Necrons would be very nice, preferably with a bunch of the new none-raiders units as I would like to playtest a list for new-'dex necrons.

Does anyone else fancy starting a Tabletop game? It's most feasible to play a hour to a few hours here and there depending our availability, rather than the whole game in one go. At the moment the available armies are IG, SM and TLs I guess. I'm in Perth, so +8 GMT and generally free most evenings from 7:30pm to 11ishpm.

I have the image files for all the Feral Ork army done now, including units with attached characters, pending waiting on updated bases files to stick them on. I've done 9 Dark Eldar units so far too.

Zombo - please can you make 15 x 40mm bases too on the weekend? Then, less important, but if you have time (I'm not sure how long it takes) 20 x 20mm square, 20 x 30 mm, 25 x 30mm and 30 x 40mm would be nice too.


I'd like to do the Necrons (both old and new, though I'm not what I'd use to represent the new invented superheavies) at some point. They're probably mid way down the mental list of armies to do and I don't really know how long it will take yet. Might not get round to it for 1-3 months I'd guess.

It'd be good to see you playing Tabletop sooner (post up a battle report and feedback for Zombo) so you know you're happy with it and going to use it? It would be a little annoying to go to the trouble of designing a new army if no-one used it.

I'm GMT +1

I can't play when my kids are awake (to much disturbance ) so that limits my available time to 22:00 - 00:00

Thanks, but that's not really viable for me (5-7am is too early, I wouldn't want to disturb others in the house sleeping).

You should be able to get a game against UK people though, perhaps Zombocomm himself?

I'll try to knock all those base sizes up at the weekend.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Great! Thanks.

Could you do 74mm round, 120mm round and 300mm round also? There could be a new templates category created as though it were an army providing the correct sized templates to use for barrages, orbital bombardments and 15cm from a point (useful for drop pods). The deployment zone templates I suggested before could go in there too. I'm hoping the system will all these to be semi-transparant or to go underneath the other units somehow but the templates would be good even if not (it's a pain and more inaccurate to have to measure these using the ruler in a single direction at once).

Please do a 15 x 30 mm base as well; I could do with it for the DE Raider. Also a base for the DE Executor Landing Model, estimating it from Raiders I think 180mm round would be about right (crikey that thing is huge).

I'm two thirds the way through creating the sprites for the DE units now.

I was just thinking about it while doing the dishes and army specific objectives, like I mentioned before, might be a bit too much bother to be worth it but could I create some general objective markers sprites e.g. fuel dump, bunker, etc and have you add them to the terrain menu? Or would they be better as units? Ideally I'd design them 60mm round mostly with a half the size 60mm semi-circle for the blitz. It makes the game more flavoursome to play and describe in battlereports if you can be fighting over actual things of worth rather than flags.

Are ranges in Tabletop measured from the centre to the centre? I assume this is the case. This works fine for units and other objectives, but for the blitz you'd ideally want the range measured to the point on the table edge. Is there any way to tweak where the range gets measured to for the blitz objective? Hopefully so, but if not I could just design a very small blitz objective (perhaps 10mm round?) so that the range is not too far off.

I can do transparent templates, and I'd add them to the counters menu rather than as a new army. It'll probably mean adding some kind of extra flag to the data file for all counters though.

Deployment sized ones could be a bit awkward to make and use though...

BTW in case you hadn't realised, counters and terrain are added in exactly the same way as new units, to the counters.txt and terrain.txt files.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Shrug. I'd have thought getting more armies in was more important at this stage. I'd recommend adding them to the counters menu however if you want to do so.



Centre to centre, yes, and there's no easy way of changing that at all, even for blitz objectives, but it surely shouldn't matter that much? Just right click and drag from the table edge...

Remember that the game has no idea at all what each of the objects is; it has no idea what a blitz objective is.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Great, thanks! That'll make barrages easier If the system allows for semi-transparent perhaps make them a semitransparent orange colour? Otherwise transparent is fine, so long as you can see the edge.


I would think it should be easy to make a deployment zone template as a image file (the exact same pixel size as the table), with coloured deployment zones and the non-deployment zone areas transparent? Do you know how to convert such an image file to a 2d mdl file? I see 2d images with both colour and transparent areas are possible as the 'ring' counter is 2d with a transparent centre. Each template could be a single large image with the appropriate deployment areas coloured and the rest transparent. It might take a few attempts to deploy it exactly centred on the table but it would be WAY quicker and easier to accurately place a single deployment piece onto the battlefield at the start, rather than trying to measure out and plonk down a number of 3d pieces in an imprecisely straight line to mark deployment zones, like we did in our game.

Thanks, I hadn't realised I could do these. I think I'd need to be able to edit mdl files though? I downloaded a program that did but it was complicated and I had no clue how to use it and gave up.

It wouldn't have taken long to make some objective images. However, after playing around with Tabletop some more I'm abandoning my idea of new objectives. I would only have been able to do 2d ones on the ground or bases and the tall, thin flagpoles are more practical in game as they're more visible and can be seen through scenery in the same place.

I don't know how to edit a mdl file but could you add a 2d 15cm radius coloured ring on the ground around the centre of the flag as well? It would be very helpful in game to be able to see at a glance which units are within and if a unit is in as you're measuring to it. It could also be useful for other things like SM Drop Pod deployment.

If you can get be the files for the various base sizes I asked for, then I'll combine them with the sprites and get you DE and FO armies within a couple of days or so.

I've just finished all the sprites for the Dark Eldar army as well as the Feral Orks now. Just waiting on the new base files and then I'll get the army packs sent across.

I have other things I need to get done but will work on gradually adding more as I have time, probably either orks or craftworld eldar next.

I'm two thirds done making the sprites for Hive Fleet Leviathan / modern Tyranids now too.

It'll be semi transparent, yes.



It'd actually be easier for me to just make new objectives. I'm not sure about the 15cm ring, it's very scenario specific.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

A clear visible 15cm circle from a centre point would also be useful for SM Drop Pod Deployment. And Planetfalling generally too, as once you locate the point you pre-plotted you have to place the planetfalling unit wholly within 15cm of the point. You could judge by eye from the particular unit graphic and the 15cm radius circle, while this would be tricky and more inaccurate to measure if using the range ruler which measures to the middle of a unit and units vary in size and shape.

Make it as well as the regular flag, not a replacement for it, both have their uses. If you don't think it's generally worth having it in Tabletop then just include it (and the deployment zone area templates) with the underground epic distribution but leave it out of the general distribution. Please do add it in! It would be very, very handy for playing Epic.