Topic: Legions of Steel Defiance conversion.

Considering that Defiance is kind of distantly related to Legions of Steel, I'm finding some trouble working throught the Planetstorm Orders of Battle. Anyone else who's thought about these, feel free to chime in.

UNE: These guys have a HUGE variety of weapons. Two standard PI rifles, two carbines, three pistols, three rapid fire PI weapons, three grenade launchers, an IF missile, a single-shot AV missile, a single shot AI missile, a missile launcher with 2 different AOE rounds, a stun AOE round, and an AV round; a vehicle mounted laser; a heavy infantry/vehicle "point defence weapon" (not really a PDS as in USS augmentation, since it doesn't shoot down AOE rounds at all); 4 grenade types (dealt with in the augmentations stage?) and 5 types of infantry, 2 types of vehicle. And a cone weapon that stuns.

Conclusion: some of these must go. I'm thinking of erasing the carbines, the stun missile AOE and the CARP missile AOE, the stun grenade, and the stun cone weapon, making the short range rapid fire "plasma projector" into a cone weapon, possibly removing all the pistols (or maybe leaving just one) and the PDS (to be replaced with a real PDS??).

My reasoning is thus: multiple stun weapons are really the Meraxillan thing and not so useful for an army not bent on HTH combat. The rifles are cheap and simple enough that either the carbines OR the pistols are totally unnecessary and already the rifles fill the long, medium and short range brackets in terms of tactics. Besides the carbines are not obviously different on the models, unlike the two rapid fire weapons. The CARP overlaps the KPulse Missile in terms of useage and is harder to adapt to USS.

And even then there's problems with exceeding the maximum number of frames, especialy when it comes to the combo weapons; although reducing the Carl-G to two ammo types improves that.

I have it noted into my copy of Planetstorm that the UNE maximum unit size is 10, so I'm running with that.

Re: Legions of Steel Defiance conversion.

and how would one build a forcewall grenade ?????

infranites have a max unit size of 8.

Re: Legions of Steel Defiance conversion.

The problem with the Planetstorm UNE from a game balance perspective is that one can easily tell that there was a tunnel-fighting Legions of Steel force that was then expanded to an open air fighting force.  But the tunnel fighting troops and weapons were ineffective on most tabletops, making the OOB much more compact from a practical standpoint.

My advice would be to ignore or modify any of the UNE trappings that seem designed for underground fighting, and make a "battlefield" army list.  You can always make a second "underground" army list of you so chose.

SW, are you finding that 35 frames isn't enough to build a USS UNE list?

The forcewall grenade is a fun concept, but I remember it tranlsating very poorly to a tabletop setting.  Still, it would be fairly easy to design and point cost...

Re: Legions of Steel Defiance conversion.

The forcewall would create a very small wall, and IIRC (this might be a Starslayer rule?) standing right next to a wall lets you claim a cover bonus without a penalty to your own fire? Transportable hard cover. Gotta like that.* It'd be interesting if you would stat it up in order to run scenarios where UNE Commandos with completely standard kit got dropped in the wrong spot ( Suvla Bay? ) and had to fight their way to the tunnels as best they could, whilst suffering heavy casualties to the infamous "Ottoman" class Overlord....



As for more than 35 frames, let me just check this with my new, improved knowledge of the USS Army Builder....

*Though not nearly as much as in the tunnels, where Recce commandos once prompted the following cryptic transmission from a Papa-class Overlord: "OMFG! Nade spam! F0rc3w4llz r teh h4xx! UNE HAXX!!!!!"

Re: Legions of Steel Defiance conversion.

okay, it's looking like 27 frames to model *everything* in the planestorm UNE army list once I recalculate the number of frames occupied by combi-weapons (the Carl-G now occupies a maximum of 1 slot rather than 4 and the single-fire GL/RAM combo occupies 1 slot rather than two; the GL and all the missile types ONLY exist in combination with the RAM and the Carl-G itself respectively).

Frame count is down from at least 31 when I misunderstood the frame requirements of combi-weapons, and that down from roughly 40 when I was still counting vehicles and grenades  :oops:

Re: Legions of Steel Defiance conversion.

Okay, for comment, I post my slightly non-canon conversion to Defiance of Demian's slightly non-canon conversion to Starslayer of the INFRANITE weapons. I'd like someone to check my sums here.

TEMPEST LRE: profile 32, no changes, 22PV:

Ai | FR1 | -/25/40/55/60

TEMPEST ASSAULT ROUND: profile 7, no changes, 8PV

Ai | FR1 | 10/15/20/25/-

ROCKET POD "RiP": profile 32, Vehicle piercing, IR 1, ammo 4, 41PV

Ai | FR1V | -/25/40/55/60



SSRP: as the RiP above, but 1 ammo, 15PV

RQP: profile 32, Vehicle target, IR2, armor piercing, ammo 4, 43PV

AV | FR1A | -/25/40/55/60

WHIRLWIND CHAIN CANNON:Tandem Combo Weapon, otherwise identical to:

TORNADO CHAIN CANNON: Parallel combo weapon

FLECHETTE ROUND: Profile 17 at FR3, 48PV

Ai | FR3 | 10/20/30/40/-

HE ROUND Profile 38 with the AOE below; 48PV

Ai | FR1 25/35/45/55/60 AOE 4"/9+

HEAP ROUND Profile 32 (why the hell not), Armour piercing, IR 1, 48PV

Ai | FR1A | -/25/40/55/60

FROG POD Profile 53 with 4"/9+ AOE; 62PV

Ai | FR1| -/60/-/-/- | IF

Typhoon GL Profile 9 with a 3"/ 9+A AOE; 7PV

Ai | FR1 | -/-/5/15/25 | IF

Finally, to emulate the havoc and dismay wrought by the well, overwrought 4 FROG pods on a BAP, Behold the FROG RACK:

As for the FROG pod, but with a 4"/5+ AOE and IR of 1; 131PV :shock:

Re: Legions of Steel Defiance conversion.

smokingwreckage wrote:

Considering that Defiance is kind of distantly related to Legions of Steel, I'm finding some trouble working throught the Planetstorm Orders of Battle. Anyone else who's thought about these, feel free to chime in.

Conclusion: some of these must go. I'm thinking of erasing the carbines, the stun missile AOE and the CARP missile AOE, the stun grenade, and the stun cone weapon, making the short range rapid fire "plasma projector" into a cone weapon, possibly removing all the pistols


Okay, I realize i'm chiming in late here, but I've been pretty busy, (and will be for a while).

It has occured to me that in order to model the UNE from Planetstorm, you'd have to take the UNE and separate them into a number of distinct 'armies' that work together in the big picture.

Each one would be it's own armylist.

Thus you'd have the UNE Commando 'army':

You'd have the UNE Recce 'army'

You'd have the UNE Powered Infantry 'army'

You'd have the UNE Assault Trooper 'army'

You'd even have the UNE Assault Pioneer/ Combat engineer 'army'

This is not unlike real world armies.   Making one army list couldn't really do justice to the armed forces of one modern nation, let alone the armed forces of the entire planet, you have to sub-divide.

That's just my little bit to the discussion.  wink

What the ramifications are to Demians meticulously crafted point system are beyond my faculties at this moment.

JP

Re: Legions of Steel Defiance conversion.

@SW: I love these conversions!  Makes me want to break out the FROG BAP!  Actually, come to think of it, I think I lost it... :cry:

@JC: I agree with you that U.S.S. armies are best described as "field-able" armies, i.e. they do not and cannot decsribe the entirety of a national force.  This is intentional.  There is no particular "point balance" reason to restrict frame number, it just makes for a more consistent overall "feel" to each army.

-Demian

Re: Legions of Steel Defiance conversion.

@Demian: Glad you like the conversions, and I'll swap you a FROG BAP for a full version of the eventual print run of Defiance. It only has two of its FROG pods though, due to a cruel twist of fate.

Re: Legions of Steel Defiance conversion.

OKAY! Due to some luck and some good sellers both on Ebay and off, I think I have enough to field a reasonable UNE force. I hope to stat it up tomorrow night, but here's some starting assumptions:

No recce elements, I don't have (enough) models. Commandoes will be treated as Fanatics, not Elites, as I'm not fond of elites and I have 16 commandoes. The BAP, HAT, and assault troopers will be in as an Exclusive mixed-frame Assault Section. Finally I have only one standard PI section, then I'll be constituting a support section out of Flechette guns and Carl-G MK4's, with two loaders as NCOs. I think I will beef up the grenade launcher so that my sole standard PI section has decent IF capability, then use that same frame for the AutoGL. No weapon will use loaders of any kind.

The BAP/HAT will likely need to use the "integral weaponry" rule. In terms of vehicles, I have a superfortress and a Hellion productions Despot Tank (reaper CAV design) in 28MM; the fluff from the one and only edition of "HAVOC" suggests the tank should get a super-uber-killy gun all its own.

I'll post all weapons and frames as I get them done.