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Jarvisi posted:Is it worth trying to play this game on paper? Everyone seems to say it's digital for life. I have a bunch of battlemechs and some battletech maps I'm sure I could whip up a one shot NPCs have a bunch of moving parts so you'll want a bunch of index cards or to print off screen shots of their stat blocks from COMP/CON. BattleTech map sheets are about 20x30 hexes so you can do a small fight on one sheet or a big fight on two sheets. Medium fights you can overlap the sheets for a 30x30 board.
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Apr 5, 2024 15:46
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Jarvisi posted:Is it worth trying to play this game on paper? Everyone seems to say it's digital for life. I have a bunch of battlemechs and some battletech maps I'm sure I could whip up a one shot I DM with paper on a dry-erase hex map with tokens I had to make myself, I don't even use COMP/CON, just keeping track of HP and cooldowns on notebook paper though I do keep my laptop beside me to reference stats. It's been fun. Map I made of warehouses that the party were searching.  Tokens glued to cardboard stock prior to cutting.  I am not a good artist.
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Apr 5, 2024 16:00
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I have a Chessex battlemat that's around 30x50 hexes and a ton of Battletech maps and minis. Drawing out a map for Solstice Rain takes a very long time. I can't wait until we finish it and I can move to BT maps and some cut out paper buildings. Right now I'm using retrograde minis paper cutouts for OPFOR as there's a OSR faction set for them. I use a tablet with Comp/Con in desktop mode for NPCs and my players use I the mobile version for their characters. 
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Apr 5, 2024 18:40
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I don't think it's any worse than D&D 4e on paper, and probably a lot better if you're using compcon on a laptop
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Apr 5, 2024 19:47
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40 Proof Listerine posted:NPCs have a bunch of moving parts so you'll want a bunch of index cards or to print off screen shots of their stat blocks from COMP/CON. Bt maps are like 17x17 if you include the partial spaces in the gutter, since a bt hex is way bigger than an inch.
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Apr 7, 2024 01:12
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ShineDog posted:Bt maps are like 17x17 if you include the partial spaces in the gutter, since a bt hex is way bigger than an inch. Thanks, that'll teach me to not double check my numbers - on average 15 columns and 17 rows, and if you smush two of them together hamburger style that's where I was getting my "20"x30 maps and 30x30 maps from. Sarna.net has a good breakdown: https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Map_Sheets
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Apr 7, 2024 13:27
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Yeah, this was what led to me deciding against them. I think 20x30 is about the least you'd really want for a lancer game if you don't wnat everything to be a knife fight, with 25-35 being the ideal. That's why I ended up not going for battletech maps, since they have basically a 1.25 inch footprint that just ends up too big for our table once you factor in space for character sheets and stuff.
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Apr 7, 2024 14:31
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I like to mix up the map size and congestedness a lot, but I think you need to be able to get a 40x40 map onto the table every once in a while to play up long range or fast NPCs.
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Apr 7, 2024 23:07
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Armed to the Teeth
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May 1, 2024 14:06
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I'm getting a bad feeling about this group called The Shermans, like maybe they aren't totally the good guys? That quad gun Morgana is hilarious though.
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May 1, 2024 16:12
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"Divert local asteroids onto the battefield"... Planet Waves But A Mech? 
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May 2, 2024 02:46
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don't think I've posted here about it but COMP/CON is in the middle of a pretty massive overhaul to upgrade the tech stack, add a bunch of new features/qol improvements/etc that I've been working on for a minute now. I'm at a good point to pause and take feedback about what's done already (pilot mode, gm toolkit, compendium). I've got more details here, as well as the dev blog on the patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103890823 (you do not need to pay for anything to see the dev stuff, they're all free updates and will continue to be) if you've got feedback on the stuff that's done so far, I'd love to hear it before I lock in what I have in and move on to the next parts. I've got a thread on the discord I'll be sitting in as much as I can over the next few weeks, but also if you want to drop feedback here or in the patreon comments or DMs or whatever, that's all good too. Here's my current to-do list from this round of feedback: https://github.com/massif-press/compcon/issues/2463 if you haven't seen the dev site (https://cc-dev-preview.netlify.app/) it's got: - overhauled compendium browser - searchable SRD - campaigns - completely rebuilt GM toolkit - eidolon support - much better print output (including D&D4e style cards) - much better error handling and self-correction - dramatically expanded storage - a million minor upgrades and will get: - fully rebuilt cloud backend and interface - itch integration and automatic content updates - live online play active mode - campaign integration with active mode - achievements - spectator modes for live play (for streaming etc) - much better vtt integration - a much better mobile view - language support (after v3 release) - a lot of other stuff I'd really appreciate anything from general vibe check to like big wishlist items or whatever. Thanks!
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May 10, 2024 18:06
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Better print output with power cards will be huge for my group.
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May 11, 2024 20:28
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I can't offer a lot of useful feedback because I've only ever used Comp/Con as a player, and even then only for theoretical character creation because every group I've tried to assemble for LANCER has failed to reach the "actually playing the game" stage. That said, Comp/Con is easily the best character creation tool I've ever used for a TTRPG. It's an absolute dream to use. I've never once struggled to figure out how to do something, it's all perfectly intuitive and all the information is readily available. And being able to just straight up skip steps if you want is genuinely a major improvement over a lot of other similar products for other games. I know that's not useful for what's being asked, but this seemed like a good opportunity to offer praise where praise is due.
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May 12, 2024 02:09
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I just finished Op. Solstice Rain as a new GM and if Comp/Con had the ability to generate the full info block status cards from the mission runner ( during combat rounds) that would be great. Right now I have to keep a separate tab open with the NPC roster to get the full info. I paste it to our discord when they scan an enemy, but I have to edit in the current HP/heat/etc as I don't see that function in the mission runner.
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May 12, 2024 04:33
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Managing big lists of NPCs is a nightmare, that's my one statement. Everything else I could say is either 'no duh' stuff, things I can live without, or stuff I'm sure has already been called out. But managing NPCs/enemies en-masse in general feels awful and like it's a big strain on the browser, and the 'add a new NPC to the list. OK now scroll through the list and slowly add stuff to it' procedure is super slow, and it's similarly slow to add them to encounters. There's something about how the data is being stored and retrieved that mega-chugs. edit: The obvious example being that if you're adding multiple NPCs to an encounter, you have to add them one at a time. Being able to just scroll through my list and tick the ones I want, as well as how many, would be much more sensible, so that they can be added to the encounter all at once.
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May 12, 2024 04:52
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Zurai posted:I can't offer a lot of useful feedback because I've only ever used Comp/Con as a player, and even then only for theoretical character creation because every group I've tried to assemble for LANCER has failed to reach the "actually playing the game" stage. thank you very much  Amechwarrior posted:I just finished Op. Solstice Rain as a new GM and if Comp/Con had the ability to generate the full info block status cards from the mission runner ( during combat rounds) that would be great. Right now I have to keep a separate tab open with the NPC roster to get the full info. I paste it to our discord when they scan an enemy, but I have to edit in the current HP/heat/etc as I don't see that function in the mission runner. I haven't yet started on the new active mode, but one-click block status exports to clipboard are definitely going to be in there. bewilderment posted:Managing big lists of NPCs is a nightmare, that's my one statement. Everything else I could say is either 'no duh' stuff, things I can live without, or stuff I'm sure has already been called out. I'm preloading the NPC/Eidolon data in the dev preview right now for the feedback period so you can poke at the NPC/Encounter UI directly -- I think I've solved most of this successfully, though if I'm still missing something please let me know.
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May 12, 2024 05:21
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:I'm preloading the NPC/Eidolon data in the dev preview right now for the feedback period so you can poke at the NPC/Encounter UI directly -- I think I've solved most of this successfully, though if I'm still missing something please let me know. So, on the first point - my bad for not clicking the dev preview. This problem? Solved. Awesome. Seriously great. New problem. This screen?  There is no way for me to click anything on that screen to see what Hail of Fire actually *does*. The little 'open book' icon doesn't seem to do anything (unless it's my browser settings that are the issue).
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May 12, 2024 08:59
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oops, that's a bug. There should be item text in those boxes. I'll get that on the list. Thanks!
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May 12, 2024 15:03
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I would like to be able to search the text of weapons/systems/etc. There's a lot of useful information that isn't in tags so it would be nice to be able to search something like "Immobilize" and get a list of systems to look through for my Vlad or whatever.
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May 12, 2024 16:44
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WrightOfWay posted:I would like to be able to search the text of weapons/systems/etc. There's a lot of useful information that isn't in tags so it would be nice to be able to search something like "Immobilize" and get a list of systems to look through for my Vlad or whatever. I want to get this in (and fuzzy searching too) but it's a more difficult problem than I thought and none of the out of the box solutions were what I was looking for, specifically due to LCP content. I think as a post-v3 feature I can get this in, but maybe only official Massif content so I can index the text correctly? Or maybe I can index them on load and store that info locally. Regardless, it's something that I have to figure out sooner or later or even the naive searching I have in right now is going to struggle when localization comes, so this'll definitely get added, but probably not until after v3 is out
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May 12, 2024 16:53
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When adding NPCs to my roster, I'd like to be view them in collapsible folders - I often created themed lists, and this would be a huge help ((Woops, looks like that's already in on the dev site, my bad))
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May 12, 2024 23:46
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Jarvisi posted:Is it worth trying to play this game on paper? Everyone seems to say it's digital for life. I have a bunch of battlemechs and some battletech maps I'm sure I could whip up a one shot I've literally only played this in person. It works fine. Granted, the people running it have been playing Battletech for decades, so they have a lot of map stuff to make it interesting. And one of them is addicted to index cards. A Single Sphink fucked around with this message at 00:58 on May 13, 2024 |
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May 13, 2024 00:03
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Large Lad incoming
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May 15, 2024 14:06
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Encounter feedback, since I don't have a ton of experience running ultras. I won't be running it for a bit. This is the capstone encounter at the end of LL2 [for four players], the players have to breach a vault and deactivate the countdown before it all goes pear-shaped. I was planning on a Siege sitrep. Comp wise I was thinking: Utra Witch [Pain transference, legion, spread suffering, sivlershielding, hellfire projector] Priest Elite [Sanctuary, Greater Investiture] Operator [Skirmisher] Reinforcements [to be deployed based on how its going]: Ronin Grunts [Extend blade] x4 Spite [Carceri] x1 Priest [Empowered shield] I'm a little worried the enemy forces don't really have the dps to put the hurt on the players, and I'm unsure of the traits for the Witch. I could also make it a gauntlet or control sitrep if that makes more sense. I haven't made the map yet since I plan to tune it based on difficulty. I'm not welded to anything other than really wanting it to feel like they're going up against a super-hacker This will be the second ultra the players face down, the first being a bog standard Ultra Ronin with an obvious overheating weakness.
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May 15, 2024 14:28
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How experienced are your players?
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May 15, 2024 14:33
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Conspiratiorist posted:How experienced are your players? Relatively inexperienced, as in its their first rodeo past LL1, but they'll have done ~12 combat encounters between LL0-LL2 by then.
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May 15, 2024 14:46
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that's a pretty dangerous encounter, tbh. theres a few things there throwing up alarm bells. first off, you wanna be extremely cautious with invisibility. particularly if you haven't fielded a tough specter yet you haven't seen how annoying permanent invisibility can be, especially if the team lacks one of the pretty rare invisibility counters. with some bad luck your team can simply just miss 6 turns in a row and eat poo poo. this is especially the case with that priest in the mix. to attack the witch while the priest is active, your players will have to: make a systems save against 11 or fail (call it a ~60% chance) make a 4+ invisibility roll (50% chance) actually hit against the Witch's natively good defenses stats of evade 10 (60% at grit 1) that's a less than 20% chance of hitting the Witch with an attack. worse even since if you fail the systems save you can't Barrage or apply reaction fire, and its not accounting for the Resistance from the Priest's Investiture. secondly, Ultras can scale dangerously with glass cannons. Witches fall into that category. They may not deal hp damage, but if allowed to operate they can put out a huge amount of heat damage. This is especially the case for Ultra Witches, as normal Witches can have their heat output countered by prioritizing them as targets. Ultra Witches by virtue of their high action economy and sufficient hp to avoid quick kills (especially with the Priest backing it) can simply dunk out a lot of heat damage. To lay that out: turn 1 Witch targets Mech A with Pain Transference Witch targets Mech A with Tear Down Witch uses Spread Suffering to target adjacent Mech B with Tear Down Mech A takes 1 Heat Mech B takes 1 Heat+1 Transferred Heat turn 2 Tear Down procs Mech A takes 4 Heat (5 total) Mech B takes 4 Heat + 4 Transferred Heat (10 total) Witch targets Mech B with Tear Down Witch targets Mechs A+B with Hellfire Projector Mech B takes 1 heat (6 total) Mech B takes 1 Transferred heat (10 total) Mechs A+B take 3 Energy and 4 Burn damage each round 2 turn 1 Mech B takes 4 Heat (14 total) Witch targets Mech B with Tear Down Mech B takes 1 Heat (15 total) etc. et. al. as you can see the level of heat inflicted escalates rapidly. Mech B may not even have activated in the combat yet by the time it takes 10 heat, which is enough to Overheat the majority of player builds at LL2. By round 2 turn 2, a Blackbeard or similar target may have just straight up died from heat damage, even if it starts at full Stress and makes its overheat rolls. note this isn't even leveraging it to its maximum. you can abuse pain transference by taking the priest/operators turns between the witches turns and invading to dunk out even more heat. if you get lucky with a recharge roll in turn 2 you can arguably execute an infinite heat combo by having pain transference up on two mechs within range of eachother. Definitely a place where GM prudence applies and you pump the brakes, but it illustrates the danger.. Witches are definitely one of the wonkier NPCs. Personally, unless you're feeling confident of your players ability to handle such a deadly threat - I would consider a different Ultra but include a witch or two as support units. Spread them out and have them hack at long range, being irritating, but a fast striker like a Nelson or an artillery mech could take them out quickly with a little luck. TheDeadlyShoe fucked around with this message at 17:48 on May 15, 2024 |
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May 15, 2024 16:23
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Ultra Witches are the scariest thing in the god drat game, IMO. They overheat players incredibly quickly. My local group sees Witches as kill-on-sight-take-any-amount-of-damage-to-do it. Operators aren't far behind.
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May 15, 2024 17:24
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:Personally, unless you're feeling confident of your players ability to handle such a deadly threat - I would consider a different Ultra but include a witch or two as support units. Spread them out and have them hack at long range, being irritating, but a fast striker like a Nelson or an artillery mech could take them out quickly with a little luck. I appreciate the breakdown, I guess I hadn't assessed quite how much heat the witch would be putting out. I'll likely re-work the encounter to something a little less brutal. From a purely "feel" point of view, I want what's inside the vault to feel threatening in a way that feels different from just getting punched in the face by a berserker chain axe over and over, so I think its back to the drawing board on that.
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May 15, 2024 19:03
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ConfusedUs posted:Ultra Witches are the scariest thing in the god drat game, IMO. They overheat players incredibly quickly. The folks I play with have a running joke about Witches. They generally only get one successful turn, but that one turn normally costs someone a Structure and sombody else a Stress.
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May 15, 2024 19:15
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TheCog posted:I appreciate the breakdown, I guess I hadn't assessed quite how much heat the witch would be putting out. I'll likely re-work the encounter to something a little less brutal. From a purely "feel" point of view, I want what's inside the vault to feel threatening in a way that feels different from just getting punched in the face by a berserker chain axe over and over, so I think its back to the drawing board on that. Having some non-standard damage dealers protected by a big bad defender might do the job. Witches, Scouts, and Snipers all have unique mechanics that feel very different from "chain axe goes brrrr". You could put a handful of these with an Elite Priest and some grunt Aegis dudes for a different sort of encounter that is very dangerous. Nothing says "oh gently caress" like realizing that the Sniper is going to take off a structure unless you're behind cover or prone on its turn, except maybe a Witch doing heatgun poo poo or a Scout pulling down an orbital strike. Also Aegis are my favorite grunts. Mechanically they soak up a shot in a way few other grunts do, but mostly I love them for in-game lore reasons. The first Aegis my local group fought was an Elite. I'd built it up as a scary force multiplier; the mech was named Invincible Sally. Invincible Sally had been leading raids against ships and colonies for weeks. Everyone talked up this guy as a major badass.My players vaporized it almost immediately. I don't think it lasted a full round. IPS-N (who they were working for) recovered the parts, realized there was no point in making it tougher, and is now mass producing Vincible Sallies. They show up everywhere, and I take great joy every time one explodes.
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May 15, 2024 20:26
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Witches are already often problematic NPCs to have on the board in the first place, and stacking Ultra template + potentially a Priest supporting them eliminates the option of taking them out quickly. Deadlyshoe did a good analysis on that front, so I'll just add that for inexperienced groups LL2 can represent a power drop as they switch out from "oops, all Everests pop core" to bespoke frames, so you'll also need to factor in any changes in expected party DPS as you design these early encounters.
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May 15, 2024 21:22
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