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With the loss of the license of Robotech, palladium still technically owns the rules for the game, just not the rights to the armies and models used in the game, but with further playtesting and refinement of the rules Palladium can produce a table top war game with miniatures they wont loose rights to. That game could be a Rifts Role Playing Game Tactics. On thier store they sell a veriety miniatures for Rifts, and with some repackaging they could sell a miniature wargame for the Rifts IP. Heck they can even keep the same abreviation, as a nod to old wargame. The starter set could be made up of two forces of mercenaries vs coaltion.
For the Coalition they already produce
Dogboys, Skelebots, Coalition Grunts, Skycycles, Samas, Coalition Psistalkers, Coalition Officer

For the Mercenaries
Cyborgs, Juicers, Crazies, Glitterboys, Cyberknight, cityrats, Wilderness Scouts, Rogue Scholars, Scientists, men of magic

There could even be a Federation of Magic Force
Mystic Knight, Lord Magus, High Magus, Men of Magic, and some of the mercenaries could fill out the ranks.

There are even some miniatures for Raiders of Atlantis, Simvan, Brodkil, Witchlings, and others.

We have the foundation of the rules, and the initial models to make up the first wave, now it just needs stats, and a box for a starter set.

What do you guys think?

Thought of this myself.

I think a Splicers or Systems Failure variation would be pretty cool to see.

Customizing units on the splicer side would be where most of the crafting time would be spent as most machine forces are cut and paste. Numbers could make that even for the machines though.

Systems Failure could play the same way, but on a more tactical level of game play than strategic that could be done with Splicers.

The obvious choice though would be the Mechanoids.

Otherwise, yeah, going into the Rifts direction would be good, but with the problems of the KS, it would have issues of people funding it. Palladium would have do that in-house, and right now Palladium's got things to work out before going in any direction but providing what products they got now.

The RTT rules are okay, at best. There is no reason to shoehorn a Rifts minis game into those rules. It would be far better for a Rifts or Splicers or Mechanoids minis game to have rules specific to those settings, forces and concepts.

And then public playtest the heck out of those rules. RTT clearly showed a lack of strenuous testing which was a terrible shame.

Personally I do not think that palladium will ever make another attempt on the miniature tabletop gaming scene again, they have had their fingers burnt tooo badly.

They need to have a completely different design outlook when it comes to table top rules which in themselves have to be very restrictibeve on what is potentially a very wide rpg universe. THis in itseldf may put off the rpg fams whpo are likely to be the best customer base. The chances of wider success are very slim, given the crowded scene with a lot of what are very polished games out there.

The final naill is money, a tabletop game without miniatures and eye candy is dead in the water to start with and Palladium cannot afford another foray into that gaem. They ghave burnt their bridges with regard to kickstarter nd other crowdfunding arenas so that in itself kills the game before it even gets to the start line

honestly i wouldn't mind. but i'd make the following suggestions.

adjust the rules so that the focus is more on skirmish games with 'heroes' (which you can adapt from your RPG chars or build yourself using a system in the mini's rules), and small squads of mooks. limit the number of models you need to play, and allow people to create more personalized forces.

instead of creating a miniatures line, just adjust the rules so that you can use the existing rifts miniatures they already sell (in 25-28mm), and just put out the rulebook to start. this play's to Palladium's strengths as a book company. it also means that players who don't have any of the existing rifts mini's, but which do have stuff from the many 25mm to 32mm miniatures lines out there (gamesworkshop, malifaux, Infinity, etc.) you can still play using their existinf figures as proxy's. honestly the setting of rifts lends itself well to mixing figures from many different manufacturers to represent the wide variety of mercenaries and adventurers and DBee's and small factions running around.

once you have the game out and a fandom building, then you approach someone like Reaper Miniatures or Iron Wind Metals or some other company that doesn't have its own rules line, to create a line of new Rifts miniatures. (since the existing ones are kinda meh quality wise.. they were good for the time but are a bit dated in sculpt and quality)

To me, Cost is a factor. I don't want to spend more than 50 bucks on a board game. Make the game with Paper Mini's, then add on the plastic, pewter, or whatever mini's.

To echo gb somewhat.....take a hard look at FFG's star wars imperial assault. It has a tactical skirmish option (6-15 minis in a force) and a campaign option where players play one character/hero and a gm runs them thru scenarios. THAT would be the kind of game they should do for Rifts or anything else. IE what carmen was attempting but was very much underdeveloped for in regards to the price point asked.

Just put out a rule book, paper maps, and use madmanmike's paper minis to start (because present actual minis available are limited in stock). Bam you have a small tactical tabletop minis game with an adventuring option.

yup. far less expensive to develop a board game without actual miniatures, and the lower price point resulting from it can mean that you can more easily persuade people to give it a try. it also means that you can sell it in PDF potentially, which lowers the initial investment and price point even further (although i'd be lying if i said i didn't have a preference for more sturdy boards and actual minis, at this point "not expensive to develop" is probably a critically important part of any pitch to palladium... i can't imagine after their recent troubles that they've got a lot of money to throw at anything. and also, i'm hesitant to spend 100 bucks or more on something i haven't heard anything about, while 20-30 for something that sounds interesting sounds much more reasonable)

jaymz wrote:To echo gb somewhat.....take a hard look at FFG's star wars imperial assault. It has a tactical skirmish option (6-15 minis in a force) and a campaign option where players play one character/hero and a gm runs them thru scenarios. THAT would be the kind of game they should do for Rifts or anything else. IE what carmen was attempting but was very much underdeveloped for in regards to the price point asked.

Just put out a rule book, paper maps, and use madmanmike's paper minis to start (because present actual minis available are limited in stock). Bam you have a small tactical tabletop minis game with an adventuring option.

to separate the two games (and not step on Carmen's toes), keep the RTT rules based game 3D terrain rather than the square mapgrids Carmen's was going to use, and put an emphasis on somewhat larger scale combat (but not too big.) since Carmen's game would have mini's in the same rough scale, the two would then be complementary products, rather than competition.
(sorta like how FFG's Imperial Assault and their new SW Legion game are.. the two play differently, with IA being skirmish using mapsheets and faster playing, but Legion lending itself better to big battles on 3D terrain. the scales are close enough that there are people using IA figures in their Legion games to represent units that haven't gotten proper models released yet.)

That's assuming there will still BE a game put put by Carmen

jaymz wrote:That's assuming there will still BE a game put put by Carmen

true enough. i'm hoping he'll still want to do it. but if not, well, the computer models are made. PB could probably obtain permission to use them for an RTT type game, and i know Carmen had done some looking into getting his mini's produced, which hopefully could allow the one-piece figures to be made in the US by PB.

Indeed. I know I'm trying to figure out the point costing formula in IA to do rifts and I've figured out how to do techvstuff in alpha strike just getting hung up on how to incorporate psionics and magic.

They need to come out with a Palladium Megaversal Tactics and when it gets popular a Palladium Megversal Strategy that deals with ships and giant monsters.