out Command Link. A unit (in range to be) affected by CL at the beginning of its activation is so affected throughout its activation. CL gives the unit abilities, of which I've thought of two so far. I don't know if more are necessary, really. Command Link won't affect droidekas, for reasons that should become quite obvious when you've read the following description of what it does:
- Overdrive: When the unit runs, double its speed.
- Fortify: Activated/deactivated at the end of the unit's activation, or through Command. While Fortified, a model or unit cannot move, be moved, or be knocked down. It gains +2 Armour, and possibly +2" range on all of its weapons or another effect (unit-specific)?

Heroes have abilities complementing this playstyle. An ability that causes droids to explode when killed by melee attacks; another that makes enemies that engage them or hit them with melee weapons suffer damage rolls. Killing grounds that trap enemies within an AOE that then gets filled with crossfire.

I may also make new units - come to it, I could even take these armies and adapt them into new ones, either 40K ones or factions entirely of my own devising, just so I can play around with them without being constrained by Star Wars canon. In particular, the CIS army would just love an enormous bastion-robot-thingy that gets dropped onto the battlefield, unfolds into a huge turret and stands there gunning down anything foolish enough to approach it. And the Clone army definitely deserves a fast-moving transport, although there's a good chance one of those already exists somewhere in the canon.

By the way, I've now incorporated the IF40K rules into the main IF rulebook. I left out Swarm, partly because it isn't really that necessary, but mostly because I couldn't think of a different name for it so it didn't clash with the existing rule-called-Swarm!

[Peter]

Interestingly, there seems to be some established SW canon that actually says that many of the clones used during the clone wars weren't actually the high quality Kaminoan ones - instead, they were vat-grown at much lower quality.

The one million clones made on Kamino were apparently deployed as squad leaders, elite operatives and specialists.

Apparently the lower quality clones were also 'unstable'.

You could probably use that to justify slightly weaker stats for the weaker clone troopers.

Apparently, Luke Skywalker knows the Force Kick technique.

'Apparitions' might be worth including in the game as well. Qui-Gon, Yoda, Luke and Anakin are all known to be able to manifest as 'spirits' when they are killed.

That might make an interesting unit option.

A possible solution to the Swarm issue may be to change it to 'Horde'

[Adam]

Weaker clone troopers? Apparitions? Eh, the Expanded Universe struggles at the best of times. While scouring Wookieepedia for things to turn into unit abilities, I've come across quite a bit of supposedly-canonical stuff that's ridiculously silly.

Renaming Swarm to Horde wouldn't work that well, unless you mean renaming the original Swarm, which could work. However, the rule's unnecessary. As far as I can remember, there are only three Swarm units in 40K at the moment - Scarabs, Rippers and Nurglings - and they're different enough that they'll probably only share one special rule, the one allowing friendly models to move through them. Other than that, they don't share anything, so it's not really worth making a USR.

Does anyone have any thoughts on my big long post up there? Particularly the CIS' proposed playstyle?

[Peter]

Oct 23, 2009 2:53:32 GMT -5 Adam said:

Weaker clone troopers? Apparitions? Eh, the Expanded Universe struggles at the best of times. While scouring Wookieepedia for things to turn into unit abilities, I've come across quite a bit of supposedly-canonical stuff that's ridiculously silly.

Renaming Swarm to Horde wouldn't work that well, unless you mean renaming the original Swarm, which could work. However, the rule's unnecessary. As far as I can remember, there are only three Swarm units in 40K at the moment - Scarabs, Rippers and Nurglings - and they're different enough that they'll probably only share one special rule, the one allowing friendly models to move through them. Other than that, they don't share anything, so it's not really worth making a USR.

Does anyone have any thoughts on my big long post up there? Particularly the CIS' proposed playstyle?

The 'apparitions' are things like the ghost of Obi-Wan - they appear in the films.

From what I can tell, the 'weak' clone troopers were the mook-level ones - the stable clones derived directly from Jango Fett were used as officers, commanders and elites (the system you have now might reflect things adequately, in fact).

[Adam]

Yeah I know Obi-Wan shows up in the movies, but I didn't think you meant that. I mean, come on. What in-game effect is an insubstantial vision experienced by half-dead Jedi going to do? I guess Luke Skywalker could have a special rule where Obi-Wan/Han/Yoda/Someone shows up and fortuitously saves his ass - maybe if he survives a whole turn on one wound he gets all of them back or something... that'd be amusing (read, irritating as hell for your opponent, hehehe).

As to the clones, well yeah that should be fine, given that Sergeants provide Veteran.

[Peter]

Oct 23, 2009 13:25:15 GMT -5 Adam said:

Yeah I know Obi-Wan shows up in the movies, but I didn't think you meant that. I mean, come on. What in-game effect is an insubstantial vision experienced by half-dead Jedi going to do? I guess Luke Skywalker could have a special rule where Obi-Wan/Han/Yoda/Someone shows up and fortuitously saves his ass - maybe if he survives a whole turn on one wound he gets all of them back or something... that'd be amusing (read, irritating as hell for your opponent, hehehe).

As to the clones, well yeah that should be fine, given that Sergeants provide Veteran.

Well, most of these 'apparitions' supply guidance and even teach some of the living jedi.

Some of the Sith examples from the XU are even worse - one of Luke's apprentices actually gets possessed by the ghost of one of the first Sith lords and goes so far as to zap Luke (apparently Yoda isn't sharing the 'force lightning catch' technique).

I guess that both holocrons and ghosts might work as a special element to a scenario or a narrative/campaign - e.g. "Luke Skywalker may use the following force power this scenario" or a way to 'upgrade' characters by spending a few points.

Note also that at least some of these ghosts were able to get better (Palpatine and Luke both come to mind).

[dragonlord]

I think your proposals for the armies sound reasonable, the Command Link concept would make the CIS a little like a robotic version of the tyranids, it does also fit with the movies, like when they destroy the command battleship, and the fact that there are definitely droid 'officers'. The CIS having in your face killy units backed up by slow moving phalanxes of droids and field artillery seems exactly in keeping with the films.

As far as a fast moving transport for the Republic goes there is the drop ship thing, the LAAT/i.

This might do as a CIS heavy turret-like unit.

[Adam]

I did think about the LAAT/i. I eventually passed over the idea for the simple reason that it's just too large. It's airborne, so would have to work much the same way as 40K flyers; it's heavily armed and armoured; and isn't really much of a transport, more of a dropship. The LAAT/i does appear in the game though, in a vestigial kind of fashion - Commander Cody's reserve rules were written with it in mind (one of them's called Dropships).

I did find one transport the army could have access to - the UT-AT - although it's big, ugly, slow, and generally not all that amazing. Still, it's better than nothing, but I'm probably best off just making up new ones. Four letter acronyms with at least one A and two Ts in, and I'm sorted. AT-OT (All Terrain Obligatory Transport) anyone?

The scorpenek droid could indeed be useful as a turretesque thing. Or, alternately, the Octuptarra. I think the octuptarra'd suit it slightly better, particularly as you can get explosive virus-loaded versions - a large and deadly template that doesn't harm the CIS guys, so you can use it to help deter the enemy from assaulting your position by putting octuptarras in front of your units. Both of them have equally stupid names, though. And both can move in the canon, and don't usually get dropped in from orbit as far as I'm aware. Ehh.

I kinda wish I could use the Tri-droid, actually, but it's massive... Or the Basilisk, which might actually find its way into the list as a large melee bruiser, a better vehicle for upfront attack armies (certain builds of Clone list are pretty effective at melee-rushing).