"Fanstorm" Armada

[Ruckdog]

Looks like Alex Mann is planning to work on his own modifications to the FSA rules! He has a blog post up discussing a proposal for an alternative movement system (be warned, there is a dash of salt in his post regarding the falling out he has had with Spartan Games):

http://mannmomo.blogspot.com/2017/05/fanstorm-armada-developing-game.html#gpluscomments

Honestly, I think this is an intriguing idea. He is basically adapting the movement system that Spartan uses for Uncharted Seas and Dystopian Wars for Firestorm Armada. I see no reason why this couldn't work quite well, as I've never had a problem with the similar system that DW uses. The templates he printed out are very reminiscent of the "skeletal" (my term) DW turning templates produced by Litko:

http://www.litko.net/products.php?product=Steampunk-Wars%2C-Movement-Rulers#.WRcoNtLyuUk

Some thoughts:

-From my experience with using the Litko templates in DW, I think this concept for FSA will greatly reduce the problem of not being able to get movement templates into tight quarters, though they will probably not completely eliminate the issue. To be honest, I'm not sure that you really can completely eliminate the problem given the other various characteristics of the Spartan engine.

-I'm honestly not sure how much time this will really save during gameplay; to me, the biggest time sink during the movement phase has been trying to figure out where to move my minis, not the actual mechanics of moving them to the location that I have chosen. Granted, that is just a gut feel, with no empirical evidence to back that up.

What do you all think?

[Brimat]

-I'm honestly not sure how much time this will really save during gameplay; to me, the biggest time sink during the movement phase has been trying to figure out where to move my minis, not the actual mechanics of moving them to the location that I have chosen. Granted, that is just a gut feel, with no empirical evidence to back that up.

What do you all think?

I am with you on this one. We also use a proxi base for movement in tight quarters, so you can see if you can go there before shuffling your models around.

Another timesink in my turns is shooting. Here also the process of deciding which firing solution on which target takes the most time, the compiling of the dice pools and the rolling are fast.

[Ryjak]

Maybe once I somewhat settled after my recent move, I'll put together that time-lapse video I recorded from our last Firestorm Armada game, Ruckdog.  It really illustrates how much of a time-suck the movement phase and dice math is in FSA 2.0.

Since I helped to develop and playtest these templates and movement system, I can state these do speed up gameplay.  First, you can basically pre-measure before you turn and see if the model/base will end up somewhere it can fit.  Second, understand you can't change the turn direction until you move far enough to complete the turn... these templates represent a maximum turning rate.  Third, you can start a turn at any time.

[Toxic_Rat]

@Ryjak, is this method better or faster than using the 'pivot' method that was proposed for 3.0?

[Spenetrator]

I haven't played a game yet, so take this with a pinch of salt, but Litko do a 8" ruler with a 45 degree slant at one end. You measure your distance to the turn, apply the template, wit the slanted end toward the base,so that it points 8" away at 45 degrees, then move the desired distance along it, and reapply, I can't think of anything quicker without using a hex grid and hex bases.

I feel like we are looking to change something in the rules which works fine, but just has a ridiculously oversized template... Just change the template!

[Ruckdog]

Well, the latest word from Alex is that he has decided to suspend the active development efforts for his Fanstorm project, in light of the purchase of the Firestorm IP by Warcradle. He posted this in the Fanstorm Facebook group:

Long story short, I don't believe development of Fanstorm Armada as a full-blown ruleset is necessary at this point in time. This group will remain open because Stuart and the team at Warcradle are very open to input, and this is a good place for us to collect community feedback and opinion on what needs tweaking with the v2 rules to develop Firestorm as a game system.

To that point, I'll keep collecting feedback and sharing mechanisms that the FFG/Theorymachine have developed for v2.5, as these are obviously the areas we've all said need some attention in-game. What Warcradle decide to do with this input is obviously their choice, but the better information goes in, the better our game can be in the future.

Here's to a future living universe that we can all look forward to! Good times!

[Covertwalrus]

Has there been any word further on the Fanstorm project? Given the stall on the Warcradle side, I don't see it a huge challenge to their IP.

[Ruckdog]

Not a lot of movement from what I've seen, no. The last posts on the Discord were from back in June. Seems like there was a flury of activity in the Feb-Mar timeframe, but it's been fairly slow since.

[Toxic_Rat]

Alex noted that he was going to do a full re-write, so that there wouldn't be a copyright issue. But, that takes a lot of time and I don't think that he has much free time. But hey, who does?