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Author Topic: Planetstorm  (Read 4311 times)

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Offline SgtHulka

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Planetstorm
« on: April 28, 2011, 09:48:40 AM »
So why didn't this game work? And by "work" I mean why wasn't it successful?

Dirty secret: Me and my group played a helluva lot more Planetstorm than we did Legions of Steel. We played the crap out of the playtest rules even before Planetstorm was released.

It required a ton more figures than Legions of Steel did, so from a marketing perspective it makes sense that you'd lead with LoS, hook people on the boardgame, and then lead them down the path of a full tabletop miniatures game, forcing them to buy and buy and buy. So why didn't that really happen? For me the biggest challenge for Planetstorm was a big enough table and enough terrain (I never managed to play on the recommended 8 x 4 table; we regularly played on a 6 x 4 table, instead). But 40K was already standard and that used the same recommended table size.

And the rules themselves are really, really good. If I play again I'm gonna house rule you pin on 1 under your kill number instead of on your kill number, based on my memory of how ineffective high ROF 5+ kill weapons were (Flechette, RPK), but I think that's the only tweak I'd personally make. Everything else seems solid.

So as I'm re-reading them I'm thinking "why didn't this game ever take off?"

And as a side note, in Legions of Steel I'm gonna start taking away one leadership from non-elite units to simulate the need to constantly command them in order for them to act independently.

Offline Clark

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Re: Planetstorm
« Reply #1 on: April 28, 2011, 02:46:58 PM »
I would speculate that it didn't get supported. The book came out and all the minaturescwere out there and then nothing new followed. Global Games was on the rocks by the end of the year and things just got worse thereafter. Things might have been different with the release of Stormfront and a slew of new figs in 1997 along with supporting the Stryker program, hitting the cons and other promotional events. If Stalingrad had come out then Global would have had three product lines, plus paints, plus carrying cases. That would have made cons much more important. With only Legions of Steel we could go to GenCon and make enough profit on sales to pay for half a dozen or more of us to go. With three product lines we would have been hitting every decent sized con because we could actually turn a net profitor at least break even at the smaller ones.
« Last Edit: April 28, 2011, 08:13:36 PM by Clark »

Offline Clark

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Re: Planetstorm
« Reply #2 on: April 28, 2011, 03:07:23 PM »
Pinning on a near miss instead of an exact kill has a pronounced effect on gameplay in that you are basically doubling the firepower of all the figs. The UPVs were calculated to take into account the pinning effect for high rof/high kill# weapons.

In the rewrite I want to combine pinning and wounding together so that on an exact roll you could have 4 possible outcomes: pinned, wounded, pinned & wounded, or killed. That would sort of split the difference because you have a chance or scoring a kill plus a second wound will kill most figs. That way weapons like the BE Lance can have a decent chance of scoring a kill and it isn't so pointless to keep firing at a pinned figure.

Offline sergeant_hastp

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Re: Planetstorm
« Reply #3 on: April 28, 2011, 05:37:34 PM »
Here's an idea from what we used to do;

Each side in the game were given a 'luck token' for every 'X' number of unit point value on their side.  (I think it was about 200 points or so.)  You could also spend points to buy a few more tokens for your side.

The way it worked:

If your figure got hit on the exact number needed, you could spend a token to have him wounded instead of killed.

If you shot an enemy figure and were just 1 off from a kill, you could spend one of your sides tokens to have him wounded.

So they could be used 'offensively' and 'defensively'.

This came to mind because you mentioned more than one possible outcome on an exact roll.  This provides a bit of player input as to which outcome it might be, if you wanted to rework some elements of this idea.

Offline Clark

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Re: Planetstorm
« Reply #4 on: April 28, 2011, 08:26:54 PM »
I think I read that in one of your other posts.  There was something aesthetic about it that didn't agree with me.  What my brain came up with in response was a "designated hero" system. Figures representing X% of your force total (I am thinking 10%) could be designated heros, or DH for short (I sort of stole this from baseball).  Then the pinning and wounding and certain other rules only apply to the DHs.

Overall, I think that the basic idea of pinning it what makes Planetstorm work with the battle drills taught at the RCR Battleschool.  If you cant kill them then keep their heads down until you can close and finish them off.  It's been a while so maybe doctrine and tactics have changed based on new information.  A chit system is a workable mechanic but completely unrealistic.  That's why I came up with the LOS Leadership rules in response to leadership in SpaceHulk.  Then again, the DH system is equally silly but it strikes me as more cinematic.

Offline Dave Chase

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Re: Planetstorm
« Reply #5 on: April 28, 2011, 09:36:32 PM »
To answer your main question of this thread for the 3 stores that I frequent during that time frame.

Lack of figures to purchase, and when word got out about the 'failure' of GG, people did not want to invest in a game that had no future.

Dave Chase
Freedom is the right to speak your mind.

It is also the right to walk away from those you don't want to listen to.

Offline Clark

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Re: Planetstorm
« Reply #6 on: April 28, 2011, 10:03:58 PM »
A commitment to ongoing support is a key factor.

Offline smokingwreckage

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Re: Planetstorm
« Reply #7 on: April 29, 2011, 07:22:19 AM »
Just on pinning, I think but can't be sure that in Defiance if you get pinned and then get pinned again, you're dead; if you're pinned and your unit falls back you're dead; if your unit is falling back and then you get pinned, you're dead; if your unit is forced to fall back twice in succession you're dead.... I liked the idea of a guy who was pinned down and cut off from both his squad and his chain of command was considered effectively "eliminated".

I'm sure there are parallels in wargames that emphasise morale and command. The important thing is that being effectively useless for the remainder of the firefight does not necessarily mean being a corpse, and the corollary to that is that you don't need to be fatally injured to be no threat to the enemy for the duration of a few minutes of skirmishing

Offline Clark

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Re: Planetstorm
« Reply #8 on: April 29, 2011, 09:49:18 PM »
I'm of the theory that if you have a combatant - even a useless combatant - on the field then you leave the miniature there.

It seems to make more sense with medieval warfare where a completely broken unit will disperse to the 4 winds.  I really don't have any modern data to suggest that broken troops will slink away off the battlefield without encountering friend or foe.

The technical definition of a "kill" is: "an amount of damage sufficient to reduce the combat effectiveness of a man-sized target to zero".  As per Juntion Point and its references, only about 1/3 kills actually means death.


Offline SgtHulka

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Re: Planetstorm
« Reply #9 on: April 30, 2011, 08:12:02 AM »
Lack of figures to purchase, and when word got out about the 'failure' of GG, people did not want to invest in a game that had no future.

I thought Planetstorm was out a good few years before GG went under. It came out before Junction Point and before Inferno, for example. But I guess just because it was out did't mean people knew about it or had access to it. My group was probably early adopters because we had played the Playtest rules so much and were really geeked for it.

I'm also wondering if it had to do with presentation. The miniatures photographs came out really badly. The line-drawing color plates weren't nearly as cool as actual minis. And it was printed on really weird glossy paper that feels thin and kind of cheap.

That said, the paper seems to have done the job pretty well. I played the heck out of these rules and my spine is still good and I have no torn pages.

As I'm going through the rules again I'm remembering one of the best things about Planetstorm as compared to the playtest rules: fluff text. The game universe didn't really start to live and breathe for me until Planetstorm came out. Until then it was just a really fun set of rules.