Author Topic: Interstellar Operations... When?  (Read 43098 times)

mike19k

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #60 on: 31 July 2013, 07:54:47 »
I check the thread because it is an unread thread and I have a compulsion to click the "you haven't read me and you want to read me" icon to see what people are saying...

 :D
Glad I am not the only one who does this.

Hammer

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #61 on: 05 August 2013, 17:07:57 »
Quote
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,31797.msg739853.html#msg739853

See Point #2

This is the most current thing I've seen on it.  I hoping we get a candid updates from Gen Con next week.
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wolfgar

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #62 on: 08 August 2013, 20:18:29 »
thanks hammer
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Hammer

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #63 on: 20 September 2013, 12:21:09 »
A very small reference to IO on twitter:

https://twitter.com/catalystgamelab/status/381101001346134016


Hope that means we get some movement or even news.
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Atlas3060

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #64 on: 20 September 2013, 12:29:45 »
70%
Interesting.... well here's hoping to more public beta tests!
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Obvious

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Jayof9s

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #66 on: 08 October 2013, 09:06:46 »
https://twitter.com/catalystgamelab/status/387303906730323969

Any chance in telling us what it says? Between not having a twitter account and it being blocked at work anyhow...

StCptMara

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #67 on: 08 October 2013, 09:36:08 »
Any chance in telling us what it says? Between not having a twitter account and it being blocked at work anyhow...

From the CGL Twitter:
Good Skype BT meeting today with Herb and Ray…printing out a ton of IO materials to review on the plane trip this week. rnb

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Jayof9s

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #68 on: 08 October 2013, 09:56:19 »
Thanks, hopefully that means we'll see IO in this decade  :D

RebelRunner

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #69 on: 14 October 2013, 17:25:29 »
Thanks, hopefully that means we'll see IO in this decade  :D

Sounds about right...
I've looked at the IO open beta material up on CGL's website. Frankly, there's not a whole lot there. What I've seen is of good quality, but the lack of more conclusive updates is concerning. What, exactly, is the holdup?
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Atlas3060

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #70 on: 15 October 2013, 08:36:03 »
What, exactly, is the holdup?
We will never truly know what exactly is the hold up. Well unless CGL eventually posts a Battleblog or thread explaining the hold up.  ;)
As for fun fan guesses? Probably having similar problems that Kurita Handbook is having.
Heck for all we know printing out all the pages broke someone's back (and printer) and they killed off a rainforest in one go.  ;D
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Bedwyr

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #71 on: 15 October 2013, 10:18:39 »
My opinion? (and purely my opinion?)

All the scaling in and out that they were wanting to do and Randall talked about in his blog are similar to the mechanics in the Battleforce 2 planetary operations, except that they're taking the scaling up and down to (as befits Randall's wont for the Core books) an absurd degree. Making fun games and rules out of that is really complicated.

I predict that one of the problems they're having to resolve is the same one in BF2: how do you deal with loss of resolution as you zoom in and out to the different levels of gameplay? Each conversion abstracts the unit being converted in some way and you've lost information you may have been tracking. Blown a weapon? That gets abstracted into lower damage, perhaps, but you lose the individual weapon information when you convert back. So scaling is really only useful in one-off situations or permanent changes. Also, how do you work out with your opponent how and when scaling can happen? Is this a GM kind of thing? Campaign? Maybe each of you gets so many chits to scale down? Is it fair that your units get abstracted because your opponent called in a chit?

Like I said, it's kind of complicated.
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Atlas3060

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #72 on: 15 October 2013, 10:29:47 »
Good points, also fact is there are only so many writers and only so many fact checkers.
Other products have to go out the door to make money.
I have faith that it is being worked on, after all we got twitter updates about it earlier.
It is just certain things are probably taking priority over IO.
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SCC

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #73 on: 16 October 2013, 03:35:27 »
I think part of it is simply the fact that the rules haven't covered this sort of thing before, sure there was the IS in Flames board game, but that isn't the same thing

Atlas3060

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #74 on: 16 October 2013, 10:48:22 »
Succession Wars was the board game.
Inner Sphere in Flames was a...very loose frame work within the spirit of the SW but without the board part.
I like to think that ISiF was similar to Chaos Campaign: loose rules, allows folks to make stuff up, but otherwise not really cemented until a further publication.
I can only hope that IO will do to ISiF what Total Chaos did for CC.
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Bedwyr

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #75 on: 16 October 2013, 10:56:01 »
Not even that. ISiF was almost more a group of tables held loosely together by some suggested rules.people who tried it quickly realized that they had to fill in about 1/3 of the gaps not including errata discovery. ISiF was very... partial.

The confusion brings up an interesting point. ISiF and Succession Wars are two very different products. Given Randall's penchant for the kitchen sink, does that mean both are being shoehorned into that same overall framework? How hard is that to do? (The answer probably begins with 'very'.)
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Atlas3060

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #76 on: 16 October 2013, 11:59:54 »
Well with all the fun and shenanigans he told us about the boxed set and manufacturing it, I doubt we would get a Succession Wars boxed set any time in the future.
The one rule I couldn't get into with ISiF was the 30 light year movement for each system.

Considering how we don't even have a canon published source to find such things out, it makes the game a little harder to move units.
For example, I'm moving my Regiment from Thorin to...well what's 30 LY from it? Oh let's consult... oh that's right aside from the IS Atlas I can't think of anything and even that isn't officially canon anyways.

I loved how Succession Wars board game did it: move into a segment of the map that contains X number of systems. Fight for those and done deal.
As I ponder this I realize all the era maps so far have provinces and internal borders for nearly every stellar nation.
It would take some imagination, but I could see that as an alternative for movement.
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mike19k

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #77 on: 16 October 2013, 13:57:21 »
Succession Wars was the board game.
Inner Sphere in Flames was a...very loose frame work within the spirit of the SW but without the board part.
I like to think that ISiF was similar to Chaos Campaign: loose rules, allows folks to make stuff up, but otherwise not really cemented until a further publication.
I can only hope that IO will do to ISiF what Total Chaos did for CC.
Succession Wars is a fun game, wish they released an updated version.

Alexander Knight

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #78 on: 19 October 2013, 14:06:48 »
Considering how we don't even have a canon published source to find such things out, it makes the game a little harder to move units.
For example, I'm moving my Regiment from Thorin to...well what's 30 LY from it? Oh let's consult... oh that's right aside from the IS Atlas I can't think of anything and even that isn't officially canon anyways.

Working on a little something here.  How's this for a work in progress?  Each hex is 5 LY.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/klkw0n1213kh1ps/3025.png

Atlas3060

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #79 on: 19 October 2013, 22:30:40 »
Working on a little something here.  How's this for a work in progress?  Each hex is 5 LY.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/klkw0n1213kh1ps/3025.png
Actually pretty cool, if there was a version with no political borders people could carve out their own empires on the finished product.  8)
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Alexander Knight

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #80 on: 19 October 2013, 22:34:43 »
Actually pretty cool, if there was a version with no political borders people could carve out their own empires on the finished product.  8)

That's possible, actually.  I'll keep that in mind as I progress :D

Jayof9s

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #81 on: 20 October 2013, 10:50:52 »
MekHQ has a pretty good, interactive, map that can handle calculating distances, jumps necessary, etc.

It also calculates jump times based on the sun type (which is canon for the ~1/3 of planets that have published data and for now a default for the rest). In some cases, the positioning of the planets could be improved (and there are plans to do so), but overall it is about as accurate as you're going to be seeing anywhere.

There are also plans to make it easier to change factions. Currently that would have to be accomplished by manually changing the planets.xml file (which is relatively simple since it is an XML document). Otherwise, it updates the map based on the date you've selected and should follow canon or be as close as possible (not all faction changes are 100% in yet, there's a lot to work with.)

Still, it is a very handy tool. And planets with published data, have their information entered (sun type, gravity, pressure, temp, recharge stations, etc.)

BloodReaper

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #82 on: 21 October 2013, 00:32:59 »
Working on a little something here.  How's this for a work in progress?  Each hex is 5 LY.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/klkw0n1213kh1ps/3025.png

neat, i like the political boundaries

I found this picture on google images which was similar, but bigger hexes:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r-RM10CTyFo/Tnly0ArSauI/AAAAAAAAADA/YjBDdIreQ2w/s1600/temp4.png



GOTHIK

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #83 on: 22 October 2013, 14:23:23 »
I've frequently wondered what the hold up with IO is ... the first mention of the book and it's purpose that I'm aware of was in Tactical Operations, and my .pdf copy has a copyright of 2008. 

You'd think it would be finished by now.

Bedwyr

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #84 on: 22 October 2013, 15:01:57 »
I've frequently wondered what the hold up with IO is ... the first mention of the book and it's purpose that I'm aware of was in Tactical Operations, and my .pdf copy has a copyright of 2008. 

You'd think it would be finished by now.

As I've said, and it is speculation, the mix of systems Randall et all want to include create an immense amount of complexity. This isn't any warchest campaign system, but refreshed abstractions and whole game systems for nearly everything in the Battletech universe several times over. Randall wrote about "staging" and "zooming" when he first blogged about IO. Each one of those stages is an entirely new abstraction that needs to be dealt with in the context of its siblings (Battleforce/Alpha Strike,  Battletech, and each other staging). So to get it right is kind of like the board game analog of a combinatorial explosion. Sure you can release a new Inner Sphere in Flames, but for Core Book quality you have to get it right and test the hell out of it. You can't do it half-assed like the Combat Ops release. That's FASA/FanPro thinking.

Here's the potential dark side to the book's development. I'm a big fan of having connected and complete campaign systems. It really makes the verisimilitude of Battletech shine for me. But while Battletech has a market and Alpha Strike might have a market, I'm not sure how much of a market multiple complex campaign systems have. They're a lot of awesome and cool to me, but maybe people just prefer to play with minis and standard record sheets and buy TROs the way they always have. Alpha Strike's release gives me a hint where the developer resources are going and where priorities are. I'm not mad or angry or affronted, just kind of "aww darn" at the possibility that IO's a low priority.
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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #85 on: 22 October 2013, 16:17:31 »
I've frequently wondered what the hold up with IO is ... the first mention of the book and it's purpose that I'm aware of was in Tactical Operations, and my .pdf copy has a copyright of 2008. 

You'd think it would be finished by now.
I suspect it that TPTB have the tendency to throw the kitchen sink at a book (causing the page count to explode) and then trying to integrate everything (which is very hard).
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GOTHIK

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #86 on: 22 October 2013, 16:20:08 »
great post, Bedwyr!  I couldn't agree more with the sentiments you expressed. 

I've always been a big fan of lengthy campaigns that started out with strategic planning, moved to jumpships entering a system, followed by dropships and their fighter escorts making their way through swarms of defending fighters, atmospheric drops, abstract (radar map) fighter battles on planet that allow ground forces to disembark, recon excursions to the target, and massive battles that include artillery, ASF cover, fires, infantry and anything else, all the way down to a one-on-one Solaris VII dueling rules battle between primary characters, and roleplaying mixed throughout!

Bedwyr

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #87 on: 22 October 2013, 17:05:51 »
great post, Bedwyr!  I couldn't agree more with the sentiments you expressed. 

 [stupid]  ;)


Interesting thing to ask. As starry eyed as I get about these systems, have I actually run a campaign with them? Er... no. I, um, haven't. <shuffles feet embarrassedly>
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Alexander Knight

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #88 on: 26 October 2013, 22:22:42 »
Updated version, now with the Taurian Concordat and the Capellan March added in (no borders).

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4240188/3025.png

SCC

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Re: Interstellar Operations... When?
« Reply #89 on: 28 October 2013, 00:34:28 »
I'd suggest getting rid of the hex numbers or reducing them in size, AK