First Impressions

[thepuffin]

About me: I'm an experienced table-top 40k player. This is my first Slitherine game, although I have played a but of Panzer General 2 / OpenGeneral.

Installer
The game installed easily, although it did seem to take a long time to move the assets given it was an SSD to SSD install.

Starting the Tutorial
The font used for the story dialogue looks out of place with both the theme and the rest of the game.

Mission 1
Is the enemy supposed to simply sit there and do nothing in this mission? Why do we get a popup *after* turn 1 instead of before?

Mission 2
The first time I played this mission the game crashed before deployment when I zoomed the map out as far as it would go.

Mission 4
Pretty sure the game bugged here. After deploying, the game proceeded to play all 9 turns without letting me perform any actions. As it happened, I won the mission, but it didn't seem correct that I couldn't manoeuvre.

Random Thoughts

• The tutorial isn't a tutorial! Where is the detailed help required to actually learn the game? Mission 3 would have been impossible if I hadn't randomly discovered that I could buy Leman Russ tanks
• How do I know the likely outcome of a particular attack? The numbers under the cursor are not explained
• What is the deal with reaction fire? Why can an artillery piece fire back at multiple of my units per turn simply because they fired at a different enemy?
• This feels nothing like 40k! Lasguns can't penetrate Leman Russ armour yet they do in this game; mortars can't destroy tanks yet they seemed better at it than battle cannons; 40k is very much about using the correct weapon for the correct job and moving units correctly to achieve a goal but the game feels like you can win simply by spamming heavy bolters.
• The scale of the game feels uncomfortable. Even in 40k Apocalypse, you would be running mixed formations of infantry and tanks in the same hex and the facings of the tanks matter. Here, tanks are simply a blob of X tanks that take the same damage from any direction and get in the way of your infantry blobs. Also coupled with this - why do my transports disappear when I'm not in them? Chimeras, especially, are powerful IFVs - not just faster movement for the squad - and need to be implemented as independent units.
• Is morale implemented anywhere? Why don't units flee? What effect does a command squad have on this?
• Why don't Tactical Squads have special and heavy weapons?
• Why are Blood Angel vehicles so slow? (Should be Faster than guard tanks)

General Comment
Unless I've missed a lot of features, I can't help but think that this game is basically Open General with a different icon set. If you're trying to appeal to PG2 fans who like 40k then fine, but I can't see this game being that attractive to 40k players who want a game loosely representative of the tabletop game.

[Rudankort]

Thanks for feedback, it is very useful to hear opinion of hardcore W40k players. Keep it coming!

A few quick comments.

Is the enemy supposed to simply sit there and do nothing in this mission? Why do we get a popup *after* turn 1 instead of before?

Since it's the first tutorial, yes, it is supposed to be easy, with no enemy activity.

Mission 4
Pretty sure the game bugged here. After deploying, the game proceeded to play all 9 turns without letting me perform any actions. As it happened, I won the mission, but it didn't seem correct that I couldn't manoeuvre.

Please install a hotfix from this thread: viewtopic.php?f=321&t=53652
This should resolve this issue.

The tutorial isn't a tutorial! Where is the detailed help required to actually learn the game? Mission 3 would have been impossible if I hadn't randomly discovered that I could buy Leman Russ tanks

Tutorial messages will be added.

This feels nothing like 40k! Lasguns can't penetrate Leman Russ armour yet they do in this game; mortars can't destroy tanks yet they seemed better at it than battle cannons; 40k is very much about using the correct weapon for the correct job and moving units correctly to achieve a goal but the game feels like you can win simply by spamming heavy bolters.

We'll check these issues. If you see more things like this, unnatural to a tabletop player, let us know!

Why don't Tactical Squads have special and heavy weapons?

Our general approach in this game is, there is just one unit per hex, and this unit uses soldiers/vehicles of just one type. This is done to streamline the gameplay and make it easier for people to understand which units where, without digging into additional UI panels, popups or submenus.

Unless I've missed a lot of features, I can't help but think that this game is basically Open General with a different icon set. If you're trying to appeal to PG2 fans who like 40k then fine, but I can't see this game being that attractive to 40k players who want a game loosely representative of the tabletop game.

This game is of course different from tabletop for a number of reasons.
- GW do not really want a W40k game which would resemble tabletop, because their core business is still selling the miniatures. We would not be able to do such a game even if we wanted to.
- Scale of the game is very different, we are on the epic scale here or maybe even higher, showing a planetary conflict.
- We wanted to make an easy to grasp yet deep game, and for this reason a lot of aspacts have been streamlined (see above).

However, I don't think your comparision to PG2 is valid (or we would have to conclude that all hex-based wargames are the same). Gameplay mechanics are completely different and were designed specifically to resemble W40k much more. Here are just a few core concepts which did not exist in PG2 but exist here:
- most units have ranged attacks
- cover
- line of sight
- accuracy
- rate of fire
- several weapons per unit
- morale
- assaults
- units with multiple hit points, stacks of widely different size

[Galdred]

I am a long time Epic Player(I played mostly Space Marines, the second edition of Epic in the early nineties). Epic scale is much closer from Armageddon.
1 platoon per unit makes perfect sense there (I'd say the Warhammer 40K scale is the non sensicale scale : What are super heavy tanks and artillery doing deployed150m away from the opponent?).

Having all the units in squad use the same weapons was already the case in epic (well, not really, but units have an aggregated value), and in Final Liberation. Having a weapon count for each weapon, ala Steel Panthers, would make it easier to fine tune weapon balance indeed, but it is a perfectly reasonnable abstraction(even though I would favor the simulationnist approach).

This feels nothing like 40k! Lasguns can't penetrate Leman Russ armour yet they do in this game; mortars can't destroy tanks yet they seemed better at it than battle cannons; 40k is very much about using the correct weapon for the correct job and moving units correctly to achieve a goal but the game feels like you can win simply by spamming heavy bolters.

We'll check these issues. If you see more things like this, unnatural to a tabletop player, let us know!

But as heavy weapons are not represented, basic weapons also represent a few heavy weapons in each platoon and thus should be able to penetrate armor(it was already the same in Final Liberation and Epic40K).
In Epic Armageddon, the only ranged attack(45cm) of an infantry platoon was the heavy weapons. The small arms were abstracted into close assault and firefight(0<range <=15cm) value

I agree about the differences that make the game stand out from Panzer Corp and its ancestors, but some mechanisms ported from Panzer Corps are a bit weird at this stage :
- unconditional reaction fire (the standard convention at this scale is to have overwatch that costs one action). Free retaliation at the grand tactical scale is weird (as it increases the rate of fire of the target).
- reinforcements : They are costly indeed, but reinforcing units in a tactical engagement makes less sense than at the operational scale.
-transports : I think they should add their attacks to the squad whether they carry the units or not. The simplest would be to have separate units and transports.

[thepuffin]

Thanks for the clarification about the similarities to Epic (which I've never played) versus pure 40k. I do understand the complexities of how to model units on this scale but I wonder why we assume anti-tank capabilities in an (apparently) all-lasgun platoon yet the transports for that squad are not similarly included as a buff to the unit's profile (note - does this mean that Chimera are overcosted as their weapons will be rarely used?).

Furthermore, one of the most powerful aspects of space marine Tactical Squads is the ability to specialise by taking the appropriate special and heavy weapons. If you build anti-tank into them you are either: a) ignoring the power of melta weapons vs tanks; b) ignoring the improved range of lascannons; or c) buffing plasma guns/cannons to have greater AP than expected. Speaking of plasma - is there any implementation of Gets Hot! in the game?

I just think that the tactical options afforded to the player by a flexible multi-weapon loadout would be more interesting than the current situation where bog-standard infantry are assumed to carry all types of weapons at once.

Perhaps I have misinterpreted the scale and one unit is actually company size rather than squad/platoon? (If so, it would be great to have some sort of readme file or in-game help explaining the differences between tabletop 40k and the rules of this game).

As an aside, have I missed the inclusion of characters attached to squads, any form of psychic powers or flee/rally mechanics?

[Galdred]

units don't flee, but they get a malus to defence/ reaction fire / attack when their morale drop(the unit strength turns yellow then red).
I agree about the transports not being well represented at all in the game, as they are not able to support the carried unit, which can be a big problem for the stronger ones (and the Land Raider ends up not being able to transport units at all).

Concerning infantry weapons, there was a similar discussion in the epic French league (should devastator Space Marines have several profiles, one for each weapon loadout), but it was decided that this level of micromanagement would be excessive at the epic scale.

[thepuffin]

units don't flee, but they get a malus to defence/ reaction fire / attack when their morale drop(the unit strength turns yellow then red).

Shame, morale is such a large part of the tabletop game. I would love to have to make decisions like "Order your Commissars to shoot their own men to make them fearless". The tradeoff between reduced combat power long term versus high risk of running away in the short term makes for interesting decisions.

[vadersson]

Hey gang,

I too play Warhammer 40K (but not well apparently.) I just really started with 7th, so I am the newbie. I too have noticed the lack of correlation between these games. I was just fighting a Grot Tank and my Leman Russes were pretty useless. My Slamander and Griffons were actually better. I really think there needs to be a re-evaluation of guns in this game. Anyone with more table top want to comment?

The way I see it here are the best AP guns;
Battlecannon (S8 AP3)
Lascannon (S9 AP2)
Melta anything

Lower level AP weapons would be anything plasma (generally S7 and AP 2) Autocannons after that at S7 AP4

Do they guys at Slitherine know how weapons work in 40K?

Thanks,
Duncan

P.S. Another thing to consider this that the Guard generally has a 1/6 better chance to hit than orks. The Space Marines are 1/6 better than that. So if you set the guard units at 100% then the Orks should be a base of around 85% and Space Marines a base of 117%. Of course, my opinion is to make the Guard a flat 50%, Orks 33%, and Space Marines 66% with no range penalties.