Thanqol Learns To Draw Six: Stealing Time

[Thanqol]

I just want to reflect on this feeling I've had ever since I started this 40K hobby three months ago. Specifically, if I was a miniature cartoon pony, I think that this is the feeling I would be having upon discovering my magical butt symbol.

This has been the most consistent and unbroken creative flow I've ever had. For three months I've spent minimum two hours every night painting, usually more. For a while I was so deep in the flow that I was actually endangering my health and making myself sick and I've had to deliberately pull myself back to a more restrained schedule. But even then, at 10 each night when I'm about to turn in, I find myself looking over at my art desk and thinking 'I should touch up that white'.

I've got a diverse range of interests - history, art, strategy, optimization calculations, roleplaying, writing, small group socialization, trashy sci fi pulp - and they're all finding expression here simultaneously. It almost feels like I've been watching professional StarCraft for the last five years because the understanding I was developing of tactics and unit movement would help me in Warhammer. It feels that my entire art thread to this point was just to build up skills and fundamentals so that I could execute my visions properly on the plastic - and so that I'd forge the relentless determination to art every day.

I've relentlessly had the problem with digital art that I have always hated all my brushes, that I didn't want to put in the hours of effort fiddling with unknowable opacity and texture sliders to try and just get a damn pencil. If you go back through my drawthreads you'll see dozens of posts of me whining about this. With that problem lifted from me there's nothing keeping me from the raw crystal flowstate. With my living room designed to perfectly support my creative process there are no distractions or reasons to not be in the flow. All the problems I've had with 'how' are either settled or solvable. Now it's a clean line between vision and execution and I'm not sure anything's ever felt as good.

I'm aware as anyone of the importance of tattooing 'this too shall pass' on one's buttocks but in three months the sensation hasn't even showed the hint of fading. It's been my dream since I was six to play Warhammer but I legit had no idea it would connect with me on this many different levels. Bless this big dumb setting.

(Incidentally, I'm actually glad I didn't get into it earlier than I did. I simply wouldn't have had the mental, physical and financial infrastructure to do what I have been doing before now - and also, I seem to have dodged the worst of Games Workshop's evil phase.)

I've been working on getting Africa together, and I've noticed a couple of peculiarities regarding their Bonuses.

This is always on Tier 1. Should this also always have the Ban keyword?

Um, yes.

The Tier 2 bonus here is identical to slapping the Ban keyword on Rogue Nukes. It makes for an underwhelming Tier 2.

Good point, add Output: Agent

This doesn't seem to be any different than just giving them the associated Bonuses. Am I missing something?

It's just flavour text, you're right.

Hot dang. That...is a game on a mind-bogglingly huge scale. I didn't even know they got that big.

Neither did I! That Imperator was the size of a large dog!

[Anarion]

(Incidentally, I'm actually glad I didn't get into it earlier than I did. I simply wouldn't have had the mental, physical and financial infrastructure to do what I have been doing before now - and also, I seem to have dodged the worst of Games Workshop's evil phase.)

Hopefully, I'm not hijacking your drawthread for personal reflection overly much, but I have experience with this exact thing and it may be of interest to you. When I was in high school, I was very into Games Workshop models. I doubt I was ever as good a painter as you were, I liked building the models, painted simple colors schemes with just one or two layers, and then liked playing the games with them, but despite those differences, the parts of the hobby I enjoyed, I really, really enjoyed. I was in the Warhammer 40k afterschool club at school (which I helped found), and before I even got a license to drive, had my parents cart me around to local game stores to play. Models were a tad more limited at the time (they only had plastic kits for the big main squads, you needed pewter cast for a lot of the other stuff), but even with that, I had a full Space Marine army, and enough craftworld Eldar to field both a normal Codex force and a Biel-Tan specialty specialty force. I also dipped my toe into Warhammer, with some lizardmen, undead, and Bretonnians, though only in small groups.

And, well, that stuff is all still there in my parents' basement, but it's not doing anyone much good. The problem with getting into it so early is that I was young. And I moved out for college with no way to take any of that stuff and no space to continue the hobby while living in a college dorm with three other people. Then I moved across the entire United States for law school and ain't nobody wants to ship all those models anywhere, so I didn't even have access to them if I had wanted them. I then went and worked, and then worked elsewhere, such that I've moved house, let's see, I think four times in the past six years. So, without ever really intending to give it up, I can now look back and say that I pretty much abandoned my Games Workshop model hobby purely out of the fact that I haven't touched any of the models in over a decade now. And while my parents have done an admirable job storing them all that time, at this point I hardly know what I had, nor am I at all certain that everything survived the process of being boxed up and moved onto shelves in a basement, so there's a good chance that there's a box full of headless Eldar down there (the pointy hats and tiny neck joints were a perennial risk for the careless).

It might be a hobby that I take back up from scratch now that I have my own home and have a basement with lots of storage space, but there's quite a mental barrier to starting something like that back up at the moment. So, for real, count yourself lucky that you fell into it, with all its joy and unique community at a time when you're able to support it and not have to abandon all the time and work you put into it just because of how life works.

[Thanqol]

Hopefully, I'm not hijacking your drawthread for personal reflection overly much,

get out

Naw dude, this stuff's communal.

It might be a hobby that I take back up from scratch now that I have my own home and have a basement with lots of storage space, but there's quite a mental barrier to starting something like that back up at the moment. So, for real, count yourself lucky that you fell into it, with all its joy and unique community at a time when you're able to support it and not have to abandon all the time and work you put into it just because of how life works.

Do it filly. Now's possibly the best time it's ever been. The new model lines are amazing and phenomenally detailed, the modern plastics are a joy to work with, the Warhammer youtube channel does fantastic tutorial videos that just cracked the entire concept of working to a studio level over the course of about an hour, the new rules are officially Cool and Good, there doesn't seem to be any sign of power creep in the codexes so far (and they're coming out two per month!), and GW seems to be uncharacteristically Not Evil. Grab yourself the Dark Imperium box set; it's about $200 AUD (that's about $14 USD) - that will give you 56 of GW's best models which is uniquely good value - and see if you're into it.

Hobbies have a natural tendency to self-organize themselves, I find. Something had to disappear to make time for all the painting I've been doing and in my case it's been video games. I tried playing the new XCOM expansion yesterday and barely got through gatecrasher before I turned it off to go do more painting. If you enjoy it you'll just stop doing things you enjoy less, if you don't enjoy it then you won't do it and therefore will have learned something about yourself and can move on from that part of your life.

I kind of despaired when Warhammer Fantasy died and GW hit peak GW with Age of Sigmar, but right now it looks like that was rock bottom for them and things are now going uphill.

EDIT: I think the turning point when Warhammer Became Good was, not coincidentally, exactly when The Regimental Standard became a thing. It's important to remember that the setting has an unbreakable core of ironic comedy at its heart, and GW seems to have finally restored it.

[Thanqol]

One of my favourite things about miniatures painting is how abruptly everything comes together. I spent hours and hours painting a Dominus thinking, 'jeez, I have no idea where I'm going with this, I think I messed it up...'

And then, BAM. I put the finishing touches on and suddenly it looks amazing. Suddenly it looks like the best thing I've ever done. I've just passed some invisible line and now the miniature is complete and all those disparate pieces are now working together in harmony. All my thought and planning and colour theory discharged in an instant, and I set it down for a moment to marvel at it - and when I do, I place it amongst all it's buddies and they all fit together perfectly, and I just take ten minutes to soak it in.

It's like after three hours of meditation there's a flash of lightning and my idea is made manifest - often in a way that's better than I really expected. It's a fantastic feeling.

[TheAmishPirate]

I'm aware as anyone of the importance of tattooing 'this too shall pass' on one's buttocks but in three months the sensation hasn't even showed the hint of fading. It's been my dream since I was six to play Warhammer but I legit had no idea it would connect with me on this many different levels. Bless this big dumb setting.

(Incidentally, I'm actually glad I didn't get into it earlier than I did. I simply wouldn't have had the mental, physical and financial infrastructure to do what I have been doing before now - and also, I seem to have dodged the worst of Games Workshop's evil phase.)

Woohoo! I'm so happy that you've found something that clicks with you so thoroughly.

Good point, add Output: Agent

Whoops, there's one more that has this same problem:

Somalia
TIER 1
International port, Conflict Zone, Pirate Haven: Any country Linked to this one loses the effect of Resource Curse (Ban)
TIER 2
Loses the effect of Pirate Haven

We could use a more interesting Tier 2 here.

Neither did I! That Imperator was the size of a large dog!

Haha - wait, what?

-one Google search later-

Holy moly mother of pearl you weren't joking.

[Thanqol]

Day 2297: The Most Beautiful Of Robots

So this time only 50% of my pictures were incomprehensibly blurry - and I took a lot more! Sadly the most blurry ones were the most recent set BUT NONETHELESS DO I HAVE A SHOW FOR YOU

Archmagos Brackmann and Dragoon
Dunecrawler Veteran
Dunecrawler
Dunecrawler
Katraphrons and Dominus
The Artillery Line
Custodes and Ruststalkers - my Custodes won this mirror match up pretty decisively, despite getting charged and eating most of a turn of shooting, which pretty much won me the game as a result.
Battlefield - including the only half decent shot of my Skitarii.

[Thanqol]

I've been quiet here because I haven't finished any new models recently - and that's not because I'm not painting, it's because I'm painting an Imperial Knight! It's a huge piece of kit and the centrepiece to my AdMech army and I've been happily chipping away on it for the last few weeks. It's really starting to come together at this point and I reckon I'll be done in another week!

And just in time too - the end of October is Armies on Parade, where I'll be able to take in my completed force to the local GW and have my entire force professionally photographed for entry in the worldwide painting competition. So some decent pics, basically, without my signature blurry 2006cam stylin's. I reckon I've got a pretty good shot at my store's 'First Army' category!

The AdMech codex also was a joy to mentally crunch through. I love theorycrafting strategies, compositions and optimization paths and I've spent entire days thinking through the implications of army construction. I'm particularly chuffed by the fact that my favourite model of all time, the Sidonian Dragoon, got a massive buff in the codex and I am now strongly incentivised to buy five more of the bastards.

Things are good!



What is not good is that I've made zero progress on game writing. I briefly went through an angsty period and I'm generally terrible at writing without a rigid schedule or feedback/commentary - PBP'ing has set my brain's incentive structure in a response rather than proactive mode. Amish, if you want to make a practice of prodding me for more content every few days that's the best way to optimize my writing throughput.

[TheAmishPirate]

What is not good is that I've made zero progress on game writing. I briefly went through an angsty period and I'm generally terrible at writing without a rigid schedule or feedback/commentary - PBP'ing has set my brain's incentive structure in a response rather than proactive mode. Amish, if you want to make a practice of prodding me for more content every few days that's the best way to optimize my writing throughput.

Aye, I can help get the habit off the ground. To that end, there are two things you can be doing that would be hugely helpful:

1) Flesh out the global warming system. It's still really nebulous, and it's the last, big system that we don't know much about. I have other things I can work on, but that list of other things I can work on is getting smaller by the day.

2) Write out the three dialogue trees we're starting with. We have one with a complete path, but few other endpoints, and two more that need writing completely.

(The reason I've been so quiet is that I've just been hammering away at the remaining development tasks, and haven't really found a point where I felt like I could wrap it up into a proper milestone. I may just force myself to share something soon, just to show you what's been done.)

I'm imagining that there would be two resolution steps, one for the player and one for Mr. Johnson, that would resolve most of these issues.

So, for example, let's say that I start my turn.
1) My upkeep phase happens and my executive finishes his previous action (let's say he was pushing a tech somewhere and that's done).
2) It's now my main phase. I move my exec to a new country and start forging a new influence link there and end my turn.
3) It's Johnson's upkeep phase. He finishes what he was doing, say also pushing a tech.
4) It's Johnson's main phase. He "makes a mistake" for this example and moves to the same country as my executive and tries to start forging an influence link, ending his turn.
5) My turn starts and it's my upkeep. My executive finishes his influence link, that country is set and now Johnson's action is cancelled because it has become impossible in the current game state.

A smart Johnson would never have moved to the country in the first place once he saw I was there (unless my action in the country is hidden information from him), and on the flip side if I see that Johnson is hanging out somewhere forging an influence link, it would be a waste of my turn to move to that country and begin forging such a link.

Also, if that's the way it's structured, I would suggest coding such that an executive forging a link makes that link "busy" as far as the game is concerned so that the other executive attempting to forge the same link would get an "invalid action" response rather than allowing a novice player to straight up waste an action.

Thanqol, is that how you were thinking it would go?

Side note! I realized we forgot that forging an influence link is a task with a % chance of success, rather than "spend X turns forging a link and it'll happen." There's no guarantee that the unit will actually create an influence link anytime soon. By marking a link as "busy", we prevent players from racing to see who can get their link done first. Instead, an Executive with a low % chance to forge a link could just keep that link permanently busy, and block the other player from attempting to make an influence link themselves. And unless you can get an Agent in to Assassinate the Executive, there's nothing you can really do about it. That strikes me as a less interesting interaction compared to both players racing to grab the last possible influence link on a country. The action resolution phases fixes the original problem, and the idea of "busy" links may have fixed the problem too hard.

Thoughts?

[TheAmishPirate]

Two more thoughts:

1) For the Global Warming system, I think our idea of chaotic consequences borne by all is a good one. That's a good mapping of the real-world thing, and it's pretty easy to communicate; maybe each segment on the Doom Track shows the probability levels of various degrees of disaster or something. I also think that it's a good opportunity to knock down Development Levels, because right now the system lacks ways to do that. The part I am getting hung up on is the "short-term gain at the cost of the environment." I'm not sure how well that maps the real thing - our original system may have done a better job in that department, even though it was a bad mechanic - and I'm struggling to find a short-term gain we can use.

2) On the subject of downward development pressure, what if Conventional Warfare and Insurrections gradually reduced the Development Level of a country over time?

[Thanqol]

I finished the god damn Imperial Knight! I am glad to have that bastard off my desk.

Side note! I realized we forgot that forging an influence link is a task with a % chance of success, rather than "spend X turns forging a link and it'll happen." There's no guarantee that the unit will actually create an influence link anytime soon. By marking a link as "busy", we prevent players from racing to see who can get their link done first. Instead, an Executive with a low % chance to forge a link could just keep that link permanently busy, and block the other player from attempting to make an influence link themselves. And unless you can get an Agent in to Assassinate the Executive, there's nothing you can really do about it. That strikes me as a less interesting interaction compared to both players racing to grab the last possible influence link on a country. The action resolution phases fixes the original problem, and the idea of "busy" links may have fixed the problem too hard.

Thoughts?

I kind of think the idea of tying up multiple countries diplomatic bureaucracy for decades with pointless bad faith negotiations that go nowhere in the end due to domestic political concerns - hi TPP! - is an entirely in genre move. We'll keep an eye on it during testing though.

Two more thoughts:

1) For the Global Warming system, I think our idea of chaotic consequences borne by all is a good one. That's a good mapping of the real-world thing, and it's pretty easy to communicate; maybe each segment on the Doom Track shows the probability levels of various degrees of disaster or something. I also think that it's a good opportunity to knock down Development Levels, because right now the system lacks ways to do that. The part I am getting hung up on is the "short-term gain at the cost of the environment." I'm not sure how well that maps the real thing - our original system may have done a better job in that department, even though it was a bad mechanic - and I'm struggling to find a short-term gain we can use.

So let's focus instead on Resilience and Adaptation. We'll assume in the world of Complex the threshold for global warming has been passed and there is widespread environmental collapse beginning, it's only a matter of adaptation.

Climate effects:
At the beginning of every turn, each country rolls global warming level against its resilience level, if the roll is failed then that country gets a negative effect for that turn. UI Note: These can't be event pop ups, that'll begin each turn with pop-up spam that's horrible to get through. Instead a little icon should appear over each country marking the effect.
Famine: Decline of development level
Migration: Decline of science level
System Collapse: Decline of resilience level
Political instability: Increased effectiveness of insurgencies
Infrastructure collapse: Increased difficulty of exec actions, possible slowdown of units passing through.
(Rarely) New opportunities: As perverse as it seems occasionally there are real economic benefits to global warming, i.e. the new shipping routes through the arctic.

Resilience can be boosted by tech and I want to say an Exec action. There are also techs that reduce and techs which increase the rate of global warming accumulation. I don't really think that any individual action can interfere with the global GW accumulation. I kind of want the feeling to be very abstracted and feel almost like it's a problem beyond the scope of the game. Like, it's already bad, and it's going up constantly all the time, and this tech is going to give us a much needed military edge so why bother? The connection to anything big and long term should be vague and abstract. At the end people would say, 'well, it's not my fault, I didn't go out of my way to ruin the earth'.


Boom! I spent weeks thinking but after that one post of yours I just barf out a whole thing fully formed. This is how my brain works.

2) On the subject of downward development pressure, what if Conventional Warfare and Insurrections gradually reduced the Development Level of a country over time?

I like that, make it so.


Also, on the topic of how my brain works, I think that these dialogue trees will go shockingly quickly if we structure them like a PBP. Like, it's just how I'm wired - see a thing, respond to thing now. It's a far more reliable process than relying on the unknowable whims of my solo creative drive.

[TheAmishPirate]

I kind of think the idea of tying up multiple countries diplomatic bureaucracy for decades with pointless bad faith negotiations that go nowhere in the end due to domestic political concerns - hi TPP! - is an entirely in genre move. We'll keep an eye on it during testing though.

Alright. This may influence a couple of other link-related things, but I'll bring those up as I get to them.

I like that, make it so.

Imagine an Agent funding a fruitless insurgency just to destabilize a Country. If that's not on-brand for this game, I don't know what is.

(I will also note that this means Deploying a military unit has no appreciable effect on a Country's development level; it's only when conflict breaks out that harm is done. That feels fitting.)

Right. Now to the global warming stuff. On a whole, I really like the direction we're going with this.

There's two Bonuses that need to be slotted into this new Global Warming system; Green Energy, and Environmental Collapse. For Environmental Collapse, we could add a multiplier to any negative environmental effects. When things go bad in that Country, they go REAL bad. I'm a little less certain on Green Energy. Maybe provides a Resilience bonus? Major decrease to Global Warming accumulation?

There are also techs that reduce and techs which increase the rate of global warming accumulation.

Somehow, I missed this sentence on the first 3-4 readthroughs of this post. I was all prepared to insist on including this tech effect, how it'd be dishonest not to, but it turns out you already thought of that.

Climate effects:
At the beginning of every turn, each country rolls global warming level against its resilience level, if the roll is failed then that country gets a negative effect for that turn. UI Note: These can't be event pop ups, that'll begin each turn with pop-up spam that's horrible to get through. Instead a little icon should appear over each country marking the effect.

We should play around with the number of turns between saving throws. I propose we start out with 5-10 turns between rerolls to give the player a chance to respond to and capitalize on results. Otherwise, too much randomness is hard to play with and hard to see how it's affecting the map. (Plus, it'd be trivial to change this number. Heck, we could have the turns between saving throws fluctuate over the course of the game, easy.)

Famine: Decline of development level
Migration: Decline of science level
System Collapse: Decline of resilience level

Just to be clear, are these "decline" effects a downward pressure over time, or a flat minus for the duration of the event? I think it's the former, but I want to be sure.

System Collapse: Decline of resilience level

Resilience appears to be a flat number that can get a static boost from Tech, and possibly an Exec action. It doesn't appear to be a number that grows/shrinks over time, but goes up/down in spurts, and will revert back to its base level if everybody leaves it alone. Which makes this event seem strange to me, since it suggests a change to the base number. Is that the case?

It also feels weird in terms of its effects. Nothing actually bad happens, but you've got a higher chance of failing the next roll. (Again, assuming that the base number isn't actually changing.)

At the beginning of every turn, each country rolls global warming level against its resilience level, if the roll is failed then that country gets a negative effect for that turn.

There's a lot of ways to make this saving throw happen. Here's my first pass on how I think we ought to implement it:

1) A Country's Resilience affects its saving throw. A higher Resilience means better rolls.
2) The results table - where we plug in the roll to see what actually happens - is based on the current tier of the Global Warming track. As you advance to higher milestones, the table gets worse and worse.
3) This is a bonus thought that I think would be fun to play with: Degrees of failure. Situations where a failed roll can hit a Country with multiple events. So as the Global Warming tracker increases, the odds of getting nothing go down, and the odds of getting more than 1 event go up.

What do you think?

Boom! I spent weeks thinking but after that one post of yours I just barf out a whole thing fully formed. This is how my brain works.

I've noticed a similar thing when I'm making things myself. Idea in my head? Progress is garbage. Maybe I have a good day every now and then, but mostly it just sits there spinning its wheels. Not very good when I'm on a deadline. But when I get somebody to talk to about the idea? MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE

It's one of the reason I'd much rather work with a good team of folks rather than pursue stuff solo with a revolving door of contractors. I think I'd really miss having a steady team to spark ideas.

[Thanqol]

Imagine an Agent funding a fruitless insurgency just to destabilize a Country. If that's not on-brand for this game, I don't know what is.

hello russia

(I will also note that this means Deploying a military unit has no appreciable effect on a Country's development level; it's only when conflict breaks out that harm is done. That feels fitting.)

Yeah, like, moving a military unit up to unoccupied Canada and deploying isn't an invasion of Canada. It's getting Canada to sign NORAD.

There's two Bonuses that need to be slotted into this new Global Warming system; Green Energy, and Environmental Collapse. For Environmental Collapse, we could add a multiplier to any negative environmental effects. When things go bad in that Country, they go REAL bad. I'm a little less certain on Green Energy. Maybe provides a Resilience bonus? Major decrease to Global Warming accumulation?

Major as in 'noticeable but hard to quantify'. Any attempts to fix the planet should feel a little bit ambiguous about if you're saving the planet or just shovelling sand.

In that spirit, I prefer anything to be a resilience bonus that can be. Maybe for Green Energy a shared bonus to linked countries if it feels a little anaemic.

We should play around with the number of turns between saving throws. I propose we start out with 5-10 turns between rerolls to give the player a chance to respond to and capitalize on results. Otherwise, too much randomness is hard to play with and hard to see how it's affecting the map. (Plus, it'd be trivial to change this number. Heck, we could have the turns between saving throws fluctuate over the course of the game, easy.)

No, I think every turn is the best. Every couple of turns feels like random 'screw you' one offs. If it's every turn, and the effects are individually pretty minor, it does much better at giving the sense of a slow slide into the ocean.

Just to be clear, are these "decline" effects a downward pressure over time, or a flat minus for the duration of the event? I think it's the former, but I want to be sure.

They're just small minuses, but they're happening every turn.

Resilience appears to be a flat number that can get a static boost from Tech, and possibly an Exec action. It doesn't appear to be a number that grows/shrinks over time, but goes up/down in spurts, and will revert back to its base level if everybody leaves it alone. Which makes this event seem strange to me, since it suggests a change to the base number. Is that the case?

It also feels weird in terms of its effects. Nothing actually bad happens, but you've got a higher chance of failing the next roll. (Again, assuming that the base number isn't actually changing.)

Thinking about it, I don't think building resilience is an Exec action. They counter it by just shoving development or tech up manually. It's a function of tech primarily.

There's a lot of ways to make this saving throw happen. Here's my first pass on how I think we ought to implement it:

1) A Country's Resilience affects its saving throw. A higher Resilience means better rolls.
2) The results table - where we plug in the roll to see what actually happens - is based on the current tier of the Global Warming track. As you advance to higher milestones, the table gets worse and worse.
3) This is a bonus thought that I think would be fun to play with: Degrees of failure. Situations where a failed roll can hit a Country with multiple events. So as the Global Warming tracker increases, the odds of getting nothing go down, and the odds of getting more than 1 event go up.

What do you think?

I think that'd be a great way to model a crisis, but I don't think that's what I'm after here. Global warming isn't, like, suddenly the sun comes down and starts punching out your cows. It's not a problem that's obvious and urgent and easy to get your head around. That's what makes it insidious and so hard for humans to get their heads around. It should feel more like the cost of doing business. A long, slow decline rather than a sudden and violent collapse.

I've noticed a similar thing when I'm making things myself. Idea in my head? Progress is garbage. Maybe I have a good day every now and then, but mostly it just sits there spinning its wheels. Not very good when I'm on a deadline. But when I get somebody to talk to about the idea? MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE

It's one of the reason I'd much rather work with a good team of folks rather than pursue stuff solo with a revolving door of contractors. I think I'd really miss having a steady team to spark ideas.

Natch!

[TheAmishPirate]

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[Thanqol]

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you have realized my vision. change nothing.

[Thanqol]

Day 2324: How have you been?

Here's what I've been up to over the last four months.

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Hobby owns. Miniature painting owns. Everything owns. I've never had as much fun in my life.

[TheAmishPirate]

I think that, perhaps more than any other system we've made, the Global Warming system will need ample testing to figure out the feel of the thing. Too weak, and it'll be constantly ignored. Too strong, and it'll be too frustrating to deal with as we've deliberately made fixing it a problem outside the scope of this game. To that end, I'm going to try and build this system as robust and easily-tweakable as possible. Make it easy to change the numbers until we find what we're after.

Did you have any ideas for the specifics of the roll itself? Or should I just throw some formula together that takes reliance and the current Global Warming level into account?

No, I think every turn is the best. Every couple of turns feels like random 'screw you' one offs. If it's every turn, and the effects are individually pretty minor, it does much better at giving the sense of a slow slide into the ocean.

They're just small minuses, but they're happening every turn.

Just to be clear, these minuses only last a turn, yes? After one turn, they go away?

I think that'd be a great way to model a crisis, but I don't think that's what I'm after here. Global warming isn't, like, suddenly the sun comes down and starts punching out your cows. It's not a problem that's obvious and urgent and easy to get your head around. That's what makes it insidious and so hard for humans to get their heads around. It should feel more like the cost of doing business. A long, slow decline rather than a sudden and violent collapse.

Fair. If one effect per country isn't enough to communicate that, we could try experimenting around with multiple bad things happening in a roll as the game goes on. (If we did this, then we could just not have distinct tiers. As the game goes on and things get worse, multiple bad things is just something that can happen.

[Thanqol]

I think that, perhaps more than any other system we've made, the Global Warming system will need ample testing to figure out the feel of the thing. Too weak, and it'll be constantly ignored. Too strong, and it'll be too frustrating to deal with as we've deliberately made fixing it a problem outside the scope of this game. To that end, I'm going to try and build this system as robust and easily-tweakable as possible. Make it easy to change the numbers until we find what we're after.

Did you have any ideas for the specifics of the roll itself? Or should I just throw some formula together that takes reliance and the current Global Warming level into account?

Throw something together. We're way off fine tuning at this stage.

Just to be clear, these minuses only last a turn, yes? After one turn, they go away?

Yeah but they can occur separately on multiple turns. I think there's an important psychological difference between the dice saying Brazil is on fire now and everything is lost, as opposed to Brazil slowly burning down over 50 turns. One gets the players reaching for the savescum option, one is like 'man why bother saving it, just loot it and leave it for the other guy' which is the right kind of attitude for megacorps dealing with climate change.

Fair. If one effect per country isn't enough to communicate that, we could try experimenting around with multiple bad things happening in a roll as the game goes on. (If we did this, then we could just not have distinct tiers. As the game goes on and things get worse, multiple bad things is just something that can happen.

For sure.

[TheAmishPirate]

For "New opportunities", what sort of effects are we looking for? Are there a lot of different benefits that could happen? Or just one? (I will say that additional Influence Link capacity is likely a bad idea, as there's only one turn to capitalize on it and then that capacity goes away, which isn't really that great.)

[Thanqol]

For "New opportunities", what sort of effects are we looking for? Are there a lot of different benefits that could happen? Or just one? (I will say that additional Influence Link capacity is likely a bad idea, as there's only one turn to capitalize on it and then that capacity goes away, which isn't really that great.)

Nothing immediately comes to mind, I'll think on it. A bunch of bonuses seems right though.

[TheAmishPirate]

It's the end of the last workday in October! The day where I was aiming to have our first super-big playtest build ready. Did we hit the goal?

In short; no. In slightly less short; no, but we're pretty darn close. In long...

Excluding the AI player, all of the major mechanics are in the game. We found Africa and the Balkans. The world burns at an acceptable rate. What's left are a small laundry list of features that I didn't fully implement on the first go-around, or are missing bits of content before they can be considered done. Here's what I still have to do:

• Finish 4 remaining Bonuses.
• Make it so that players can choose their Advanced Research options.
• Test some interactions with Colonial Hegemon.
• Make a metrics tracking system.

Once I get that done, I'll consider this prototype in a good place. But once it's in a good place, I'll want to take some time, pour over our "make sure to playtest this" notes, and develop a strategy for early playtesting. Figure out what exactly needs testing, in what order, and what questions every test session should be answering.

I expect the remaining tasks to take me no more than two weeks. And then we'll take it from there.

[TheAmishPirate]

Oh, and a surprise win? It turns out there's a super easy formula for turning the probability of an action succeeding into the number of expected trials/turns it'll take to get one success. So for all actions with a duration/probability - except for Conventional Warfare, because that one is weird - we now display the expected/actual duration on the unit panel. We also color-code the text to indicate whether it's within the expected range, the possibly unlucky range, and the "something is screwy" range.

[Thanqol]

Day 2345: On Parade

I have finished the AdMech just in time for Armies on Parade. Here's my submission, and the long awaited proper photographs!

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There's a bunch of stuff I want to talk about, including WHAT IS THE NEXT ARMY, but right now I just want to bask in the achievement. I did that. I worked really hard and I created something awesome. I'm really proud of what I've done.

[Thanqol]

Oh, what the hell, here's my test Wraithguard model.

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[Anarion]

Oh, what the hell, here's my test Wraithguard model.

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Which Craftworld is that? Or is it a custom color scheme? I’m a big fan of the aspect warrior units in Eldar because they have such evocative mythology and symbolism, so I used to favor Biel-Tan myself.

[Thanqol]

Which Craftworld is that? Or is it a custom color scheme? I’m a big fan of the aspect warrior units in Eldar because they have such evocative mythology and symbolism, so I used to favor Biel-Tan myself.

Custom scheme. I'm going to be using Illayden tactics with Ynnari support.

I personally adore all the WraithX units because A) they all look beautiful B) They are literal walking war crimes.

The idea for these guys are going to be that they're a long forgotten Eldar martial arts temple on a pristine Maiden World. The Wraithblades are the martial artists, the Wraithlords are the contemplative zen masters - and the Wraithguards are the janitors who wander around atomizing dust/intruders with their cosmic megabrooms. I'm thinking Chozo Temple aesthetics and a statue-y look to the models; they're all going to be slightly overgrown with plants and moss and streaked with accumulated mud from centuries of rainfall. Fluff is still developing, it's a major thing I think about while painting.

(Did you know you can mix the gemstone paints? You can!)

I'm not a huge fan of aspect warriors in either looks or tactics so my force is going to be entirely Wraith units aside from the HQ psykers animating and supporting them.

[TheAmishPirate]

Day 2345: On Parade

I have finished the AdMech just in time for Armies on Parade. Here's my submission, and the long awaited proper photographs!

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There's a bunch of stuff I want to talk about, including WHAT IS THE NEXT ARMY, but right now I just want to bask in the achievement. I did that. I worked really hard and I created something awesome. I'm really proud of what I've done.

Oh, what the hell, here's my test Wraithguard model.

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These are incredible. Seriously, I can hardly believe the level of detail you've got on these guys.

[TheAmishPirate]

In going over the design notes we have, I've realized there's some questions left on how Deployment ought to work.

1) When an Army unit is Deployed, are they allowed to take any other actions? Considering that Armies have a limited set of actions they can take, I'm inclined to think this is an unnecessary restriction. Plus, I don't think it'd have intuitive interactions with Conventional Warfare; I know I'd accidentally un-deploy my Armies all the time when trying to fight.

2) Can opposed Army units occupy the same Country, provided neither of them have Deployed? I'm thinking they can. Both players racing to see who can Deploy first sounds perfect for this game.

3) Do Insurrections only target Deployed Armies? I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, this could make Armies very difficult to kill outside of Conventional Warfare. On the other, Armies are purely defensive units, so the worst that could happen is that they could Confiscate Technology from non-occupied Countries.

4) Suppose we have a Deployed Army unit in a Country, and another one of our Army units moves into that Country. Is the second Army unit considered Deployed? Do they have to Deploy in order to reinforce that Country?

5) If an Army wins a Conventional Warfare contest, are they considered Deployed once all the enemy units are destroyed?

[Thanqol]

These are incredible. Seriously, I can hardly believe the level of detail you've got on these guys.

Thank you!

I'm having a blast with the Wraithblades so far - I'm trying to slow down my painting so I've resolved on absolutely no assembly line production for any of them, all of them get full character treatment start to finish, including significant amounts of freehanding. I've done two more since I posted the first and they both look gorgeous.

(A hidden benefit to the style I'm doing is that if I mess up the freehand anywhere I can just cover it with moss!)

In going over the design notes we have, I've realized there's some questions left on how Deployment ought to work.

1) When an Army unit is Deployed, are they allowed to take any other actions? Considering that Armies have a limited set of actions they can take, I'm inclined to think this is an unnecessary restriction. Plus, I don't think it'd have intuitive interactions with Conventional Warfare; I know I'd accidentally un-deploy my Armies all the time when trying to fight.

Yeah, I think the limitation is that when deployed they can't move - and that's almost a feature because you don't accidentally want to be moving your armies out of critical countries accidentally.

Keep an eye on this, though, especially if the range of army actions expands.

2) Can opposed Army units occupy the same Country, provided neither of them have Deployed? I'm thinking they can. Both players racing to see who can Deploy first sounds perfect for this game.

Yes, I think so.

3) Do Insurrections only target Deployed Armies? I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, this could make Armies very difficult to kill outside of Conventional Warfare. On the other, Armies are purely defensive units, so the worst that could happen is that they could Confiscate Technology from non-occupied Countries.

I think yes. Like, narratively an insurrection is an ongoing war of attrition against the military-political complex running the country's administration, not a random military base out in the desert where planes are moving through.

4) Suppose we have a Deployed Army unit in a Country, and another one of our Army units moves into that Country. Is the second Army unit considered Deployed? Do they have to Deploy in order to reinforce that Country?

I think they need to take the deployment action. Only having one deployed army means your control is pretty brittle and a surprise insurgency could take out a key province. Having a big stack of military forces is begging to get WMD'd.

5) If an Army wins a Conventional Warfare contest, are they considered Deployed once all the enemy units are destroyed?

If it's an attacking army, no. Country becomes unaligned meaning that there's scope for a sudden counterattack.

[TheAmishPirate]

Yeah, I think the limitation is that when deployed they can't move - and that's almost a feature because you don't accidentally want to be moving your armies out of critical countries accidentally.

Keep an eye on this, though, especially if the range of army actions expands.

Gotcha. Do you think that there needs to be a specific Undeploy action before an Army unit can move, or does moving out of a Country cancel Deployment?

[Thanqol]

Gotcha. Do you think that there needs to be a specific Undeploy action before an Army unit can move, or does moving out of a Country cancel Deployment?

I actually reckon undeploying should take an action but keep an eye on it.

Day 2352: Aspects of the Forest

Kickin' ass at this Eldar thing.

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