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Why the change to quasi-WW2? Just as an FYI, the original version of Gear Krieg tested at Gencon used Rafm scale HG minis with the North as the Germans (because they were both more angular) and the South as Russians (due to the curvy design trends for both at least mid/late war).

I've always concepted KL as a European conflict, Germans v Russians.

I was originally thinking WW1, as that's when tanks got introduced. But "WW1 battles" connotes massed infantry and static battle lines of trench warfare and massed artillery. And the WW1 tanks were bizzare. And Ostfront doesn't really have the iconic British tanks. So it wasn't a good match.

WW2 proper was always out of the question. "WW2 armor battles" instantly has people thinking El Alamien or Barbarossa or D-Day, and those are all way too big for what I intend.

The Spanish Civil War occurs when tanks have had some refinement, and the Germans and Russians skrimishing in the background, so it's the nominal historical analogue. But KL isn't WW2 or in Spain. It's just a footnote to history.

The real basis of KL is the ongoing development and anticipated militarization of exo-skeletal assist systems to produce Giant Robots.


I didn't get into GK at all, as the designs just never appealed to me. A lot of 1946 stuff rubs me the wrong way - I have similar issues with DUST, for example.

The decisions to proxy GK as NvS are totally reasonable, just not the direction I'm going.

As I had noted earlier, KOG light is now its own near-future small skirmish game between the giant robots of Germany and Russia. While rules are virtually entirely divorced, KL is still going to have some obvious Heavy Gear influences, because those are the models that I'm using to play with.

My KL German King Tiger KOG is still going to be a translation of HG's Southern King Tiger, and my KL German Panther is still going to be modeled on HG's Southern Black Mamba. The starting stats are going to be fairly obviously derived, but I expect playtesting to push defense down, and offense up.

After that, it'll be a look at how jump jets should work as a boost to movement and/or mobility.

Down the road, it'll be a question of whether to bring in tanks like the Leopard 2 and/or helicopters like the Hind. I think that tanks are probably OK, as they have roughly comparable footprint, and are excellent scale markers like infantry.

Scale-wise, helos are rather challenging, as a 1/144 scale Apache is 4" long with a 4" rotor disc. The iconic Russian Hind is almost 5" long, with a 5" rotor disc - roughly the size of a RT-era landspeeder! The sheer jump in scale suggests that helos are problematic.

Scale issues also pretty much preclude fixed-wing aircraft of any sort, where the helo size/speed/range problem is amped up by an order of magnitude. The iconic A-10 Warthog would be nearly 5" long with a 5' wingspan. With a typical operating speed of 350 mph, it'd traverse the width of a large 6' wide game space in 5 seconds - 1/10 what one would expect of a MBT like the Leopard. Or a Gear, which is, itself, far faster than an infantryman.

tl;dr? Tanks OK; helos, maybe; no aircraft.

On rebalancing, I'm trying to work on lethality. This interesting quirk comes up because defending is optional in KL. That is due to counterattacking replacing defending, rather than being in addition to defending. It's a pure trade between passive defense and active counters.

Rather than mucking about with stats at random, I'm trying to design attack and defense effectiveness against a particular ideal.

I'm kind of a mind that the ideal ratio is probably a little higher than 2 attackers to kill 1 defender in a straight-up fight where it makes sense to defend. Counterattacking under 2:1 should usually result in destruction, making it something of a desperation move.

OTOH, if the defender is dug in (i.e. re-rolling defense from cover), then the classic 3:1 ratio might be about right, consistent with prepared defenses of some sort.

And as defending is optional, the likely result should be just short of killing a counterattacking target 1 on 1. If the attack effectiveness were much higher, then a too-high likely destruction makes counterattacking something of a false choice, as choosing it means you would usually get destroyed for no potential benefit.

Anyhow, that's where I like the stats to shake out for the basic Gaear. Then, I'll embellish up/down by weapons and Gears before tackling Frames.

In mucking about, it starts to become apparent that my decision to add a counterattack reaction / defend in lieu of passive armor has a some interesting side effects.

Whether a target unit chooses to counterattack or defend, either are active choices. Defend represents dodging / ducking / shifting to better cover / activating ECM / whatever. Counterattack, of course, is a deliberate shooting action of some sort. As Defend / Counter is on a per-attack basis, a unit under combined attack can have multiple Defenses and/or counters.

This level of action breaks the inherent time-motion foundation behind KL, that each unit can only do one thing in any given step increment.

I'm now needing to reintroduce passive Armor that might be used against ALL attacks vs active Defense against a particular attack vs active Counterattack...

Distinguishing passive Armor vs active Defense is likely to be 1d6 (D+) Armor vs Xd6 (D+) Defense. Armor might (re?-)roll a single armor die against every attack, so a target might roll 2, 3 or more such dice over a particular turn, with individual successes reducing and negating individual attacks one by one. Defense would (re?-)roll multiple dice instead, giving better chances to completely negate a multi-die attack.

Design-wise, I think this third option gives even better tactical depth for both Attacker and Defender, particularly in many-on-many situation where individual attacks create layered options for both sides.

I need to play this more, but I think this may be the hallmark of KL. Or at least, it feels like an "Eureka!" moment. Suffice to say, I'm pretty excited over it.

Other than the die roll making the effect random, how is that different from the Robotech style hit vs a static target number and then choose whether to actively dodge? I'm not really seeing the benefit with this over a target number to hit then option to dodge.

Not being familiar with the Robotech dodge option, I'm not really sure there is necessarily that much difference. Not that there needs to be - I'm not afraid to steal what I consider to be a good idea if I think it would improve the game. If the RRT dodge option is good, and I happen to have something similar, then I'm OK with that. Potentially, the only real difference could be the requirement to decide whether to dodge at the moment the attack is declared.

I'm just trying to develop a set of tactical options when the non-active player's units are targeted. I am hoping to provide a useful variety of risk/reward payoffs that players would prefer depending on situational circumstances. If this helps, great, it'll stay. If not, it'll go.

Sorry, I figured as a customer you were familiar with the rules as well. In robotech, each unit is ascribed a passive defense stat that represents the difficulty of hitting them overall with just general operation based on typical speed and maneuverability for that model. If the attacker gets that target number on the hit roll, the defender can then choose the active and deliberate dodge reaction roll (at the cost of a command point). There is no automatic counterfire option that I can recall but I can't exclude it for sure it's been about a year since I cracked open the rules. I hope that helps.

Haha, nope. I just split for some of the RRT minis. Never played a single game of RRT. Fair assumption, though.

Anyhow, thanks for the clarification. The distinction between active and passive defense is essentially similar, where KL would effectively give each model a single RRT-like command point that they might use for active defense or else for counterattack.

It is interesting how this moves so far away from the clear Igo-Ugo concept that I previously had.

It's still different in that the robotech version (and I'm sure others) in that your's is randomized and constantly available rather than static for each model and a limited resource.

As for never playing a game, I suspect that puts you in the same boat as most of the kickstarter backers given how badly the game has been "managed" since funding. :(

Well, sorta. My sense is that RRT allows any units to actively dodge until CP are exhausted, right? So sufficient CP would allow a single RRT unit to dodge several times in a single turn.

My thought for KL would allow each unit to potentially dodge once per turn.

As I had mentioned in the other thread, my Arena Strike Cheetah (Ocelot) and Spitting Cobra (Tiger) models don't match the rest of my stuff, so they are likely to not figure in the games that I play. In particular, the Spitting Cobra is completely off from my King Cobra. So different, that I think I want to sell/trade them, rather than build them.

I plan to add unmanned Recon Drones, but I'm thinking the Ocelot and Tiger stay on as reference placeholders for HG players.


As an aside, I see that Pegasus Hobbies sells Russian / Ukranian houses for $7 set of 2. And prepainted infanatry for $7 for 10 guys. And prepainted tanks. Plus, they're local (sorta - over an hour inland!) to SoCal? That's pretty awesome!

What scale is the infantry? I put some ideas for the generic drones up in my blog after you posting about making them. Using left over command heads plus some robotech bits might work for the actual drones (the base and pegs though is another matter).

Pegasus labels it as 1/144, and I have no reason to doubt that right now. As Gears and Frames don't actually exist, there is plenty of squish in the size for the two to coexist.

http://pegasushobbies.net/catalog/Models-Peg.-Figure-Sets-1/144-Scale-Figures/c107_1_10/index.html?CDpath=3

The 1/144 Pegasus houses and terrain are what's really caught my eye. I see that eBay lists more variety of things than what's on the Pegasus website, which is pretty exciting. Prebuilt, prepainted infantry and buildings on the cheap!

OK, got the initial wording in for active Defend v Counterattack v passive Armor. Now, I need to do a little cleanup in preparation for releasing "Beta 4" ...

After that, I'll be back to working on stats and balance.

With the discussion of ground : figure scale ratio, I think I'm going to be at 3:1, so 1/144 figures & terrain with 1/432 ground. Not that it really matters when we're using made-up guns and such.

Although it does justify the unlimited range weaponry.

For those who have been wondering why Beta 4 is so slow to be published, It turns out that I stumbled upon on a rather fundamental core rules issue that needs cleanup before I publish again. It's rather amusing, and it warrants a post here to explain.

In its very first incarnation, KOG light inherited (i.e. "stole") GW-like phased actions from the AoS ruleset, which is why it's been structured as 1. Move, 2. Fight, 3. Shoot phase. GW obviously derived the AoS player turn from 40k's Move, Shoot, & Assault phases. This is intended to codify how things move in some sort of rational way, to limit actions each turn.

As I've been working on KOG light, I've had something of a time/motion clock in the back of my head, stricter than AoS, which is why I Fight before Shoot, and then clarfied to mutually exclusive Fight -or- Shoot. These restrictions were to prevent "unrealistic" AoS / 40k-like Alpha strikes of Move +Shoot +Charge +Fight, while still keeping a limit on what units can do each turn.

In more recent development, I've been noticing that the game is actually a 2-phase Move, then Act system. For the actions it won't make any difference whether a unit fights or shoots first, so it's OK to let the player choose the order, rather than forcing the player to finish fighting before shooting (or taking shoot-equivalent actions).

After I recognized that it's a Move + Act phased turn, the question then becomes whether I move to a true Action Point / action system a la Infinity. In trying to resolve this conundrum, I've been looking at alternatives for new players. Pure actions means it's possible to shoot, then move, for example. However, pure actions also increases certain sorts of tracking, that I'm not quite sure I want to manage. I think that the extra options change the game into something else, so I hold on the Move and Act phased turn within the overall Igo-Ugo turn construct: I Move, I Act; You Move, You Act.

And then there's the whole business of Fight vs Shoot, where it's one or the other. Not having separate Fight & Shoot phases helps reinforce that it's a single action phase, in which the player may only choose one or the other as the action. And it will help unify the Attack language for Shooting and Fighting, rather than largely duplicating the rules with very minor tweaks. So that's also good.

This has been sitting in the background for so long. All this time, I've been using a turn structure that didn't reflect what the game was had evolved to be doing, and then overcomplicating the rules to make it do something else. When a 2-phase player turn wouldn't have had any of that problem.

Anyhow, that's what I've been up to!

For the record, I got in some more work on all of the KOGs, vehicles and infantry, setting converted costs, movement, defense (skill + armor), hull and sensors. So this defines how quick and tough each of my platforms are.

Next step is to re-address lethality in the open, but Beta 4 is looking like a strong possibility to finish this summer / end of month!

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
OK, got the initial wording in for active Defend v Counterattack v passive Armor. Now, I need to do a little cleanup in preparation for releasing "Beta 4" ...

After that, I'll be back to working on stats and balance.

OK, it's time to talk about another big mistake, of a different sort that I had actually worked out prior to pulling the 40k/AoS phases for Move&Act. It turns out that my initial concept for Armor vs Defense was very wrong.

I was using 1d6 to represent passive Armor vs full Xd6 for active Defense., so 2 Defense (4+) would reduce down to 1 Armor (4+).

Simple, right? Wrong.

1. Reducing dice down to 1 die roll strongly constrains the number of dice I would use for Defense, functionally requiring at least 2 Dice, preferably something more like 3 Dice for it to be truly meaningful.

2. Reducing dice is a completely different resolution modifier when the rest of the game works on re-rolls, re-rolling success or re-rolling-failures. So, mechanically, it felt wrong because it was out of place, out of character.

3. Having a minimum of 2d6 was bumping up Defense rates much higher than I wanted for the desired default ~50% lethality. I'd have needed Attack to be rolling 3 to 5 dice, which broke the design brief of a maximum of 3d6 per player.

4, Stats were getting messy, as I had so few meaningful options to work with, due to the design space being so limited.

Solution

As it turned out, Active Defense simply maximizes the Defense result like a critical effect. The model simply makes the most of whatever it has.akin to how Piercing Weapons always cause a Critical Hit on a 6. Much easier and better, and consistent with other mechanics.

It also "stacks" properly for a "worst case" shot:
- re-roll attacks for long range,
- re-roll defense for cover,
- active defense auto-crits.


Yeah, I should have written this up earlier, but I was too tied up with the numbers. Oops.
____

8/26 - as it turns out, I need to back to Counterattack (and Attack) precluding any Defense at all. All or nothing.

Oh yeah, I need to have a little follow-on discussion about Target Reactions and how they work, why I only have Defend and Counterattack, but not Retreat; also, how they combine to create a Close Combat phase.

In KL, a target only gets one reaction.

That means the best way to take an enemy model out is to gang up on it. Either via massed Ranged Shooting attacks, or else by dogpiling on it in Close Combat. Either way, the target reacts once. After that, the cost is clear for other models to take their shots without any reprisal or other reaction. This is very deliberate, as it creates tactical and strategic opportunities on the tabletop. A clever player can arrange positioning and sequence shooting so that combined weight of fire can focus on a single model to take it out efficiently. Or to engage secondary targets if things go well. Similarly in Close Combat, where a furball allows models to gang up on another model, after the target exhausts its Defense.

Counterattack helps the target choose to extract a cost if the first attacker is too light. So there is some gamesmanship here to choose whether to suppress with a heavy enough attack, or risk losing a light unit to counterfire. The selection and sequencing of the attacks matters. And it naturally encourages dynamic coherency for supporting fire and combat, rather than forcing it.

However, there is No Retreat, because reactive movement would undo the active player's setup work during Movement in preparation for coordinated and/or cascading Action. The typical reactive movement scenario becomes very cat-and-mouse, where the active player moves and takes a snap shot, and then reactive retreats behind cover when someone shoots back. This isn't a bad sort of game, per se, but it's just not in character for mini-mechs stomping around. Worse, it breaks the combined targeting strategy above, both for ranged shooting (where you move to be fully obscured) and close combat (where you simply move > 1" to break out of the secondary attackers). The active player may go through a lot of effort to set up interlocking fire or overlapping combat, and should be rewarded for doing so; allowing the target to simply evade or avoid all of that with a free move would be very frustrating.

Counterattack is also the mechanism by which units "fight back" in Close Combat, akin to the 40k Assault phase. The active player charges and attacks in close combat, and the surviving targets counterattack, still in close combat (because they can't move, as explained above). During the next player turn, the active player repositions models (incidentally gaining the charge bonus); steps back to shoot a fighting retreat; or else breaks contact entirely at speed. But they can stay stuck in, and fight as in 40k. The difference is the active mobility gives tactical choices, placing them in the player's hands.

Finally, the reaction mechanic dovetails with the game round initiative system potentially giving back-to-back player turns. A player gaining double turns doesn't get to double shoot with impunity. The counterattack reactions give the passive player the ability to respond in kind, and helping balance risk and reward. The primary advantage of those double turns comes from the extra movement, to regroup and reposition while the other player has to remain put.

Yes, I'm pretty happy with how this is shaking out.

8/26 Playtested Beta 4 today!

Working! - Most stuff works the way I like it.

1. Squad creation. I standardized at 3-6 models of 4 types (Tactical, Elite, Recon, Heavy), each corresponding to a 4 squad type, with standard options to bump or dilute squads as appropriate. It's a very clean replacement for the HG system.

2. Platoon creation. I also standardized this as 2+ squads (1+ Tactical), where Tactical squads unlock non-Tactical squads or models. Also very flexible.

3. Player Turn. Revised Move, then Act is good.

Some wordsmithing and tweaking might be needed, but the gist of it is correct.


Needs more work... A few things were off, to the point that they absolutely need reworking.

1. Counterattack - with layers of Defense, it bogs down. Mechanically Attack - Armor, then Attack - Armor is too many sets of rolls for what's supposed to be a streamlined game. Going forward, Attackers don't get any Defense. So Counterattack is Attack, Attack and all hits cause damage.

2. 3+ Hull wasn't obvious or smooth. We had a unit with no damage, 1 damage, and Crippled models. If I remove the intermediate state(s) between undamaged and Crippled, then active models are either undamaged or Crippled; then Destroyed (or Eliminated). Every model becomes a fixed 2 Hull, which it means I can now remove Hull as a stat, simplifying the profiles. Instead, this just folds into Defense.

3. Lethality - too high (i.e. Infinity-like). Defense was too low, not meaningful. I need Defense to be meaningful, and that is doable with the standardization on 2 Hull.


TBD

1. Game Round iniative - I need to noodle this a bit more. I think I've "fixed" the AOS initiative thing, but need to play it a bit more.

2. Best Defense - Critical defense might not be where I want to go, as this is supposed to be a lethal environment. Just not quite as lethal as Infinity.

All in all, it was a good little playtest, and those other eyes were helpful.
____

8/28 Update!

In reworking stats (lots of work here!), I removed Spray (e.g. Flamethrower) as nobody uses such weapons anymore, also because it's such a strange weapon from a rules POV.

Also, tweaked Defense to remove Best Defense that cancelled 2 hits in favor of adding a Concentrated Attack penalty that re-rolls successful defense. Concentrated Attack makes the tactic very clear to all players, rather than a a quirk of the rules. Yes, it overlaps Precise (which was deliberately intended to negate Cover), but that's OK because Precise is a somewhat uncommon trait tied to high accuracy / homing weapons.

Also, updated the one-shot weapons to 2 shots, with a second checkbox.


Side observation - the absolute volume of rules has gotten visibly smaller. I'm not using the 8th page at all, and I have more whitespace at the end of my columns. I guess that means I'm doing a decent job of editing out the junk.
____

8/29 mini-Update!

As the last page is basically blank, and most of the rules are "fixed" I've been adding a Summary of Play. Because it was requested. Not that it really needs it, what with the playing rules being on 2 facing pages, but it doesn't hurt, and I have the space. Mainly, it gives me a reference that the high level game flow is correct.

As I've been prepping for the (major) Beta 4 release, lethality has come up as a question.

Current stats for the base case attack result in:
. 20% Destroyed
. 25% Crippled
. 55% No effect.
45 damage / 55% undamaged

I'm thinking to release at this level, but was curious what others think.

Thread on lethality is here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/701078.page

Long-awaited Beta 4 is finally available:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/s/i/at/2016/9/KOG_light_rules_B4-20160831r-01152322.pdf

I had a really good summer with family and friends, and KOG light was on the back burner for much of it. This wasn't a bad thing, as I gained a certain amount of distance that allowed me to revisit the game with a bit of perspective to think about what I liked, and what I didn't. Going into the holiday weekend, I've decided to publish at months' end to put a marker down as to what I see KOG light being.

At this point, Beta 4 should be cleaner and smoother than Beta 3, but the weapons are still in flux as I work through tweaking the lethality and survivability of the German Gears and Russian Frames. Going foward, I'm going to push for monthly releases to finalize the game by end of year.

So, what changed?

p.1 - I cleaned up the preparation format to better clarify physical whatnots that the game would need. I also recommended more terrain; this is a sticking point in finalizing the game, as I will have to create and provide terrain templates.

p.2 - Game Rounds got rebalanced such that the Attacker starts with a double turn, with the Defender next to get the double. Recent discussion about AoS initiative suggests I've made the correct tweaks to minimize turn bias and average advantage.

Player Turns were heavily revamped to Movement & Action (vs Move, Fight, & Shoot phases) this is smoother and more flexible, simpler for players to process.

Counterattack (and Attack) was revamped to be in lieu of rolling any Defense dice.

Victory conditions tweaked to give minor victory for all destroyed or crippled - an easier win condition than all destroyed.

p.3 Combat Resolution was restructured and unlinked so that experienced players can roll Attack and Defense simultaneously to speed play. Indirect was given a minimum 12" range and moved to Weapons, while Spray was removed as obsolete. Functionally, it's actually an opposed test.

Concentrated Attack was added to explicitly encourage focused attacking, where it was an implicit benefit before.

All models were standardized at 2 Hull, where it previously was typically 3; this simplifies damage tracking (undamaged / crippled / destroyed) along with stats calculation.

Simplified Infantry so they can properly use Cover - this means that Infantry now only have one special rule.

Added special rules for Tanks, such that they are immune to Concentrated Attack as the Tank special rule to distinguish them from KOGs.

p.4 - Alternate Scenarious also count crippled for destruction objectives.

Unit battles now specify minimum units in addition to maximum units

p.5 - background officially set in 2037.

Moved the Model description and Unit selection rules here. Overhauled Unit selection for Squads and Platoons to something much simpler and more consistent - this is a lot easier to build forces with.

pp.6-7 - German & Russian Forces were reworked with corrected, recalculated defensive stats across the board, based on HG Piloting & Armor & H/S stats (ugh). Weapons are still going to take work, along with Frame options.

p.8 - added all new Summary of Play. Designer's Notes updated.

At this point, I think I've redone and replaced all of the AoS-isms from the original draft. It's entirely possible that there are no AoS elements left in the current rulespack. Nevertheless, AoS was a useful starting point for the ruleset, and the emphasis on brevity has been very helpful in preventing bloat.
____

9/1 - Corrected Summary of Play - Game Rounds - Defender has first turn, then Attacker.

As I had called out, Beta 5 should revisit weapon stats in a systemic way. In addition to tweaking the force selection rules for squads.

In thinking about it, I need to call out a more comprehensive to-do list for what I'd like in KOG light:

1. proper weapon stats for German & Russian units
2. Russian Frame options properly addressed
3. status markers
4. DIY 3-D terrain templates

If I can do that, I will call KOG light "complete".

Over the long weekend, I got the basic weapons for both German & Russian units roughed out, so that part is coming along. In the conversion of CEF to Russian, I observe that CEF Frames are clearly more deadly than their Southern / German counterparts. Which generally aligns with their higher points costs.

In trying to pull the Russian Frame options together, I've not yet found a good way to represent this, partly due to how I have 2 skill levels (human / GREL) and 2 tiers (regular / BF-19) producing 3 levels of effectiveness x each weapon. This ripples through 4 options per frame type, of which I have 4. Ugh.

Maybe I'll switch over to terrain.

With less than a week until I'm "obliged" to release Beta 5, I thought I'd polish the German not-Gears and Status Markers, just to get that done.

Then spend October working my way through Russia... Hopefully, I'll have more luck than Napoleon did!

Or, I could just release Beta 5 right now as-is...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/s/i/at/2016/9/KOG_light_rules_B5-20160926-27040516.pdf

Yeah.

Changes?

p.6 - German Units - rebaselined weapons and Defense -- these are ready for playtesting.

p.7 - Russian Units - rebaselined Defense and base model weapons -- also ready for playtesting. Frame options are still WiP.

p.8 - added Status Markers, updated Designer's Notes


Notes?

I screwed up by not releasing the German not-Gears when I was "done" with their stats at the start of the month. I spent the past few weeks not getting anywhere at all with the Russian not-Frames.

Although I did rough in a placeholder for Status Markers.

*sigh*

The Russian not-Frame options are quite the little mess to deal with, and that the cleanest "fix" is probably to separate Gunnery Skill from Weapon Accuracy and Weapon Strength. I'd have to add a Skill Stat crossing against an explicit Weapon Table, which breaks my initial "no tables" design goal.

Maybe implicit weapon table, or just for the Russians. :


TBD?

Russian Frame Options and printable terrain!

On the terrain front, I found out that I can comfortably fit 5 shipping containers on a single sheet of paper - 2x 20', 2x 40' and 1x 40' high cube. These will be pop-up / fold-flat terrain pieces, so easy to build and easy to transport.

Next up will be box trucks, van, and other vehicles, before I move on to industrial buildings and small commercial, finishing with residential stuff.
____

9/29 - I got the vehicles squared away: 2 box trucks and 4 van trailers!
____

9/30 - and commercial vans! Thinking about it, I should probably change the mix of the van trailers to include some tractors and short van trailers...

To close out the month of September, I'm releasing the initial terrain pack of modern industrial stuff:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/s/i/at/2016/10/KOG_light_terrain_-_20160930-01023423.pdf

Contains "pop-up" papercraft models for:
* 2 delivery vans
* 2 box trucks
* 4 van trailers
* 5 storage containers

This helps address the issue of KL needing cover on the battlefield for things to hide behind.

I was working on designing some 1/144-scale buildings, and I realized I was wasting my time. It turns out that 1/144 scale is essentially similar to model railroad N-scale (1/160).

Woodland Scenics sells a multi-pack of 13x multi-story buildings:

And the killer? It's $157 MSRP, so it's possible to get for $125 + S&H.
http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/Item/S1485/page/1

So much for worrying about scenery!

Like a duck on a calm lake, things appear quiet on the surface, but there's a furious churn that you can't see... Lately, I've gotten some good, actionable feedback, and have been working through it. Items under review include:

Coherency - this looks good, but radios go really far, and there's probably a more natural and consistent LOS type requirement if I don't standardize on 12" coherency (24" for Recon).

Speed Move - this probably needs to be a shoot-equivalent action to simplify the rules. Allowing the player a choice to move -or- shoot is also probably a good thing in terms of potential decision-making.

Overwatch / En Passant - this is a bugaboo, and I understand the point of interrupting movement for Snap Fire, but I don't much like what it does to the game flow. If I don't do this, I suspect I need to address it head-on in Designer's Notes.

Fire Support - as a rule for one model per side, it's not a good one use of design space. Better to simply make Commanders Recon, I think.

Sensor Lock - a game that purports to use near modern technology probably shouldn't have magical sensors for invisible targeting.

Hold Objective - Should this require the same model for consecutive turns, or allow models to "tag" in and out for the win? Right now, the latter is possible, but I'm thinking it's not really desirable.

Counterattack - Needs example vs Defense: A, then C // A v D.

Linebreaker - this scenario needs to be revisited. Probably with a defined exit zone; possibly as an all new scenario.

Forces of Battle - this needs more restriction, as I see that people with free choice and no history with the massed excess of Tactical models in HG just won't bother with them.

Examples - Rocket Pods need to be called out? 2d + 2d vs 1d + 1d.

Attack / Defense ratings - there are a few units where I was overly generous in consistently rounding up, where the unit(s) in question might have been better realized with some up and some down. German Infantry, for example, is probably too strong.

Movement Rates - in the conversion from HG, to a smaller standard battlefield, I may have gone to far by using the maximum move vs standard move. This will result in a -1" to most units, and a -2" reduction in a few places. .

Visuals - In addition to the above areas, the entire thing is crying out for diagrams and examples, along with a print-and-play sheet.

Designer's Notes - needs to cover the option to simply walk out of CC and shoot... Also needs to address Indirect Fire and Counterattack.

And it still doesn't resolve the Frames issue. -sigh-