Wild third game speculation. Space Lobsters!

[Pvt. Ryan]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by abneo3sierra:

I would vote for continued realism vs sci-fi. If they could produce a sci-fi title without taking anything away from their main audience, I would say go for it though. However, they would likely not be able to do that, as any dollars and time spent on the one, by the nature of the business, probably come from the other.

They've already stated that keeping their "main audience" is not a concern, so your concerns seem misplaced. CM:SF's change of focus was a deliberate attempt to attract a broader consumer base with the admitted sacrifice of existing customers, so why stop there? </font>

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Pvt. Ryan:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by abneo3sierra:

I would vote for continued realism vs sci-fi. If they could produce a sci-fi title without taking anything away from their main audience, I would say go for it though. However, they would likely not be able to do that, as any dollars and time spent on the one, by the nature of the business, probably come from the other.

They've already stated that keeping their "main audience" is not a concern, so your concerns seem misplaced. CM:SF's change of focus was a deliberate attempt to attract a broader consumer base with the admitted sacrifice of existing customers, so why stop there? </font>

[Mord]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

For once, DaveH, you and I may agree. Was that the one advertised in comic books with a drawing of an M-16 being fired in a college hallway by an automated machine of some kind?

That was Attack Of the Mutants...one of those Yaquinto Album games...I gots me a copy about two years ago.

As for Sci Fi...I am not all that big on the idea in CM but Ogre would be pretty cool...or even Battle Tech...or Harry Turtledove's World War series, where the lizard men attack earth during WWII. Maybe even an Xcom type background...

Hell, once Spore gets released I probably won't have any Sci Fi time to spare!

Mord.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Mord:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

For once, DaveH, you and I may agree. Was that the one advertised in comic books with a drawing of an M-16 being fired in a college hallway by an automated machine of some kind?

That was Attack Of the Mutants...</font>

[SlapHappy]

What was that pocket game similar to Attack of the Mutants with "Alien"-style monsters set in a space station?

[SlapHappy]

Ahhh...found it....

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/2613

[Garm]

I'd like to see a BattleTech or WH40K based game, but I guess the license would be too expensive.

[Dean F.]

I'm sort of a science fiction fanatic, and a military science fiction fanboy. The problem is that not much translates well into a good balanced game.

Yes, Heinlein's Starship Troopers was a great book, and for its time grounbreaking, but it was all infantry with little mention of other arms. Granted it was infantry in powered armored combat suits, but nonetheless infantry.

Joe Haldeman's Forever War is similarly based on powered infantry.

David Drake's Hammer's Slammers series is very balanced, but the tactics are basically based on the use of armor in the Vietnam-war era. Also, the science is lacking in that weaponry is based upon a deus-ex-machina "powergun" technology.

Keith Laumer's Bolo series is basically like OGRE. It is based around very large armored vehicles that routinely fight entire conventional armies. The stories span 2000 years and cover 60 generations of Bolo.

The Meat of the Matter:

A very good possible model would be one based on the now-defunct roleplaying game 2300AD, by Game Designers' Workshop. It is based around the colonization of space by (real-life) human nations after recovering from a catastrophic cold-war-turned-hot kind of war in 2000AD (which was covered in a prior game called Twilight:2000). This is the kind of game, like Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium, that people would buy just to read without playing. It was that good.

2300AD had VERY detailed weapons and armored vehicles from several human nations, and an EXTREMELY well-developed and ORIGINAL alien opponent that also had well-developed equipment.

France and Germany had developed powered infantry combat armor, though it is no-where near as well-developed as in Starship Troopers. It was bulky, much like that seen in the 3DSF model pictures in the previous post. (And the United States used a license-built copy of the French design.)

Manchuria had a perverse cultural fascination with vaguely mecha-like (but much smaller) "pods" that walked on legs but had no arms, and bristled with weapons. You definitle rode a pod, though, you didn't wear it like the French and German powered armor.

Most "tanks" were in fact built more on Stryker MGS model than the M1A2 model. They had to be kept light because most were ground-effect (i.e. hovercraft). Thus, they depend upon maneuverability and C3 to survive, just like the Strykers. Only (I think) the French and the Manchurians kept main battle tanks mounted on tracks, and they were HUGE, like smaller OGREs or Bolos. Most of the combat had a very gritty Aliens-like colonial-war feel to it. It wasn't space-opera like Star Wars or Star Trek.

The aliens were called "Kafers", after the German word for bug, but they are not insectile. They are interesting in that they get more intelligent under stress, using an adrenalin-analog that works on their minds instead of their bodies. But, every time they get a shot of this "adrenaline" over the years their baseline IQ would rise a little, too, so they could still have pretty smart officers and leaders who were old and experienced. This is all covered in great detail in the Physiology section of the Kafer Sourcebook. It was said that "nothing is more stupid as a Kafer at the beginning of a firefight. But nothing is more clever than the same Kafer twenty seconds later, either."

The Kafer had several different rifles, ATGMs, anti-aircraft missiles, a ground-effect tank, and at least two types of tracked APC. Railguns and plasma guns are used extensively. Man-portable laser weapons tend to be bulky, but not as bulky as the man-portable plasma guns (which have backpacks similar to flamethrower tanks). But the Germans-- clever little devils-- had a man-portable plasma gun that didn't have a backpack (it only held six shots, though). The Ukrainians had a shoulder-launched single-shot anti-armor plasma weapon that worked like a recoilless rifle.

These are all the high-end stuff, though. Most troops still shot bullets using chemical propellant, and many lower-end vehicles mounted autocannon rather than beam weapons.

The timeline also covered many conflicts between the various human nations before cooperating (sort of) in the final war against the aliens. The human-on-human wars would likely make great 2-player games, with the Kafers excellent for 1-player games. You could even argue that the Kafer AI doing stupid things occasionally was accurate!

Getting the license for this would be MUCH cheaper than one for Aliens and, frankly, has more information available to it. (The USCM Technical Manual covers USCM equipment in depth, but there is no info on any of their opponents.) Also, Marc Miller let Steve Jackson Games start making suppliments for the epic Traveller role-playing game using the GURPS system, so I think he is interested in cooperating with others about the games that reverted to him when GDW went under.

Marc Miller as eBook versions of all the old books for sale at: http://www.farfuture.net/

Anyone developing CM:2300 would need the basic game, the Vehicle Guide, the Kafer Sourcebook, and the Aurora Sourcebook. There are fan-sites all over the internet. (It was, as I said, a truly excellent and original roleplaying game. It won awards. GDW always made great stuff.)

By the way, Texas is an independent nation in this game.

All that said, I'm all for sticking to real-life as well. But if a CM sci-fi game was made based on 2300AD I would pay ridiculously for it.

[ March 01, 2008, 05:34 AM: Message edited by: Dean F. ]

[luderbamsen]

I'd say a future, fictional but realistic scenario, say, 2050 or thereabout.

[Mord]

Originally posted by SlapHappy:

Ahhh...found it....

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/2613

HA! LOL I'd picked this game up too, about a year ago, still in the shrink.

Dorosh, I knew right away when you described that pic, played the game quite a few times as a teen and finally got my own copy. I am a rabid, classic game collector. Fun stuff.

Mord.

[LongLeftFlank]

Originally posted by Dean F.:

It is based around the colonization of space by (real-life) human nations after recovering from a catastrophic cold-war-turned-hot kind of war in 2000AD (which was covered in a prior game called Twilight:2000). This is the kind of game, like Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium, that people would buy just to read without playing. It was that good.

Yes, I remember buying a number of the Twilight 2000 modules without having any intention of ever playing the RPG. As imaginative mil-fiction it definitely beat Tom Clancy, and its authors knew their geography, history and technology very well.

[SlapHappy]

Twilight:2000 was a great concept as an RPG. Just a bit hard to get your head around as it had very complex rules system.

That being said, I think it would make a fantastic tactical combat game.

[Peter Cairns]

The problem with the WH40k type game is that where as through history engagement ranges have grown and troop desnsities dropped ( yes that's a generalistaion but you know what i mean so don't get picky), in movies and table top games ranges are ridiculously short.

It's a fudge, in movies it makes them action packed. The Terminator should have killed Sara conners from 1,000m with an M-16 with no scope in the first reel but that wouldn't have been much of a movie.

In WH 40K you should engage at about 500 ft, but who's got 60 or so 8 ft tables and somewhere to put them.

Whether it be in-doors in "Aliens" or super power suits that allows a man to carry more armour than a Tiger 2, they are all just fudges to make it look good keeping it "on screen" or "on table".

What the CMx2 engine allows you to do is break away from that and use realistic weapons at proper ranges and if you don't do it then you end up with just another novelty Sci-fi game.

If they do it BF should aim for something better than that.

Peter.

[flamingknives]

With tabletop games or movies as inspiration, I would have thought that you use the background and relative strengths and apply them in a more logical way, having more virtual space to play with.

The thing I like with the WH40k universe is that it's so big and complex that there isn't a universal tech level. A Space Marine in his powered armour is very high tech, but the cost is far too high for it to be a universal solution when at the same time a forgeworld could produce a hundred tanks.

Additionally, with the Tyrannids, you do have space lobsters.

[dan/california]

The problem with any realistic sci-fi game is that anything bigger than a bug that shows itself is going to get vaporized.

1 Kilowatt lasers are coming into service now, literally, and 100 kilowatt models are coming very soon. Give this trend another 50 years and the life span for most mechanized equipment on the battlefield for the force with the second best tech is going to go from days, to hours, to minutes.

As a book, and I have read them all, Drake makes it work in Hammer's Slammers. But a book doesn't have to be balance-able. A game does to some extent require it.

Drop team fudges this and I think that is still its biggest problem. Battle Tech fudges it to the point of being a joke.

[flamingknives]

Dan, you are assuming a certain level of targetting technology and a certain tech level.

Obviously, with a homogenised society, as you might find in Star Trek, then tech is going to be universal and high. In a fragmented universe then tech level can vary dramatically.

[dan/california]

Yes, but if the civilization is fragmented the side with the smaller fragment of technology gets erased in a standup shooting war. A realistic conflict starts to look like the 91 Gulf War with the Iraqi's being run right over while providing a little target practice.

This only leaves scenarios where either you have a an even matchup of the same fragment, which would probably be stuck on a single planet. If your going to do that why not just do an Arab Israeli 68-73. Then we can all argue about real equipment, instead of made up equipment.

[flamingknives]

That kind of assumes that the communications are sufficiently good to allow contact of the high and low tech in such a fashion that the high tech has the logistics it needs.

[dan/california]

A high tech force that is completely cut off from its logistics train is going to become combat ineffective very quickly. Something I hope several someones at the Pentagon stays up late at night worrying about by the way.

However; if we assume the level of technology that allows for something called the "Colonial Marines" they would have to take this into account. Almost entirely robotic factory ships that mince up asteroids and spit out various kinds of kit come immediately to mind. Beam weapons that don't use up the beam generating core with every shot go a long way to help with this as well. The Pentagon is throwing truck loads of money at fiber-optic lasers for that very reason. The last thing I read implied they were making progress too.

Drake wrote a book whose name I can't immediately remember where he took this into account very intelligently. One side was using lasers on their tanks because while they were not quite as effective as some of the alternatives they were essentially infinite ammo. The other side was using osmium ( atomic number 76 and almost none available in the earths crust) penetrators that were in very limited supply for various complicated reasons. Again, it worked as a book, but as a balanced game it is just very tricky.

Small edit added for clarity.

[flamingknives]

I'm sure that the logistics is what keeps the tech level of the Imperium in WH40k down. The really high-tech is concentrated in small, elite units (Marines, Titan legions) or on platforms that aren't seen in ground warfare (Navy). The rest is tech that is common or self-sustaining, like the lasgun, which is not so effective but needs little or no tech to keep going.

The background also allows for localised high-tech systems and higher-level high tech, but with understanding of the tech being what it is with the Adeptus Mechanicus (Basically a cult of the machine spirit) they would be loath to deploy factory ships into unsecured areas, since if they were lost, 1) the enemy could capture them and 2) they might not be able to recreate the technology.

On top of that, there are the economies of scale. The sort of production line that would produce a lasgun on a forgeworld would be capable of very consistant product at a very, very low cost.

Plus, being how big it all is, there's plenty of scope for roughly equal units to bump into each other.

[dan/california]

If they were going to do a Sci- Fi game I would like to see them do ship to ship combat in the Honor Harrington Universe.

That has needed a good computer game treatment for a long time. And there is built in fan base. It would require a whole new engine obviously. That odd cracking sound is Charles's jar exploding.

[Dean F.]

I sort of take my model for a playable high-tech sci-fi engagement from colonial-era history.

Since sealift was limited colonial wars were often fought with very small forces. If you consider the number of troops deployed in Europe during the Seven Years War and compare that to the pathetically small French and English forces fighting in the new world or India, it truly boggles the mind. A couple of regiments basically decided the history of the western hemisphere.

Now, the purpose of colonies is to generate trade, and thus revenue, for the mother country. Thus, the mother country tends to economize on colonial forces to maximize investment-to-return ratios. This is why colonial forces in the early 20th century were still using single-shot large caliber rifles (a la the German Askaris in German East Africa) and the last generation of fighting vehicles. There was also a much higher ratio of infantry to armor or aviation in those forces.

Back when I was playing Steel Panthers Modern Battles the most fun engagements were always things like "Greece vs Turkey in 1970", because both sides were using castoffs from more wealthy nations and neither had a war-winner like the Abrams in the First Gulf War.

Regarding weapon lethality, well, there has always been a race between the weapons engineers and the armor/stealth engineers. The death-knell of the main battle tank has rung several times in the past half-century (usually by some ATGM fanboy) but the cussed things keep soldiering on.

In the future I'm sure that gigawatt lasers will NOT be vaporising anything that crests the horizon. The computerized fire control system that directs those lasers has to see a target first, which is where stealth comes in. What about an armor surface covered in tiny-tiny lenses, resembling liquid glitter but dissipating most wavelengths? A mirrored target would be easy to spot, but you'd have to fire a warhead at it, not a photon. Or even cover the mirror surface with a surface that ablates, thus dissipating some of the laser energy while simultaneously uncovering a small area of the mirror? Sort of "laser-ERA?" Or, what about smoke dischargers that launch prismatic aerosols? And wouldn't a powerful laser's ionization trail (when fired in an atmosphere) make a wonder IR beacon directly back at the firing vehicle...?

An x-ray or gamma-ray laser might be more difficult to defeat, but I'm sure some smartboy somewhere has a plan.

I guess my point is, there will always be countermeasures. And a really WELL DONE sci-fi game could be a joy.

And I'd buy a truly good sci-fi game, but I'd still rather stick to real history, given my druthers.

Oh, and I'll throw down the gauntlet right here and now: WH40K is not science fiction. It is really bad space-opera.

[ March 03, 2008, 05:26 AM: Message edited by: Dean F. ]

[Garm]

Dean F.: How about BattleTech? I played the tabletop for quite a few years and also loved the PC games.

[MikeyD]

Sometimes SciFi techies can be more of a pain in the arse than (us) wargame nerds. You go 'serious' sci fi and there will be arguments about the megawats needed to produce a proper electric field around a vehicle. If you want to see what a 'reality-based' CM scifi game would look like just go visit the Drop Team site. I'd instead go for humor. Something closer to Mars Attacks. A 1950s era earth force versus very big, very colorful, very goofy Martians. Okay, so maybe I wouldn't play a game like that 6 months continuously, but I would buy it and get some hearty chuckles off it.

[Dean F.]

Garm:

I played the tabletop version of Battletach a few centuries ago, but ultimately tired of it. It wasn't very "high-tech" for a science fiction game. It was basically WWII combat dressed up with walking tanks. The designers eventually tried to retroactively explain that with a "fall of Rome" kind of scenario, but it rang hollow.

I never played any of the computer games. They always seemed to need a computer one generation better than what I could afford. Nowadays I'm set on that front, but Battletech still doesn't appeal to me.

As I have implied, it would have to be a quite original sci-fi game to interest me. I'm the kind of guy who loved 2001: A Space Odyssey and detested crap like Wing Commander, and even Star Wars and Star Trek, y'know? (Though Alcubierre's work is shedding new light on Star Trek style warp drives.)

Lord knows I've been disappointed by every space combat game ever made. For a spaceship combat game I'd want something with a interface like the old 688i Los Angeles class submarine simulation-- where you never see your opponent, just read sensor information. Perhaps you would see him as a dot on the horizon through your periscope (or for space, a low-res light above the terminator via a telescope array) occasionally. And, you could accelerate to the limits of your fuel supply and there would be no upper limit on velocity.

I certainly understand why there have been no such games. Nowadays, though, you could have some kind of navigational AI to crunch the numbers and offer orbital options or something, then arrange the proper attitude and delta-V.