Re: [DSII] Heresey

On Thu, 4 Apr 2002 09:57:51 -0800 (PST), John Atkinson
<johnmatkinson@yahoo.com> wrote :
> > There are a number of minor differences that are
> > possible -- ablative or reactive armor, APFCs, and
> > so on -- but nothing that's likely to have much game
> 
> > effect.
> 
> If Reactive Armor doesn't have a game effect, your
> opponent isn't using enough GMS/Hs.

Actually, this is unquestionably the case -- and since I've been
designing both sides of the majority of games that I've played in the
past, I know exactly 
who to blame, too.  I decided early on that GMS sytems "weren't worth
it" because somehow I had the impression that they were one-shot
weapons.  
Since I've picked the game up again in the past few months, and actually
*RTFM*, I know better.	Multiple GMS/H systems are just plain nasty, to
the 
point that I feel guilty for designing a vehicle with as many launchers
as the mini seems to have.

> > Solution?  Beats me.  I'd like to see something like
> > the FT building system, or even (bear with me for a
> > moment here) classic Car Wars.  Given $15,000 
> > to spend, you could end up with a ton of different
> > vehicles, all of them of similar combat potential. 
> > Maybe I need more experience with the system, but it
>  
> > seems to me that DSII can't do the same right now.
> 
> First, you're focusing on the wrong thing.  The joy of
> DSII's design system isn't designing individual
> vehicles, it's on designing force packages--complete
> combined arms assortments that go and do missions.  

This seems to be a consensus; I need to shift the way that I'm looking
at the game.  I spend too much time staring at the individual tanks
while I'm 
painting them, I suppose.  Gives me an inflated idea of their individual
importance.

("You can't blow up that tank!	I spent an hour painting that thing! 
It's too PRETTY to die!")

-- 
John Crimmins
johncrim@voicenet.com