(( Sign up/ OOC thread ))

[Gravedust]

It actually is just space monsters. They're really nasty, they keep popping up where human settlements are, nobody knows where they come from and it seems like there is an infinite number of them. >.> If other intelligent life is out there it hasn't made itself known.

Places we know about:

Old Earth: Site of original and how heaviest known Geist infestation. Human life has been completely obliterated there. It is impossible to get any closer than high orbit, the entropic field around the planet is so intense that it will disable most starcraft within minutes. Tombstone, an unmanned sattellite in high orbit, was placed as the last act of the fleeing Old Earthers. It returns pictures of Old Earth every year and continually transmits a message to stay away.

New Earth: Found and colonized shortly after the beginning of the conflict on Old Earth. Heavily colonized by refugees from Old Earth, now a partially overrun Citadel world. Nominally the headquarters of the NEA, (in reality, the important stuff happens in safer places) which was formed from the previously segregated armed forces of various old earth nations to protect the citizens of New Earth. The NEA protects (and governs) probably about 75-80% of the remaining human population and colonies. But not everyone. There are free colonies that govern and protect themselves, so the FFS or similar organizations do fit into the lore. There is definitely reason to be spooked about and/or disagree with the one giant organization that rules everyone and takes their children away. >.>

Funnily enough, the bulk of the NEA forces would have a really hard time fighting other humans. Part of why the Old Earth battles were lost so badly is the Geist made all their technology fail. If you want to fight Geist you basically have to do it with a 1980's tech level, or all your stuff will break. Old Earth fought with drones, sentry guns, energy weapons, AI command and control systems, smart munitions, but all of it stopped working and suddenly it was down to guys with rifles.

But if you aren't fighting Giest, all that tech is suddenly valid again. So the NEA, for all it's huge amounts of manpower and equipment, would probably fare pretty badly against a 'modern' foe. So 'Special Forces' for the NEA might just mean guys who are equipped and trained to fight other humans, rather than Giest.

Humanity as a whole isn't doing too great. They're surviving, but it's kind of an uphill struggle, so earnest human vs human conflicts are probably fairly rare, though I could see raiding or piracy happening.

Tower: Industrial colony turned citadel world. Actually a pretty good place to fight Geist due to earthlike conditions and an abundance of metal ores (though no fossil fuels)

Datura: Relatively safe colony world, home to a large NEA training facility. Where A.Willaims and all of the original troops were trained and shipped from. The new squad additions are all Tower natives.

[Abyssal Squid]

Call me cynical, but I don't believe there's any threat so dire, so plainly existential, that you'll unite everyone against it instead of them using it as leverage against other factions.

On the one end you'll have your kooks siding with the monsters over humanity for various, usually apocalyptic reasons. They don't tend to be very influential​ and do tend to burn out rather quickly, for obvious reasons, but they keep popping up and they can be dangerous while they last.

On the other end of the spectrum you'll have your isolationists. “What's Tower ever done for us, other than kill good boys and girls? Let them solve their own problems, I say!” More prevalent where the threat is more remote, so not something we're going to face while we're shooting aliens in person, but I can imagine worlds on the fringe seceding from the NEA because “not my problem lol.”

Most dangerous of all is internecine war among factions who agree that the threat is existential, but have some ideological hill they'd rather die on than concede. Let's say the Federation is appalled by the Alliance’s compulsory military service as an affront to freedom. “Sure, they say it's to defend against the Geist, but who among us wouldn't volunteer to fight them? How do we know it isn't something more insidious? They don't even pretend they'll ever relax the requirement, all 'The Geist aren't going anywhere.’ They're ​grooming us for dictatorship, I tell you!”

The fun part is the last group doesn't even have to be wrong to be an effective antagonist. Maybe the NEA really is constitutionally evil and humanity would be better off under the Federation! But it's rich ground for interesting conflict, I can easily imagine a Federation sleeper cell noticing a decisive conflict between the Alliance and Geist, and intervening against the Alliance in order to weaken its geopolitical position.


Of course I just came up with the Federation of Free Stars on a whim as an excuse to make more flags, so take this all with a grain of salt. :{}

Speaking of which, Datura is a good name for a world that sends people off, naked, to die in the wilderness! 😈 It was easy to make a Datura flag:

[Abyssal Squid]

A few miscellaneous things:

1) It makes sense for AoE attacks to hit multiple vehicle compartments, but it felt weird for VC's engine to take damage and the front tires to blow from an attack hitting the rear bumper. Would it be too much work to consider the square(s) hit when assigning damage to compartments? Not a rhetorical question, I'm willing to accept "yes." :V

2) Still thinking about the semi-auto rifles, still think a fixed difficulty target would be the best way to represent their high accuracy and low RoF (scratch the idea about changing magazine size). Simplifies math for everybody, encourages plinking at distant enemies even when there's nearby enemies.

3) I liked Vikinghelmet's analysis of "shoot-n-scoot," but also I don't think that's a problem. It's fine for vehicle-mounted heavy weapons to be strictly superior to infantry equivalents, especially since you can't reload them in the field.

[Gravedust]

1: It's certainly something that could be done, the current rules are mostly in service of keeping things simple, and allowing location-based AOE damage would complicate things beyond just excluding compartments from damage. Since if that's the case for AOE then shouldn't it work that way for direct attacks as well?  And then you have to consider where all shots would be hitting, etc. And then how do you handle AOE attacks against G-class Geist? Do you have to get all squares under your template or else do less than full damage, etc.

I have done games that care about hit location before so I'm familiar with some systems for it, and I kind of think a template-weapon based vehicle game where templates and vehicle overlap matters could be a lot of fun. (As in, I'm now actually literally thinking about how it would work.) But I don't really think it needs to happen here, this game is more about breadth than depth.

As a secondary reason; Vehicles are meant to be powerful in some ways but weak in others. Most of their weaknesses you haven't seen just yet, but being a big rolling target is one, and I don't want to ameliorate that by having them only take partial damage from indirect hits, especially since a more heavily armored vehicle could have weathered that hit with very little difficulty. Actually the only reason the driver took a hit was because the cab caught a Slinger Javelin a few rounds back. …It's not a coincidence that the tires got shredded, though. The unarmored passenger compartment and tires are meant to the the Buff's achilles heel and one of the things that separate them from a 'proper' light combat vehicle. You'll probably like the upgraded version though. :3

Anyway I guess the short answer is that I wasn't considering it, but it might be worth it if I can find a way to do it cheaply and with bloating the rules too much.


2: Ehhhhhh. You may need to explain more about how you are envisioning that, because I'm not quite seeing it right now. Generally though I'd refer to keep all gun-ish weapons using the same type of roll, for consistency's sake.

3: Yeah, I think vehicle weapons are all right at the moment. Speed and firepower are their strengths. ...Geist do have units that make life difficult for vehicles, (foreshadowed on that black and white TV screen) they just haven't showed up yet for you guys.

[mydad]

My suggested compromise would be that area of effect attacks hit a number of compartments equal to the number of tiles of the vehicle they cover, up to and not above the total number of non-destroyed compartments. It would be consistent with the current area of effect attack, uh, effects on infantry, it would allow vehicles to be more vulnerable to area of effect attacks, but it would prevent a scratch hit like this from taking out EVERYTHING.

[Gravedust]

Jun 1, 2017 13:56:11 GMT -8 mydad said:

My suggested compromise would be that area of effect attacks hit a number of compartments equal to the number of tiles of the vehicle they cover.

That's not a bad solution, if I decide to do partial AOE stuff then that'll probably be what I do, or something close to it.

At the moment I am leaning towards partial AOE damage, but I don't think I want to make a change until I've had a bit more time to examine things and/or after the end of this mission.

[Abyssal Squid]

Okay I had a vague idea when I posted that and now that I've gotten groceries I have it more fleshed out. It'd require some changes to how vehicles are statted, but after that I don't think there'd be appreciably more overhead.

Vehicles would be split into sections, like this:


Buffalo modified for these rules:


If a square that gets hit is only in one section, roll 1d20/2 to determine which compartment gets damaged. If that square is in two sections simultaneously (like the middle of a Buffalo) then add 10 to the "hit numbers" for one section and roll the 1d20 like usual. When attempting overrun attacks, geist will only attack the Front section of a vehicle.

If all the compartments in one section are destroyed, that section becomes an invalid target, just like damaged compartments. If the square hit is in a destroyed section and a surviving one, the surviving section is automatically hit. If all the sections a square is in are destroyed, AoE attacks have no effect. All other attacks have their damage shifted to a surviving section.

This doesn't affect how AoE attacks interact with vehicles other than limiting valid recipients of damage. Anyway that's my idea for integrating damage into the vehicle facing rules!


As for Marksman/Sniper Rifles, basically just set the range penalty to a fixed number, rather than taking the range and dividing it by two. 10 or 11 for the Marksman Rifle, for instance. Cover and defense modifiers still apply, unlike for ballistic weapons and Difficulty. So for instance, once a slinger gets close enough to a soldier to attack an assault rifle would be more accurate, but the marksman rifle wouldn't have any problem hitting targets out to its maximum range.