Re: [GZG] [OFFICIAL] Question: was Re: [SG3]: What if?

(drops out of lurk mode again)

-----Original Message-----
>From: Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com>

>Setting aside all the myriad different opinions about what future 
>warfare may REALLY be like, what do folks WANT from the game?
>We sell infantry (from militia to Heavy Power Armour) and tanks (from 
>tracked to Hi-Tech Grav). What we're writing is a game that allows 
>people to play with the toys they buy from us. So, it is a given that 
>the game will be about infantry and tanks, of varying tech levels. If 
>that means it is more about Science FICTION than about projections of 
>probable military technology, so be it.

At some point, I like games that are easily customized to whatever
setting so that I can let my own imagination start something out in
terms of scenarios and then a game will help me easily play it out
without needing to twist the rules around like a balloon animal.  From
an infantry fighting game, I could see myself wanting to simulate almost
any imaginable setting...

1.  Bug swarms, whether of the Starship Troopers novel variety, the
movie variant, or the xenomorphs of Aliens.
2.  Truly alien critters with morale rules that might be rather
different than a human's in general.
3.  Yeah, "body waves" of low tech should be a halfway playable
possibility, e.g. World War II through modern troops.
4.  "Modern-plus" where you might have a few more high tech weapons or
just much fancier communications and range finding and artillery
options.  (Kind of what SG2 had)
5.  Something up into Halo territory where an elite soldier might have
personal forcefields and/or light-bending active camoflage.
6.  Actual powered armor, with or without the forcefields and stealth.

I realize that this is a vast amount of variety for a game to be able to
try to simulate well, but ultimately I like to be able to just throw
whatever comes to mind out there and not have the rules getting in the
way of me doing it.  The creative process of dreaming stuff up and
thinking of how the critters would fight is at least as much fun to me
as actually gaming the stuff out, and if the rules allow me to do that,
great.	It was one area where Full Thrust was really a draw for me, but
where Dirtside was kind of semi-okay (artillery seemed way too powerful,
although my little girl enjoyed seeing us make cityscapes out of her toy
blocks back in the day), and I never really got interested in Stargrunt.
 It could be that the scale of it might have been too small for me on
Stargrunt, but scalability would be a good thing too so that I could
play any size battle I felt like.  Ultimately, while Full Thrust just
kind of let us do anything we wanted, Dirtside and Stargrunt seemed to
dictate the tech level and what worked and didn't work to us (e.g. the
hyper-expensive Walkers that were only middlingly more effective than
regular tanks and certainly weren't all that cost-effective).

My much-more-than-two-cents.  Maybe I'm kind of out there, but the
realism isn't so big to me as the ability to simulate most any kind of
random idea I might dream up and not feel like the rules are telling me
it can't be done.

EF

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