Hey everyone! For those still around, I appreciate your continued interest, and since there's been a couple of pages of discussion since I last talked to anybody, I figured I owe it to you all to chime in a bit. (I do still keep an eye on this thread from time to time - the eyes of the Administratum are always watching, after all 
).
For starters I'd like to admit that I'm not particularly pleased with myself for stalling the project where I did. There were a number of outstanding issues on my To-Do List and I basically let it slide. I'd like to firstly apologize for that, and offer a little bit of restitution: - DARK ELDAR UPDATE: Here
- FLEET SUPPORT UPDATE: Here
- ORK UPDATE: Here
- TYRANID UPDATE: Here
Here's the quick overview of the changes:
Dark Eldar: All the changes here were prompted by reports that the most effective DE strategy was "Kill 1 ship and leave". While hit-and-run tactics are supposed to be the Dark Eldar's forte, this was obviously a lame NPE in practice and not really fluffy when taken to that extreme. The biggest change then is the addition of the "Insatiable Greed" rule which prevents DE ships from voluntarily disengaging until the fleet has scored at least 25% of its own value worth of victory points. This (in combination with other changes) should extend the time the DE must remain on the table by 1 or 2 turns, giving the opponent a fair shot at retaliating. The other changes that combined with this are the reduction in Slave-Taking scoring rate by half (+5 per instance instead of +10) and the return of the Mimic Engine to its simpler roots. (It is now a scout-move at the beginning of the game and provides conditional immunity to shooting on the first turn).
Fleet Support: I saw the picture posted about the Blackstone Fortresses and I agree that it looks silly, so I tweaked the rule about the Super-Mega-Death-Shot combination to be measured by base, not stem, as was suggested.
Orks: The Orks, after much adjustment prior to my placing the project on indefinite hiatus, had mostly been fixed as I understood it. However, there were a few pricing issues still remaining and I just never got around to updating them. So, a couple of the Clanz had their upgrade cost reduced, and Freebooter Kaptins and Nobz had their costs reduced to bring them in line with other fleets' equivalent commanders. Also, the Klaws have been updated (again), to keep them the same as the Tyranid versions.
Tyranids: So, a bunch of changes here drawn from the discussions in this thread and many of the suggestions put forward by everyone here. First up is the Proteus, which is now targeted as a defense and has been limited to 2k fleets or bigger. Next up, the shield rules for Tyranids have been combined with the "base-as-a-blast-marker" rule, returning everything thematically to the original "Spore Shields" concept. Moving on, there were a number of changes to the Tyranid weapons. Primarily, feeder tendrils have changed dramatically. Feeder tendrils now enable a Tyranid ship to halt its movement while in base contact with an enemy (unless on AAF, and it cannot turn without moving its normal requirement). Feeders are also now used in the shooting phase as a normal base-contact range weapon, rolling D6-per-Strength vs the target's Lowest Armor value, with each hit resulting in a normal H&R result. The Strength of feeder tendrils went up to compensate. Massive Claws also got another big change (because my last attempt was still headache-inducing). To describe it simply, grabbing with claws now prompts both ships to get "stuck" together in place, rather than any complicated dragging/forced-moves.
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Now, in order to be fully transparent, I had hoped to finish a Scenarios book (the unanticipated nemesis of this project) before posting anything. Obviously, that didn't materialize and I felt it was better to post now, since there's been discussion about the future of the project.
With regards to where things go from here, GSL's synopsis in the preceding post pretty much covers the state of everything very well. If I'm being perfectly honest, it's become clear to me that I'm probably never going to finish a Big Book of Scenarios all on my own. Which is why I owe a great deal of thanks to GSL and the many other wonderful members of this community for picking up the slack that I could not.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So to answer this section of GSL's previous post:
[spoiler]
So here is my recommendation of how to move forwards with the core rulebook to have a new edition that we can present to the community (1 book, 1 pdf for all your needs, with everything working). The vast majority of it is already finished, what we need to add are:
1. Detachments
2. Scenarios
3. Campaign Rules
4. Maybe subplots
The Detachment and Campaign Rules are ready to go and just need to be incorporated into the existing PDF (I of course would appreciate proof reads and I'm open to balancing). I believe that the best way to approach this would be to make the Detachment rules their own section and place them just before the Scenario rules, and to keep the campaign rules at the end of the book. The reason I think this makes sense is both because the detachment system fixes a lot of the balancing issues we otherwise were stuck with while NOT requiring players use our updated fleet lists. It also provides us a cool mechanic for designing the scenarios.
With the detachments before the scenarios we then would be able to incorporate scenario specific stratagems and detachments, which would help to simplify the alternative force organizations appropriate for each scenario. So, for example, in the convoy scenario we could incorporate a new detachment called a "convoy detachment" made up of 3 freighter-analogue ships. Rather than have the player calculate points for freighters simply state that they must include 1 convoy detachment for every 2 detachments in the list, and I would recommend making this detachment cost 1 command point (-1 CP). This would encourage the defending player to take larger detachments (ie: Fleet Support, Recon, and Combat Patrol) as escorts to reduce the number of freighters they have to guard. For scenario specific stratagems for example we could make one for the escalating engagement scenario that would allow players to bring their units into the fight faster, potentially with the downside of needing a turn to shift power away from their engines (essentially arriving on All Ahead Full!).
Once we have the scenarios reworked we add them after the detachments/stratagems rules. Then at the back of the book we add the revised campaign rules and we'd have a completed product.
As far as subplots go I feel that they always were rather clunky and that most of their value would be represented within the stratagem system. That said we could largely leave them as is for flavor as an optional rule like they are now, or theoretically integrate them with the stratagem rules to provide a number of additional stratagems that players could elect to take before the battle that have some impact on their fleet or for the coming battle. I'm leery of doing that as it sounds like it would get very complicated very quickly, but it is something we could investigate.
Now with all that said, we do need to gain access to the templates needed to make the book into a finished product. Does anyone have access to that stuff aside from Xcalibre? If not is anyone in touch with him?
We're very nearly ready to produce a unified new edition book, we just need to start assigning tasks and get back to work on it. Hopefully we can get this all done in the first half of 2019 and give a nice give to the community.
[/spoiler]
This seems like a great plan GSL. Regarding production, I can send you the initial template I had for the Scenario book as a base (along with my proposed organizational notes and all the associated resources), but I did everything in Adobe inDesign and Photoshop, which could pose a problem. If that's an issue, once you have everything written and plotted out, I'll happily produce it all for you (I mean, I'd be a bad BFG:XR editor if I didn't). The biggest slow-down of trying to get the Scenarios done all by myself was just burn-out from having to come up with tons of writing that wasn't already in BFG/BFG:A/BFG:R or the 2010 Compendium. If it's just a matter of fitting text and images onto a page, I should be able to handle it.
Reply here or shoot me a PM and we can coordinate. We'll also probably need to do a round of proofing on the current BFG:XR material to ensure that existing references to Campaigns, Scenarios, fleet-building, and sub-plots will work properly after any changes.
