Forums

Thanks! 

I've actually created a full fleet construction system for my own universe and am playing with a "Max Thrust" version of Full Thrust.  One thing I've always considered is a means to add a fleet ideology to ship construction, so you don't just have a myriad of unrelated vessels in one force.  I understand the desire for companies to keep design proprietary, otherwise you dilute the brand by permitting outside manufacturers' models into your system and tournament play is a highly effective marketing aspect/tool.     That said, I think there are plenty of ways to create profit engines with custom ship designs and even ways to promote using existing ships from the FSA line used with different builds in some level of tournament gaming.  This could be something like a competition via the website for the best new ship design, created with the design rules and kitbashed using existing FSA models.   GZG (Jon Tuffley's company, creator of Full Thrust) has had his full design rules available for free on his site for years - he makes a killing just selling minis to this day.  But then, Full Thrust fans tend to be diehards, and they're relatively inexpensive, so that may have no bearing on how FSA models would sell.

I bet there's a way to do that.  I know you can field basic Imperial Guard (or whatever the hell they call them now) in Kill Team and their basic mechanics are simple enough to permit large numbers.  What you're proposing would require some flexible crunchiness, which is doable for sure, but is it worth it?  You and I seem to think so, but will the business model?  Personally, I love the idea of one SpecOps team vs a platoon of muggles.  It's how it should be and it lends itself well to specific scenarios.  SpecOps vs SpecOps is a different animal, which is what I believe all of Infinity is really geared for.  I've actually been working on some designs just for me that have some heavy Masamune Shirow influence, so, by default, they look like Infinity models (a lot of their stuff seems to stem from Shirow's "Appleseed" series) - my point being, their design aesthetic is right up my alley and I've been wanting an excuse to buy their models and there just happens to be a game to provide that impetus.  LOL - it seems silly that I have to feel like I'll actually use the minis for something in order to justify buying them.  I'd feel the same about SpecOps minis, as long as they're great looking I'll likely want to play the game in order to buy the minis.  Get to work Warcradle!  :p

Ah, I thought you were stating that it was their primary purpose.  It's funny how old the concept of the destroyer is and what a great mind Jackie Fisher had.  He created the destroyer, battlecruiser and dreadnought and he and Jellico were at the forefront of the aircraft carrier concept to boot.  It was an amazing time in naval warfare. I'd really love to see at least one fleet with battleships as fast as their cruisers and battlecruisers faster than cruisers.  This would emulate the Royal Navy in WW1 and would be great fun to play.  I've tried building ships (using upgrades) in FSA many moons ago, but haven't revisited it in ages (I've been stuck on X-Wing for some time now).

was never too fussed about Spec-ops until I saw these! Awesome stuff!

I can't completely disagree, but sometimes it is nice to bring a horde of baseline troops for story purposes.  Hero versus Hero can be epic, but so can the hero versus 20.  A lot depends on the engine's capacity to handle the balance between them.  You technically can bring hordes in to Infinity, but the game can get bogged down rather quickly, and the game's mechanics trend to favor quality over quantity, partially due to the reaction mechanic.

You do realize you stated that it was false, and then more or less confirmed what I said.  While I didn't call them "torpedo boat destroyers", I did reference that their name came from their devastating torpedo attack.  The full title of "torpedo boat destroyer" was relegated to the main noun.  The advent of the torpedo blister vastly reduced this effectiveness, but they were still light ships that could move quickly, making them excellent pickets.  When submarines became a threat, they were tasked and equipped to deal with them.  They were already picket ships, and that's where you want your anti-sub vessels to be.  They never were a big gun ship at all, and that was the main point. Naval nomenclature will change to fit the period and the preferences of the community.  This was one of my points over all.  In Babylon 5, the Terran destroyers were cruisers/battleships with a light fighter complement, but in FSA, it is a Cruiser hull with a different weapons setup, while in WW2, it was a picket ship.  Then you get the very confusing designation in Star Wars of, "Star Destroyer", while "cruisers" can range from the size of a corvette (the ship that Qui-gon and Obi-Wan use is called a Republic Cruiser) to something closer the Venator Star Destroyer, aka "Jedi Cruiser". I can't disagree that having consistency across platforms would be nice.  Cruisers should be beefy and offer a strong balance of firepower and durability.  Destroyers should be glass cannons for their Tier.  Gunship is another title I hate, as that should be relegated to Planetfall or SpecOps, and be retitled to something akin to bombardment cruiser or bombardment destroyer.   Using "dreadnought" to mean "heavy battleship", I really don't have too much of a problem with, since that actually has seen consistent use across universes, and much like the "torpedo boat destroyer" dropping its descriptor, when all battleships are heavy, we can just drop the adjective. As an interesting side note, in the Honorverse, the latest "destroyers" of the protaganist's navy are thought to be light cruisers by the largest, but vastly out-moded, navy in the area (the Solarian League Navy).  These destroyers still fulfill the same role as destroyers, and can keep up, or even out-run, the destroyers of the other navy, but they fire battlecruiser-weight missiles.  The SLN long ago determined the standards and generally went by the mass of the ship, but the protagonist's navy gained tech to drop those designations on their hind end and generate new ones.

Infinity, for sure.  8-12 models was the goal, with some crunchy rules for your operators.  It was supposed to give you a lot of ownership of each troop.  It also means you don't need a gazillion poses, just a few models with different kit for each race, so it plays well to resin or metal models with a higher price point.  The Infinity game model is actually quite excellent, so good that GW has even adopted it to an extent (Kill Team).  Skirmish games are in their heyday, as they offer tons of variation relatively inexpensively.

This is completely false (I mean no offense, but your facts are not factual).  Destroyers get their name from being "torpedo boat destroyers"; torpedoes were the greatest threat to battleships at the time.  A flotilla of torpedo boats could roll right up to a BB and break its back with a volley of torps and the BB was so tall that it couldn't depress its guns to properly fire upon this diminutive class of craft so a ship that was faster than torpedo boats was required to fend them off and/or hunt them down.  Then submarines became a prevalent tool and destroyers were tasked to ward these off as well.  Destroyers were used to perform their own torpedo attacks against larger vessels, but this was never their primary tactical role and was often suicide for them, as it was best to attack ships from the side, where all of their guns were facing your position.  Destroyers most often performed these attacks at night (Jutland has several accounts of destroyer torpedo attacks occurring at night). One of my biggest problems with FSA was their total misuse of naval nomenclature and a deep misunderstanding of ships' tactical roles.  Combine this with the fact that all the fleets were fairly homogenized and you wind up with a relatively boring overall feel to the forces.  I'd love to see ships of the same size from all the races named something completely different with entirely different tactical roles.  Leave the human nomenclature to the human ships and give the aliens something different.  Make ships of the same size operate completely alien from human counterparts (in size).  I understand the need for some homogenization (cruisers are designed to be the basic ship of the line for all races and permit players to use them as a backbone of their fleet - they operate a bit differently from one another but they're all basically designed to stand in the line and shoot at the enemy).  BUT, I'd like some more variation and changes in nomenclature to indicate variance in alien thinking.  Really, why does everyone need a dreadnought?  (Another silly nomenclature issue, by the way - these were just battleships with a unified primary armament and high speed, the first of which was HMS Dreadnought, hence the term dreadnought battleship). Wouldn't it be more interesting to have more of another class of ship that does something crazy?  lay to the fluff instead of playing to the "class".