I'll have to check my books, but, last question first:

The MALP is very, very slow. I'd call it PI, give it slow movement and half-decent armour (0 or -1) and give it a Hero point. That lets you field it alone and independent. If you like, you can make it a Matrix morale figure with a Hero point. That will make it expensive but virtually immune to morale, befitting a remote controlled drone.

There are no completely stationary units in Defiance by default, because it messes with the stats that the units are built on. I can't clearly remember the Jaffar heavy cannon, but here's your options off the top of my head:

1. Crew Served Weapon. IIRC this means it can be moved, but only by a team of infantry. Crew Served Weapons use the Vehicle weapon max points for your army list, so they can take much bigger guns than infantry.

2. Eyeball it. Take the slowest vehicle frame, calculate it out, and then give yourself another 20% discount for being immobile.

If you're making an army list to go up against just any old army list, you will need one or two decent Indirect Fire weapons. Alternatively you can house-rule IF out completely. In games I played where one side took little or no IF for flavour reasons, they got dominated.

This might balance out in SG versus Goa'uld because Earth forces would likely have mortars and grenade launchers, whereas the Goa'uld would have a monopoly on close air support. Actually, thinking about it, this would be a very interesting match-up! It might tend towards "win big or lose in a slaughter" games, with the Goa'uld needing to take down mortar teams and the SG forces needing to take down the Gliders, or respectively get absolutely slaughtered.  :twisted:

I haven't really gone through CQB as I haven't had gaming time, but I expect they apply to regular Defiance and CQB as well.

I expect they are using 1 mould for one sprue, and they'd be casting like-with-like, so that one cast = one package (blister, sprue, whatever). So, the $30,000 figure was for 30 models, admittedly all low-complexity so you'd get several per mould. Looking at the KS layout and guessing it's optimised, roughly 5-6 heroic figures per mould. However several of the starting Bones figures were more economical than that, the 3 rats are one sprue and I think 4 kobolds are one sprue, 4 goblins too. So that's 11 different models off 3 sprues.

If we assume $30,000 makes 30/6 sprues, that's $6,000 per sprue for the low-but-not-lowest complexity stuff. Figures from other sources have put sprues anywhere from $10,000 to $17,000 but of course those things are likely getting cheaper every year, and Reaper already has a factory/ies and casting machine/s and probably is getting a pretty good deal from well-established business relationships.

I have now cribbed Ares "Up close and Personal" and will incorporate those rules, using numbered tokens rather than cards.

The Ares Yahoogroup has proved a source of extra special abilities and weapon stats.

Having read through the Swords and Wizardry .PDF I'm not sure whether there's much to be said for attempting to migrate the game to ODnD or ADnD style rules; Ares is easily competitive with ODnD. Ares magic is better and the combat cleaner, and wounds versus hitpoints isn't much of an issue. The one thing Ares doesn't do is levelling. I'm ignoring the fact it doesn't do attributes per se, since plenty of RPG systems don't, or disconnect them from skills in some way.

Most kinds of attacks can be resolved with Ares as-is; physical and magical attacks are all covered. That leaves psychic and morale effects (covered by Morale and applicable abilities) and disease/ poison resistance, assuming I want to go into that kind of detail.

Well, my dear daughter directed two rather powerful warrior-women into a small dungeon we made up from the D&D Dungeon tile set. We played I-go-U-go, and without any form of looting or XP system yet. It was a simple series of rooms leading to an ancient crypt: known denizens of the region were a bunch of giant rats, some zombies, and a giant spider. Morale was ignored.

The first three giant rats were dispatched without incident, but two rooms in the sheer number of the hideous things nibbled heroine 2 into unconsciousness. Heroine 1 slaughtered the remaining rats and dragged her unconscious friend to safety, having failed to find any healing potions (6 on a D6, once per room or hallway) and inadvertently rousing a Skeleton (1 on a D6 while looking for potions), which she easily dispatched.

Thoughts:

Power and Dice: I don't have any D4, D8 or D12, which is a problem. This game ran on "heroes get D10, monsters get D6" but there's not much room there for advancement. I'd prefer monsters and mages on D4, heroes on D6, with D8, D10 and D12 for enormous monsters, magical weapons, etc. That would be Heroic, Mightily Heroic, Legendary and Godlike power levels, 4 grades... a bit like Fudge.

Morale: I think roomfuls of living monsters should maybe take morale checks like a squad, or something. Maybe. If I care enough. Which I don't.

XP and treasure: this is a tricky one. It would be nice to hand out Gold and let the player spend it on a variety of gear... but that's work, which is time, which I don't have. For one-off games it's no problem, and it's not really  a game-breaker at this point, but Dungeon Crawls are meant to have Loot. It's... it's just not right without loot.

I'll be into them tonight but unlikely to get anything polished up for over a month due to work.  :cry:

HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS HAD HAPPENED AAAAAAAAAAARGH

If you get this finished you'll be the first. But most other attempts have been spreadsheets.