Newbish n00b questions, MkII

[Kirillyos]

6. How do construction actions (for the Mechanik and such) work in forum battles?

7. How do wheeled, non-self-propelled weapon platforms work? Like if I have a cannon/catapult/Gatling-gun-made-out-of-bazookas on wheels and the whole shebang is pushed around by a little old lady who confused it with her shopping cart? Are they basically covered under the turret rules?



8. How far out does the Scout's ability to detect stealthed units extend?
If it's line-of-sight with no limit, what's to stop someone from just stationing 4 scouts facing north, south, east, and west in an armored plexiglass bubble atop a tower atop a tank atop a giant turtle atop your mom in the center of the battlefield and detecting every stealthed unit that's not behind cover? (Besides the obvious threat of getting shot down, of course).

9. The 2010 rules, under "Gathering Power" briefly (but lovingly) touched upon units using teamwork and jumper cables to channel needed power to weaponry. Is there a range on that, or am I only limited by the length of my extension cord? What if I want to have a "Command & Conquer"-style reactor in the middle of my base powering my defensive systems, could I do that with the aforementioned concept?


10. Minifig abilities can be assigned to non-minifig things like vehicles, right? Like if I want to have a stealth drone to sneak up on government stealth drones and take embarrassing pictures of them taking embarrassing pictures of co-eds? Could I just give my drone the Scout's stealth ability?



P.S. The MOCs you see there were done by yours truly.

[IVhorseman]

6. Interesting question. It doesn't work like a normal mechanik would. It'd be up to each host, but if it were me, I'd just slap all of the pieces legally available to the mechanik that turn together into a half-assed interpretation of whatever the player told me to make.

7. Minifigs can push or drag objects by themselves up to 2" in size at half-speed. More minifigs = more max size.

8. 8" horizontal

9. Pretty much, yeah.

10.Totally!

[Kirillyos]

Awesome - thanks for clearing those up for me.

[Kirillyos]

11. Not really a rulebook question, but I didn't know where else to put it: do all digital LEGO/LEGO-CAD creations go in the LDD forum, even ones made by other programs like LeoCAD?

[IVhorseman]

11. Probably?

[Kirillyos]

12. Another question that's kinda been bugging me: What's the current verdict on Squads and Officers? I notice that chapter missing from the 2010 rules, so I just dug what I could out of the 2005 book and bumped the Officer's Skill up to 1d8.

Are the 2005 Squad rules even compatible anymore, or are there new official squad rules somewhere other than the 2010 pages that I should be aware of?

[IVhorseman]

12. Instead of having to take an action, squads can just form up willy nilly, without officers. In exchange, as long as officers perform a combined action with their squadmates, all squad members have at least 1d8 skill.

There's a few other re-toolings of how squads are gonna work, but most of them are still in the works. It's more-or-less the same as 2005, but squads pretty much consist of simply declaring "these guys are a squad now" and being done with it. Improvise the rest.

[Kirillyos]

Okay, so no more of the "time cost to form up a Squad" reasoning? I guess that makes sense since people could have just equipped each Squad with an Officer to skirt the whole issue anyway.

Thanks for bearing with me so far - I'm still kinda new to this, so I have a few more questions:

13. Under the rules for Launchers, it's mentioned that payloads traveling further than 12" don't come down until a subsequent turn, just kinda "hanging out" in the air and getting to pretend they're Michal Jordan. So in the interim, can they be attacked like any other airborne object of its size and structure level (provided the target saved up enough Action for the response)?
For example, if you lob a school bus full of fat kids at my pleasure yacht made entirely out of cocaine and hookers, and it has to travel 16" to reach its target, I may not have the maneuverability to get out of the way, but can I target the bus in-flight (on my turn before the bus completes the last 4" of flight) with my deck-mounted Phalanx miniguns?

14. Does the aforementioned "payload traveling more than 12" doesn't come down till the next turn" only apply to payloads without their own systems of aerial propulsion?
So for example, if while the fattie bus was in the air, their eccentric driver (who is somehow also their teacher) Mrs. Frazzle decided to ignite their antimatter boosters to close the gap with the target, would the shiny drugboat be screwed? The rules seem to imply that launched payload capable of taking their own Actions are welcome to do so on their own initiative, since it mentions using Launchers to scramble fighter craft.

15. The rules seem to imply that regardless of the total distance traveled, any payload traveling 12+" takes exactly 2 turns to come down. Am I correct in this inference, or would a payload traveling 36" take 3 turns to land?

16. Does the 12" travel limit and coming down on the next turn for launched Payloads include falling objects from great heights (e.g. dropped bombs, Officers you heroically shove out the back of the C130 with lembas bread in their pack instead of a parachute)?

17. Do rockets or explosives launched as grenades count as "thrown weapons" for the purposes of parrying them with a shield?

18. Would reactive armor and point-defense lasers be best statted out with the regular shield or energy shield rules?

19. Are there any official rules on teleportation yet? If so, what are they?

[IVhorseman]

I'm just going to answer questions 13-16 by saying that I completely ignore the whole 12" thing. For artillery-style attacks it sometimes makes sense, but for all the reasons you just listed, it's almost always a pain in the ass.

17: Sure, but even if you manage to block the explosion, you get pushed 2"

18: Whatever seems cooler/whatever you'll actually remember

19: Nope. Heroic Feats I guess?

[*CRAZYHORSE*]

And here people, we see the correct way to do brikwars.
Every thing is more about the awesome and less about the correct.

[Kirillyos]

I'm just going to answer questions 6-9 by saying that I completely ignore the whole 12" thing. For artillery-style attacks it sometimes makes sense, but for all the reasons you just listed, it's almost always a pain in the ass.

20. And that's was I was really wondering about - scenarios where I am intercepting a large Payload (explosive or otherwise) that's coming at me in-flight, whether by Goalkeeper CIWS, plane-mounted laser, or Dr. Manhattan's glowing blue schlong. I presume that between the turn it's launched and the next one when it lands, I can attack it like I can attack any flying unit, right?



For the teleportation thing, I'm thinking maybe something can be kit-bashed from the SuperNatural Movement dice rules, with the caveat that the teleported unit is Disrupted for the rest of its turn (teleporter sickness, "phasing in", existential crisis at realizing it's just a copy and the original was killed on the other end of the teleporter) and on a fumble, randomly fusing with the nearest object at the site like Jeff Goldblum in "The Fly"



But... we should probably move in-depth discussion of teleportation to its own topic.

[Kirillyos]

21. Another question: how do proximity-fuse explosives work? Do I just buy it as a small field hazard that a soldier can plop down somewhere?

[IVhorseman]

21. You buy it as any old explosive and say "this one's got a timer of this many turns."

[Arkbrik]

I'll try answering questions 13-16.

13. Sounds awesome, go for it. I'd say it's rule legal too. If you have a Response action saved you should even be able to fire on the bus on the turn it is fired.

14. If the payload has its own Flying Move stat then it could use that after being fired. So yes, the drugboat would be screwed.

15. The rules state that it takes just one extra turn no matter how far you fire. I'd say this is good, would be too easy to move out of the way otherwise.

16. As far as I know, falling in BrikWars is by tradition instantaneous. And realism-wise, things that fall travel faster and a shorter distance than things which get launched in an arc.

[Kirillyos]

You buy it as any old explosive and say "this one's got a timer of this many turns."

That's not what I meant, I'm not looking for times explosives... more like "I plop this thing down right here, and if you get close to it, it blows up in your face". Basically a Size 1" portable field hazard. Well, portable in the sense that you can take it from point A to point B, and then hope it blows up an unwary enemy.

Basically, instead of minefields pre-defined before the battle ever begins, I'm looking for the capacity to have soldiers be able to just stick 'em in the ground wherever, mine-laying vehicles, heck, even mines deployed by artillery. I think this would give a certain "push the line" style to scenarios where the factions are trying to gain ground, rather than already dug-in, and would make for a more dynamic and unpredictable battlefield, which means - altogether now - more mayhem.

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'll try answering questions 13-16.

Thanks!

13. Sounds awesome, go for it. I'd say it's rule legal too. If you have a Response action saved you should even be able to fire on the bus on the turn it is fired.

I think you led me to the bigger concept to really take away from all this - "if it sounds awesome, go for it".

14. If the payload has its own Flying Move stat then it could use that after being fired. So yes, the drugboat would be screwed.

Alas, the S.S. Hookersandblow, we hardly knew thee...

15. The rules state that it takes just one extra turn no matter how far you fire. I'd say this is good, would be too easy to move out of the way otherwise.

True, though at the point where the Payload travel exceeds 24", that's a 5"+ launcher with a UR of 10 anyway, and I'm more likely firing at something enormous and non-agile like an aircraft carrier, a mountain fortress, or Jabba the Hutt's mom.
Fun fact: "Jabba" means "toad" in Russian

16. As far as I know, falling in BrikWars is by tradition instantaneous. And realism-wise, things that fall travel faster and a shorter distance than things which get launched in an arc.

Sounds about right.