Phoenix Rising - Mines

Mines in FSA never really felt like area (volume?) denial weapons, their main use was typically as drive-by bombs. Mines also tended to be dangerous to smalls and mediums rather than large ships (though not exclusively and we all had the odd success more generally). Still, they were relatively easy to deal with - fly something relatively sturdy or disposable into the area, clear the mine and move on. The blast radius was big (4") and persisted in theory, but as that was too big to really drop a template, plus move models etc, it was generally "ruler around the marker" measuring, which could then get forgotten if the mine was removed after detonating. it was just a little clunky, though not necessarily urgently broken, it felt unsatisfying in many cases. Of course there was the whole issue of the "drive by" as well, and this does fix that, but actually my aim wasn't to address this specifically, but more how mines worked at a grass-roots level.

I wanted to go back to basics with mines, and think about their use as volume-denial weapons. They should be dangerous but not insanely so, forcing difficult choices on players. I've opted for the following solution;

1. Mines are persistent. They stay on the board during the game unless removed by a specific mechanic, so the "kamikaze minesweeper" is gone.
2. Mines have a smaller area of 2" radius, and as they're persistent, they can be indicated on the board by terrain (card circles)
3. Ships only have enough mines for seeding a single area, unless a MAR gives them more (preventing the board becoming one huge minefield!) (edited)

This (hopefully) has several effects;

• Mines are now true area denial weapons - or at least, they deter enemies from certain routes, allowing ambush techniques etc
• Mines become something you need to time appropriately, rather than just fart out whenever in the hopes of catching something at some point
• Measuring and effect determination becomes simpler, without cluttering the battlefield with things ships can't be placed on.
• Although more dangerous to small ships, they also have the speed and manoeuvring power to avoid them most easily, smoothing out their effects across ship types
• Facilitates minesweeper ship types to remove them

So how does this work? Well mines are laid after movement, placing a Mine Marker (a 2" radius circle with the mine value on) half way under the rear of the models' base. These mines remain inactive until the end of the parent models next activation. This prevents the unavoidable "drive by", as ships in the wake have a chance to manoeuvre away before these go live. I say a chance, because if the player can lay the mines late in the turn and activate before those in its wake, it could get a successful drive-by. Of course your opponent knows this and is going to try to activate before that happens, but then it's a matter of priorities - is that more important than activating your battleship and getting that killer shot?

I went for this as it provides more "meaningful choices" in a game, which good games are all about. It's no doubt that no-one wants to fly into an active minefield, but if those two frigates chasing down that carrier happen to do that because you have higher priorities, that's just bad luck for them, right? On the other hand, maybe those two frigates can take that wounded behemoth down, and they absolutely need to survive. You can imagine situations where a cruiser group could get an optimum RB2 shot if it went through the minefield, or attempt an unlikely RB3 shot by going around it...which is best? Only you as the player can ultimately make that choice, and given 100 people asked exactly that, each will have their own decision and rationale for it - it's not a given either way. I think this also allows some nice scenario possibilities, and adds some real value to the Minefield MAR. Aquan Drone mines become terrifying (though I've an idea for balancing that), but very thematic.

So what does everyone think? Feel free to comment below!

Fanstorm Armada - Developing the Game

Spartan are working on FA v3.0 right now, and I could be wrong, but I'm not liking the sound of what I'm hearing in terms of rumours and rumblings. Derek Sinclair, the rules designer who's primarily worked on DW, Planetfall and latterly Halo, is getting in on FA. I can't say this gives me a rosy feel inside. Derek was not involved in the development of the v1 FA, nor v2.0. I don't know about v1.5, but that was a clusterf*ck of copy/paste errors from DW v2 which was written at the same time.

Planetfall for me was a catalogue of how NOT to develop a game, with it evolving faster than The Thing on steroids in front of your eyes. I believe in a living rulebook, but not one where what I buy is invalid by the time it hits the shelves, or by the time the ink has finished drying on the 48 pages of PDF downloads that came out with alarming regularity - to say nothing of the shocking lack of proof reading, leading to more errors and re-writes than most Hollywood C-list films. Halo was much better produced, but I subscribe that this is down to 343s involvement, and not so much Spartan's change of spots. I find HFB a bit bland and far too dominated by boarding and Spartans, but that's understandable because of the Halo franchise - it's still not what I want to see come into FA.

"OK Alex" I hear you say "So you don't like what's happening at SG. So what? Are you just going to sit on your behind and moan about it? You're so negative....blah de blah de blah..." (ok, maybe not that last bit, but I wanted to cover myself!)

Well, I haven't been idle in this regard. Myself and a set of designers from across the world (now named "TheoryMachine") have embarked upon the project of Fanstorm Armada, to continue where the FFG left off, and continue the development of FA in a direction that preserves what we love about the game, strengthens those elements and tones down the ones we don't. As we're not a company and aren't in this to make money, suggestions and alterations from the community are more than welcome, and everything we suggest will be published for free distribution. We don't want to infringe upon what SG is doing, and we're not going after any IP, we're just fans of the game making suggestions about how to make FA a better game.

In a prior post, I mentioned movement. This is one of the largest chunks of time in FA - understanding that FA is a game of strategic and tactical manoeuvring is one of the greatest understandings that any player can discover about the game, and as such it should be preserved in the greater part, but speeded up. I discussed how to do this before, and mentioned some templates. Here is a PDF of those that forum member Ryjak made;

FA Movement Templates PDF

That's great, but we all want better gaming aids, right? As I have a 3D printer, this was something I figured I could cook up, so 15 minutes on Tinkercad and I produced the STL file. Printed at 0.2mm with 15% infill took just under an hour, and here are the finished articles;

They could do with a bit of tweaking on the print settings, and I might cut the longer ones down to 3" as well, to make them easier to get into tight spots (which is one of the issues with the SG 45 degree template). Here they are in use - I've set up a common situation in FA - the knife fight. In this example, the Dindrenzi Dreadnought really doesn't want to be so close, but it's decided to go for it. 

It has a 2" Turn Limit, so we use the Turn Rate 3 template.

So you can see two advantages of this method here straight away - firstly, the template is narrow enough for you to get it into tight spaces - you'll see that in the other pictures too. Secondly, you get an immediate idea of what is possible - where the model is going to end up, which reduces moving and then "backing up", which is one of the big slow-downs in many games. This also has a secondary thought-process speed-up, since you're concentrating more on actions rather than logistics of movement.

So we've moved, and can nicely line up the two Ba'kash cruisers in our dual rail cannon sights. Now let's look at the Ba'kash move (assuming they survive!)

Here the Ba'kash cruiser turn (using the Turn Rate 2 marker) would cause problems with model placement, and not be good for a port broadside shot, so instead the model moves 1" forewards...

and we can see now that a turn will clear the model nicely, and set us up for a nice broadside of drive-by boarding assault...

One more inch of turn...

...and we're aligned.

With 4" moved, there's plenty left to cruise alongside, probably setting the scene for a rear-arc shot next turn!

I hope you can see that this is pretty liberating for FA in a couple of ways, yet preserves a VERY important part of the game, since movement is a central and critical part of Firestorm's feel. Given that Spartan Derek isn't even considering movement mechanics yet, I'll be adopting this movement system and then moving onto other areas first - after all, you don't build a house and THEN work on the foundations, do you?