MechaScape

[Elstree]

I thought I'd post a few images of something I've been working on. For a long time now I've really want to play a shooty mech game with large numbers of mixed units, but with rules as quick and easy as HeroScape. I'm still working out the rules, but here are some pictures of the project in progress (click images for larger views):

Overview




Lefthand skirmish, high angle




Lefthand skirmish, low angle




Righthand skirmish, high angle




Righthand skirmish, low angle

[srmalloy]

Originally Posted by Elstree

I thought I'd post a few images of something I've been working on. For a long time now I've really want to play a shooty mech game with large numbers of mixed units, but with rules as quick and easy as HeroScape. I'm still working out the rules, but here are some pictures of the project in progress (click images for larger views):

Makes me want to necro the Does anyone remember the game Ogre? thread with 3D-printed craters that fit on one-hex tree bases and little ridge inserts that fit into the gaps between hexes; aside from doing all the ridge groups from the original map, there's not that much to it. GEV maps are a lot harder, though; you can do forest with swamp tiles from SotM and city with rock tiles, but the railroads, roads, and rivers don't work at all without a bunch of custom tiles. Stick it on the 'someday' list, I guess.

[Elstree]

I most definitely remember Ogre. The little black box version was one of the first war games I ever purchased. I think Malachi recreated the classic map using lava tiles.

You're right that I'm a bit limited here for terrain type options. If I were going to represent urban areas, I'd use road tiles or possibly cement or asphalt tiles from Marvel. I'm not sure what I'd do if I wanted to add roads or rails. Probably add Z-scale model railroad elements.

My trees are mounted on acrylic bases that fit in the gutters between tiles. The working rule is that any space adjacent to a tree is wooded, with no differentiation between light and heavy woods. (If I decide to distinguish, spaces next to two or three trees will count as heavy woods.)

The temperate trees are Safari Ltd. Tree Toobs. You can get them at Michael's with an online coupon for far less than you would on Amazon.
https://amzn.com/B001Q0Y5GS

The tropical trees are two types: tall, thin "coconut" palms, and shorter, broader "fan" palms. I ordered them off of Amazon:
https://amzn.com/B01FVPKSZK
https://amzn.com/B01BF0YZ1S

The trees really help define the scale and change the mecha figures from person-height to mecha-height. I discovered this early on when I put one of the Safari trees next to Deathwalker 9000 and suddenly he looked like a huge, towering behemoth instead of something that would fit in your garage.

[mac122]

Over the years, I've toyed with this idea, but have gone back and forth on the level of complexity. Straight up Scape style seemed to lose too much flavor, but adding in other elements of the MechWarrior game added in too much work and made it feel less fun. Still trying to find that middle ground.

[srmalloy]

Originally Posted by Elstree

You're right that I'm a bit limited here for terrain type options. If I were going to represent urban areas, I'd use road tiles or possibly cement or asphalt tiles from Marvel. I'm not sure what I'd do if I wanted to add roads or rails. Probably add Z-scale model railroad elements.

Since I got a 3D printer, it's changed a lot of what I can do; the hex tile customizer I set up allows people to put custom face textures on a 3D model to print, so I could do up a 'open terrain road' texture and print tiles like this:

to use for the roads (that's not what I'd actually use; the road is off-center, and it's a bad texture for the 'grass' around it), with a similar design for rail lines.

My trees are mounted on acrylic bases that fit in the gutters between tiles. The working rule is that any space adjacent to a tree is wooded, with no differentiation between light and heavy woods. (If I decide to distinguish, spaces next to two or three trees will count as heavy woods.)

For Heroscape scale, the Safari Ltd trees look worth picking up a set or two and gluing them to one-hex tree bases; the problem I have with most railroad scenery trees is that they typically use flocking for foliage, which degrades with handling. Those look solid enough to take getting bounced around without leaving bits behind.

[Elstree]

Originally Posted by mac122

Over the years, I've toyed with this idea, but have gone back and forth on the level of complexity. Straight up Scape style seemed to lose too much flavor, but adding in other elements of the MechWarrior game added in too much work and made it feel less fun. Still trying to find that middle ground.

That's where I'm at too. Right now I'm basically using HeroScape for movement, attack, and defense, while borrowing activation, terrain, and formation rules from MW. I tossed out a lot of the bs that usually goes with mech games from the start -- things like facing, firing arcs, torso twists, separate hit locations, etc., that adds realism but just slows the game down. I've kept two things that I think are crucial to the feel of a mech game: heat and critical hits. Heat, because that risk of pushing your mech too hard to gain a tactical edge is one of the crucial dilemmas of most mech games, and critical hits because the attrition of your mech's performance is part of the feel of the genre.

Originally Posted by srmalloy

Since I got a 3D printer, it's changed a lot of what I can do; the hex tile customizer I set up allows people to put custom face textures on a 3D model to print, so I could do up a 'open terrain road' texture and print tiles like this:
[...snip...]
For Heroscape scale, the Safari Ltd trees look worth picking up a set or two and gluing them to one-hex tree bases; the problem I have with most railroad scenery trees is that they typically use flocking for foliage, which degrades with handling. Those look solid enough to take getting bounced around without leaving bits behind.

It would be cool to have road and rail tiles like that, but probably too expensive for me. The Safari Ltd trees are great. They have a plastic toy look that goes really well with HeroScape terrain. I prefer to place them at the intersection of hexes rather than on them so you can indicate wooded hexes while still placing figures in those hexes.

[srmalloy]

Originally Posted by Elstree

It would be cool to have road and rail tiles like that, but probably too expensive for me.

The cost, for home production, is almost all in the time required to print the tiles; the filament cost comes in around a quarter per hex. When I started printing crystal clusters in translucent filament to go on single-hex tree bases as terrain objects, I can fit two within the build volume of my printer at once, and at medium quality the pair takes a little under five hours to complete. It's the print time that makes 3D printing, at least for someone with a single hobbyist-grade printer, a tool for creating one-off or small-quantity special-purpose items, not in production quantities.

The Safari Ltd trees are great. They have a plastic toy look that goes really well with HeroScape terrain. I prefer to place them at the intersection of hexes rather than on them so you can indicate wooded hexes while still placing figures in those hexes.

The positioning is a stylistic thing; the original RttF trees were hex cappers, so that's what I've been doing most of my terrain object designing around, but if you're getting results you're happy with putting them in the hex gutters, I'm not going to tell you you're doing it wrong. Looking at what the various people here have done with the game, from customized terrain to extending the range of troops, and what other people have done with it, there's room for everyone, and every time someone pushes what you can do with Heroscape, it just makes the game a little bigger.

[Tornado]

Originally Posted by mac122

Over the years, I've toyed with this idea, but have gone back and forth on the level of complexity. Straight up Scape style seemed to lose too much flavor, but adding in other elements of the MechWarrior game added in too much work and made it feel less fun. Still trying to find that middle ground.

I have also considered this.

I think a stripped down Heroscape-esque version would work nicely but I would still have to have hit locations.

[Elstree]

Originally Posted by Tornado

I think a stripped down Heroscape-esque version would work nicely but I would still have to have hit locations.

I hear ya'. I think it depends what scale of combat you're aiming for. If you want to run a lance-on-lance, mech-only game, then hit locations and location-specific crits can really add to the experience. It's more of a dog-fight: You tactically maneuver for a shot at your enemy's weak spots, while trying to keep your own weak side protected. If this is what you're after I recommend you take a look at the free Mecha Front rules, which could be easily adapted to hex-based movement for use on HS terrain.

But tracking hit locations adds a lot of record keeping that slows down a game. If you're playing larger scale battles with combined arms, including mechs, armor, VTOLs, and infantry (as I want to do), then you really need to streamline game play, and one of the obvious ways is to eliminate hit locations.

You can capture most of the same feeling of the gradual deterioration of your mech with just an armor stat, an internal structure stat, and a chance of scoring a crit once armor is breached. Crits are defined by effect rather than location: movement penalty, targeting penalty, extra heat, extra structural damage, weapon system offline, insta-kill, etc. This captures much of the flavor with far less burden, and is the direction I'm heading.

[Tornado]

I doubt I would do hit locations for anything other than mechs and to keep the bookkeeping to a minimum.

We used to play huge Battletech games that would last for multiple days of gaming.
The pace is a little slow for my current tastes.

[mac122]

Originally Posted by Tornado

I doubt I would do hit locations for anything other than mechs and to keep the bookkeeping to a minimum.

This was one of the concepts I was working on, and yeah, only for the Mechs. I had a couple different ideas. One was a static card with Life and Defense for each section, attacks assigned to the arms and maybe torso, and any special move on the legs. The other would have had lower base abilities on the card with upgrades available for additional point expenditures. I was going to use glyphs for the upgrades. When a section was destroyed, flip the glyph over.



The other concept was a bit more complex. Tried to pull more aspects of the MechWarrior minis game in.

[Elstree]

Originally Posted by Tornado

We used to play huge Battletech games that would last for multiple days of gaming.
The pace is a little slow for my current tastes.

Me too. CBT has a lot of avid fans, and I don't want this to turn into a pros-and-cons of Battletech thread, so I'll just say that I consider Battletech to be the Car Wars of mech games and let other people decide what that means.

Originally Posted by mac122

This was one of the concepts I was working on, and yeah, only for the Mechs. I had a couple different ideas. One was a static card with Life and Defense for each section, attacks assigned to the arms and maybe torso, and any special move on the legs. The other would have had lower base abilities on the card with upgrades available for additional point expenditures. I was going to use glyphs for the upgrades. When a section was destroyed, flip the glyph over.

The other concept was a bit more complex. Tried to pull more aspects of the MechWarrior minis game in.

Your third image is more what I have in mind, though I should probably mention that making this compatible with existing Heroscape units isn't one of my goals. I'm also going with smaller, rectangular cards. HS cards look slick but I need to fit 12 to 24 unit cards on the margin of a table -- hard to do with the HS "snowflake" style cards.

I like your second idea too. That's a nice streamlined way of tracking crits to individual systems.