The Return?

[locarno24]

Finally, if it's a 'Traveller' space combat game, that was done back in the day (even the 2nd additon books has rules for it) and it was cack!

Power Projection wasn't bad - it was build on the Full Thrust rules-set.
Of course that meant it wasn't terribly original, either, being just Full Thrust plus rules for missing with spinal mounts.

Just seen this on the VaS board:

[Mr Burns]...Excellent.[/Mr Burns]

One can hope.



Starship troopers is still possible - I believe they still hold the license for it - but the Judge Dredd rules would be much better suited to a starship troopers adventures skirmish* after the fashion of the one that turned up in Signs and Portents than a massed battle system.


* It was a sort of space hulk/dungeon delve/warhammer quest analogue. Quite good fun, in its way.

 

[mikelosaurus]

The strange thing if there was going to be a new version of ACTA in a different universe why leave it so long after the death of the B5 version? Unless it's for licensing reasons? *scratches head*

 

[AkosPrime]

Hi guys,

It is not B5 - sorry, but that bird has flown and the licence is way to expensive vs. the interest in the property these days.

Unutterable sadness and despair. There are many things I don't understand; like why a ip holder who's not getting money or bids from anywhere else wants to overcharge somebody willing to give them money. How is that good business sense? You could have some money, or no money......???

Now I have to deal with the consequences of life getting in the way the last 2 years and derailing my plan to build massive EA, Minbari and Shadow fleets. :wink: Time to start lurking on eBay I guess.

Just out of curiosity, can you quantify in some kind of terms just how expensive 'expensive' is?

 

[Target]

Mass effect would be cool. Sounds CTA3 is very far off if at all

 

[Ben2]

The ACTA rules set could be applied to so many things though. You could stretch it to ground combat.

The B5 licence has been hit by the law of diminishing returns. AoG had chomped much of the meat, and Mongoose chomped the rest and sucked out the marrow.

What there is left wouldn't justify the expenditure on the licence vs the return plus lost opportunity costs for Mongoose.

Better to do something else, in preference something unlicensed, like world at war or BF:Evo, without the same upfront costs to develop.

The ACTA rules engine is pretty solid, as is the Evo rules, so applying them to a new setting could be a money spinner.

 

[Burger]

There are many things I don't understand; like why a ip holder who's not getting money or bids from anywhere else wants to overcharge somebody willing to give them money. How is that good business sense? You could have some money, or no money......???

Well I would imagine (and I'm just guessing here, I'm no expert!) that they would want to make a certain threshold to make it worth their while. They presumably have admin associated with the license, maintaining it, and ensuring it is used correctly. They woudl have to pay their legal team to sort out the contract. They also wouldn't want to devalue the product by selling it cheaply, especially when they have bigger fish to fry. If they're only making a small amount then it simply isn't worth their while. They are a large company, and large companies tend to only be interested in large figures.

Just out of curiosity, can you quantify in some kind of terms just how expensive 'expensive' is?

Last I heard it was about £8k. Just a rumour though, I don't have any solid information.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Unutterable sadness and despair. There are many things I don't understand; like why a ip holder who's not getting money or bids from anywhere else wants to overcharge somebody willing to give them money. How is that good business sense? You could have some money, or no money......???

Ah, film studios don't work that way They tend to have a minimum amount they look for in each licensing period, with a view that anything less would lose them money (as they have to spend time going through archives hunting for images, employing lawyers and accountants, etc).

It isn't true - we are a very low maintenance licensee. But that is how it works.

Just out of curiosity, can you quantify in some kind of terms just how expensive 'expensive' is?

Best part of sixty grand

 

[AkosPrime]

Ah, film studios don't work that way They tend to have a minimum amount they look for in each licensing period, with a view that anything less would lose them money (as they have to spend time going through archives hunting for images, employing lawyers and accountants, etc).

Yes, I don't know why I expected logic and common sense to be part of Hollywood or the legal profession! Foolish I know.

Best part of sixty grand

HOLY [bleep]!!!! I thought the 8k/yr that someone else mentioned would make the margins small but 60k?!?! That's just.... [*sigh*] Wow, that's incredible.

Thanks for responding and letting me know though!

 

[Da Boss]

The ACTA rules set could be applied to so many things though. You could stretch it to ground combat. .

been looking at this a bit, maybe doing a Supplement based around the Earth Minbari War and in particular LCs "Last Star" novel about the battle for Proxima............

If we were to do a second edition of VaS (not saying we are ), we would remove the Crew score altogether. It is a relic from CTA and, given that the next generation of CTA won't have a Crew score on ships, it does seem rather redundant in VaS...

Sad to hear that -I like the Crew Socre - I find it evocative and helps making ships different from each other - ie you can have high damage low crew or high crew low damager etc............

see alot of ACTA regulars around the firestorm forums, all depends on the minis/license mongoose do on whether they can beat FSA these days. I myself have a directorate and aquan fleet (with directorate being my main) and the models are really really nice

True very True - although I have yet to actually play a proper game of it Some very good models - I am lucky enough to have a truely exceptional painter paint my Aquan fleet......

 

[MongooseMatt]

HOLY [bleep]!!!! I thought the 8k/yr that someone else mentioned would make the margins small but 60k?!?! That's just.... [*sigh*] Wow, that's incredible.

What is incredible is that, during the upswing of B5 that we enjoyed, we easily exceeded that advance in both licence periods. In fact (and this says more about the number of people WB work with, rather than anything to do with hobby games), we were in the top five of publishers that Warner Brothers worked with! Got invited to the premieres and everything

 

[Ben2]

So is this new thing unlicenced? Something historical, or a new setting?

 

[MongooseMatt]

Just seen this on the VaS board:

If we were to do a second edition of VaS (not saying we are ), we would remove the Crew score altogether. It is a relic from CTA and, given that the next generation of CTA won't have a Crew score on ships, it does seem rather redundant in VaS...

Which could be a clue! :lol:

Worth pointing out that CTA 3 has been in existence for a good 2 or 3 years at least - we just haven't got round to publishing it

 

[Sting52jb]

Matt what's the hold up on ACtA 3 then? Is it the ship miniatures themselves that you are working on? How about a few previews in Signs & Portants?

I would love to finally see this game released just to have a new slew of starships to buy. I'm more of a collector then a gamer, but do find the ACtA rules a really nicely written set.

 

[Tolwyn]

Starmada does even don't have their own universe.

Why don't sell ACTA with design rules so everybody can come up with own ships, settings etc?

 

[Ben2]

Design rules are incredibly hard to balance, and ACTA doesn't have set points value calculators or anything like that. The units are impossible to balance without playtesting.

 

[Sting52jb]

Actually for ACtA 3 the units were suppose to finally have a set point value. I would love to see a combination of the priority levels and points values. I think that would make for some very interesting games.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Matt what's the hold up on ACtA 3 then? Is it the ship miniatures themselves that you are working on? How about a few previews in Signs & Portants?

The setting, more than anything else.

I don't mind telling you all now that we were 'this' close last year to snaring Star Trek for CTA, and have a working set of rules (it was great, it integrated all three eras into the same fleet lists, so you could mix and match, say, Excelsior vs. Galaxy-class, leaky shields, cloaking devices, the works). However, Heroclix jumped in and went cockadodaloo all over that one (their sales model provides a large hit up front, whereas ours stretches out over several years - so they can always offer a much higher advance). We could argue that they do not really operate in the same market, but licensors don't really distinguish between models and miniatures.

So, we cast around for other universes, looked at a couple of our own (which may still happen), dismissed all the settings that really only had two factions (Battlestar Galactica would not work well in CTA - remember, we had 13 fleets in Babylon 5). Then, at Gen Con, a chance meeting posed us with an interesting opportunity that we may be able to move very quickly on - just working out the details at the moment.

We have also been invited to make a proposal for a CTA variant based on a very big sci-fi setting. Don't hold your breath on that one, but it could be quite cool (especially as we already did some 'fan' rules in-house for it and all the basics are already in place!).

 

[MongooseMatt]

Why don't sell ACTA with design rules so everybody can come up with own ships, settings etc?

CTA does not work that way - there is no 'grand formula' for working out points based on ship stats (though, funnily enough, there is one for VaS!). Sci-fi fleets are always going to have something weird or new that would knock any such system out of kilter, and we would prefer to be able to tweak the rules to fit a particular universe.

For example, consider shields and other defences. In B5, shields don't really exist (ignoring the Abbai for the moment), and so you principally have armour and interceptors.

In Star Trek, you have genuine shields. However, they work differently to those in Star Wars (which are far less leaky), and you would want to reflect that in the rules.

In Star Wars, the big ships are very ponderous, in Star Trek they are more agile. In Star Wars, fighters can be king (especially for Rebels), whereas they are virtually non-existant in Star Trek.

All these things mean that if we did a Star Trek _and_ a Star Wars game for CTA, while the core rules (moving, firing, etc) would be identical, there would be enough differences between the auxilliary rules for them to feel very different in actual play.

 

[Burger]

I just want to put in my vote for Mass Effect, again! That would be an awesome setting. Plenty of races, lots of diversity... and blue aliens

 

[MongooseMatt]

I just want to put in my vote for Mass Effect, again! That would be an awesome setting. Plenty of races, lots of diversity... and blue aliens

Not a huge amount of ships at the moment though...