Newbish n00b questions, MkII

[Kirillyos]

22. A couple more questions on explosives: how would remote-detonators work and can units self-destruct (as would be appropriate to certain starships, top-secret bases, and unstable reactors)?

[IVhorseman]

So then just buy them as regular explosives, that are triggered to detonate as soon as anyone steps within the effective blast radius of the explosion. I wouldn't worry about balancing in a CP cost to make it "fair."

More broadly, I'm exploring the idea of portable Field Hazards in general (an idea already hinted at in the fire rules)...
- a super-agent's car that deploys an oil slick and caltrops to deter the relentless pursuit of a paternity suit lawyer
- a coil of barbed wire you stretch across the dorm floor to keep that smelly roommate away from your fridge
- a bear trap set in the path of a rampaging politician
- a Death Submarine with a hull that can be electrified to fry PETA protesters
- a smoke grenade deployed by a trooper to provide cover and sneak away from the dreaded PowerPoint safety briefing.
- a barrel of radioactive waste you pop open at a family reunion just for shiggles

I don't see why you can't just buy things as field hazards and then just poop em out when you need to. They function almost exactly like weapons with size and all. Here's your examples converted:

-Caltrops are a concealed hazard, oil slick is just difficult terrain. The bonus of an oil slick is that once a creation enters it, it can't change directions until it leaves!

-Barbed wire is technically a concealed hazard, though you can see it. slow-moving figs can pick their way through it without taking damage (or simply cut it).

-Bear traps are straight-up exposure damage. You step on it, you take 1d6 damage.

-An electrified death sub is also exposure damage. Consider d8s if you have em!

-Smoke grenades are something lots of us have trouble with coming up with something cool for. Some of us say it should just grant cover to everyone within a certain radius, but that's both easy to forget about, and doesn't look very cool. Another idea is that you get to place something like 1d20 studs' worth of blocks and "construct" a smoke wall that loses a few bricks every turn as it dissipates. If you come up with something else, it might even be cooler!

-Spill that radioactive waste, and that whole puddle is a sick-ass exposure hazard. use WISG rolls to determine any awesome mutations.

[Kirillyos]

I don't see why you can't just buy things as field hazards and then just poop em out when you need to. They function almost exactly like weapons with size and all.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. On the small end of the scale, they can be just one-off weapons, and when a trooper plops down a sticky-bomb, or a battle-alchemist just busts open a flask of whoop-ass and boom! you've got a field hazard where there wasn't one before.



I thought about the self-destruct thing and realized "duh! - I can just buy it as a regular explosive and keep it on board for detonating in case the structure falls into enemy hands".

[Kirillyos]

Okay, these next questions aren't so much about the rules as they are about the Brikwars community in general:

23. What's the general consensus on using non-LEGO parts around here?

Obviously el-cheapo clone brands like MB are reviled (and rightly so) by much of the LEGO community for their shoddy, inferior plastic that falls apart when someone slams the door too hard, but what about some of the newer blood like BrickForge, BrickArms, or other such small 3rd-party manufacturers?
I've heard some good things about these smaller accessory shops, though I have yet to purchase any of their products myself (I may, however, do so in the near future).

24. Do LEGO-CAD battles go in the battle forum, or does all LEGO-CAD stuff stay in the LDD forum?

25. How active are the forums, typically?

26. Can anyone explain to me the story behind how OT became so revered here?

[IVhorseman]

23. Just do it. Sure, they suck in comparison, but shitty bricks are better than no bricks.

24. I think that's LDD too, but nobody's gonna stop you

25. More active during summer because kids don't have school. We're not a huge community, but SOMEONE generally says SOMETHING on any given day.

26.

[Tzan]

http://brikwars.com/wiki/index.php?titl ... t_Chainsaw
http://brikwars.com/wiki/index.php?title=OT

[stubby]

23. MB is reviled but sending reviled stuff into battle is sometimes more fun than regular stuff. The official BW commentary on the use of Mega Bloks is in the 2010 rules under 1.3: Supplies Checklist.

24. Actually I don't know.  I would think that battles trumps LDD, but I'm not actually sure.

25. On a school day, 100 posts a day or so. On weekends and holidays it gets higher, especially when major battles are going on.

26. It has always been a fact that the orange transparent chainsaw was the baddest-ass of all Lego weapons back in the golden age of Lego; nothing else even came close. OTC reverence pre-dates BrikWars by at least a couple years. OT is revered because the OTC's badassness has to be explained somehow.

[IVhorseman]

Oh good lord is that awesome.

[Zupponn]

As is this one:

[Ben-Jammin]

Oh good lord is that awesome.

That's bullshit, every lego fan knows that Ice Planet will never die.

[Falk]

23. Since everyone skipped the second part of your question, I'll answer it for you. Lots of people here use BrickArms and similar stuff, if you want to use it too, go ahead!

[Kirillyos]

So... heroic weapon?

[Kirillyos]

I'd also like to get some varying perspectives from the others around here on the Construction Points concept used in the rulebook.

27. Like 'em? Hate 'em? Don't care?

28. Reasons you think the concept does or doesn't make sense?

29. Any changes you'd make to the CP system or a different game mechanic you'd use instead?

30. For those of that you that do use CP, what are some common allotments for various scale battles (barroom brawl, border skirmish, WWIII, etc)? I never know what kind of numbers I should be using for these things.

[Kirillyos]

31. Does anyone ever play Brikwars as a more Civ-style game, with development of your minifigs' civilization, Tech Trees, and/or gathering alliances to crush the opposition (and inevitably stab them all in the back once they've outlived their usefulness?

32. Anybody ever use weather effects during battles? If you did, how did you implement them?
I assume they'd work like field hazards.

[Pwnerade]

ORANGE TRANSPARENT PIPE!

I need to get me a real one of those. Better start browsing smoke shops.