X-Com(-ish) Project - another APC

[Constable Bertrand]

Excellent scratchbuilt Skyranger. It looks as good as a kit!

I like the grafitti posters to, thats a very nice touch.

For power suits you could check out DUST Tactics Allies 'hammers'

Cheers
Matt

[Dentatus]

Very nice.

[Neunfinger]

Thank you all for the kind words. I didn't have much time to paint (or post) lately and I don't think that fact is going to change in the next few weeks, but at least three sectoids are done.

I went for a very simple, unicolor look and added a bit of colour variety by adding white dots over head and shoulders (maybe that's what they ought to be using, right? Get it? Headandshoulders?   Oh well never mind... )

In game terms the sectoids are going to be the technicians of the alien invasion rather than the cannonfodder they are in the computergames. Weak and fragile but clever and crafty.

Hope you like the pictures.

[sundayhero]

The city pics are really inspiring ! Do you have any overall view pics to share ?

I really like the last small aliens. Really evil !

thanks

[beefcake]

Very cool. Great painting.

[Neunfinger]

The city pics are really inspiring ! Do you have any overall view pics to share ?

Afraid not, what you see in the pictures is more or less just a backdrop for the minis, I don't have enough scenery for a complete board yet. I will however take pictures as soon as I have corrected that grievance

[sundayhero]

I'm in the same case ! I have not enough urban scenery for now to make my complete zombies modern table. Not speaking of a scifi or cyberpunk table, wich is only a plan in my head for now  )

Anyway the first scenery you have around your minis is very promising already !

[Suber]

Wow! I really like all you are posting here! Cool stuff!

[Neunfinger]

Wow, I didn't realize it has been two years since I updated this project. Well, you now, time flies and so on... 

Anyway, I actually managed to paint a couple of miniatures in these two years

First picture, more sectoids. Thanks again to Fergal for these cool miniatures. I'm really glad you contacted me about the Skyranger, else I would still curse the lack of suitable sectoid minis.

Secondly, pictures of the Skyranger built from Fergal's kit. He contacted me via this forum after seeing my scratchbuild Skyranger and made a wooden kit out of it. As if that wasn't cool enough, he send me one as a gift for free. Again, thank you very much! I really like the model and the fact that you can actually place miniatures inside.

And last but not least, for our upcoming X-Com campaign I 3D-printed some fighter jets (loosly based on the Eurofighter Typhoon) and alien scouts. They will be used with the rules of the X-Wing game.

I hope you like the pictures!

[Daeothar]

Great seeing you're back at the wheel of this monster

The Skyranger looks ace! Does the ramp drop down as well?

And the little minis are great too. I've always though the Eurofighter was the one in the original game too. It certainly fits, timeframewise. Your models even resemble the Rafale or older Mirages (must be the delta wings ).

The Alien ships are nice too and look like proper scout UFOs. Using the X-Wing rules is probably just right to play the intercept missions. Will you also have a Geoscape game element?

You know; where you have radar posts and bases to track UFOs, before you send your interceptors to catch them (with the X-Wing rules). That would really  give the whole project the depth of the classic game...

[Cherno]

Cool idea to make represent the intercept mini-game with miniatures, too

[Neunfinger]

Thanks to both of you for your kind words. Yes, the ramp can be opened as well

I've thought a lot about the different game elements and layers. To me, one of the most important aspects of X-Com is the scale of the whole thing. You’re defending Earth from an alien invasion – it doesn’t get any bigger than that. The various computer games feature a variety of gameplay elements and layers to give you a good feeling of truly being the first and last line of defense. You have to place bases and radar stations over the globe, intercept UFO, assault the invaders in ground mission, etc. So, to recreate some of that feeling in an adaptation, the game has to feel just as big. Even if break it down by letting the players handle just one of various bases or regions of the world, I still feel like there should be a ton of things going on – I feel like when you’re playing just one or two missions of ground combat per month you don’t really get the same feeling as when there are a dozen of UFO sightings, a couple of ground combat missions, a terror attack and so forth per month in the computer games.

Now the question is, how do I include this scale when the best I can do is have one gaming session of a couple of hours per month? So I came up with the idea of splitting the whole game into different groups of players.

Group 1 – The Geoscape
A small group of player (4-6) assumes the roles of the leaders/department heads of an X-Com base. This is a roleplaying group that meets once or twice per month. You have the Military Commanders, the Chief Scientist, Chief Engineer, the Leader of the Airforce, plus maybe a diplomat who deals with the UN/Council of Nations or possibly multiple Scientist for various fields of research. They decide where to set up radar surveillance, which countries they cooperate with, how to spend the received funding, etc. This group basically does the stuff you get to do in the geoscape of the computer games.

Group 2 – Air Force
A second group of players handles the interception of UFOs, most likely by using the X-Wing rules. This doesn’t have to be a static group of players. Players could just decide to play a couple of rounds whenever they feel like it. The mission types and quality of human interceptor and alien UFOs depends on what’s going on on the Geoscape. For example, if the roleplaying group decides to raise the funding of the air force and the science and engineering staff developed some new weapons, the human interceptors have better stats. Ideally, this would lead to a group of X-Wing players who each form a squadron of interceptors, taking turns playing humans and aliens. An experience point system could even be included for the pilots of each squadron. The results of the games will influence the roleplay group – if there were a lot of UFOs shot down in the last month, the UN are happy and increase funding. If most UFOs escaped, the UN will feel like X-Com isn’t up for the task and withdraw funding etc. I hope that this influencing between the different player groups will result in interesting dynamics, like Air Force players cursing those eggheads back at base when funding is cut or the roleplayers cheering when learning that last month’s interception missions went really well and they now have tons of UFO wreckage to explore.

Group 3 – Ground Combat
Basically like group 2, but instead of playing an interceptor squadron each player leads a squad of infantry. I’m still unsure what kind of rules to use for the ground combat. Since I want to be able to include many players who just want to do a game or two without going into the full depth of the campaign, I want to use either rules that are quick to learn or well known, like W40k. So far, I have used Pulp Alley, but I feel it needs a bit more lethality to fit X-Com.

Those are my thoughts so far. I'd love to hear everyone's ideas about how to properly represent "that X-Com feeling" in a tabletop/roleplaying adaptation, so please feel free to critizie my ideas and bring up your own. I'm very curious.

[fergal]

They all look great!  Those are the best looking versions of the grey's that I've seen yet!  And you've done a FANTASTIC job on the dropship!  Just all around great stuff.  Keep it coming!

[GDonk]

welcome back, although very new to posting on this (or any) forum, I have followed various post for a long time and watched your posts of 2-3 years ago with interest.  I'm also interested in multi-scale/multi-rule-set games where the action is kinda zoomed in on from a distant galactic level right down to one-on-one combat via  army/divisional/squad/ etc level interactions - I can't say I've actually got any further than just thinking about it but I will continue to watch how you develop this.  All the best, GDonk

[Neunfinger]

fergal and GDonk, thank you for the kind words. I will try to keep posting about the progress of the game and its mechanics.

And if anyone has more thoughts on the concept, I'd love to hear and discuss them

I've also managed to paint some of fergal's human troops. I will use them as troopers in personal/carapace armor or possibly just as troops from another outfit. The third pictures shows them alongside ballistic and titan/power armour.
The paintjob got a bit darker than I expected, but I think I'll stick with it. At some point I'll probably add a bit of detail to the bases.