A very well designed and solid generic science fiction miniature game for 28mm or 15mm miniatures, with probably the best army and troops creation tool in the market today. Aimed for staging somewhat bigger battles but works for small skirmishes too.
Post originally by PenceFost at 2005-06-14 12:46:30
Converted from Phorums BB System
I downloaded the full version of Defiance when it was released a few months ago, and having read through it a couple of times, I've found a few things I've loved and a few I've despised. I do agree that Defiance handles quite a few things fairly well, and that it has some very good ideas. For me, however, the army building system is needlessly complicated and frought with artificial mechanics. Some facets of it even seem nonsensical in their arbitrariness.
Case in point: Leaders/commanders. Why does the army builder require a player to tie a specific troop type to a certain type of leader/commander? Is it true that my Arcturian Mechano-Rats can only have a Leader 2 or Commander 1? Or could an officer whose own unit has been wiped out take over a Mechano-Rat platoon whose on leader was killed? And why are there only two levels of quality of Commander but four for Leaders? This seems to me to be arbitrary and artificial.
Second example: Grenades. You can only design one or two grenade frame per army (up to four if you take the Extra Grenades enhancement). But when I was in the infantry, we would take whatever was necessary to accomplish the mission -- frag, flash-bangs, several different kinds of smoke, white phosphorous, thermite, etc., ad nauseum. It once again feels arbitrary to limit a certain army to only a couple limited types of grenades. Also, this is science-fiction, so why are grenades so limited in what they can do? Why can't I have a Plasma grenade that also has a Terror effect?
Third example: The infantry and weapon frame options seem needlessly complicated and, once again, arbitrary. Weapon ranges only occassionally follow any logical chain of progression (unlike the excellent Starmada system, which is very straight-forward) and seem varied only for the sake of variation, rather than increassing in a logical and understandable manner. Table 2.6 in the Carbine section is a classic example; what was the logical chain of thought that leads from Carbine 12 having a 7+/9+/11+ at 20"/30"/40" while Carbine 13 has only a flat 7+ at 30", and no other ranges and to hit values? Weird.
Fourth example: Suppression capability. Why not call it high rate of fire? And why call it that when any weapon that frightens an opponent is capable of suppressing them? An RPG could suppress an enemy unit under combat conditions, by striking enough fear into them that they are sufficiently cowed into staying put. Again, this is an artificial game mechanic that strikes me as being unneccessary, as well as adding unneccessary complexity to the weapon design process.
There are more things that I've found in Defiance that make me reluctant to get too heavily into it. I hope that other people have a better experience with it than I have, and I sincerely hope that Defiance 2 improves on the army builder to make it feel less arbitrary and more solid. As it is, I just don't have a very good feeling about it.
RE: Good review, but I have mixed feelings about D
Post originally by meraxilla at 2005-06-15 00:57:33
Converted from Phorums BB System
Hi PenceFost,
As the author of DVG, I wanted to respond to your criticisms and hopefully give you a feel for some of the reasoning behind my design decisions.
Firstly, thanks you for your compliments. I understand that certain mechanics seemed artifical to you, but I am glad there were a few things you found to love.
It seems that many of your complaints relate directly to the Customizer, so let me say first and foremost that play balance trumped all other features when designing this system. In my opinion, too many games sacrifice this aspect of a point system. Almost as important was the desire to give individual armies "themes". This was in an effort to discriminate each force and allow for some personalization of tactical style from player to player. Together, these two concerns do mean, however, that the scope of what can be created had to be toned down a bit to a manageable level - there are both statistical and meta-game ("feel")reasons for this.
As an aside, there is nothing in the mathematical structure that prevents the design of "anything goes" armies...they will simply be less balanced due to certain assumptions made in the morale, shooting, and HTH rules. I am open to the idea of outsourcing the raw formulae as an "open" computer program in the future, but this would require a bit of capital.
I do want to answer some of your questions point by point:
-------------------------------
Case in point: Leaders/commanders. Why does the army builder require a player to tie a specific troop type to a certain type of leader/commander? Is it true that my Arcturian Mechano-Rats can only have a Leader 2 or Commander 1? Or could an officer whose own unit has been wiped out take over a Mechano-Rat platoon whose on leader was killed? And why are there only two levels of quality of Commander but four for Leaders? This seems to me to be arbitrary and artificial.
---------------------------------
Each troop type is given two leader choices to help define its tactical niche. For example, many assault squads will tend to have more leadership per capita, to better mix it up with the enemy, while tactical squads tend to mix in some command levels for greater army control.
An officer from a different unit could take over control of a unit in which the leader was killed if both units are of the same quality.
There are only 2 command levels because they only vary by one parameter (command cards); there are 4 leadership l;levels because they vary by two parameters (attack chits and unit size reduction).
-------------------------------------
Second example: Grenades. You can only design one or two grenade frame per army (up to four if you take the Extra Grenades enhancement). But when I was in the infantry, we would take whatever was necessary to accomplish the mission -- frag, flash-bangs, several different kinds of smoke, white phosphorous, thermite, etc., ad nauseum. It once again feels arbitrary to limit a certain army to only a couple limited types of grenades. Also, this is science-fiction, so why are grenades so limited in what they can do? Why can't I have a Plasma grenade that also has a Terror effect?
----------------------------------------
Again, this is a design decision that is meant to define "feel". As the oriignal reviewer points out, the best way to represent the variety of a larger force (e.g., the US army) is to make several sub-army lists. This is the scale of most skirmish engagements, i.e. they are focusing on the actions of a few (likely specialized for the task) units, not the strategic capabilities of the army as a whole. The grenade options are a bit limited, but this is more out of a concern that grenades are difficult to point balance, and therefore playtesting was relied upon more heavily than mathematics, making fudging a bit riskier. Still, I can't see it being too unbalancing if a player decided to add two grenade effects into one grenade by simply adding their point costs together...(shrug).
--------------------------------------
Third example: The infantry and weapon frame options seem needlessly complicated and, once again, arbitrary. Weapon ranges only occassionally follow any logical chain of progression (unlike the excellent Starmada system, which is very straight-forward) and seem varied only for the sake of variation, rather than increassing in a logical and understandable manner. Table 2.6 in the Carbine section is a classic example; what was the logical chain of thought that leads from Carbine 12 having a 7+/9+/11+ at 20"/30"/40" while Carbine 13 has only a flat 7+ at 30", and no other ranges and to hit values? Weird.
----------------------------------------
The Carbine, Pistol, etc. designations are purely for ease of use, i.e. they make reading large tables easier. You are correct, the weapons don't follow a strict progression. The idea was to give as wide a range of statistical outcomes as possible without clumping things so close together that differences became meaningless. I do agree that this is one area where a computer program would be nice to allow for open-ended frame building. Currently, the mathematics would be too cumbersome to do by hand - hence, tables, a practical if imperfect solution.
-----------------------------------------
Fourth example: Suppression capability. Why not call it high rate of fire? And why call it that when any weapon that frightens an opponent is capable of suppressing them? An RPG could suppress an enemy unit under combat conditions, by striking enough fear into them that they are sufficiently cowed into staying put. Again, this is an artificial game mechanic that strikes me as being unneccessary, as well as adding unneccessary complexity to the weapon design process.
-------------------------------------------
I'm not quite understanding what you mean here. Supression capability simply means that the weapon has a feed rate of greater than 1 and unlimited ammo - it is not an effect that is purchased but rather an innate ability of such weapons. It is meant to represent the kind of high-quantity, low-quality fire that prevents enemy movement, especially movement of lower quality troops, who "scare easily". As a game effect, it is one effective way to force morale checks on an enemy unit, but it is certainly not the only way. For example, the AOE of an RPG round will force a morale test on any figure that survives its blast. And any weapon fire that kills enough troopers will end up leading to a high possibiltiy that the affected unit will go to cover (become "broken"). I apologize if I am missing your point, here.
In summary, I do again want to thank you for both your compliments and your constructive comments - it would also help me if I knew what were the parts of DVG that you liked.
I really like this review, for the simple reason that it avoids "it's great; it sucked" terminology in return for a more careful summary of the pros and cons of the system, inviting well-reasoned responses such as yours.
Linear Mode
