Phonelobster Chews On Wargame Scenery In Real Time

[PhoneLobster]

Or ok maybe not. A long time ago I put some small effort into the beginnings of a sci-fi tabletop wargame rules set just for a “hm, can things be better than fucking GW?” The answer unsurprisingly was “yes even with incredibly minimal fucking consideration and effort” but turned out to be sort of boring as far as unproductive wastes of time go.

I am however briefly interested again, so I'm going to resurrect the old document, and maybe give it a kick in the nuts, here, on the forum, rather than just writing it in secret like I normally would.

This is less of a "Hey! Talk about this rules set I went and wrote!" and more a "Hey! Watch me write this rules set and talk about it!" thing. There's a lot of "Hm, what if we tried designing it like this?" and "what do I need to add this?" and "what does that actually do?" stuff here. The general idea is that I'm starting with some basic structure and doing multiple passes making changes and adding complexity with each pass.
Which, all in all probably makes it a much more interesting read than it otherwise would be as a "WTF? It's a finished/partially finished project with no given reason for it's sometimes strange design choices.

So I'm going to bring out the original document, break it up a touch and then move on to reconsidering it and adding to it. Do tell me if this is at all entertaining, because I'm bound to get bored of this again sooner or later.

[Koumei]

I'm disappointed that you lied there, I'd very much prefer you to just chew on the foam hills, plastic trees and big citadels.

“hm, can things be better than fucking GW?” The answer unsurprisingly was “yes even with incredibly minimal fucking consideration and effort”

Indeed, it's the easiest thing in the world to do, if you set the goal at "is better than the GW system" whether from the angle of simplicity, rewarding strategy rather than wallet-power or randomness, rules that make sense and are well laid out... anything you pick, my dog could do better than GW.

Unless you set the goal at "people other than my local friends will play this". Because you can convince friends to play anything, but there really isn't a way to get even a gaming club to try out a new wargame (whereas they'll try any RPG you throw at them). Never mind an international market, or selling stuff, just getting a small local club to play it for free, or to get interest if you run it for free at a convention - officially sold, available things with glossy-cover rulebooks and minis still don't do well if they're not by GW.

That said, feel free to do it, as an intellectual exercise it could be interesting. Keep in mind what you expect people to use as minis - unless you have your own 3d printer you'll need to specify whether people are using Lego (easy to customise, minis don't slide around, looks a bit silly, smaller than normal scale), "random assortment of minis from 40K, Infinity etc" (huge variety, a standard scale that other weird crap works with, customisation is a pain in the ass) or "20cm tall anime figurines" (no). Because if one person brings a Transformers toy and someone else brings a Lego man, the scale there is kind of a problem in any system where the sizes of the actual things on the actual table means anything.

[PhoneLobster]

Pass 1 : Spider Man Like Origin Story Miniatures IN SPACE!!!
My original motivational blurb
Lets say I wanted to make my own table top minis rules. OK so we know GW and Privateer Press are basically evil and insane and have a trash product, and hate me, and you, personally, because they are dicks. And anything else outside of Napoleonics or WW2 shite is basically sufficiently obscure you might as well make shit up yourself.

So hey here is me making some shit up. Some early directional decisions need to be made...

Decision 1)
Screw the bucket O'Dice. We will roll less dice less often if possible. This means combined group attacks needs to share dice rolls instead of multiplying the bucket o'dice to infinity and beyond, similar options may need to be considered for rapid fire and multi weapon shenanigans.

Decision 2)
We need a basic roll mechanic. For absolutely no good reason let's make the standard dice roll mechanic a 1d10+Bonus vs Difficulty. Equal or better succeeds. Margins of success may be important.

Decision 3)
Setting and flavour. Let's run with Sci Fi. The flavour is “things exploding”. The setting is “Things exploding IN SPACE!!!!!!” For elaboration on that point the things that will be exploding will be tiny army men and the odd giant robot on a table top near some scenery. There can be more of this later, or not.

Decision 4)
Modularity is a strong theme. Modularity works nicely with models, see cause we can like swap out our tiny plastic toy weapons or tiny plastic toy heavy weapon team member or what have you, so we want rules that work hand in hand with that so you can kit out customized units and junk. So there are going to be like points systems for customizing armies and their kits and such.

Decision 5)
We need some idea of intended basic scale here.
“Standard” scale will be intended to be in the range of 10-100 tiny men instead of 2-12 tiny men. But streamlining and combined rolls should mean you make LESS than one decision/roll per tiny man per turn. And indeed probably make about one decision/roll per 5-10 tiny men on average. The game is about teams of 5-10 tiny men, similar numbers of tiny men on tiny sporty future vehicles, or tiny men piloting GIANT ROBOTS, or maybe the odd hover tank, but mostly GIANT ROBOTS because regular tanks are for god damn WW2 fans and they can just go play a stoopid WW2 game. One giant robot should be of equivalent value to maybe a squad of tiny men and should have similar decision/rolling commitment, if not a bit more because giant robots are cool and we want their mechanics to be an interesting focus for the games attention just as the models should be an interesting focus for visual attention.

Decision 6)
There will be elite shit. Some tiny men squads or giant robots are better, maybe the totally best of best squads/mecha can take on up to 3x their number in 'regular' tiny men. And will be costed equivalently. There might have to be super elite shit it seems stupidly powerful individual dudes are a big deal. Flash Gordon needs to come to the table and when he does as a single individual model of regular dude scale he needs to be at least as good as one, if not several SQUADS of models, so yeah, there may need to be some dudes who are the same physical size as regular dudes but are “rules sized” as big and nasty as a Giant Robot.

Decision 8)
There will be an abstracted Command Chain/Order system for resources and as a means of morale/command simulation.
Primary resourcing will be in a Orders and command system. You will have limited numbers and choices of orders to give out each turn and you will need squad leaders and commanders and such in order to give them, we will do funky things with special orders, group orders, and special variants of standard orders when certain squads receive orders, as well as command disruption and squad leader assassinations etc... This will also substitute for our morale system, losing unit leaders will be the equivalent of broken morale and will reduce your ability to give or receive orders.

Decision 9)
Secondary resourcing may occur with limited charges of “ammo” or limited numbers of times special orders or abilities can be used per battle.

Decision 10)
There MUST be at minimum a simple points based army building system. Good rules for resolution are not enough, we need a means to determine what models to bring to the table. I think it was Stargrunt that taught us that.

The points based system doesn't have to be PERFECT. (one should at least take a shot), and points based systems generally WILL be imperfect, but it is still absolutely necessary to be as good and standardized as possible.

Some Basic Building Block Numbers
We need some base rules and maybe some base unit profiles or something to work from before we can start experimenting and figuring out what to add.

So here is a profile for a worthless Space Rat. (space rat being just some dude with like the minimum base line of stats or something).

Troop - Space Rat
Cost Per Model : 1 SP (Space Points)
Hit Points per model : 1
Move : 5 (foot)
Defence : 0
Basic Attack : +0 Ranged, +0 Melee
Weapon : Unarmed – Attack +0, Damage 1, Range Melee

Here is the reasoning behind the profile.

Troop : This is a title indicating the unit type, in this case a troop, the basic unit the game deals with. Then we give it a fun name.

Cost Per Model : While the idea will be to buy most units in groups or something it will be nice to know and individual cost in case of varying unit sizes, attachments, substitutes or whatever, and just as a standard. The term Space Points is named that way for fun. This is the minimum guy so he gets minimum price, one point, that's the smallest unit in the game, the only way to go lower now is to sell things 2 for one.

Hit Points per model : We want models to be killed on a somewhat individual basis, they need their own damage track of some form, we will use a simple HP style mechanic and the smallest (and standard) HP for a simple individual space dood is going to be ONE.

Move : this is the distance moved by the unit in certain circumstances. The foot bit is the movement type, if that one day matters.
Defence : When you attack this is the number you have to roll higher than in order to hit your target. And yes with a Defense of 0 this unit will be hit with like EVERY ATTACK EVER unless we institute a critical miss, and at least as a standard we won't institute a critical miss (we might for a few special back firing unstable weapons or something).

Basic Attack : Not used directly, but as a guideline for equipped weaponry. Some weapons may give attack bonuses (or penalties) but they will work off a base ranged and base melee attack bonus inherit to the model.

Weapon : a specific weapon profile with a name, any special abilities, a range, an attack bonus and a DAMAGE VALUE.

Now here is their group information, the thing you refer to when purchasing them.

Unit – Space Rat Squad
10 Space Rats for 10 SP
One space rat is promoted to a Standard Unit Leader for no extra cost.
Default Unit Leader Command Range: 4
Space Rats are equipped with no weapons.

Whats that all about?

Unit : Hey look it's a unit, then it has a fun name.

Then you get the base price and how many models you get for that.

Then we have a note on Unit Leader/free upgrades. As a default unit leader with no special rules or references this guy will do whatever the hell standard unit leaders will do. Which we will get to in a second.

Command Range: This is going to be a number we use for keeping units bunched together. We will flesh it out later.

Then we have standard and purchasable weapon options. These guys suck and get nothing since nothing has been invented yet. (Except space travel, since they are IN SPACE).

Some Basic Building Block Rules
RIGHT. So now we have a basic, REALLY basic, unit profile. Let's make it dance.

Command Range and Unit Bunching
We need some rules about how you organize your models on the table. So...

1) Each model in a unit must be within Command Range inches from their Unit Leader at the end of movement and must not have obstructions, models from other units, or enemies blocking line of sight to their unit leader. (ranges measured from edge of base to edge of base). If they fall outside of this range the model is Out Of Formation.

2) If there is no unit leader there is no need to be in unit formation. And no one gets unit orders.

Models Out Of Formation do not participate in Unit Orders given by their Unit Leader. And may suffer other penalties such as optional individual targeting by enemy attacks. Models that are out of Formation perform NO action at all when excluded from Unit Orders unless otherwise noted. If the unit performs an order incorporating movement the Out Of Formation models may move along with the unit, and may move back into formation but do not otherwise participate in the unit order that turn.

If there is NO unit leader models in the unit may perform Individual Actions. And units out of formation can also perform such actions. IF there are unspent individual actions to use that turn...

Individual Actions
By default not having a squad leader is pretty punishing. Every model in the unit splits and can now act independently however each turn you will be limited in the number of individual actions you can take, if you have more individual models than that... then they don't get to act!

Individual actions may also be useful for special weapons models and hero models, so you could (and SHOULD) have a shortage of individual actions to go around.

As a general rule you may not take an individual action with a model that has participated in a unit order, and a model in a unit MUST participate in any unit order the unit is given unless otherwise noted.

By default the only individual actions to choose from for now are...

Take Cover
Model moves up to it's base move towards or into the nearest cover better than it's current cover. They can only perform this action if there IS better cover within one move.

Hold Ground
The Model fires on the nearest enemy in range OR places one reaction token on itself.

Retreat
The Model moves double it's move towards a similar unit, an allied commander, it's deployment area, or a board edge of your choice. If it moves off a board edge it has fled the battle. This move may not move it closer to an enemy, if so, pick another valid destination or give up.

Regroup
The Model moves up to it's base move towards a similar unit (a unit in which the model is a legal addition/option the unit could field?) and then joins the unit, unit's MAY exceed their standard size or exceed special weapon limits in this way. You can, (and probably should) join a unit that has not acted yet this turn, the unit still gets to act normally along with the additional model. (This one could use a lot of work).


Standard Unit Leaders and Unit Orders
A unit leader, at least for now, is an otherwise normal model that still acts like everyone else and has the same junk. By default a unit leader can give the following orders.

Unit Charge
The unit advances it's Move speed and attacks any enemies in melee range.

Unit Hold Ground
The unit fires on an enemy unit (or individual target, or disorganized group) in range with group fire OR with an individual special weapon, OR it places a Reaction token on the unit leader. .

Unit Move
The unit may move up to it's move speed in any direction.

Unit Retreat
The unit moves up to double it's move towards the nearest board edge or an allied commander This move may not move it closer to an enemy, if so, pick another destination or give up.

That's a good basis from which we can later give them all sorts of fun improved and special orders like move and shoot, shoot and charge, fall back and shoot, double shoot, etc... We can make units charge extra distance or move extra distances and all sorts of fun things.

Attacking Something With a Ranged Weapon
Let's give our space rats a ranged weapon, because shooting things is going to be the standard attack option in the game.

Weapon : Space Rat Sidearm – Attack +0, Damage 1, Range 5', Long Range 10'

Making An Individual Attack
Check range (edge of base to edge of base), roll 1d10+ Attack, compare to target Defense. If you equal or exceed the target's defense you deal weapon damage to the target, or ½ weapon damage (round down) if you were in long range and beyond standard range.

Yes this means that an individually fired space rat side arm deals NO DAMAGE at long range!

Yes this means that a space rat shooting a space rat at close range currently AUTOMATICALLY KILLS THE SPACE RAT ON ANY ROLL.

Group Attack
Check range, roll 1d10+ Attack, compare to target Defense. If you equal or exceed the target's defense the group hits the target and deals damage equal to the amount they succeeded by TIMES their weapon damage! But this amount may NOT exceed a damage cap equal to total number of models firing X weapon damage. Damage dealt is halved at long range (round down).

And yes this means that GROUP fired space rat side arms CAN deal damage at long range.

And yes this means that now groups of space rats shooting groups of space rats actually care about the roll, because while it's an auto success it matters how MUCH you succeed by.

Also at some point some consideration for single targets and damage caps to prevent hit point inflation on lone giant robots may need to be considered, but that can wait for another pass.

Anyway, this means group attacking can deal variable damage and still requires only one roll, also the variable result means we can have that 0 defence and make it make some sense, the damage cap means that firing in a larger group is better but not insane, and the long range thing is just icing.

Technically, especially with bottomed out defence ratings as low as the listed “default” sample firing each guy in your group individually is better. But the general idea is you don't have enough individual actions available to do that, so the option isn't have 10 space rats fire together or fire 10 individual space rats separately, it's fire 10 space rats together or maybe two or something individually.

Melee Attacks?
Will work just like ranged Attacks. But the default melee range will be 1 inch. If your unit is within one inch of an enemy you may ONLY make melee attacks. For now we just use the "Unarmed Attack" profile from the Pass 1 Space Rat stat line.

Removing Group Casualties
OK so now we want a rule to determine what dies in you unit, because Unit Leaders are important, and maybe sometimes there will be other special guys who are important, like that one guy with a flame thrower, or the one just barely in charge range of you, etc...

When removing casualties in melee you may only remove opposing models within melee range of your attacking models (Defender Chooses which). If you deal more damage than there are models within melee range the defender nominates more models in their attacked unit and you may move your attacking models into melee range of additional models in the targeted enemy unit as free additional movement before removing the additional casualties. This COULD lead to you being out of formation, in which case that's your problem but it won't apply until AFTER the free movement/removal of casualties is resolved.

When shooting an enemy unit you may remove only models you can see, this CAN let you remove a special weapon or squad leader, but only if you do enough damage to force the opponent to remove it as it is the defenders choice which of the possible casualties are removed.

ALSO when shooting enemies you may not remove casualties that were out of range of your weapons, even if you rolled enough extra damage. Yes, you could use this to pick off unit leaders and such, but presumably at the cost of risking doing less damage than your roll enables, and you would probably use Individual Actions to do that anyway, at least as things currently stand.

There will later need to be more rules on this, especially regarding multi-hit point models in units.

Targeting “A Unit”
Note that attacks target UNITS. So you measure your range to a unit, then you shoot it up and throw damage onto a unit.

But we already know that units can be broken up into individual models by means of losing their unit leader or being out of formation.

So how do we target small mobs of individual models?

1) Target An Individual Model
You can select and target "Individual Models" which will be, for now, just models that are "Out Of Formation".

2) Mowing Down Disorganized Groups.
You can target all individual models, in range, (that are out of formation or have lost their unit leader) under a circular template with a radius equal to your squad's Command Range as if they were a single unit. If you don't HAVE a unit leader... er... for now you just can't do this with individual fire then! This probably does not apply to giant robots or bullshit heroes, those are targeted individually as if they were a unit on their own. But they don't exist yet, so whatever.

Measuring Ranges
Ranges are measured from base of model to base of model, the CLOSEST edges of bases, not the furthest, yes even "within command range" etc... just measures to the closest edge and doesn't care about the full base area. This is easier than trying to sight the middle of bases. There will be less arguments. Similar rules may likely apply to AoEs when they turn up, we'll see.

All ranges and distances can be “premeasured” none of that guessing crap, choices are more informed and there will be less bullshit arguments.

Moving A Unit
Moving units will be made simpler. You measure the move for your squad leader only. All other models in the unit may then move any distance and be placed anywhere in Command range of the squad leader. Individual model movement... is done individually.

Measuring Unit Firing Lines
Firing as a unit is also simpler, measure range from your unit leader (to all targets), and only bother with line of sight for the rest of the participants. If the unit leader is present but lacks line of sight nominate any one other model in the unit still “In Formation” to stand in for him as “fire leader”. (this may need slight work?).

Terrain will also have bases or marked “areas”, no “oh there are no trees on this bit”, if it is a forest terrain item the whole BASE is forest, if it is half forest and half Space Ruins then the base needs to clearly mark and differentiate all edges of each area.

Line Of Sight
OK we need some line of sight rules and we CAN'T do the “oooh I see that guy's nose through the window so I can shoot him and he has an “all bar nose from hard cover” cover bonus on the cover by anatomy look up table.

That's just not cool. And it starts tiny model nose based fist fights at gaming tables.

So line of sight is determined from any portion of your BASE to any portion of your target's BASE. When units fire on things only models in the attacking unit that can see SOMETHING in the target unit can fire, and only targets that can be seen by at least one attacker can become casualties. In melee as long as the unit has any model with melee range contact the entire attacking unit may attack (melee needs it's little perks) using the free melee move mechanic to reach additional targets/casualties.

Some things will need to block line of sight. But some things SHOULDN'T. So...

1)Models in your own unit (and In Formation) do not block line of sight.

2)Models in the unit/Disorganized Group you are targeting do not block line of sight to other models in the same unit/Disorganized Group.

3)Other models DO block line of sight between you and your target. They block an area equal to their base.

4)Bigger things can be seen over smaller things, bases smaller than your target's base do not block line of sight.

5)Bigger things can see over littler things, bases smaller than your own base size do not block your line of sight.

6)Some terrain blocks line of sight, some doesn't, some provides some form of cover bonus, we need a mechanic for that. Later.

7)We might want a "Partial Cover" for "part of base concealed behind cover". In which case it needs to be pretty binary such that all edge case models get the partial benefit with no arguments over caring about the difference between "1/2 of base obscured vs 2/3rds of base obscured!" bullshit. We can judge the difference between "none behind a rock" and "some behind a rock" with minimal arguments, but how much is fight bait. Still, determine the details in later pass.

8)We may need some simple height and elevation rules for terrain and line of sight. Later

One upshot from all this is the need for a limited number of standardized base sizes/shapes. And units/models are going to have to start specifying these things. For now our space rats are all 1 Inch diameter circular bases.

Reaction Tokens?
From the options on holding ground. Will work up into a mechanic where units get to shoot at something out of turn in certain circumstances as long as they were put on guard with a reaction token. And maybe other cool reaction actions like reactive charges or something?

Weird Math
OK so the attack/defense and group fire mechanics have some interesting implications.

1) Individual attacks (with current attack/vs defense values" are better than group attacks. Which means we need to keep individual attacks to a minimum through individual action limits.

2) When shooting a higher defense unit you are probably better off with less guys that deal more damage than you are with more guys that deal less damage.

3) When shooting a lower defense unit you are better off with more guys, but you still want them to have higher damage per guy if you can.

4) You stop benefiting from extra guys if your opponent has less hit points than your highest potential margin of success times damage per guy. Similarly you stop benefiting from extra guys if your number of guys exceeds your highest possible margin of success (which in the case of space rats vs space rats is 10, but it COULD be higher or lower).

The alternative that immediately comes to mind for group attacks could have instead been 1d10+Attack+Number Guys vs Defence and THEN used the margin of success X damage. And thrown around some higher defence in all of that. That would unfortunately lead to some serious damage/defence inflation. So for now I'm sticking with the original.

So What Does The Game Look Like Right Now?
So for now we bring two “10 SP” armies of one unit of ten space rats each to the table, we give them all Space Rat Side Arms for free because we didn't get around to pricing that crap yet.

With no real cover or rough terrain rules, or even deployment rules, we will just put them on an open field 15 inches away from each other.

Each turn each player will (for now) get one Unit Order and one Individual Action. The individual actions will be mildly useless because it is highly unlikely that squad leaders will be removed and you can't take an individual action with a model that has participated in a unit order.

Players will either close to long range and start firing. Close to short range and start firing. Attempt to charge into melee. Or give hold ground orders and wait for the opponent to close to firing range.

1) Close to long range and fire.
At long range these units deal an average of about 2.25 damage a turn to each other (well, quick dirty math there, but close enough) and it will take about 4 turns and being the guy to shoot first IS an advantage but not a huge one.

2) Close to short range and fire.
At short range these units deal about 5.5 damage average on their first shot, and casualties are going to rapidly cripple their maximum damage cap. Odds are good first to fire will win, but if they roll under 5ish and their opponents next shot is a roll of over 5ish then the odds will start swinging around significantly.

3) Close to melee.
In this match with no special abilities or obstructing terrain closing to melee has no particular advantage. You are unlikely to be in a situation where ranged fire is going to have a significant limitations in removable casualties compared to melee. Though admittedly once you are at the space rat side arm short range there is no actual disadvantage to charging into melee instead and outcomes will be similar. However if you do close to melee while the other guy is shooting you all the way you will take on average like 7.75 casualties and then lose horribly. But without any melee delivery mechanics yet this is pretty much OK.

4) Hold and Fire
OK so reaction tokens don't HAVE a proper mechanic yet, but assuming they let you shoot approaching units, and presumably that is their main thing, then Unit Hold Ground orders could throw in an extra round of screwing a player trying to close to firing range. With the starting ranges involved in THIS sample it isn't an issue, but in any other circumstances ranged defenders given one turn to “dig in” with a hold ground order will have a notable advantage. This isn't altogether bad, but may mean we also might want some “ranged attack delivery” in addition to “melee delivery” mechanics, a “advance and fire” order for instance might be a good common “special unit order” for certain classes of unit/squad leader. Either that or we have to rethink this reaction token business a little bit, and that would be sad because a few out of turn actions would be really sweet.

So all up it's a pretty even match with strong advantages to whichever sucker gets the first shot off, which is pretty much what we want to see for this example.

The other news is this example is resolved in a very small number of measurements and dice rolls. For instance.
1) Close to long range and fire.
Player 1) 1x Move Squad leader measurement, place troops in command range (mostly by eye)
Player 2) Measure range from Squad leader, check LoS, fire with one single dice roll.
Player 1) Remove casualties, Measure (or now safely assume) range, check or assume LoS, fire with one single dice roll.
Player 2) Measure or assume repeated range, check or assume LoS, fire with one single dice roll.
Player 1) Probably now removes casualties and is wiped from the board, or maybe one more shot or so each.

That's pretty reasonable and quick with relatively few Dice on the table for an encounter involving 20 models.

[PhoneLobster]

PASS 2 : making all female models into masked whip using S&M mistresses like the big publishers do Slightly Bigger Armies
What does a Commander look like?
OK so I mentioned something about order resources and generals/commanders as a half formed idea. So whats a Commander and what does he do?

A commander is like a unit leader, only for your whole army, just like a unit leader gives Unit orders shared by the models in his unit the Commander can give Army orders shared by the whole army.

That's basically it, that's what he is here for.

Let's make a army/faction list for the Space Rats

Faction – Space Rats
Commanders – (1x) You may, for free upgrade one Space Rat Unit Leader to Space Rat Commander
Units – (Unlimited) Space Rat Units

Space Rat Commander
Is just another space rat, but he gets default Unit Leader AND default Commander powers.

Default Commander
OK so we want some stuff that any basic Commander might do, and those are army orders these orders ideally need to as good, or even a teensy bit better than just giving out the same number of unit orders. We want some motivation to use them after all, but they should also be more generic and general so that if you give them to your entire army you may be losing out a little on flexibility and choice.

Unlike Unit Orders you may nominate any number of units in your army to just not participate in Army Orders. Units that do not participate in Army orders may perform a Unit Order (within the limit of however many of those per turn you are allowed to have), or may have individual models in their unit perform Individual Actions (within the limit of however many of those per turn you are allowed to have).

Troop models without a Unit Leader may NOT receive Army Orders, but we will probably let Heroes and almost certainly let Giant Robots receive army orders.

Default Army Order Options
Here are some default orders for us!

All March
All units that receive this order may move up to 2x their move. They must however all end their movement closer to a single shared “destination” board edge or single point declared in the order.

All Advance
All units that receive this order march 1x their move toward any enemy unit, then may perform either a Group Fire or Special Weapons Fire attack on the nearest enemy unit. (Special weapons do not fire as part of the group fire action and can still fire with an individual action).

All Charge
All units that receive this order charge 2x their move into melee with the nearest enemy and attack, those that cannot move 2x their move towards the nearest enemy or 1x their move and make a Group Fire attack (no special weapons fire as usual with group attacks... this needs to be a rule in group attack...OK, now it is). Units receiving this order MUST move as far as possible until they make contact or fire. They may NOT choose not to move or to move less than their maximum. They will not however jump into whatever Lava Pit terrain we have and will move around obstacles/take most efficient routes if slowing terrain is present etc...

All Fire
Every unit in that receives this order performs either a Unit Charge or Unit Fire order on the nearest opponent.

Fall Back And Regroup
This army order is special because individual models and models without a unit leader may receive it, however as a down side ALL units and models under the commander MUST receive this order without exception when it is given. All units (and models) that receive this order may retreat toward a nominated board edge, or may make a 1x move to a simlar unit and join the unit.

OK so there are a few good “all army” orders. But we could come up with all sorts of fun special ones like Firing Retreats, Cautious Advances and charges covered by other unit's ranged fire and junk. We can even give out really big super explosion orders and say the general can only use them once per battle!

We can also write in exceptions to units where a Unit Leader lets their unit do something different or additional when participating in an Army order like All Advance.

So... How Many Orders Do You Get Per Turn?
This is a hard one. We want limited actions, choices and resolutions per turn. We want things to change over relatively quickly and for it to be hard to use EVERY unit in your army without an Army order and hard to use every model in a unit without a Unit Order.

But then we get weird bullshit where some armies will have more units/models and not get enough Unit/Individual actions to go around while others will have less (and therefore better) units/models and will get PLENTY of Unit/Individual actions to go around. And while that is SORT OF OK, since the grouped orders etc... are intended in part to be a way of reducing decision/resolution time for larger armies rather than smaller ones, the benefits could easily be too great for smaller armies.

Which probably means we need some sort of scaling system where by you get a certain number of each action type per turn based on over all points total or even numbers of certain types of units. But that too can go horribly wrong!

For now we KNOW that at least for a “standard battle”, whatever that means, we probably want only ONE Commander to be present and we only want to give ONE Army order per turn (maximum) to his available units.

The tricky bit kicks in with the Unit and Individual scales, because we still don't know how many of those thingies we want running around the board! So lets throw some crap at the board and see what sticks.

You hereby gain a number of Unit Orders per turn equal to ½ your CURRENT number of Unit Leaders (round down, minimum 1 unit order). You may gain one additional Unit Order by forgoing your Army Order in the same turn. It's uncertain, but odds are good Giant Robots are going to be treated like Units for this purpose. If you lose your General you get one additional Unit Order per turn.

Now counting current “Individual” models is going to be a hard one. So lets instead tie Individual Actions per turn to total army size. You get one individual action per turn, +1 per 50 points of army you field at the start of the game. Some things you field might actually give you more individual actions to spend in some way. You can trade a Unit Order for an additional individual action, but the action must be spent within the unit that traded it's Unit Action, you can trade an Army Order for an additional Individual action. For each General or Unit Leader lost in battle you gain one additional Individual Order.

As a proviso to prevent chaining multiple orders to single units/models we will need to write in a rule saying no model may act in more than one order/action each turn, so no single model getting an Army, Unit AND Individual action, or 3 individual actions, note though that some things like certain Unit Orders specifically let some models count as “not acted” such as in the case of Special Weapons guys.

What the heck do things look like now?
First lets make those space rat side arms cost something, they significantly upgrade our space rats after all. So lets update our whole army list builder thingy...

Faction – Space Rats
Commanders : (1x) You may, for free upgrade one Space Rat Unit Leader to Space Rat Commander
Units : (Unlimited) Space Rat Unit

Unit – Space Rat Unit
10 Space Rats for 10 SP.
One space rat is promoted to Standard Unit Leader for no extra cost.
Default Unit Leader Command Range: 4
Space Rats are equipped with no weapons.
You may equip your entire Space Rat Posse with Space Rat Side Arms for +5 SP

Commander - Space Rat Commander
Is just another space rat, but he gets default Unit Leader AND default Commander powers.

Unit Leader - Space Rat Unit Leader
Exactly like a space rat only he gets the default unit leader abilities.

Troop - Space Rat
Cost Per Model : 1 SP
Hit Points per model: 1
Move : 5 (foot)
Defence : 0
Basic Attack : +0 Ranged, +0 Melee
Weapon : Unarmed Attack +0, Damage 1, Range Melee

Weapon : Space Rat Sidearm Attack +0, Damage 1, Range 5', Long Range 10'

And lets come to the table with the following force...
4xSpace Rat Units 40points
-upgraded with Space Rat Side Arms 20 points
-3 free Unit Leaders 0 points
-1 free Commander 0 points
total 60 points

This gives us each turn (before trade ins or casualties).
1 Army Order
2 Unit Orders
2 Individual Orders

What does that play like?
With the same army on each side it will look a lot like the larger scale version of the first test run. Rolls are still kept low, and over all he who fires first (probably) wins, with some reasonable doubt from random rolls, much like before.

But All Advance gives us a move and fire delivery mechanism, which will make trading shots at long range less attractive, and reduce the advantage of the still unwritten Reaction Token attacks.

And All Charge gives us a melee delivery, which compared to the really crappy ranged weapons we have given out so far makes it as good, or even better for charging into combat vs gimped long range fire.

Without terrain, variable equipment, special orders, variable units etc... the most sensible action in the world for each army is to execute single Army Orders each turn and completely forgo Unit and Individual orders. However the “nearest enemy” targeting restrictions of these orders means they may well use their one or two Unit Orders per turn to do a little target selection or focus fire of some form.

The whole game will be decided in about five-ish dice rolls per unit, for a mere 20 or so dice rolls. And if someone lucks out, or focus fires, and knocks off the enemy general's unit early they might squeak in a bit of an advantage.

Of course the game is still boring as hell, but we have a whole lot of hooks to hang special abilities and weird crap off. But we still need to add more hooks, we still need to write something up for Reaction Tokens, Terrain, minor vehicles, giant robots, heroes, more interesting Unit Leaders and Commanders, Special Orders, Special Weapons guys, Special Weapons, other equipment, and then weird shit like special movement, deployment, special deployment, missions and stuff.

[PhoneLobster]

Before The Next Pass : prematurely creating a failed indie miniatures line like so many others before Catching back up
OK so all that material there is basically old as nails. It's even seen a brief appearance as a part of a reply on a nowhere thread here before in a spoiler block in un edited form lacking bolding and headings and such.

It needs some looking at and consideration before continuing...

And for the most part I actually still like it.

It is currently however very clear that some things very specifically will need work.

Points Values Are Barely Beginning:
They were always meant to be place holders and currently without much to compare to there are minimal issues and no upper limit on potentially acceptable inflation. But... they need reconsidering. It might well be good if the EVENTUAL default 1 SP trooper is better, if mandatory Unit Leader and Commander Options are costed higher than free (and get extra HP or something) as a default, and for even the lowest costed default weapons to be priced at something other than 1/2 a point per trooper.

Something needs to be done about group fire and large single targets
Group fire currently could see a space rat squad doing 10HP of damage to a single target.

That's cool for shooting say, another space rat squad... but what about shooting a giant robot? A hero like Flash Gordon?

This is going to take some thought. Somewhere along the line either the "big single" targets are going to have to just HAVE that much capacity to take damage, or a damage cap rule like "single targets are capped at 1x weapon damage" may have to be instituted.

Command Resources Need Work
The current place holder of 1 Army order, 1+1 per 50SP Unit Orders, whatever it was for Individual Orders... probably needs significant extra work, and I'm not entirely sure yet were to take it.

Also unit leader casualties granting extra individual orders, commander casualties giving an extra unit order, etc... might be a bad thing.

All Charge Is Awesome
And probably puts melee at a distinct advantage right now over long range fire. (and as such all ranged fire). Admittedly this may largely be due to there being only two crap default weapons in the game, but consideration on this may need to be fairly heavy.

Who's Turn Is It Anyway?
I need to decide whether players do all their orders as a turn then hand over to the next player, or if the game should run an alternating order then order until both run out and its called a turn sort of arrangement. This is important and rather an over sight from Pass 2.

Which Minis Can Koumei bring to the table?
The rules are intended, for now at least to only care about BASE SIZE. So we want circular 1 Inch bases for now, if you can glue it to a circular one inch base it can be a space rat, whatever. So you can glue lego, 40 k minis, kinder surprise toys, or actual live rats to 1 inch bases if you like, that's bound to go off without a hitch.

In the longer term the game is intended to run off some sort of relatively limited number of standardized base sizes, clearly marked terrain base areas and maybe some abstract "Height 2" type things for height. What models are on those bases is intended to be entirely divorced from the mechanics. Because arguing about whether or not a troops nose is visible through a ruined shutter on a terrain base is total fucking bullshit and shouldn't be in any sane table top mini war game.

[PhoneLobster]

Pass 3 : Everyone Must Now Bring 40 Tanks to the Table in order to play Giant Robots!
We better wedge some sort of god damn template for giant robots into the rules real early before it becomes too tacked on.

Rat-Bot – Independent Vehicle (Walker)
Cost Per Model : 10 SP
Base Size : Er... Size A? OK I don't know, that sorta big round one. For now.
Pilot Options : 1 Space Rat, no gear
Hit Points per model: 5
Move : 5 (foot)
Defence : 5
Basic Attack: +0 Ranged, +0 Melee
Weapon : Rat-Bot Smash Attack +0, Damage 1, Scaling Damage (10), Range Melee
+5 SP for Weapon : Rat-Bot Fire Gun Attack +0, Damage 1, Scaling Damage (10), Range 5', Long Range 10'

So then we write up a rule for Scaling Damage...

Scaling Damage (X)
This weapon when fired as an individual attack deals additional damage based on margin of success (up to a margin of X) times it's base Damage. (Basically the same as if it were a unit of X troops firing with the same weapons). Is this the best way to do this? (maybe not) is this the ONLY way to do this? Almost certainly not. However lets use scaling damage for now as a short hand for how a perhaps rapid Fire weapon trait might work and assume other giant robot options might just deal big individual damage, or AoEs or other things to put them on par with littler unit groups.

Maybe those weapons should have been like “Damage 2 Scaling Damage (5)” or even the melee smash for “Damage 5 Scaling Damage (2)” instead or something for added variety, but the 1/(10) will do for now instead.

Survivability?
With a defence of 5 and 5 HP it basically takes the same sort of hits as a unit of 10 Space Rats... but... I'm not entirely sure I like that compromise in several respects. But lets use it as a functional place holder for now.

Individual Status for Orders/targetting?
OK we probably need to have “Independant Vehicle” give you something extra in the way of Independant Actions. Like improving what your robot can DO as an independent action. For now if we just let independent vehicles do the following...

Independant Charge
The model advances it's Move speed and attacks any enemies in melee range.

Independant Move
The model advances it's Move speed.

It is getting pretty close to acceptably similar options to a group of similar basic troopers. Once we roll in special weapon attachments to unit groups some more options might be needed, like the ability to also fire a special weapon while doing other things or something.

Should the Rat-Bot get extra Order resources?
For now we stick with our place holder order resource rules, and Rat-Bot doesn't give or get extra orders. So you aren't really going to field more than one or two of these in our default space rat test army. Yet. Changes may come later, especially with elite pilots or something.

Hey... Rat-Bot has a Pilot!
You know what would be cool? Having a pilot model who hops out of a smashed mech and dies horribly. There should be something that does that. Also, having a pilot option/entry means we can stick better pilots in who give better order options or bonuses or something.

Right now our only pilot option is that the turn after Rat-Bot is destroyed, your Pilot ejects to a position up to (1 standard move) away from the Rat-Bot AS AN INDEPENDANT ACTION (meaning they have acted that turn). They are not “on the board” until then so you don't get to shoot them.

Hell, later on maybe we can have crazy elite sniper units sniping robot pilots or robot pilots taking over enemy robots or fun stuff with this, but getting a FREE UNARMED SPACE RAT! Who... is delayed a turn in the middle of battle and probably shot down during post decisive battle clean up is considered the HEIGHT of weird custom rule option awesome as the game currently stands.

How does that turn out
Aaaand that's a giant robot profile that will be functionally pretty much identical to fielding 1 unit of existing Space Rats...

I mean. It's functionally similar to the point of boring. And it is a VERY lame giant robot as far as they go... but it's costed accordingly and it IS a base option.

Bringing some Rat Bots to battle now basically just makes the game slightly swingier thanks to their Defence 5 HP 5 business compared to the standard Unit's Defence 0 HP 10 which means lower rolls now aren't contributing to removing Rat-Bots at all, even if similar over all casualty rates should be expected. Also The fact that the Rat Bot does NOT decrease effectiveness until removed is a big deal (since squads lose damage cap for their margin of success multiplier with their casualties) but that's probably made up for with them having slightly better order options and stuff.

edit! Wait up check yo maths fool!edit: Check your maths twice fool
No wait... I think defence 5 HP 5 actually works out OK. I may be mad but I think average damage there is about 2.5 for your standard full squad/Enemy Rat-Bot attack run, and that means that yeah, you still sort of go down to two average hits. Sort of...

wait... man my math is getting old/bad. OK so thats average 1.5 per hit. Hm. lets see, not sure if I should tweak that to Defence 5 HP 3, or Defence 4 HP 5(or 4) or Defence 3 HP 5 (or 6). Hrm...

HRM....

[PhoneLobster]

Pre-Pass 4 : Bullshit Vehicle Glancing Hit Tables Are All The Fucking Rage Survivability, Armour, And Other Rat-Bot things
Hoookay...

Well this reminds me of 5, yes FIVE things...
1) Check my math, even the basic stuff, especially the basic stuff.
2) This IS a "watch me screw things up in real time" thread so that's gonna happen.
3) I had considered to include an armor mechanic of some kind instead of just increasing HP as a flat out armour simulation.
4) I had considered having some sort of hit location mechanic for giant robots, because blowing their arms off would be cool?
... that's five right?

The problem with just using HP
Well HP are cool. And the advantage of using MOAR HP! as your only armour soak mechanic in this sort of game are good. Really good. So good I am damn well tempted.

But it doesn't quite give the feel of damage bouncing off an armoured robot so great.

The problem with just using Defence
Well.. that was supposed to be a dodge mechanic. As is CURRENTLY stands it IS a nice effective dodge simulator. If you stuck a high Def and a low HP on a character they would work very nicely like a hard to hit egg shell. And we like simulating that. So it's working pretty good.

But if we can't just put Rat Bot on pure Defence, it makes him seem pretty egg shelly. Even a Defence 5 HP 3 rat bot who averages the same survivability against EXISTING weapons is going to drop in one shot 60% of the time to an attack +0 Damage 3 weapon/attack profile once they start to turn up in the rules set. And that might arguably be the lower end of weapon/attack options.

Doing it with HP and Defense
Running a mix is... cool. I guess. The interaction with higher attack and damage bonuses is fairly intuitive and beneficial.

Instituting a damage cap?
Not ready for that yet, and I'm considering keeping that for a "Hero" thing.

Damage Reducing Armour?
Well, if you just have "armour -1 damage taken" sort of thing... it looks a lot like Defence in function, though it will interact with higher damage weapons + damage multipliers from squads differently. And... maybe not in a good way? Not to mention it means our "Damage 5 so its probably anti-vehicle or something?" one shot/one trooper special weapons will be affected by armour in ways that make pummelling it with a squad of 10 damage 1 space rats look pretty comparable.

Making it -1 damage per weapon makes a very nice "screw you pistols! I'm in armour!" effect. And I might well institute that as a mechanical option at some point... but lets not make it a basic option.

System Damage?
And now I remembered I wanted system damage! Like "Oh No! My Giant Robot's Legs are out! No movement!" sort of thing.

Some games have done this with various fuck off vehicle damage table rolls.

Fuck that.

Some have done it with the infamous warmachine damage grid. That was pretty cool... but lets not do that.

Lets run with something simple. Armour HP and Systems HP and stuff which will work so that our sample Rat Bot's HP entry will now read...

Hit Points : Armour 3, 1 System 1, 2 Systems 1, Destroyed 1
Systems : Legs (Movement, -3 Defense), Arms (Rat-Bot Smash, Rat-Bot Gun)

That gives the Rat Bot 6 HP in total. BUT. The first 3 are Armour HP and are there just to be HP. The next 1 is 1 System, meaning with damage in this range you lose ONE SYSTEM on your rat bot. The next one after that is 2 System, meaning you lose TWO SYSTEMS. The last one is Destroyed... leaving your Rat Bot destroyed after that.

The systems entry gives us... two systems... and notes on what stops working when they are out. The DEFENDER decides which systems to disable (barring special ability fodder for later).

The Rat Bot is functionally disabled at 5 HP but not destroyed, in case we care for repair or other things. as of NOW we change the pilot eject thing into an action that does NOT automatically happen on destruction, so your Rat Bot pilot is likely to eject if he has no systems (but is not destroyed) as an actual action or if his one system down is enough to render the Rat Bot useless.

This also means we have a little bit of reduced effectiveness with damage taken. Which is a good thing.

So we ARE now creating the 6 HP Rat Bot with systems damage bullshit as the new Rat Bot Standard.

What else are we going to actually do?
Actually you know what, screw it, for now at least, that's it. Rat Bot IS

Defence : 5
Hit Points : Armour 3, 1 System 1, 2 Systems 1, Destroyed 1
Systems : Legs (Movement, -3 Defense), Arms (Rat-Bot Smash, Rat-Bot Gun)

YES this means after all that fucking consideration the Rat Bot is still taking an average of only 1.5 damage from our standard Default squad/rat-bot attack. And is still not fully disabled until 5 HP of damage, and as such IS currently more survivable than our current default squad.

What should we do about that?

Well, a repricing on the Rat Bot might not be bad.

But after considering the Defence/HP/Damage/Group attack/Weapon damage interplay...

... I actually need to jump into phase 4 and throw in some more weapon options and stuff before we can really decide on the value of the Rat-Bot's troublesome survivability. Because I'm thinking once squads with damage 2 weapons or with single Special Weapons attachments with 3 or 5 damage one shots are a thing Rat Bot fills a more interesting role and becomes less stompy on his defence for value.

[Foxwarrior]

You haven't mentioned interesting mission objectives yet, have you?

[PhoneLobster]

Mission objectives can wait, right now space rats don't even have shot guns.

[PhoneLobster]

Pass 4: Before battle Roll 1d6, on 6 unit gains weapons worth 25 points for free, on 1 stab self in eye with sharpened pencil Improving Weapon Options
OK so we need... more weapon options. Or at least some idea of the shape weapon options might take.

Special Weapons Guy Attachment
Step 1. Little space rat units would be totally cool if they could have, like, a guy with a flame thrower or a rocket launcher or a giant space laser walking around with them doing his thing.

So now we will be adding options to the space rat squad so that some number of its guys (probably 1 or 2) can (at the cost of some SP) equip Special Weapons instead of normal ones.

When the squad does Group Shots members with Special Weapons DON'T fire, they however can as an Individual Action (or instead of the group fire) fire their own Special Weapon, on their own as an individual attack.

But What Should Special Weapons Look Like?
We are going to want a number of options here. At least over the full span of various available troops.

Bam it deals damage!
Something nice, deals some extra damage compared to standard options, maybe a bit of attack bonus. It will be nice vs vehicles OR squads. Our sample option?

+5 SP Special Weapon : Plasma Shot Gun : Attack +2 Damage 3 Range 5 Long Range 10
This thing will reliably kill 3 space Rats a turn at standard range, 2 at long range. It takes out (as in just destroys) our default Rab Bot in only 2 hits, and hits it 80% of the time.

It's a great all purpose simple weapon.

Single Shot High Damage Killers
We want something that hits one target fairly hard, but is sorta crap against masses of troops. We need an extra mechanic for this because if we just write up a 5 or 6 damage weapon it is still going to murderise 5 or 6 troops per hit (and with low default defense) do that EVERY TURN.

+5 SP Special Weapon : Anti Vehicle Rifle : Attack 0 Damage 5 Limited Targets (1) Range 10 Long Range 15
This weapon is pretty cool, it's range is up and it will take out a Rat Bot at 10 inches in one shot 60% of the time. And do fairly nasty damage to it at 15 inches. Limited Targets is the mechanic that makes it suck vs squads as it can only damage X (in this case 1) model per shot. in theory a Limited Targets (2) weapon would let you do the over flow group damage thing vs group targets, a bit, but mostly the idea is we will see limited targets 1 stuff.

Line AoE Weapons
We have models on the table, things that shoot in a way that exploits layouts for fun and profit would be cool. So lets create one that hits everything in a straight line...

+5 SP Special Weapon : Pulse Beamer : Attack +2 Damage 2 Limited Targets (AoE Only) Range (Line, Cover Piercing) 15

So we've just invented the Line range. This weapon attacks all individual models under a single striaght line to 15, and we have even added Cover Piercing so it goes through walls and bigger bases and crap. Limited Targets (AoE Only) means it cannot over flow damage onto squads models outside of its line.

It's nice It does 2 damage, it hits more often. It's number of targets is situational, but good, its range is huge and it makes cover less useful.

But wait... you can totally pick off squad leaders with this. And indeed any placed AoE we design. So lets throw in a new Standard Unit Leader trait to prevent that.

Unit Leader Substitution
When damaged by an AoE, line, cone, or template a squad leader may apply the damage he receives to other models in his unit within his Command Range who are not already being damaged by the attack.

And while we are at it lets give a similar standard ability to all commanders.

Commander Substitution
When damaged by an AoE, line, cone, or template a Commander may apply the damage he receives to other models under his command within his Command Range who are not already being damaged by the attack.

Moar AoEs
We might like to create fancy triangular templates for flame throwers or or sprays of auto fire or something. Actual templates are very usable. But lets also make all those templates follow a standard where they are a cone with a Length and and end width (center at the length) so you can just measure it if you don't have a damn template.

+5 SP Special Weapon : Flame Thrower : Attack 0 Damage 1 Limited Targets (AoE Only) Range (Cone) 7 long 4 Wide

That's a pretty kick ass flame thrower.

Also we want round explosions!

... but I got an appointment elsewhere so I've got to finish this later.

[Koumei]

A thought regarding damage for vehicles and robots, if you're okay with them being treated differently from infantry. It's something a friend was toying with for a "fixing 40k" project.

Basically, you make up a grid for the robot, with Engine, Gun and Armour squares (potentially also Passenger, Crew, Wheels/Treads and whatever). When you attack it from that direction, you randomly determine which row (if attacking from the left or right) or column (if attacking from the front/back) the whole unit shoots.

Armour is just "empty HP", but if you damage a weapon it can't be fired next turn, and if you destroy all squares for a given weapon (with big cannons getting 3-6 squares, and little storm bolters getting 1), then the weapon is gone forever. Taking out an engine chunk means it stalls for one turn, taking out all engines means it's out of action. He also worked in a thing where, due to 40k tanks all running on nuclear/plasma/warp batteries, every time a vehicle suffers engine damage, you roll 1d6, and if you don't roll more than the number of engine blocks taken out by that attack, the whole thing blows up.

As you can see, it's a bit long and complex, and also involves a separate chart for each robot. If you're not using particularly modular miniatures, it's going to be really annoying, too, as you'll have to draw it up on paper for each one and cross bits off. But it does make it involved and has the fun of chipping away at various bits and pieces, and allows for various things to have special rules of "just pick the row/column" or "you can ignore the first layer and go straight into the machinery inside" for some units.

It could be useful for tinkering with.

[PhoneLobster]

...and back.

Starting with Koumei... Yeah damage grids like Warmachine basically are kinda cool directional damage grids and such might even be cooler. But it's a bit on the complex side. My current linear Armour HP -> 1 System Down HP-> More Systems down HP-> Disabled -Destroyed HP. Has plenty of flexibility and has a significant advantage in simplicity in unit profiles.

You can still adapt the linear system I've proposed further. The system down margins can be larger than a single HP, as can the destroyed margin, repair rules could interact interestingly with those margins, some things only repair armour, some things can bring back systems, some things can bring back non-destroyed vehicles. We can also add in more types of HP ranges, so a many system vehicle might have only 1x System and 2xSystem margins then jump straight to "Disabled" for all systems down before Destroyed. You could throw in a "Stunned" margin where if you take any damage in that margin you are stunned next turn. Etc...

As for the special rule for "just picking the damage" my plan is to put that in the "1x System" type margin mechanics. By default the defender picks the systems that go down. The special rule option is an attacker who gets to pick which systems they knock out. Potentially also we could write up a weapon that just outright ignores Armour HP and starts damaging directly the margins in the damage line AFTER the armour. (or after X points of armour even).

It all seems adequate enough.

[PhoneLobster]

... and back to special weapons.

Arcs
Cones are nice, and easy to measure as AoEs. But occasionally we might want to measure an arc. Because it's relatively easy to measure "all targets in range X along a Y Degree Arc. Well. OK so Y degree arcs is a bit much but if you keep it to 90 degree increments arcs are doable.

So the idea is that you do most things resembling arcs smaller than 90 degrees with a Cone AoE instead, and cones that approach or exceed the 90 degree mark should probably be an arc. Here are some arc weapons...

+5 SP Special Weapon : Arc Beamer : Attack +2 Damage 1 Limited Targets (AoE Only) Range (Arc 90) Range 6

We could also have range entries that read (Arc 180), (Arc 270), (Arc 360), and better yet things like (Arc Up To 270) which would let you do lesser increments of 90 degrees if you prefer.

Circular AoEs
OK there are piles of different types of circular AoEs we might want.

The first is basically your (Arc 360) or a circular AoE centered on yourself but probably (but maybe not always?) excluding you. We probably want to change the notation (largely for flavor). So we will call that a "Range Self (Blast Radius X) and have the additional provisos of potentially (Ignores Self) and even (Ignores Own Unit). That lets us do funky pulse field effects nicely without pretending its a 360 spinning arc.

Next up we want to take our circular template off ourself and move it onto something else. Which we can do by using basically the same notation and extending the range for things like "Range 10 Blast Radius 3". That's a nice simple ranged blast radius.

BUT We might want to have scattering blasts, or blasts with primary targets and secondary blast targets. Or even both at once!

The primary target thing will be done with a more complex profile, so it might look like.

+5 SP Special Weapon : Rat Rocket Launcher : Primary (Direct Fire): Attack 0 Damage 4 Limited Targets (1) Range 10 Secondary (Blast Radius) : Attack 0 Damage 1 Range Direct Target (Blast Radius 2).

Scattering is a bit of a challenge. But we will put it in as a secondary effect on weapon ranges that cares about margins for MISSES. And probably is attached to weapons with attack penalties. So we might have.

+5 SP Special Weapon : Scatter Grenade Launcher : Attack -9 Range 15 (Blast Radius 5)

And you could combine both.

OK gotta run again...

[PhoneLobster]

... so anyway...
The rest of the scatter weapon bit
So if you miss the weapon instead scatters by your margin of failure in inches. We want a nice little four directional roll for the direction I think, so it goes forward in the initial line of fire on a 1, Left on a 2, right on a 3 and back toward you on a 4. Or something like that, but thats a good basic default there.

The result puts the Scatter Grenade Launcher as a reasonable long range hit or miss scatter blaster for crowds. Oh, and somehow its entry lost it's bloody damage number, which will be a nice safe 1 for now.

Rapid Fire/Multiple Fire?
Not sure how much we want this. And there are a few ways we can do it.

For flat out "giant spray of bullets" we already have arcs, cones, and the first special weapon quality back on the Rab-Bot, the Scaling Damage (X), so a good scaling damage rapid fire weapon might look like...

+5 SP Special Weapon : Rat A Tat Gun : Attack +0, Damage 1, Scaling Damage (10), Single Target Cap (1) Range 10'

I've stuck no long range on this and made it better than the original Rat-Bot Fire Gun. This guy works exactly like a whole unit firing and is really nice in general but especially good at clearing mobs of units. It WOULD be totally awesome against vehicles, but we have instituted a NEW trait Single Target Cap (X) which works like the opposite of limited targets, and reduces the number of hits you can apply from scaling damage/group fire to a cap of X times damage, so this thing is restrained into sucking vs big hit point targets.

Now TRUE multiple fire MIGHT be something you might want, but really we want to keep numbers low there. 2 or 3 shot weapons mostly, a 5 or more shot weapon is a big deal. That sort of thing is probably going to be restrained to rare units or to special weapons on special weapon guys or vehicles. IF we were to do it it might look like...

+5 SP Special Weapon : Cluster Grenade Launcher : Multi Shot x 3 Attack : -9 Damage : 1 Range : 15 (Blast Radius 2)

Which is a stretch for resolution because ONE guy firing not only three shots, but three AoEs that ALL are likely to scatter... well. yeah. It's doable but we are pushing some limits pretty hard there, so it better be sort of cool.

Chaining AoEs
Yeah, there are crap loads of AoEs we might want.

A simple one might be Chaining, so you might have...

+5 SP Special Weapon : Link Zapper : Attack +2 Damage 1 Range 5 (Margin)x Chaining 5 (Nearest)

So we have a new, complex, notation for chaining. That goes. (X)Chaining R (?). X is the number of times it chains to new targets (in this case your margin of success), R is the distance it can jump to chain, and ? is how it chooses chaining targets (could read Selected or something else?). Potentially you could also throw in (Overlap) as an extra if you wanted to let it leap back to older targets. or (Overlap X) if there were a limit to how many strikes it could jump back to a single prior target on.

We might also like a branching notation with, (X) Branching Branches Range (Targeting), And yeah you could make a cool branching chain lightning cannon, but you could also put 1 at the front of the notation just to do "hit that guy and some number of other guys within branch range of him". And odds are if you used that attack type at all that's what you would probably most commonly use it for.

+5 SP Special Weapon : Zapper Grenade Launcher : Attack -2 Damage 1 Range 5 (1)x Branching Range 5 Branches 5 (Nearest)

Snipers
Well we wrote in target substitution for AoEs, letting the officers avoid being deliberately picked off. BUT... we might want a weapon designed specifically TO let you pick them off.

Now AS IT STANDS, we have accidentally written in any of our single target special weapons to already do that. So you can pull out our sample Plasma Shot Gun or Anti Vehicle Rifle and just automatically murder our default Defense 0 HP 1 officers. That's actually a bad thing... so lets buff the crud out of officer subsitution abilities to now read...

Unit Leader Substitution (v2)
When damaged by a ranged attack without Accurate a squad leader may apply the damage he receives to other models in his unit within his Command Range who are not already being damaged by the attack.

Commander Substitution (v2)
When damaged by a ranged attack without Accurate a Commander may apply the damage he receives to other models under his command within his Command Range who are not already being damaged by the attack.

And then we make a new weapon with accurate, which for now looks like...

+5 SP Special Weapon : Rat Sniper Gun : Attack -5 Damage 1 Accurate Range 15 Long Range 20

To pick off officers with. Sometimes. It has a long range... but who cares because it rounds down to no damage at long range.

Something Something Terrain Based AoEs?
Here is a cool idea. What if you had a weapon that if fired into certain terrain bases might trigger cool things.

Lets say we stuck "Wild Fire" as a trait on our Sample Flame Thrower. Any "Combustible" terrain in it's AoE... deals the Flame Thrower attack on all targets in the terrain then burns it down. Lets burn down some Space Shrubberies with people in, awesome.

Lets say we stuck "Electrocution" on our Link Zapper, and any "Conductive" terrain hit (or that you hit a target inside of) applies the basic unchained Link Zapper hit to all targets in the terrain base. So lets electrocute groups in giant space bath tubs.

Then lets say we stuck some actual attack properties ON TERRAIN, and had it trigger either from specific attacks, like Wild Fire, or Electrocution, or just AoEs in general, or even ANY attack on the terrain. We give the terrain a defense profile, and then when its dead, we give it an explosion or something, BUT that can wait until better terrain rules.

AND WHAT ABOUT COVER
With all these things going on we might actually care about finishing up cover rules. Even if we lay off the rest of terrain rules for a while.

Bases of terrain can have properties like...
Opaque
No effect on whether you can shoot through it, but you cannot SEE through it. Blocks LoS. Doesnt have an effect on targets only Partially behind it.

Transparent
Doesn't matter if you can shoot through it or not you CAN see through it. Some things might care about this. Later.

Solid
You cannot move through it, you cannot shoot through it. Models partially behind it get some reasonably good cover bonus. Lets say, +3 Defense. You cannot stand in Solid cover unless it has Indoors or a Roof, but those can be things we will put in the terrain rules later.

Cover (X) This cover just grants it's cover bonus to defense of models in it or behind it when they are shot at. Models partially behind it get half the cover bonus (round down). Presumably most Cover (X) Terrain is Navigable but it could be Unnavigable or Rough but we will define those things later in the terrain rules.


Weapons With Status Effects
And the OTHER special weapon thing we might want to do is hand out status effects of some kind. Here are some possibly viable samples.

+5 SP Special Weapon : Rat Stunner : Attack -2 Damage 0 Stun 1 Accurate Range 10

Deals no damage, Stun however makes the target unable to act next turn (including unable to issue orders) and yes, its Accurate.

+5 SP Special Weapon : Crippler Gun : Attack 0 Damage 2 System Damage 1x Range 15
This not bad weapon also damages 1 system on a vehicle on hit, outside of the usual armor/system damage progression, though the defender still chooses which (for now).

+5 SP Special Weapon : Net Gun : Attack -5 Damage 0 Entangle Range 15 Blast Radius 6 Scatter

The net gun launches an undamaging scattering AoE that applies the Entangle status. This makes the targets unable to Move by any means, until they perform an entire action (may be issued as a Unit or Army order or individual actions) to escape entanglement.

+5 SP Special Weapon : Guider Gun : Attack 0 Damage 0 Defense Reduction -3 (This Turn) Accurate Range 20

The Guider Gun is accurate and Looong range. But deals no damage, it DOES however Debuff target defense a lot. Which will help OTHER things hit it a whole bunch for the duration of... This Turn.

Anyway. Thats a LOT of potential for special weapons guys and gives Rat-Bots a pretty big kick in the nuts for now. The Pricing in SP is of course fucking terrible at a flat +5 SP regardless, but it will be reasonable as a place holder for now.

Next up is probably special squad weapons and melee options. Or heroes, or terrain, or vehicle options, or elites...

[PhoneLobster]

Pass 5 : Favored Factions may opt to get cheap god like uber men, everyone else is mandated to purchase crippled gimps Noobs, Elites, Veterans, Heroes, Commanders Oh My
Tiers of Unit Types
You can call them what you want, you can fuzzy the boundaries a lot. But people are going to come to a game like this and expect to see things filling various roles/teirs of awesomeness.

Noobs/Raw Recruits/Cannon Fodder
Some level of troops/units/vehicles that are cheap, trashy and either numerous or disposable or both. Our current default space rats pretty much fill that role, and we can't particularly make them much worse anyway.

Units/vehicles designed for this role should remain cheap with relatively few (but at least some) perks and options. We might want to limit our special weapons lists and such so not all of them are available to Noob level Space Rat units for instance.

Elites/Guys Who Are Pretty Tough
Some level of troop/unit/vehicle whatever that are totally cooler than noobs, CLEARLY cooler than noobs. They should have extra ooomph more and/or better options, and better survivability, they should have a kick equivalent to larger numbers of noobs, and be costed accordingly.

Heroes
Dudes who are SO awesome they have unique names and back stories, they cost a but load of points, considering they are like one dude, and they impact the battlefield in reasonable proportion to their costs.

Heroes are probably going to need some actual special hero specific rules and probably specific options on a per hero basis (or something).

For Now lets give them...
Heroic Defense
All attacks made against this Hero apply Single Target Cap (1) against this hero. (meaning only 1x damage can be applied to this model regardless of margin of success with Group attacks or Scaling Damage attacks).

.. that should make them pretty survivable. It should probably have a points cost, but for now we will incorporate that in hero costs. Once we actually stat up some heroes...

Veterans
You are going to want to do this thing where maybe if you like it or have spare points you declare your Noob unit to be "Noob Veterans" or have a "Veteran Squad Leader" or do the same with "Veteran Elite Units" etc...

This should be represented by minor upgrades in quality at relatively low prices. So you pull out an extra +1 Attack and Defense here and there, maybe add on an extra optional weapon investment, maybe an extra HP for leaders but general not for troops etc... It fuzzies up the Noob/Elite teir a little but its a way of spending points and customizing that we probably want.

Substituted Commanders/Unit Leaders
The assumption so far for heroes is that they are going to be solo individual models doing their own things. Which is cool.

From time to time we will want them to be able to join units. To hide from attacks, maybe give them some sort of custom version of Unit Leader Substitution to help with that. Give them ways of benefiting units.

BUT. We are almost CERTAINLY going to want to sometimes do better with our Unit Leader and Commander options than just giving them some Upgrades and Veteran bonuses. We might want heroes that you specifically insert as outright substitutions for Unit Leaders and Commanders. In fact we almost certainly want that to be a common hero option.

These specific heroes will have all the standard Unit Leader/Commander abilities on their profile with probable upgrades and additional options. Of course.


So... ?
To make this Noobs/Veterans/Elites/Heroes thing work we are going to do it two ways.

1) Outright tiers/separate unit descriptions. We simply flat out will end up with "Noob Space Rat Unit" and "Elite Space Rat Unit" and "Space Rat Hero King" being separate profiles with separate options and separate pricing.

2) Individual priced upgrades and options. So options won't just be gear they will include things like Veteran upgrades, special skills, special orders, etc... But more than that, at some level we actually want to have some sort of pricing for basically ALL upgrades beyond the most basic Noob as a sort of base line for what the things better than noobs should actually be worth.

The Shape of SP to come
For now I am very much throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks. But the general idea of SP pricing is indeed that you basically DO have an underlying "unified" points based costing for, well, everything.

Your actual faction list options won't have "everything whatever, refer to master list" on them. They will be narrower than that. But there will BE a master list, and as much as it will be over all worse and less balanced than faction lists hope to be it needs to be there.

Because it needs to be there as a guideline to attempt to help DESIGN those faction lists. But there are other benefits to it too.

Master List Points Costings and Customizable Factions
Thing is we have here is a system with NO MODEL RANGE being sold with it.

This means two things.
1) On the plus side we CAN just support any old custom army someone feels they can represent with whatever models they have and we don't give a shit because it's not like we are selling anything here.

2) On the negative side we MUST support pretty much any old custom army someone feels they can represent with whatever models they have because we aren't offering them a standardized alternative.

They actually CANNOT buy standard Space Rat Units with standard Space Rat Flamer special weapons guys. And if they don't HAVE something they want to pretend fills that role they need to be able to cost up and field the minis they DO have as SOMETHING.

Ideally the intended direction here is we have maybe a bunch of nice supposedly balanced sample factions, but they are all built off (and contribute options and ideas to) a master list that players can and WILL use to build their own bullshit CUSTOM FACTIONS.

Other Benefits of the Master List
The master list could be used, with a bunch of extra rules and material to potentially do some very interesting things with some of the more obscure branches of rules we may care about here.

It might be able to give us some good pricing for ALLIES.

It might be able to give us some good pricing for the values of troops killed for points based victory scenarios.

It might help us with fairly stable reinforcements/variable forces deployed stuff.

And very excitingly it could help us with between mission customization/diverse options in highly expanded and interesting campaign play.

Limitations Of The Master List
Of course points based systems have limitations and imperfections. Even REALLY well designed, and a lot of this won't be, you have loop holes, unintended synergies and exploits and if EVERYTHING is on a master list of some kind they could ALL end up in one place.

Sample factions are intended to avoid the worst of that, one might hope, and show how to rebalance the occasional synergistic over sight. Part of that should be that if there ARE differences in pricing between the master list and some entry on the sample factions (one would hope to avoid that, but whatever), then it NEEDS TO BE NOTED AND COSTED. If you go "well that weapon damage is so high adding attack to it is worth more than normal" then that needs to be in a NOTE on the damn profile with "so I added +3 SP to that price" next to it.

Some samples and guidelines and maybe a frame work for negotiation and you can set up a provisional means by which friendly players can check each others custom factions and negotiate some changes to account for perceived inadequacies of the master list.

I mean I'd hope to avoid that by having the "uber perfect master list" but lets not deceive ourselves too much here. That's not likely to happen.

This can and should work ok for casual play and campaigns. It's going to fall down somewhat harder for TOURNAMENTS.

But I mean... are we playing tournaments here? This is some bullshit homebrew thing. Put three guys together to play it and I'll be surprised. It doesn't and won't HAVE a "tournament scene" to cater to.

But even if it DID have a "tournament scene" I'm sorry but it comes second. Casual play and casual campaign play should come FIRST. And the imperfect potential to have customized faction lists comes ahead of the benefits that fixed faction lists can have for tournaments. Not to mention that the reality is these kinds of games are actually closer to table top battle RPGs to tell silly battle stories with cool toys than they are a serious competitive balanced sport. And people need to just realize that and design accordingly.

Not to mention, hey, you COULD still limit "Competitive Games" to fixed non-custom faction lists only and doing that is still NO actual guarantee those lists won't be broken and unbalanced. You could also for tournaments/competitions set out your additional limitations to the master list like "No Line Weapons" or "Attack Bonuses cost +3 more on 5+ damage weapons" or bullshit in advance then let competitors just run without further limitations on their custom factions and if they find exploits, then fuck it, that's the competition.

Ramble Ramble Ramble
Crap, this post has mostly been pure mother hood statement wonk. OK totally promise, next post needs to be a bunch of actual sample crap thrown against the wall for many of the options discussed here.

[PhoneLobster]

Brief Intermission and a basic rules over sight
Ok first imagine some elevator musak. And now for a public service announcement.

One of the reasons I've been struggling with average damage on the whole Rat-Bot survivability mess, aside from apparent sporadic attacks of innumeracy is an over sight of a common edge case in the basic rule for group attacks.

What happens when a Group Attack Succeeds By Zero?
See... we don't HAVE that scenario in the default Space Rats with Attack Zero shoot Space Rats with Defense Zero. But it DOES happen when something shoots a target with higher defense.

We know that an individual attack SUCCEEDS on a result equal to the defense. BUT as currently written a group attack, and maybe a scaling damage attack that "succeeds by 0 margin" technically sits down, multiplies it's damage by ZERO and basically gets nowhere unless it's dealing a status effect or something.

This is, all in all a probably BAD THING. We want "equal to defense succeeds" to be a standard. What I'm about to do is going to change the math slightly, but the contribution will be minor, and will standardize things in other ways and avoid making the averages a bit weird in the way that the alternative clarification would have.

Attack must be GREATER than defense to succeed.
That's the thing. Margin 0 attacks are now FAILURES and MISSES. And indeed are misses for individual attacks AND for group attacks.

Miss By Zero and Scatter Attacks
This unfortunately creates a NEW EDGE CASE with scatter attacks, because now we have a Margin Zero multiplier on MISSES that we didn't have before.

So a miss by zero on a Scatter attack is now officially a special DUD SCATTER, it is OUTRIGHT a miss and does NOT place it's attack/AoE on the board AT ALL.

While we are here talking about basic roll mechanics. Critical Misses, Critical Hits?
Lets clarify again. There are NOT currently either in the game. But, "yay I rolled 10s! and "OH NOES I ROLLED 1s!" can be fun moments. We probably want them IN. Margin of success and scatter misses give us some of that already.

But having weapons or skills that give critical hit or critical miss results might be cool. So here are a couple of experimental special weapon templates for the idea...

+5 SP Special Weapon : Experimental Advanced Anti-Vehicle Rifle : Attack 0 Damage 7 Limited Targets (1) Range 15 Long Range 20 Misfire(1) Explodes for Damage 4 Blast Radius 3 explosion on self.

The experimental advanced anti-vehicle rifle is all round better than standard, except it explodes (badly) in your face 1 in ten times. (misfire does what it says on a natural roll of the range listed in it's brackets)

+5 SP Special Weapon : Charged Plasma Rifle : Attack +1 Damage 2 Critical (10) increase to Damage 6 Range 10 Long Range 15

Lamer than the standard Plasma Shot Gun, except on range, and when you roll a 10 it's awesome.

While I'm Here some other special weapon over sights
Here are some other ideas mentioned or considered fleshed out slightly with special weapon examples before I get back to the elite/veteran/hero stuff.

+5 SP Special Weapon : Armour Piercing Cannon : Attack +2 Damage 2 Armour Piercing(3) Range 5 Long Range 15
So this ignores up to 3 points of Armour HP on vehicles (or even on infantry IF they get Armour HP, which WILL be a thing in the near future). Armour Piercing notation has the number of points ignored before starting the damage track, which for now jumps right to systems damage on a Rat-Bot, and will disable it on one clean close range shot, pick it off in two long range. Notation COULD include Armour Piercing(All).

+5 SP Special Weapon : Guided Micro Rocket Launcher : Attack +2 Damage 2 Range 10 Guided Blast Radius 2
Here is a fun one. its a basic little template weapon. Sorta worse than some existing ones, but hey, it shoots AROUND CORNERS! How does that work? Well, just draw your LoS and measure your range with corners in for it. Why not. Ignore various cover and outright obstacles for fun and profit.

+5 SP Special Weapon : Barrage Micro Rocket Launcher : Attack 0 Damage 2 Range 10 3xChained Blast Radius 2
Meant to cover something like this in prior chained/AoE special weapon options. Chained Blast, places X times blast radiuses edge to edge, no overlaps.

ANYWAY. Back to business shortly...

[PhoneLobster]

Pass 5 : (part 2) create unaccountably popular abandoned space ship spin off board game then refuse to sell it to anyone just in case they notice how bad it really is More troop types for real this time.
Elite God Damn Space Rats
OK. So lets take our existing space rats and make better faster stronger harder versions just to start with.

Unit – Elite Space Rat Unit
10 Elite Space Rats for 20 SP.
One Elite space rat is promoted to Standard Unit Leader for no extra cost.
Default Unit Leader Command Range: 5
Elite Space Rats are equipped with no weapons.

Troop - Elite Space Rat
Cost Per Model : 2 SP
Hit Points per model: 2
Move : 5 (foot)
Defence : 2
Basic Attack : +3 Ranged, +3 Melee
Weapon : Unarmed Attack +0, Damage 2, Range Melee

OK. So They have double the hit points and a small defence bonus. This makes them immediately a bit more than double the survivability of the standard space rat. They deal double the damage in melee and have +3 to both attacks. This makes them kill normal space rats at about a bit more than double the rate. They are about as effective against other Elite Space Rats as regular space rats are against each other (slightly better attack than defense). Their squad leader gets a gratiutous extra inch of command range JUST to prove he is a bit better. And they are worth just double the points.

Clearly the points costing is a bit wrong. But we are working with a major place holder here and soon we are going to have to redo/rescale points so we can account for these differences with a tiny bit more granularity.

But assuming they get some sort of appropriate ranged weapon these guys are basically twice the value of Space Rats (or close enough for now).

Creating A Sample Hero
Hero- Rat Dude the Killer Space Rat Guy
Cost Per Model : 25 SP
Hit Points per model: Heroic Defense, Armour 2, Health 3
Move : 7 (foot)
Defence : 6
Basic Attack : +5 Ranged, +5 Melee
Weapon : Unarmed Attack +0, Damage 2, Range Melee

Rat Dude is a pretty fricking kick ass hero. Your average Space Rat Unit is dealing only 0.4 Average damage on him per group shot(thanks to heroic defence). He is gonna live near on forever like that (though he goes down in 1 hit to the heavier special weapons, about 2-3 with the mediums or Armour Piercers). Hey look he has armour right on his profile even though he is infantry! Well, its basically ONLY there to interact with armour piercing weapons.

He has awesome attack bonuses, but his default unarmed damage is lame. His attacks should be scaled more, we want to give him better options for weaponry, and indeed maybe even better options as outright defaults. For now lets assume he can splash out and buy basically any of our sample Special Weapons as his ranged option. That makes him pretty damn cool and with the right choices puts him at about the effectiveness ranges we want for him.

Oh and we made him a bit mobile.

Not entirely sure the 25 points cost is right, but it should be in approximately the right range currently, throw on 5 points for a special weapon and he should be pretty kick ass.

Moar Weapon Options For Regular Units
Special weapons guys have let us flesh out a lot of nice stuff. But we also need alternative weapon options for our regular unit troopers making their group shots. So lets throw down a few sample alternative ranged weapons for Space Rats and Elite Space Rats to equip.

But before we do that, and before we do a number of other unit options... lets ask the question...

How Many Guns Are Too Many?
And I don't mean as options. There are probably too many options already for a single unit on a single list.

I mean how many guns should one trooper or one special weapons guy USE and how many should he be able to HAVE.

Lets start with how many weapons an individual model should use at once, and lets look at it from the angle of WTF we would like to be doing here.

1) Hands Matter
Your dude has 2 hands. Some weapons will need both. They should be big and nice. Some should... not need both they should be perhaps a little less big and nice, but there should be SOME reason or advantage to them because...

2) Using a weapon in each hand is cool
So we want to do that as a thing that does something we care about.

3) Using JUST a one handed weapon and having a free hand is cool
So we might also want to do THAT and have it be a thing we care about.

4) If you have 4 arms that needs to be cool
Some dudes in space will want to have 4 arms or something and will want that to matter in some way for using lots of weapons at once in a way we care about.

5) Wearing a hat made out of a laser pistol or shoulder pads made out of RPGS needs to be cool
So that needs to do something too. Somehow without taking us to crazy town.

6) We probably want SOME motivation (and option) to have more weapons than you can use at once on one model, and some means of switching (and reason to do so).

7) As some additional to 6 we probably want SOME motivation to stick cheap ass lame side arm back up type weapons on troopers for them to use and then give them some at least edge case reason to use them.

8) We need Melee Weapons, as yet largely untouched, that are better than just punching things. We will occasionally want laser bayonets on our laser rifles for some marginal melee benefit off our ranged options or something, though maybe not as good as our flat out laser swords. We might want some of laser spears to have a ranged option for throwing, though maybe not as good as our laser rifles are (or the same or even better if its a once only deal). And we might want our two weapons (or more) dudes to have some reasonable reason to hold a pistol and a sword at the same time since that is mildly cool.

This is all a bit of a challenge here. That is some fairly demanding bullshit to work with. But it's pretty damn clear it's what we need to work with on some level.

Making Hands Matter
OK so as of now. Standard Troopers have 2 hands (notation will be 2H) (as do any standard humanoid Robots, Like the Rat Bot).

You could have more or less but that's going to be a special thing for later maybe.

Our default Space Rat Side Arms now require only 1H to use. All our current sample special weapons require 2H to use.

Unarmed Attack Requires A Free Hand
You MUST have a free hand to make an unarmed attack. You can drop one or more weapons for free in order to qualify wile making an unarmed attack. (Place a token, it takes an action/order to pick up weapons again).

This also opens up a new skill for our Elite Space Rat Units...
+1 SP entire unit gets Martial Arts
This lets them attack with their unarmed attack even without a free hand.

Yeah its cheap, but there it is. One of our first skills in the game.

Free Hands Let You Pick Stuff Up?
We should probably have some sort of objectives. Maybe flags? which require at least one free hand to claim or carry. For now lets leave that to the mission section but try and remember it. But clearly you could just drop items like with the unarmed attack as part of picking up a Flag.

Free Hands Should Help You Climb
Another way of making free hands useful would be to have them help you mitigate Rough terrain bases effects a bit. Something to keep in mind for later.

Hands let you loot stuff?
We care about special weapons a lot. They are powerful, and expensive. It would not be unreasonable for special weapons guys to drop a token on death and have an option for another unit in the group to pick up the special weapon (and basically become special weapons guy).

Salvage Weapon
As an individual action, or as a Unit Order, a model in formation may pick up and equip a dropped special weapon within Command Range of the Unit Leader (and may also move anywhere within Command Range of the Unit Leader). That model now counts as already acted that turn.

We should however limit that to ONLY weapons dropped by your unit or at the very least your command group. Except... looting enemy weapons might be cool so we could make some more upgrade skills for our Elite Space Rats out of it.

+1 SP entire unit gets Battle Field Looters
The troopers in the unit may (as individual action or unit order) equip weapons dropped or on defeated enemies within their Unit Leader's command range. Any model that equips a special weapon becomes a Special Weapon guy. Only the unit leader may equip weapons normally restricted to unit leaders.

Yeah again, super cheap, this one might even be too cheap. But actually ARRANGING to go and get anything worth it is gonna be costly in time and risk, so, hey screw it, if this nets you a free 5 SP Flamer or two off the enemy in mid battle, fuck it, you earned it.

A model on its ass could be a corpse token
Of course that requires tracking dropped weapons with tokens. And that might be a bad idea. What might not hurt though is to just leave god damn corpses on the field. It IS hilarious toy based fun to just leave knocked over models of troopers on the battle field when they die, mountains of corpses ARE fun. And it would satisfy our tracking requirement there fairly well. We only want to actually care about exact position of dropped dudes and stuff fairly rarely anyway, so you can take the extra time and care if you know someone has battle field looter and shows and interest, or if someone has some crazy necromancy power we can now actually keep track of corpses, which might be super cool, if, well, ludicrously bad for balance.

Making the Sword Pistol (or rifle bayonet) Combo Work
Well on the one hand its already cool you got a ready ranged attack AND a ready melee attack. That's probably enough for your crappy units. But if we want to make it really matter, well, it only has to matter for some specific specialists right? So we can make some skills that MAKE it matter.

So. If we had skills that let you make some reactive attacks but required you to have a weapon ready to do so, and you had skills for both swords AND pistols and you could take both, then you do that with a unit and that makes it worth it.

Reaction Tokens!
Hey we HAVE reactive actions already. Sort of. We have REACTION TOKENS. So. If you have a reaction token and you want to use it you CLEARLY need to use it with an already in hand weapon right? So lets throw down some default STANDARD reaction token rules that include reactions with melee weapons!

Spending Reaction Tokens
If you have a reaction token you may spend it in reaction to the following events in the following ways.

1) Movement within firing range
Spend token to attack with ready Ranged attacks. This resolves during the movement, and before anything after the movement (like attacks by the moving unit).

2) Movement within Melee Range.
Spend token to attack the moving targets with ready Melee attacks, and if you and they survive to halt their movement and free move into melee range (as per the free move for additional casualties) with at least one model in your unit per model in the enemy unit. (we can enhance this with skills to extend the intercept range, we also need some sort of punishment for trying to disengage from melee rule, and maybe the option for the intercepted unit to return melee attacks as part of their now interrupted action).

3) Defend Against Charge
If charged you may spend your reaction token to shoot the charging unit BEFORE it makes contact with any ready Ranged attacks AND to then to attack them AFTER their attacks with any ready Melee attacks. (we can thow in enhancing skills on this to put the response melee attack ahead of the charge melee attack and stuff)

4) Return Fire
If fired upon from targets within range spend your reaction token to shoot the unit (after it fires) with ready Ranged Attacks AND may then if within range charge the unit and attack it with Ready Melee attacks. (We can write skills that change the timing on this too for fun and profit).

More Reaction Skills
We can also throw in some skills so that you can get some reaction fire or reaction melee even without tokens, or get additional reaction tokens, or react with entirely new reactions if you have tokens.

But actually, thats some pretty good motivation there to have Ranged OR Melee OR Both ready, so having sword and pistol or rifle and bayonet can work even on flat out default (if you are using reaction tokens).

So for now lets just give this extra option to Elite Space Rats
+5 SP upgrade Unit Leader (or Commander) with Firing Charge
During a charge Unit Order this unit can also Group Attack with a ready ranged attack before charging as normal and attacking with ready melee attacks.

Making Two Pistols or Two Swords work
So, we make a rifle better than a pistol, a two handed sword better than a sword. In some way. Some how. Most likely in range or damage.

But we also want two of the SAME weapon to be sort of cool. Right? So how the hell do we do THAT.

Well to start with we have this.

Multiples of Identical Weapons
If you have more than one of the same weapon equipped when you attack with that weapon you may treat the profile as having Scaling Damage +X per weapon (where X is the weapons existing Scaling Damage, or minimum 1 if it doesn't have any).

So if you have two swords with no scaling damage equipped, your sword attack is now Scaling Damage 2. If you have two Pistols that are ALREADY scaling damage 2, they are, together, scaling damage 4.

Of course this means we need to clarify what the hell happens when you have 10 Group Attackers with Scaling Damage 2 each. And that's easy. You just calculate their group attack cap by adding their scaling damage caps instead of raw trooper numbers (or their implied original scaling damage cap of +1 each). So 10 Troopers with 2 swords each have Scaling Damage of 20 between the lot of them on their group attack, not that they can use more than 10 of that, but hey, its there.

This is NICE but not world destroying. Its particular nice for individual attackers (which is OK). For group attackers, like say, our 10 man Space Rat squads, it actually doesn't help them out much at first because their scaling damage cap will now be well over their actual possible margin of success. But as the unit takes casualties the benefits will become clear as they have distinctly less fall off in their effectiveness as they take longer before their net Scaling Damage cap drops below their possible margin of success so their potential damage doesn't drop as fast.

So for now lets just throw one tasty skill on top for elites and heroes or something like...
+2 SP entire Elite Space Rat Unit (or Rat Dude) Gets Multi Strike
When attacking targets that normally force Single Target Cap (1) (like characters with Heroic Defence) using multiple weapons in the same attack you increase their Single Target Cap value to the number of multiple weapons used (by a single attacker) in your attack.

But what about making Two DIFFERENT pistols at the same time work
Well screw it, THAT is going to have to just be a damned... I dunno. Special ability thing really. You take a special skill it says something like. "When you attack with a ready attack do not count as 'already acted' for further actions/orders with your other ready attacks." or even "when you make a Hold Your Ground action you may attack separately with two ready attacks" or something like that. For now lets just give rat dude...

+2 SP Rat Dude Gets Double Attack
When attacking with a ready attack Rat Dude may also separately attack with another ready attack. As long as one of those attacks is melee Rat Dude is permitted to use a ranged attack while in melee.

4 Arms being cool?
Well our multiple same weapons default benefit does not cap at 2 of the same. Our different weapons benefits (default anyway) also don't cap and don't prevent combination with the multiple same weapons benefits.

Beyond that its really the domain of custom skills and items.

Laser Hats?
Same as 4 arms, our multiple/different weapons defaults don't really require the ready weapons to be in your hands. If laser hats are a thing then its a ready weapon on your profile and we don't care if it's on your head.

Swapping out to back up weapons?
OK, now THIS needs more work.

Swapping because of Order Resource Limitations
OK so Special weapons guy, at least, might reasonably be in a situation where you don't really HAVE a spare order to do his independent special weapons fire option. IF we let him have the standard squad weaponry and IF we let him opt to act with the squad instead and use it to join their group fire action that might be one reasonable weapon swapping motivation right there. But... lets keep that for the elites for now...

+1 SP Elite Space Rat Special Weapons Guy Gets Squad Weaponry
Special Weapons Guy gets the same standard weapons as his squad. Instead of opting out of Group Fire actions he may switch between his special weapon and his standard weapons and join the group fire action. But if he does then he DOES count as having acted.

+1 SP Elite Space Rat Special Weapons Guy Gets And Another Thing Must already have Squad Weaponry
Special Weapons Guy may STILL count as having NOT acted allowing him to fire his special weapon with an Individual Action even if he joins the squad in making a group attack.

Swapping Because Of Circumstance
So... maybe it's better to use your Anti Vehicle Rifle on Rat Bots, and your Rat A Tat Gun on Space Rat Noobs.

But. Lets assume for now the default was you only got to have ONE of those. Also switching by default would be hard.

So, we might in the long run have more vehicles and heroes that can just flat out do this, but for now lets say we just give out a skill to facilitate this potential.

+1 SP Elite Space Rat Special Weapons Guy Gets Extra Special Weapon Must already have a Special Weapon, must buy an additional Special Weapon.
This special weapons guy has TWO special weapons. When he makes a special weapon attack as an Individual Action he can choose to use his ready special weapon OR choose to switch his ready special weapon to his back up special weapon and visa versa then use the other one for the attack instead.

Swapping Because Of Weapon Damage
Well. Currently about the only way THAT is going to happen is if we had a vehicle that had separate weapon systems and the one they wanted to use was knocked out so they use the other one. At a stretch a trooper who for whatever reason was forced to drop a rifle might instead of picking it up pull out a side arm and shoot immediately, about all we need to facilitate that is have a "you can draw unready back up weapons as part of your action to use them if you (already) have free hands" rule and make sure there are back up side arm options on the unit equipment selections.

But if we really want to make this a thing we need to keep back up side arms on our unit equipment options (and maybe even give out some crap ones free). AND have something out there that damages or forcibly disarms weapons.

And yeah. We can totally do that as a special ability or two. Probably will. But... I'm not seeing it as being a potentially permissible MAJOR force here. So lets not bother writing up a "Weapon Exploder Gun" or "Disarming Melee Troops" elite skills. Yet.

Switching Weapons Because You Are Out Of Ammo
Would be nice IF we had an ammo resource. And we don't. Yet. It's certainly permissible to introduce one. IF it is relatively small accounting. Like say, just heroes, giant robots and special weapons guys, or at a stretch a "this squad has one kick ass grenade attack between the lot of them" thing. And if the charges accounted for are generally less than 3, and frequently as small as 1.

So lets throw in a trail version...

+5 SP Special Weapon : Rat Mega Rocket Launcher : Primary (Direct Fire): Attack -5 Scatter Damage 8 Limited Targets (1) Range 10 Secondary (Blast Radius) : Attack 0 Damage 2 Range(Direct Target) (Blast Radius 6) Limited Uses (1)

So your Special Weapons Guy uses that, which is way better (sort of) than the default unlimited ammo Rat Rocket Launcher, strikes it off his profile, and switches to his second special weapon (if he invested in it), or his standard squad weapon (if he invested in it) or his free crappy side arm (if we remember to give him one) or his unarmed attack (if we forgot to give him anything else).

And lets call this one a post because its getting big...

[PhoneLobster]

A quick clarification on rolling AoEs and Scatter
Ok before we get going...

There has been an over sight on the Scatter and AoE rules!

Who is my Template rolling attack against?
OK. So if you are placing a template like an arc or a cone or a (non-scattering) blast, you roll the attack once (or for chained blasts once per blast) and compare your result against targets in the areas individually.

But if you are making a scatter attack. Roll your attack against the target that is the Direct Target (if you your attack is one with a Direct target stat line), scatter off that. If the Direct attack hits the struck target is immune to the blast, if it misses but they are in the AoE of the scattered blast then they will be attacked along with anyone else in it. After hit or scatter then roll the blast attack once and compare it to all targets in the AoE.

If making a scatter attack WITHOUT a direct target roll against any target that happens to be under the center of your blast. Then scatter off that and damage anyone under the resulting location of the blast. If you want to place your blast so it's center is NOT on a target, then roll the attack against any target that IS under where you want to place the template (must use highest defense target). If NO ONE is under the template then you are attacking Defense 0. Yeah, I know it is kinda silly.

[PhoneLobster]

Pass 5 : (part 3) Knife to a gun fight factions kicked in the nuts and made even more underpowered than you might think More default unit weapon options for reals
The new free weaponry
The space rat units used to get no free weapons and paid for their space rat side arms.

We are now changing that. Later this might roll into a more sensible cost, but for now we are calling the existing space rat side arm FREE on space rats. But we are also changing it so it is a "Back Up Weapon". Some weapon purchases will fill back up weapon slots, some will fill hands. This is for interacting with the whole "motivation to swap and have different weapons" stuff.

Elite Space rats will have their profile changed, their default unarmed attack will get a kick in the nuts and go back to the Space Rat standard. But they will get a free 1H knife weapon for 2 damage melee attacks as a back up weapon along with their now free back up Space Rat Side Arm. This is in part for the "back up weapons" requirements of our switching weapons plans, and in part for our "mixed pistol and sword" plans.

This makes martial arts skill a bit worse, but consider it a template for A) Higher value unarmed attackers we could build, and B) other skills.

Elite space rats will have the option to forgo their pistol for a second free knife, or their knife for a second free pistol. For the whole, two of the same thing is awesome stuff. (With any luck towards the end of this over long pass this will all be rolled into a quick "updated version" faction/unit/item profile).

Special Weapons guys and squad leaders will get the free back up weapons (and possibly any purchasable back up weapon options) but get different "primary/direct to hand slot" options. And will still want that Squad Weaponry or And Another Thing skills if they want the squad primary weapons or the ability to use them. (Though no reason we can't write in Squad Weaponry type function on the free back up weapons as a default? Or maybe as a cheap optional skill? Well for now just stick to Squad Weaponry)

Melee Weapons
We will want some new melee weapons as of the above already we have the ...
Free backup weapon for Elite Space Rats Space Rat Combat Knife : 1H Attack +0 Damage 2 Melee

Lets also make that a purchasable "Backup OR Primary" option for regular space rats at 5 SP for the squad.

Then lets write up...
+5 SP (may take twice) for Space Rat Squad Primary Weapon Space Rat Sword : 1H Attack +1 Damage 2 Melee
+6 SP for Space Rat Squad Primary Weapon Big Space Rat Sword : 2H Attack +0 Damage 3 Melee

And something extra for the elites
+6 SP for Elite Space Rat Squad Primary Weapon Space Rat Chainsaw : 1H Attack +1 Damage 3 Melee
+8 SP for Elite Space Rat Squad Primary Weapon Big Space Rat Chainsaw : 2H Attack +0 Damage 4 Melee

Yeah points values are screwy I know. And the potential damage output of allowing damage 3 or 4 squad weapons could be a bit too much, well, a lot too much, but melee needs perks...

Now we could also write up other variant melee weapons that do other fun things.

+6 SP for Space Rat Squad Primary Weapon Space Rat Spears : 2H Attack +0 Damage 2 Melee Reach (2) Throw: (Limited Use 1) Range 10

Has both reach for melee at 2 inches instead of 1, and the option to throw it away once ever for a ranged attack instead. And with that damage on regular space rats, you actually might.

You know, now we have reach we probably want a "disengage from melee" punishment, so lets write a rule...

Disengaging from melee
Moving out of melee range of an enemy unit triggers a free melee attack with a ready melee option by the enemy model/models in melee range before your movement.

And we could write up various special options that interacted with that like the same effect but triggered by moving out of melee range, yet allowing an attack with a read ranged weapon instead/as well. And various abilities to increase the engagement range, increase engagement moves, and avoid them and stuff.

What other melee bullshit could we write up?
Well we could write up a cool robot puncher (a robotic fist to punch robots with) with high damage and a single target limit or something, but maybe that and other really big melee should be limited to heroes/vehicles/special weapons guys/squad leaders.

We could make our robot punchers let you hold and use weapons in the same hand with some penalty, or even let you use 2H weapons in one hand for added crazy (and write 2H in 1H skills and bullshit).

We can write up melee status effect weapons like melee weapons with stun.

We can have melee armour piercing (in fact, that might be a really good option).

Even melee rapid fire with Scaling Damage abilities and such.

Maybe a chaining melee weapon that lets you chain through up to X targets with free melee moves.

Melee skills/weapons that give you a free engage move AFTER dealing damage. Etc...

But for now lets just get to the basic unit gun options...

The New Primary Weapon Gun Options
OK so space rat side arms are the new normal (for free). What are we now paying for (maybe) in upgrades?

Well, we don't really want to (and to some extent CANNOT) give out as much as we do for Special Weapon guy options. But we could give out...

+5 SP Space Rat Squad Primary Weapon Space Shotgun: 2H Attack +0 Damage 2 Range 5 Long Range 10
+5 SP Space Rat Squad Primary Weapon Rat Rat Gun: 2H Attack +0 Damage 1 Range 10 Long Range 15, Scaling Damage (2)
+5 SP Space Rat Squad Primary Weapon Rat Rifle: 2H Attack +1 Damage 1 Range 10 Long Range 20
+5 SP (may take twice) Space Rat Squad Primary Weapon Heavy Rat Pistol: 1H Attack +0 Damage 1 Range 10 Long Range 15

And maybe some slightly better options for out elites.
+5 SP Elite Space Rat Squad Primary Weapon Energy Shotgun: 2H Attack +2 Damage 2 Range 5 Long Range 10
+5 SP Elite Space Rat Squad Primary Weapon Double Rat Rat Gun: 2H Attack +0 Damage 1 Range 10 Long Range 15, Scaling Damage (3)
+5 SP Elite Space Rat Squad Primary Weapon Elite Rat Rifle: 2H Attack +1 Damage 1 Range 15 Long Range 20
+5 SP (may take twice) Elite Space Rat Squad Primary Weapon Heavy Energy Pistol: 1H Attack +0 Damage 1 Range 15

Special Weapons Guys Melee Weapon Options?
Briefly mentioned... this is a definite doable (indeed almost a must do) thing, where some of the special weapons options a special weapon guy might consider might be MELEE options instead of the current ranged ones. Really big melee options should almost certainly be limited to special weapons guys and other individual actors, just as with ranged options, because group fire can see some SERIOUS damage multiplication.

But for now I'm skimming over and leaving this out a bit.

Squad Leaders Getting Special Weapon Options?
And we should probably consider granting potential special weapon upgrades to squad leaders and commanders.

We can be a bit flexible with their options. They could easily be permitted special weapons as good as the options for special weapons guys, IF they are then prevented from participating directly in group fire with their squad (if they have an individual fire weapon they MUST nominate a squad member to be "fire leader" during group fire actions, and then count as not acted so they can fire as a possible individual action just like special weapons guys).

But lets extend that rule, and make it compulsory for unit leaders using an "individual fire" weapon, and ALSO optional for those using a regular squad fire weapon. Thus allowing unit leaders to opt out of their squad fire and pull of an individual pot shot if they have the option.

THEN lets ALSO give them slightly better weapon options for group fire weapons by means of...

+1 SP Space Rat Unit Leader Primary Weapon Sarge's Space Shotgun: 2H Attack +0 Damage 3 Range 5 Long Range 10 Improved Version (Space Shotgun) No Bonus

So that there is now is an example of a squad leader "improved version" group fire weapon. Its better than a space shotgun. He can fire it individually (and can ONLY do so if the squad doesn't have space shot guns). But if they have space shotguns, you don't use the Sarge's Space Shotgun profile, you look at the bit where it says "Improved Version" and you just treat it like he is firing 1 more Space Shotgun with the group using the matching weapon type under the "Improved Version" bracketed text.

+2 SP Space Rat Squad Leader Primary Weapon Mk2 Rat Rat Gun: 2H Attack +1 Damage 1 Range 10 Long Range 15, Scaling Damage (3) Improved Version (Rat Rat Gun) +1 Attack

And then we can throw in items like that with differing text on the Improved Version profile, so now if you use a squad leader with this weapon along with his Rat Rat gun squad, it gives the group fire +1 Attack (but not the extra scaling damage from it's own regular profile for individual use).

Now lets give the elite space rat squad leaders some junk...
+2 SP Elite Space Rat Squad Leader Primary Weapon Mk 4 Double Rat Rat Gun: 2H Attack +2 Damage 1 Range 10 Long Range 15, Scaling Damage (4) Improved Version(Double Rat Rat Gun) +1 Attack
+1 SP (may take twice) Elite Space Rat Squad Leader Primary Weapon Heavy Plasma Pistol: 1H Attack +1 Damage 2 Range 15 Improved Version(Heavy Energy Pistol) No Bonus

What have we missed?
OK so it might still be nice to have those melee special weapon options. And actual flat out special weapon options for Squad leaders. We need maybe even specific special weapon options for commanders.

And most of all we missed upgraded alternative back up weapon options, but those might be a touch rare anyway.

Oh, and we missed Hero options, but for now lets just say they have special weapon guy and squad leader options available to them, though really they should have their own custom sets/subsets.

Still. This should do for squad weapon and melee options for now.

Next up some squad and other unit skills. Then some more vehicle options. Fleshing out some gaps in the way orders/turns work maybe some specific Commander options and then we call the really long pass 5 over and have a look at it all mashed together before we try a pass 6.

[PhoneLobster]

Pass 5 : (Part 4) Write spin off RPG where PCs are randomly generated as either super dwarven warrior death machines or crippled human peasants who own a row boat Taking a shot at some basic skill options

Options for the Space Rat Units
OK so to start with lets just throw in a little tiny boring "this unit is slightly numerically better at a budget price!

+2 SP Space Rat Unit Gets Basic Training +1 Ranged Attack +1 Melee Attack +1 Defense

A touch cheap but really a +1 here or there isn't that big a deal. Its accumulating them, especially on defense that could be bad. Importantly we don't want our budge numerically better bullshit skills to make a regular Space Rat unit too competitive with an Elite Space Rat unit unless they pay equivalent cost and even then, we don't really want that happening.

Then lets throw in a basic veteran Squad leader who is just a touch more survivable.

+2 SP Space Rat Squad Leader Gets Veteran Squad Leader +1 Hit Point (on Squad Leader only) +1 Command Range

Some sort of custom squad option.

+1 SP Space Rat Squad Leader Gets New Order: Firing AdvanceAs a unit order this unit may fire an available ranged weapon group attack (or an individual attack with a special or standard weapon) and then move their base speed any direction as long as they move closer to their target.

Shoot Then Move (with some restrictions) isn't all that powerful but its something different and possibly useful. Move then shoot, well that's significantly nicer. So hold that back for now for better units or later consideration.

And probably at least some sort of token other option...

+2 SP Space Rat Unit Gets One Of Many If this unit has lost it's Unit Leader, models in this unit not yet regrouped may receive a Unit Order for Unit Regroup that lets each of them perform a Regroup action as one Unit Order.

Things like one of many, or just plain starting units of co-operative attackers in excess of 10 should be something you should be wary of. So far most of my assumptions about damage multiplication (and they are poor) generally assume your cap for useful margin of success is going to be basically 10, but if you have guys with significant attack bonus (unlike this unit) and you have enough of them, then the margin of success contributed by the attack bonus would, combined with the large numbers in the squad let you push over the x10 multiplier. Possibly by a lot. I haven't really considered the effect of this nearly enough yet.

Some Options For Elite Space Rat Units
Again we want a small "screw it we're just slightly better" option of some kind. We could push the boundaries a bit on attack/defense bonuses...

+4 SP Elite Space Rat Unit Gets Special Training +1 Ranged Attack +1 Melee Attack +1 Defense

Though the wisdom of that is questionable with higher base value units, so I made the price higher and pretended that will fix everything for now.

Then we give them THEIR veteran squad leader...
+2 SP Elite Space Rat Squad Leader Gets Veteran Squad Leader +1 Hit Point (on Squad Leader only) +1 Command Range

And... actually maybe it's perfectly fine for that to clone both the bonuses and the base price. Even if it IS perhaps a bit more valuable on a tougher base profile.

Then we give them Firing Advance from the basic unit because it would be silly if the elite guys couldn't do that.

+1 SP Elite Space Rat Squad Leader Gets New Order: Firing AdvanceAs a unit order this unit may fire an available ranged weapon group attack (or an individual attack with a special or standard weapon) and then move their base speed any direction as long as they move closer to their target.

And their own order because why not.

+4 SP Elite Space Rat Squad Leader Gets New Order: Take And HoldAs a unit order this unit may move their base movement then place a Reaction token on the unit.

And THAT is a very nice order, it's basically a move then shoot. And why not even better...

+1 SP Elite Space Rat Squad Leader Gets Reactive Charge When an enemy unit moves or makes a ranged or melee attack within charge range (1 base move+melee range) this unit may expend a reaction token to charge into melee and attack. This may interrupt triggering movement and engage a unit, but occurs after any triggering attacks.

Which is less nice on it's own, but better with take and hold, and it's pretty damn cheap.

The unit DOESN'T get One of Many for now because it may be a bit too good of a profile to put that on. But we will give it something else as a substitute...

+2 SP Elite Space Rat Unit Gets Chain Of Command If this unit has lost it's Unit Leader, models in this unit not yet regrouped may receive a Unit Order for a Special Unit Regroup promotes one member of the squad (may be special weapons guy) to a default Elite Space Rat Squad Leader (no changes to equipment, no special skills, gets nothing from the original squad leader unless separately looting a dropped special weapon or something) and then permits the rest of the models to regroup with the new leader. All effected models count as having acted.

So they get their own "screw you for killing our leader!" ability, though it isn't that great because it eats a turn for the group and a unit order.

Hero Skill Options?
Our hero probably, certainly needs more skills. But for now I can't be assed so lets skip him for this phase. Similarly skipping heroic squad leaders this phase.

One thing we DO need to do for heroes though is fix an oversight where they are limited to standard Individual actions designed to gimp out of formation troopers.

They need at least to be able to do all the standard actions a Unit does as potential individual actions.

So, just like our independent vehicle got extra Individual action options we give heroes the same default independent charge the vehicles got...

Independent Charge
The model advances it's Move speed and attacks any enemies in melee range.

And we probably want to improve their ranged attack slightly better than even independent vehicles default to...

Improved Independent Hold Ground
The Model fires on an enemy in range OR places one reaction token on itself.

(Note the difference that this independent model gets to SELECT target rather than forced to fire on closest). And we probably want to improve its movement a bit...

Improved Independent Move
The model advances up to 2x Move speed.

So heroes can run without fighting about as good on their own as they do if they get a full Army March order.

That should make the basic test hero a touch more functional.

New General Options
OK Previously our commander/general was a lame ass free upgraded regular space rat who just gave out army orders.

Now we have multiple unit types and no idea where our commander even comes from.

OK so we could do commanders various ways. They could be an independent model (Hero, Vehicle, Heroic Vehicle, whatever) that does army orders as a thing, and its own stuff (and hopefully is a bit surviviable).

Or they can be as before, basically upgraded Squad leaders (heroic or not), with an attached squad, full Squad Leader powers, and the ability to issue Army Orders.

There probably should be hero options for commanders, probably even MORE heroic squad leaders, independents and vehicles than there are non-heroic commander options. But for now we will just write up this one guy as a non-heroic special squad leader upgrade for Elite Space Rats.

+5 SP Elite Space Rat Squad Leader gets Command School Graduate fresh from the academy this model is upgraded to an Elite Space Rat Commander allowing it to fill your Commander slot (1 per army for now) and issue Army orders.

For now we let that guy take the same upgrades as a standard Elite Space Rat squad leader, including (and especially) Veteran, but we also offer him...

+3 SP Elite Space Commander gets Command Veteran Recieves +1 Command Range and +1 HP (Commander only).

For even MOAR HP on a guy we really don't want to lose.

Armour Options?
Oh yeah. Armour would be cool wouldn't it? So lets consider/add some. For a start, lets not offer any to standard Space Rats. But maybe their Unit Leaders can get some love?

+1 SP Space Rat Squad Leader gets Advanced Space Rat Armour +1 Armour HP (squad leader only)

See that's one of those fancy "Armour HP" like vehicles get, and like Armour Piercing weapons ignore.

Then lets consider offering more to the Elites...

+10 SP Elite Space Rat Squad gets Advanced Space Rat Armour +1 Armour HP

We could also offer a budget version as an alternative option that does something like

+5 SP Elite Space Rat Squad gets Heavy Space Rat Armour +1 Armour HP -1 Move

And better stuff for special weapons guys.

+3 SP Elite Space Rat Special Weapon Guy gets Additional Armour +1 Armour HP

And for Squad Leaders

+5 SP Elite Space Rat Squad Leader gets Additional Armour +1 Armour HP

Now we COULD have offered special "damage reducing" armour as well. But that's pretty damn valuable especially if it reduces damage BEFORE group fire damage multiplication applies. Which might be a good way to do it. So since it's so awesome... lets just not do that for now and maybe do it later on as a special super item or something.