GlynG wrote:
I don't have enough of the skimmers to play it myself (unless I did a lot of proxying - I only have a single formation each of FW Valkyries and Vultures).
In attempting to add something to the conversation besides snarkiness, I'll echo Glyn here. I've been tempted by the Elysians in the past, but the skimmers are prohibitively costly (the EW ones look like fine models, but the fan/gyrocopter look just doesn't do it for me). Various proxy/forumware infantry aren't cheap either. Add this to the inability of quite experienced players to make a good show with the list and the whole thing has moved beyond the back burner for me.
I've been trying (and failing) to find a good way to say this all morning on the other thread, but I'll attempt it here:
Folks seem to want to replicate the real-world perils of an airborne drop in epic (i.e. teleport isn't fine-grained enough; doesn't take into account the transports getting shot down etc. etc.). However, I would argue that a viable game of epic requires that that phase of an airborne operation is abstracted out. As Mosc has said in the other thread (in so many words), any mechanic that takes those perils into account is going to lead to a game that is way too open to chance. I have not played Aeronautica Imperialis, but trying to get troops to a drop zone in the face of enemy integrated air defenses seems more appropriate for AI than epic.
Sure, there may be parts of the drop that went horribly wrong, but that should be understood to be happening somewhere else (other than the E:A game board). An airborne operation just isn't happening without (at least temporary) air supremacy. I think of it in terms of 40k fiction - I was always annoyed by how horribly incompetent and/or unlucky the IN was whenever they're mentioned in the books, until the lightbulb went off and I realized almost nothing major/interesting in ground combat can happen (i.e. some invasion of a planet) unless you get the navy out of the way.
