Firestorm preview sketches and announcement of the release of the beta May 6th

[RuleBritannia]

Dakkar, you are so right.  I read the first little bit about the Retholza and I was pleasantly surprised.  I am very much down on Warcradle's fluff, in my opinion it tends towards the generic and grimdark given half a chance when I am really more a shades of grey and preferably lighter ones kind of guy.  Artistic, singing, but still warlike expansionist spiders is just so cool.  Reminds me of Thrawn, a commander who can use art to understand his enemies.  The bump to earth with the bog standard then the AI took over and so they lost all art and culture was depressing.   I wouldn't mind a Killik style artistic hivemind.

The ships are mixed.  I do like that there are touches of the current designs and an actual attempt to make models that are more obvious evolutionary developments of current ships compared to the monstrous things that happened to a lot of the factions for Dystopian Wars that make me less than keen to pick up those ships, but Firestorm was less consistent and I was less invested in that game.

[Dakkar]

They're dangling weird hope now in that some fleets furthest from the Unity (and with older ships) start developing independence. We'll see ...

[RuleBritannia]

It was very interesting to me that the process of the development of the Retholza's hive mind is a very blatant homage to the development of machine control in Dune.

The Rense ship looks nice, a decent adaptation of Spartan's models.  As always I never get when they can do that, they don't do it more.  The discontinuity is the biggest problem by creating divides between the editions.

[Sailion]

Also waiting to see, quite like Terran Directorate, its funny as i used to play my Directorate fleet as brawlers like Terrans. Ryushi also ones was quite close to and Terquai. Hope Firestorm does well, yes.

[Covertwalrus]

 Must say, apart from the changes in the background fluff ( Human forces all becoming one, and under a very unsettling governance; The Relthoza and Aquan racial changes etc.) and from what we hear the rules changes in game play ( Hex-based fire arcs, for instance ), the FSA reboot seems to more resemble what Spartan coudl have done themselves to streamline the game and make it more interesting. Even the design style of most of the ships seems to maintain the original style of Spartan, with a couple of notable exceptions.

 And I will therefore ask; Why was that not done with Dystopian Wars? Well, I know why and I can say it in three letters - W, W, and X.

 But, personal obsessions aside, this does look promising for the re-release of FSA; For most spaceship gamers the fluff has always been optional, it's always about the ships and the gameplay foremost, so it's not going to be much of a concern about how the background works TBH.

[Covertwalrus]

 I'll add to my last missive the following -

 The Damage rules using Systems rather than armor tracks or hull points is an interesting idea, not sure it's ever been used before.

  Small craft ( Fighters, bombers, etc ) are a lot simpler here than in any other game, and it seems some Spartan influence from the fast play versions of FSA and DW Fleet Action might have crept in.

 The glass-topped carrier for a fcation I can't recall but love the looks of is back! Again, why didn't DW get more style following updates, huh? The Warcradle artists are clearly capable, so what's up with that?

 And even assuming a level of sick puppetry, most people seem very pleased with the Beta rules. And the feedback seems to be real here too.

[Ruckdog]

Definitely agree on the small craft rules and the damage system. I think the idea of using system damages is indeed an interesting one. It's not 100% original, but I too have never seen the way it is being used here. The carrier rules definitely trace their lineage back to the TF and FA rules; it seems that WC's design team has really latched on to the concepts behind them. And honestly, I think that is a good thing. They were easily one of the best aspects of those fast-play rules, and they sort of level out the carrier rules with the rest of the system as far as complexity goes.

[Covertwalrus]

 There's been a lot of quiet on the Firestorm front, probably due to the actual roll-out of DW 3.0 finally.

 But has anyone actually been gaming with the Beta rules? And have they been good?

[Toxic_Rat]

I tried them out early on.  The rules are...okay...but they didn't catch on.  Using dice for system damage is interesting, but it felt a bit too fiddly.  And too many exceptions where X weapon ignores Y defense statistic.  I suppose that remembering the exceptions would come naturally over time, but I've found it difficult to want to invest the time in the system.  I have better alternatives for tabletop miniatures, I'm afraid.

I agree that the release of DW-3 has contributed to the silence in the Firestorm arena.  Not a word from WC, as far as I can see.  It'll pick up again once they get around to it, but as for people playing the beta rules, I have a feeling that very few, if any, are still testing them out.  (Note, I have no knowledge of it, one way or another.  But the FB group has been pretty silent on the topic.)

[Covertwalrus]

 Things have been incredibly quiet lately for FSA.
 I can't believe that DW 3.0 s taking up everyone's time there. Maybe the roaring success of "Bill and Ted's Riff in Time" has delayed things?