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mj12games.com/forum → Posts by Justin Crough
Justin Crough wrote:It's meaningless window dressing that may actually serve to cheapen the site overall, by causing competition over who makes more posts, which may serve to dilute the actual relevance of a topic.
Yeah, but it's meaningless window dressing with pretty badges!
Touché
Does anyone really care what rank gets awarded them by an internet forum?
As far as I know, it incurs no additional responsibility, nor any privilege. It's meaningless window dressing that may actually serve to cheapen the site overall, by causing competition over who makes more posts, which may serve to dilute the actual relevance of a topic.
Justin Crough wrote:I got the gift of seeing the joy on my two little girls' faces when they woke me up to tell me Santa did indeed come.
Were there fears in the Crough household that Mr. Kringle might not appear?
There's always a little trepidation.
Y'know, that whole checking twice of the list...naughty and nice stuff. My girls are good girls, but they are sisters and they aren't always little angels to each other. 
Merry Christmas!
Busy meeting with the tangled branches of four family trees, and trying to please everyone here.
I got the gift of seeing the joy on my two little girls' faces when they woke me up to tell me Santa did indeed come.
Hope everyone else had just as good a holiday.
JP
I love animals. (but not in a perverted way.)
Cats, dogs, guinea pigs, hamsters... Gawd I'm a big softie!
Makes it so hard to teach troops how to butcher bunny rabbits in the field as part of winter warfare survival training. Crushing the back of their little fluffy heads with a sharp blow. 
And once again the great question (Where the f**k is it?) goes unanswered, leaving behind only more questions:-
Does it exist?
Did it ever exist?
What are they trying to hide, by hiding it?
All kidding aside, (and Demian or Josh can jump in here to correct me if I've gotten any facts wrong.) I believe that Josh was working on the layout work. This task was started some time ago. Then suddenly real life reared its ugly head and he began apprenticeship in a new career (based on electrical and mechanical...thingies.)
As a result of his very high workload, plus other life issues such as moving...settling into a new house etc he hasn't been able to upkeep his obligation to the project. (I know he's still chipping away at it, because I visited his place a few weeks ago and saw the progress.)
Like his previous Defiance work, its top notch. The problem is, at this rate we may never see it.
This is also holding up Assault Corps as well. You see, he is obligated to finish the Defiance supplement, and then next on his slate was AC. So the longer CQB takes, the longer it will take before he can even START the layout for AC.
But it is getting to the point where I am going to be looking for other options, as awesome as Josh's abilities are in this department.
SOMEONE knows...
Soulmage wrote:The other rule set I looked at just had you remove ships as soon as they failed a check. I think it would be preferable to give the opponent a chance to finish off a ship and/or the possibility that the ship might "regroup."
What about awarding extra victory points when a ship that fails a morale test survives.
Something like 1 victory point per hull point left when the game ends. This allows the commander to risk the ship if he feels it necessary for overall victory, while simulating the desire to not fight the ship to destruction if at all possible.
It also alleviates the need to dictate where the commander must move and what he should do as a result of a bad die roll. ie 'have to move directly away from the enemy and try to make it off a table edge.'
To prevent captains from desiring their ships to fail morale tests, you could add the caveat that any enemy ships destroyed by a ship with failed morale only counts for half victory points.
Or every hit on a ship with failed morale gives the opponent a victory point.
underling wrote:I'd love to have a superhero type skirmish system, which would be small in scale with respect to the number of models in the table.
But I sure as hell wouldn't start with the Starmada engineBut the Defiance engine, on the other hand...
Actually, I'm pretty sure Defiance *has* the basis for a superhero/ super powered genre already in the system.
Howdy all,
Looking for opinions and advice. I'm familiar with MJ12's work from Starmada and I like that system a lot.
I'm looking into a good 28mm game for SF battles. The bulk of what I'm working with so far is Star Wars and this project started when I decided I liked WotC's Star Wars minis but wanted something more from the rules.
Hey guys...don't mind me, I'm just doing a quick drive-by advertisement...
RedShark, if you are looking for 28mm battles, then Defiance can be there for you. As a fellow Star Wars fan, if you ever want to do large-scale battles with vehicles and what not in the Star Wars universe, it might be worth your while to have a look at Assault Corps. Another fine game in development by your friends at MJ12. It will be ready for sale...some day. In the meantime you could join the play tester cadre at http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/assaultcorpswarriors/
There is a playtest package, and a whole whack of pre-generated Star Wars elements from pre-clone wars up to ROTJ. It's hellafun.
Seeya!
squeeling tires
I'm not one of the BIG guys around here when it comes to Starmada. Heck, I still use a bastardized version of the original version.
But I've utilized a different way to handle fighter combat recently and I thought I'd throw it out here for others to debate its relative merits.
It started because I wanted to play out some large space battles having to do with my Star Wars RPG currently running. To faithfully represent some of the Star Wars ships, I need to incorporate a LOT of fighters.
I have squadrons of 12 fighters rather than 6 for example.
To keep track of the number of fighters in a squadron I use stacks of small change. A 12-fighter Squadron is a dime and a couple pennies for instance.
This is all tertiary to the main mechanic though. Each squadron I rate with an accuracy and an agility score.
A v-19 Torrent Squadron is Accuracy 5+ and Agility 2 for example.
When a squadron rolls an attack, they roll 1D6 and try to roll higher than the accuracy rating.
For every die that is successful, you try to roll over the ships shields (if attacking a capital ship) of above the fighter agility (if attacking an enemy fighter squadron.)
In the original Starmada, you'd lose a fighter for every '1' you roll against fighters (and Against ships if the ship had AFB) Instead, I adopted this system:
When two enemy squadrons meet, they are in a dogfight. Whichever side has MORE fighters in the dogfight gets to attack. Every '1' rolled on the attack allows 1 enemy fighter a counter-attack opportunity. If no '1's are rolled then the enemy doesn't get to fight back at all that turn.
A squadron that attempts to leave a dogfight hex is immediately attacked without a chance for retaliation. (even if '1's are rolled.)
During fighter movement, other fighters may join the dogfight hex, to increase their sides number, and allow them to initiate the attack, rather than hope for the enemy to roll '1's.
This makes sense to me because when fighters are outnumbered, they are spending most of the time trying to shake fighters off their tail, and possibly take snap shots when an enemy passed in front of them.
In a dogfight you want to have the numerical advantage, so you tend to group squadrons together, and throw them into the furball. This ties up lots of fighters, in a realistic manner, in several major hot spots without having them stalking all over the map.
You can also intercept incoming fighters, because once you engage an incoming squadron, they are pretty much fixed in place until they clear up your fighters, or they take the hefty penalty for showing your fighters their afterburners.
In the last game I used this in, we had 16 capital ships on both sides ranging from hull 2 to hull 30, and we had 168 fighters on one side (Grand Army of the Republic), and over 500 on the other (Confederate Independent Systems).
When there were really big dogfights, we'd roll an attack die per SQUADRON rather than per fighter, but resolve damage per fighter.
Some of the dogfighting hexes had a fighter counter sitting atop 3 quarters, a pair of dimes, a nickel and a couple pennies (representing 102 fighters) versus a fighter counter atop 3 dimes and 4 pennies (representing 34 fighters)
The 102 fighters, (8.5 squadrons) would roll 8 attack dice. Their accuracy being 5+.
If they rolled a 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, then 3 squadrons would be in a good tailing attack position. We'd roll 12D6 three times against the opposing fighters agility (3) which would filter out roughly half of those hits.
After the destroyed fighters were removed, the opponents were allowed to attack back with 2 surviving squadrons (because two '1's were rolled on the attack.) If no '1's had been rolled, they wouldn't get an attack at all that turn, being entirely defensive.
It worked well for us.
Supplement? Bah! I don't wanna hear about no supplements for SAE until Assault Corps is done. (Not that I won't buy a supplement anyway...)
Ahh, your loyalty warms my cold icy heart of darkness. I must point out however, that Starmada's incarnations have nothing to do with Assault Corps' progress, or startling lack thereof.
Talk to you more about that if you like on that thread.
JP
Next up: IG and Space Marine plastics form the core of another mate's army. I've been telling him for 18 months I'd write them up so I better, since he's a frickin' ninja and may flip out and kill me.
Well, as we all know, in addition to being mammals, the purpose of a Ninja *IS* to flip out and kill people.
Now, I'm having thoughts of an entire race that excels in spycraft. They train the best infiltrators and sell their product to whoever can pay them..... They utilize the best surveilance ships.... and no one crosses them because they have the dirt on everyone. If you mess with one of them, you are messing with the whole race.
Might have to consider this for my own campaign....LOL
John
Those would be the 'Bothans' of Star Wars 'expanded universe'.
Personally it irks me. (not that my opinions should matter at all).
Because the beings who stole the plans for the Death Star II happened to be mentioned to be 'Bothans' in EPisode V, the guys writing the books for the expanded universe automatically assume/creatively elaborate that Bothans are a entire race that specializes in espionage.
blah.
Required information was too high, anonymity too low, networking and groups too restrictive, and the additional information on who, what and when you'd like to screw creeped the bejesus out of me.
With the required info and only a little creativity, you'd be able to mess with my phone account. From there you'd be able to intercept my mail, and from there the sky's the limit. Honestly, I'm not a real crafty guy but if I had the info in your facebook account, all your identity would belong to us.
Edit: the groups functionality is Carp and unmoderated, so if you browse groups there's about 10,000 that start with "aaaaaaaaaaa" to get to the top of the list- including the one that's called "gaping distended vagina" and the one that's called "babies are evil, let's abort them". The interface annoys the hell out of me at almost every turn. The changelog displays virtually every change you make to your profile, so your online activity is not only public, it's broadcast. The Search for Contacts function defaults to inviting everyone in your contacts, which is abysmal treatment of their privacy, yet I'm supposed to trust the privacy ethic of this organisation?
In short, it looked novel to begin with, but the further in I got the less novel and the more sloppy, irritating, invasive and untrustworthy it got. I deleted my account but really can't be sure if the info I gave is being stored and I'd bet my thumbs that even if it's not being stored as is, it's been aggregated. The only way I'd keep an account there is under a pseudonym or persona, and only then because my IP is not fixed and is reasonably difficult to trace past my ISP.
Well, to each his own I suppose. I didn't find the info required to be invasive, and there are many options to keep strangers from seeing any info you don't want them to.
I've never had to actually go search for a group myself.
I heard people talking about it and didn't think it'd be something I'd ever use. Then eventually I got an invitation to sign up in my e-mail. i ignored it for a while. Then someone else sent me one. I eventually signed up.
So i had my one friend for about an hour and i looked at his friends list. There were a few people on their list that i also knew. So i clicked on them and clicked the 'friend request' button. This sends that person a notice that someone wants to be recognized as a friend.
They each accepted the request, and filled out where they new me from (optional). That allowed me to see their friends list (which is optional on their part).
Some of them knew people I knew...and so I clicked their friends request buttons...
Then someone I knew invited me to join a group. It was a group devoted to my extended family. (Invitation only).
So now, i have 84 friends and belong to groups such as:
▪SPSS is my Alma-Mater
▪ St. Peter's Secondary School!!
▪ Remembering Dave Mailhot
▪ Crough Family
▪ Hasty p's
▪ Support Canadian Troops in Afghanistan
All of which I was invited to, none of them I had to search for.
5 of my friends I'd actually rank as 'acquaintances' so I restrict the amount of info they can see on my profile.
Yes there is a constant update. Every time I log on, I get a summary of any changes any of my friends have made to their profile, and I see if anyone has posted any comments on any of the photos or pictures I have posted. This is remarkably effective at keeping up to date with people.
Above all, its a social thing, as opposed to this forum, which is more...business oriented.
In my humble opinion, with the hundreds of thousands of people using facebook, you have less chances of someone trying to do something nefarious with your data as you have of being physically mugged in the real world.
Like how many people have used a credit card online?
JP
Well, I just created, considered, and then deleted a facebook account.
I can't believe I got through registration without some sort of psychosomatic deafness from all the metaphorical alarm bells ringing, jangling, clanging, and eventually just smacking out a lively tempo on my face.
If this turns out to NOT be the world's largest and most elaborate credit card/ identity theft scam, you be sure to let me know.
It's not.
What makes you think it would be?
JP
Well then howzabout an "Unofficial MJ12 Facebook"?
Dang it, ya got me all curious...
Well, if you get on facebook, look me up (Justin Crough, Toronto Network) and I'll add you to my friends list.
Then you can see my 4 photo albums, read about my hobbies, and you can post some pictures you'd like to share, and we can overall just keep in touch. lol.
From there you can link to josh, and he might add you to his friends list...and so on.
JP
Cancel my last.
Hosting a MJ12 group should be in an official capacity should the time be right.
JP
I've taken it upon myself to start the ball rolling. For those who wish to sign up, do a search for MJ12 Games on the group search in the Global network.
(Or send me your e-mail address and I'll invite you directly)
jpcrough@sympatico.ca.
Dan: I used the MJ12 logo on the title page. If I have your permission retroactively then....cool. If you'd prefer it not be there, I can take it down.
JP
Isn't Facebook limited to those with a .edu e-mail account?
Originally it was, but they've since opened it up to everyone.
Up here in my region, its use has absoultely EXPLODED. I can't believe the number of people I've lost touch with that I've found on facebook.
A designated MJ12 'group' would go a long way toward us getting to know each other here as people and friends.
Just think; just 2 clicks to upload a gaming convention photo into the MJ12 facebook album, and we can have an unlimited amount of them. That alone is worth the price of logging in to facebook. (Which is actually free.)
JP
Well my wife is on Facebook, it's more like a forum.... or something... I don't know actually.
From the info page:
About Facebook
Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.
Anyone can join Facebook
All that's needed to join Facebook is a valid email address. To connect with coworkers or classmates, use your school or work email address to register. Once you register, join a regional network to connect with the people in your area.
Discover the people around you
Facebook is made up of many networks, each based around a company, region, or school. Join the networks that reflect your real-life communities to learn more about the people who work, live, or study around you.
Do more
Facebook's Platform enables anyone, anywhere, to build complete applications that you can choose to use. The possibilities are endless. Define your experience on Facebook by choosing applications that are useful and relevant to your world.
Keep it private
At Facebook, we believe that people should have control over how they share their information and who can see it. People can only see the profiles of confirmed friends and the people in their networks. You can use our privacy settings at any time to control who can see what on Facebook.
Log on here:
www.facebook.com
Its an excellent tool for keeping in touch.
(I'm on it, and so is Josh....so how can it be a bad thing?)
JP
Actually I know that too, JP, but I still felt that there was an overall WW2 influence (just an impression as a reader).
Well, as far as the Planetstorm concept goes, you have definitely got a point there. Liberating planet by planet has a definite War-in-the-Pacific feel to it, and Canadians were not big players in that theater.
*clears throat* Besides... Americans, Canadians. What's the difference? < / overloud voice >
I also noted with some glee that the ranks and insignia of the UNE were Commonwealth, right?
Yeppers. I also enjoyed the diplomatic way they handled that in the fluff text too. words to the effect of: 'Because a majority of the planet had been under the British rule at one point or another, that the insignia would be the most commonly recognized version for a new united planetary army.'
And the "Fantasians" name is an indirect reference to cold war Russians, with their organisation kinda sorta mirroring a particular motorized- or was it motorcycle- division*.
Yeah, the term 'Fantasian' was used to denote our adversary in any military training we did during the Cold War... we all knew it was really the Soviet Union, but it wasn't polite to practice going to war against an actual country we weren't actually at war with.
The 'MRR' Motor Rifle Regiment was the standard Soviet combat unit. Motor referring to the fact that the infantry were motorized...meaning the rifle infantry didn't walk to battle.
All in all, that's why I love the UNE so much. It's got enough nods to realism, and personal nostalgia to make it a worthwhile force to have, especially with the Fantasians as a counter-point.
I sometimes long for the days when we were prepared to go toe to toe with the big tough bad guys, rather than drive around looking for the third-world-weakling bad guys, and hope not to get unceremoniously blown up by an IED.
JP
and I figure the UNE are sort of WW2 Americans, who as far as I understand, showed a remarkable ability to regroup and reform ad-hoc units after bungled drops and heavy casualties.
Well, I feel compelled to say it; that the UNE are actually patterned after Korean War/Cold War Era Canadians, (Ref. discussions with the creator and other sources.) but I get your meaning.
JP
OKAY!
UNE army list has been finalised after much agony and several total reworkings. I really think this one captures a decent cross-section of the UNE, with particular reference to high morale troops, plenty of heavy powered armour, and some pretty big guns. In addition, many of the core troops are available from Amazon Miniatures UK.
Now, how do I upload it??
OH! OH! OH!
Send it to me! Send it to me!
I'm a HUGE UNE fan.
JP
mj12games.com/forum → Posts by Justin Crough
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