A "write in your own" box would be rather nice actually. I second that.

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Ivan of Nordic Weasel fame/glory/villainy.

Mobility Types still don't add points to the unit cost (i.e. Walker, Grav). Otherwise it seems to work great.

I'm a bit tied up with real life at the moment to give the calculator the attention it needs - i'll see if I can incorporate add-on traits into it

Alan

Anyone had any games going this past week?

I've gotten a few reports back from people running the intro scenario several times but I am always keen for more general feedback as well as nitpicking the points formula and whatnot.

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Ivan of Nordic Weasel fame/glory/villainy.

Having played 4 games - 2 of the introductory scenario as standard , 1 introductory scenario with 4 players, double the forces and 4 Battle Groups per side, and 1 Bugs attacking a fort game - in general I like the mechanisms. You can have a lot of toys on the table, players pick up the game quickly, not having any markers is great, the Super Heavy Vehicles and Behemoths are almost impossible to be taken down by small arms fire and the traits allow for a wide range of unit and weapon tinkering

However there are 2 down sides to LS for me - a lack of army lists and the snap cards.

Lack of Army lists

At the Berkeley Vale club we play a lot of Future War Commander (FWC) to the point where we have had an annual weekend event for the past 6 years called FWC Bootcamp. The appeal of FWC is that the rules come with army lists for almost every 6mm sci-fi range - Games Workshop, Dark Realm Miniatures (DRM) , Brigade Models and GZG to name a few. This makes it very easy for new players to get stuck in and also enables a GW Space Marine army to go toe-to-toe with a DRM Kraytonian army. Admittedly some stats were a bit bizarre but it works

With LS I've had to go back to the source material for my Pax Arcadians ie the stats from DRM, and try to match them up with LS Stats. However in order to do this I also need to compare the stats with the DRM Kraytonian and Andrayan armies to make sure they match up as well. My day-job is designing interfaces tor disparate databases so I'm used to doing this sort of thing but for a lot of people I imagine it will be a turn-off if they have to produce their own army lists.

Snap Cards

These are the equivalent of opportunity fire / overwatch which to me is an integral part of modern/future warfare. The rules imply that a standard game with 3 BGs per side has 3 snap cards. This means that an army has between 0-3 chances of getting a unit to react to enemy activity. This is fine when using small armies - say upto 12 units per side but with bigger forces it slides into irrelevance eg 3 reactions for a 21 unit army is no great shakes . I am aware that the snap cards can be replaced by a unit rolling a 6 on a D6 to try and react but this is still pretty slim.

At the club we have discussed alternatives eg 1) having to pass a morale test in order to react but that could allow a unit to potentially react upto 3 times in the turn or 2) order an activated unit into overwatch as per Bolt Actions Ambush or Muskets and Tomahawks Vigilence. Both of the methods would require markers

I must point out that FWC has it's downsides - the 2D6 command roll does mean that some players don't get to move their troops at all, Massives, the equivalent of Behemoths, die too easily and some of the rules are overly complex

I'd certainly recommend LS as a good set of Sci-fi rules but without army lists there is a lot of leg-work to do

Alan

I'm after some army lists. Once Shedman's calculator has weapons added I might have more of a go myself.

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http://hordesofthings.blogspot.co.nz/

Yeah, I am working on remedying the army list question. Actually I have the first 3 alien lists open in another window on this very laptop, right now :-)

The Snap cards are deliberately kept on the low end of things.
My personal feeling is that with a very large game, there's already so much going on, that adding a lot more actions gets a bit too sprawling.

If you want more, I'd just make each snap card 3 units instead of 1.

You could just add more cards in, but I feel that if the card deck gets too big, it takes away a little bit of the simplicity.

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Ivan of Nordic Weasel fame/glory/villainy.

When each Snap card is drawn you could roll a d3 (d3+1, a d4, etc) to allow for more snap activations with larger armies. You could scale the die rolled depending on the size of the armies.

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The best player isn't always the winning player.

http://gamingandshooting.blogspot.com

I dig that a lot. Gives it a bit of an uncertain feel. It could even be a factor of the scenario and conditions. A larger attacking force but the defender gets a better Snap action roll.

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Ivan of Nordic Weasel fame/glory/villainy.

@shedman: Do you have a rough idea, when the calculator will be finished? I know a lot of people who are waiting impatiently (INCLUDING ME!)... Do us a nice christmas gift... PLEASE?

hmmmm...no GEV movement type. Why so? how can i make hammers slammer or GEVs for ogre games?

@Shedman:

New Year, new try?

I'm not familiar with any kind of programming stuff... for a noob like me your calculator seems to be nearly complete and I cannot judge how much work it would take to add the further weapon options. I would love to see this thing being finished. Do you think you will be able to work on it again? Thanks a lot and sorry for getting on your nerves. I will do regularly now.

Best regards,

Skully

Hello, these rules have piqued my interest and I am wondering if there are any rules for air assets, close support aircraft such as choppers and space bombardment, etc. If not then are there provisions for creating them in the system or plans for expansion?

Thanks.

These are not currently in the rules, but I'm not sure if they will be added in the future. Of course, you can always come up with your own ideas to add the missing elements you are looking for.

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The best player isn't always the winning player.

http://gamingandshooting.blogspot.com

Another month has passed, Mr. SHEDMAN. I demand that laserstorm calculator to be finished!