BW 2010 feedback

[Valiant]

Stubby, for chapter eleven, would it be possible for one of my tank (or an upcoming tank platoon) photos to make it in?
Please consider.

[RedRover]

And, of course, all the usual minor polish and revisions that accompany any editing pass. I still need a lot more photos for the different SuperNatural sections.

Let me know what you need and I'd be happy to get some Imperial Magikstrate action photos.

[*CRAZYHORSE*]

If you need any naked modeling pictures let me know.

[stubby]

Stubby, for chapter eleven, would it be possible for one of my tank (or an upcoming tank platoon) photos to make it in?
Please consider.

Totally. I would have used some already, but I wanted to be careful since I knew you're protective of them. I can link the photos back to your sales site if you're selling the designs.

And, of course, all the usual minor polish and revisions that accompany any editing pass. I still need a lot more photos for the different SuperNatural sections.

Let me know what you need and I'd be happy to get some Imperial Magikstrate action photos.

That'd be great; Imperial Magikstrate is a great looking faction and your photos are always well shot. But I'm not in a rush yet; what I really hope for is stuff that comes up naturally in battles so I can link back to forum threads under the photos. I think that ends up being a lot more inspiring than posed shots. It just takes a while, usually, for people to get familiar enough with the new possibilities for them to start showing up in photos.

If you need any naked modeling pictures let me know.

Already taken care of: http://brikwars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10323

[Silent-sigfig]

Chapter 11 says "It's a mystery!" and not

[Valiant]

Stubby, for chapter eleven, would it be possible for one of my tank (or an upcoming tank platoon) photos to make it in?
Please consider.

Totally. I would have used some already, but I wanted to be careful since I knew you're protective of them. I can link the photos back to your sales site if you're selling the designs.

I'm not currently selling kits at the moment, so there's no need to link them anywhere . As for putting photos in the rule set, use whatever you like. If you're unsure about a particular photograph, just let me know .

[stubby]

Pretty good update today:

- Heavy weapons can be wielded with one or two hands. They always could, of course, but now it makes a difference. If you try to parry a two-hand weapon with a one-hand weapon and fail, your weapon is knocked away.

- More excitingly, a Heavy Weapon swung with two hands has Armor Piercing - with a damage rating of 1 die +2, Shielding removes the +2 rather than the 1 die.

- Overskill has been revamped. This is kind of a big one - I've been kicking it around for a year or so and finally have something that works. Instead of choosing between Overskill and Bonus Dice, they're now seaparate mechanics. Any time you roll Skill, if the die comes up on a natural 6 or higher (before applying bonuses or penalties) then you get an Overskill die that you can use as an Instant Benny on whatever Action you were rolling Skill for. (Or you can use it to avoid being Disrupted.) Skill d4 civilians will never get Overskill, because they can never roll a natural 6, while Skill d10 Heroes will get Overskill on about half of their rolls.

- D4s now earn Bonus d4s on a critical success. I forget if that was in there already.

- I added a couple more photos from Kommander Ken, Quantumsurfer, and Dienekes22.

[Gungnir]

Pretty good update today:

Did your flight get delayed?

- Heavy weapons can be wielded with one or two hands. They always could, of course, but now it makes a difference.If you try to parry a two-hand weapon with a one-hand weapon and fail, your weapon is knocked away.

- More excitingly, a Heavy Weapon swung with two hands has Armor Piercing - with a damage rating of 1 die +2, Shielding removes the +2 rather than the 1 die.

This is good. Kinda makes shields and dual wielding a little more balanced.

[Kommander Ken]

[Quantumsurfer]

Oh, that's awesome!

[stubby]

With the last couple updates to skill-based melee damage and overskill bonuses, the power ramp on skill dice has increased a bunch. CP cost for Minds will need rebalancing, so expect the prices for upper tiers to increase at some point.

I'll be looking at changing Minds to a flat-fee structure rather than making them Size-based, in order to bring giant creatures more in line with giant robots operated by pilots.

[*CRAZYHORSE*]

[stubby]

I've been considering this as a solution, off and on, for something like a year; I just resisted because it accelerates the power progression for skill dice by a lot. I need to rebalance some stuff so that there's still a point to having Skill d6 units at all. Right now the best use of points is to bump every unit's Skill up to d10 and let them loose to Overskill everything to death.

The Overskill bonus is independent of bonus dice from a critical success. If you roll an 8 on a d10, you get Overskill but no bonus d6; if you roll a 4 on a d4, you get a bonus d4 but no Overskill; if you roll a 6 on d6 you get both.

[stubby]

Minor update tonight. Minds now cost a flat fee, no longer scaling with Size. The CP cost of Skill dice doubles with each die size, like so:

d4 (Incompetent): 1/2CP
d6 (Trained): 1CP
d8 (Expert): 2CP
d10 (Heroic): 4CP
d12 (Supernatural): 8CP


This changes the cost of Horses, because Minds are no longer affected by Creature Size, and Heroes, because their d10 Skill cost has changed.



I've updated the Horse chapter and Mind examples throughout the rulebook to match the new changes; the Hero will be corrected in the next patch.

[stubby]

I have been playing with the new overskill rules and to be honest stubby I did not like trying to keep track of all the overskill dice and the critical successes.

Well remember that critical successes only apply to the skill roll itself, so once you've hit your use rating there's no need to keep track of them. But after playing with the new rules some more, I might be making some changes that are in line with what you're saying here. What I'm leaning towards is this:

Skill d4 gets a basic critical success. If you roll a 4, you get a bonus d4 that can only be added to the skill roll itself.

All other Skill dice get an overskill on 6+, but this replaces the critical success. They can still use the overskill die as a standard bonus die to the skill roll, but they can also do all the new overskill stuff.

I want to add an option for accuracy, where you can burn an overskill bonus to change from "I was aiming at the target" to "I was aiming at a specific part of the target" as long as your original skill roll would have been good enough to hit it.

It also felt like the damaged ramped up a bit to fast with explosives and expert skilled units and up their CC attacks. Single grenades turned into artillery shells a bit to often and expert skilled units and up where to easily chopping through metal vehicles with pretty high armor values. The damage ramps up really fast, a bit to fast in my opinion.

I don't mind if Hero-skilled units chop through tanks easily; Heroes are supposed to be ridiculous. But let's look at the numbers for minifigs vs. experts.

1 die melee weapon:

• Minifig, ignoring overskill, average damage: 4.2
  Minifig, including overskill, average damage: 4.9
  
  Expert, ignoring overskill, average damage: 5.025
  Expert, limiting overskill to a bonus +d6, average damage: 6.6
  Expert, including overskill, average damage: 6.909

1 die explosive:

• Minifig, ignoring overskill, average damage: 5.92
  Minifig, limiting overskill to a bonus +d6, average damage: 6.62
  Minifig, including overskill, average damage: 6.907, +2" radius 17% of the time
  
  Expert, ignoring overskill, average damage: 5.92
  Expert, limiting overskill to a bonus +d6, average damage: 7.495
  Expert, including overskill, average damage: 8.14, +2" 38% of the time

So Expert-level units using Overskill are typically seeing a +3 damage bonus over regular minifigs using no Overskill, and getting +1 to their explosive size about a third of the time. Big enough to be significant, but not unbalancing, I don't think; in terms of slicing through metal vehicles, that's worth about one half of an armor level.

Now let's look at the numbers for Heroes, just for fun:

1 die melee weapon:

• Hero, ignoring overskill, average damage: 5.92
  Hero, limiting overskill to a bonus +d6, average damage: 8.02
  Hero, including overskill, average damage: 8.88

1 die explosive:

• Hero, ignoring overskill, average damage: 5.92
  Hero, limiting overskill to a bonus +d6, average damage: 8.02
  Hero, including overskill, average damage: 8.88, +2" radius 50% of the time

So the bonus for Heroes is a little more significant, but even here we're seeing less than a single armor level worth of advantage over the vanilla minifig. So they're more likely to chop through metal vehicles, but it's still not automatic.