Robotech mini rules for Rifts?

[slade the sniper]

Is anyone using those rules for Rifts? Just asking...

If not, what rules for mini Rifts is anyone using?

-STS

[jaymz]

The rrt rules can work very well for tech based units for sure....the fall down is psionics/magic and how to cost/incorporate them.

All depends on what you're going for.

Squad level, platoon level, company level?

I'll gladly give suggestions on what I'd use hut in most cases it'll need moderate to heavy conversion work to be done

[slade the sniper]

Go with a "narrative" game and not worry about unit costs?
Psionics and Magic get incorporated into the shooting phase just like in the RPG?

Individual units moving and firing is easy enough. When you get into squads of powered armor, platoons of armor, etc. the game gets really hard to manage on a board that is manageable. Going with a 48 x 48 inch board and 1 inch equates to 100 meters (yes, I mix Imperial and metric, b/c 'Murica), you are looking at 4800 meters by 4800 meters which I find just about perfect.

The only issue I am finding is a stuck point between close combat/melee and long range. I think I am going to have a 0 range (when one unit is literally stacked on top of another unit) and then close range, which will cover some distance X up to 100 meters. Finding the X is where I am at right now. Oh, yeah going with minis representing entire units is also a bit of a stuck point since "what you see is what you get" is a thing. Representing a squad of dudes and dudettes that are not exactly the same gets...weird.

5 Glitterboys are easy...two glitter boys, two juicers and a mind melter is hard. I have tried to just use individuals vs a squad...and that is bad. The enemy squad just focus fires the target (as they should).

Anyway, just random thoughts as I work on my..."project?"

-STS

[jaymz]

when I say incorporate I mean that quite literally.

Most spells will have a range of less than 1 if you go 1" equal 100m.

As for melee, make it simple, base to base contact.

Narrative is fine if you are only using to enhance the rpg battle but will not work for anything more. Also keep in mind the RRT rules were specifically made to be a wargame and as such are quite problematic for RPG narrative play since the damage and armour are all streamlined to smaller numbers for speed of play.

Have you looked at the in built rules I think MADMANMIKE included with his paper minis he made for fantasy and rifts? It might be better for what you are looking for as i assume you are planning to use the MDC and damage numbers as published as opposed to streamlined down ala RRT?

Really it sounds like you just need a grid movement system to track everything that'll let you keep things tactically clean?

I can probably work something up in that regard that would save you some work....and likely make it easier to "convert" spells and such into it as well.

Edit - also keep in mind RRT is 6mm/1:285 scale and the numbers eschew that scale. What scale were you looking to do this at because that truly has an effect on rules and such.

[slade the sniper]

Most magic and psionics are primarily short range tools, and unless you are running short range (under 100 meters) engagements, they are just not really a huge issue for damage. IMO, magic and psionics are replacements for equipment and small weapons. Large weapons like GPMGs, artillery, AT weapons, etc are much more rare in the magic/psionic world. Sure, they exist, but it isn't like everyone has a lot of them. A magic user is still a tough enemy, but they start to lose their impact as the scale increases. Sort of like Psi/magic doesn't scale all that well? Tech seems to scale a lot better...one guy needs a lot of tech, which is a lot of weight to come close to equaling one mage or psionic. 10 psionic and magic characters don't seem to be as big a threat as 10 tech based guys? This is just an opinion with no information backing it up.

MADMANMIKE? Any relation to the evilmike on the old, old, old rpg.net?

Anyway, I have not seen anything of the sort. *hint, hint for link*

As for what I am doing, it is going to be scale agnostic, so it works for everything, as long as both players agree to the scale. Everything else flows from that, range, time, size of counter/mini, etc.

Anything up to 1:300-ish is doable with minis (micro-armor). Once you get larger than 1" = 25' (or roughly 1:300) counters are appropriate as opposed to minis. 1" to 100 meters is waaaaay past the mini scale (1" is equal to 100m, or 328 feet) at 1:3936 scale (or 1:4000 for ease of use). That is crazy huge, but if I want to use weapons bigger than small arms (such as MGs, missiles, etc.) which become common at platoon size and above, I have to use something with a large scale.

The 1:4000 scale is what accommodates SRMs (3+ mile range) and any sort of artillery such as tiny 60mm mortars. SRMs are dangling off everything bigger than body armor. Most vehicular weapons are 1200m or larger... Additionally, the speeds of many of the vehicles and powered armors are very fast and they are quite mobile.

Plus the point of the pro-ject (in the Canadian pro-nunciation) is for the PCs to be commanders of said troops...so that they can take bigger part of the battles described in Vampire Kingdoms, or Mercenaries.

-STS

[jaymz]

Looking to use "realistic" ranges is....problematic.

RRT doesn't do that.

Being scale agnostic could be problematic too. At 28mm scale ranges are drastically farther than 15mm or 6mm scale. Each scale really would need differences in how to run it.

Personally if "unit cost" is irrelevant then 15mm scale might be best and a good set of rules that van be tweaked would be flames of war/team yankee (company level battles). Would take some work converting stats but nothing too major really.

[slade the sniper]

Sadly, if I was OK with short ranges, I would just convert everything to Battletech. The game system is very well tested, and can handle almost everything, quite quickly. A little bit of house-ruling (which I did years ago) and it is good to go.

Plus, I am not looking for a 1:1 game. I don't want every single glitterboy or SAMAS represented on the field. Think more Risk/Axis and Allies (the board game) and less Warhammer 40K.

-STS

[jaymz]

Thus 15mm scale.

Operates in infantry platoons of varying size. (Teams look to be 4 troops to a base)
Power armour and bots would operate like tank platoons or helicopter flights (2 to 4 per unit)
Strike craft have rules as well...

The rules work fast. If you've seen the buildings I've been working on thats 15mm scale.

Team Yankee I usually run a mechanized company:

3 platoons of apcs and their infantry
1 tank platoons
2 scout sections
And various air and ground support units.

Picture it as this

12 mkX apcs with a full company of deadboys
4 abolishers
4 spider skull scout walkers
4 Samas
4 skycycles
4 mk ix missile apcs

[jaymz]

There was a nass combat system in the rifter you might want to adapt if you want more risk like....

[slade the sniper]

There was a nass combat system in the rifter you might want to adapt if you want more risk like....

Yeah, I saw that, but in true Palladium fashion it was over-complicated and not quite what I was looking for.

So, you are using Team Yankee rules? Hmm. Why didn't I figure that out before???

Anyway, here is a good article discussing what I think we are talking about: Game Scale/Ground Scale
http://miniordnancerev.blogspot.com/2017/07/team-yankee-and-flames-of-war-game.html

Team Yankee and Flames of War: Game Scale vs. Ground Scale Redux
One of the frequent criticisms of the Flames of War and Team Yankee systems is that often - especially when players are using armies that have multiple armored vehicles - the table begins to look like a "tank parking lot" with numerous vehicles very close together. The main problem is that people tend to assume that the ground scale in Team Yankee and Flames of War is the same as the miniature scale, which it isn't - ground scale is compressed and in some cases sliding which creates the impression that tanks are running fender to fender, when in reality based on the table scale, they wouldn't be.

So how compressed is the TY and FoW ground scale? In short, a LOT. Just taking a couple of examples (and I'll use metric for ease of conversion):

The Soviet 125mm gun used on the T-72 has an in game range of 80cm. Multiplying that by miniature scale (~1/100), you get a "real world" range of 80m for the T-72 gun - or less than the length of a football field (which ever type of football you prefer!). In reality, the effective range for the Soviet gun is between 800m (nighttime) and 1000m (daytime), which means the ground scale is compressed by at least a factor of 10 to 12.

Similarly, battle rifles like the AK-47 and AK-74 have a range of 20cm, which translates in the real world to 20m. In reality, the effective range of these weapons is between 200-300m - again representing a compression factor of at least 10, maybe as high as 15.


Correcting the miniature size based on true ground scale
So based on the ground scale, the corresponding miniature scale would be 1/1000 to 1/1200 or so. That means that even the popular 6mm (1/285) scale micro armor is 3X to 4X too "big" for the current ground scale. There are companies that make 3mm (1/600) and even 2mm (1/914) ranges to give you a rough idea how small we're taking about here.


Not so close as the table would lead us to believe!

So assuming we have two AFVs that are 3m by 6m (roughly the size of the hull of a T-72 or other modern main battle tank) and they are sitting 2mm apart, what does that represent if we actually remove the compression and go to a true ground scale? First the miniatures themselves have to be "shrunk" to the right scale using the center of mass as a reference point. Once that is done it is fairly easy to check the distances, and what you end up with is two 15mm miniatures 2mm apart corrected for range compression actually represent two vehicles nearly 30 METERS apart on the battlefield!!!

And that sort of gets to the crux of the issue. Team Yankee and Flames of War both make certain compromises to provide an enjoyable game that makes a reasonable representation of late and early 20th Century combat respectively. Neither game is a hard core simulation. One compromise is the miniature size - 15mm is a good size to get good detail while retaining ease of painting. Smaller scales have less (and in some cases a LOT less) detail and are exponentially harder to paint to a high standard. The standard 4' x 6' (yeah, I went back to Imperial units, deal with it) would need to be 40' by 60' to achieve the right "look" on a company scale game with 15mm miniatures - which is impractical at best.

Ultimately the player needs to decide whether these compromises are acceptable. It is also helpful to keep in mind what the compressed ground scale really means - even when tanks are "fender to fender" on the tabletop, they're effectively representing tanks at least 20m apart because of the compression. Granted, this causes some strangeness locally when dealing with buildings and line of sight, but that is yet another compromise of the system players must judge on their own.

-STS

[jaymz]

Which goes to my point of if you want to use realistic ranges it'll be problematic and most miniature based rules do not do that (you mentioned battletech too which is another obvious example)