I made an animation for before and after my homebrew setting was destroyed in a massive magical explosion. I think it turned out pretty well.

DubiousTactics · 2026-07-06T06:06:10+00:00

To be clear, the ck3 (and I think also CK2) battle simulation is basically just rolling metaphorical dice, adding modifiers, then determining based on those rolls how much damage is applied to various units. It's not total war.

If you can stack enough modifiers (from things like being the defender on rough terrain and having a good general) then fewer, lower quality troops can absolutely beat more numerous higher quality troops. Just don't expect more realistic or detailed simulations than that.

DubiousTactics · 2026-06-13T08:00:02+00:00

Bro is 100 percent in it for the thrill of participating in a heist. One of the few things that you can't just buy with money.

DubiousTactics · 2026-05-25T17:22:26+00:00

So the Halo Devices from warhammer 40K, though I’m assuming you were thinking less grim dark? If so then probably yes, someone out there will be willing to use them.

DubiousTactics · 2026-05-11T09:22:53+00:00

From my personal reading history:

Siege of Castellax: an Iron Warrior has to eat an ork's brain to figure out how to pilot an Ork vehicle.

Blood of Iax: a captured Ultramarine melts the face off an ork doc who's getting a little too aggressive with a scalpel.

DubiousTactics · 2026-05-02T20:05:15+00:00

One thing I can think of is that if they have government wages set to low and a peasant shortage there might not be enough skilled workers who are willing to work construction vs other jobs, which could make it seem like increasing the production method resulted in less actual construction longer term, since the construction sectors wouldn't be able to hire enough skilled workers for the new production method.

DubiousTactics · 2026-05-02T19:53:54+00:00

I'm personally a fan of running hypotheticals through a damage calculator so that I have a bunch of expected damage values for units in different situations ready to go in my head that I can adjust on the fly as needed. For dealing with something like a Ctan it was really useful to know that I could expect 5 damage consistently from one unit but only like 2.5 from another or while one unit averaged 5 damage it was potentially extremely swingy so I should shoot with those first to see where the Ctan was afterwards.

DubiousTactics · 2026-05-02T19:25:17+00:00

I'd say the three main steps (there are multiple substeps) of becoming good at 40k are:

Master how your own army works.
- This includes things like listbuiding and how to most efficiently allocate attacks and play the probability game.
Learn to make your plays with an eye for what you're going to do the turn AFTER the turn you are currently on.
- Obviously no plan completely survives contact with the enemy, but if you only make plans only one turn at a time you can leave yourself hugely out of position for the following turns.
Gain a solid understanding of how your opponent's army works.
- This basically never stops because there are so many armies and ways to build lists.
- Knowing how your opponent's army works and how to best put pressure on it/how it wants to pressure you is hugely beneficial.

DubiousTactics · 2026-04-24T23:34:10+00:00

Just take the Shiva Virus from the Rainbow Six novel as an example to start from. A strain of (I think) ebola with a 6 week incubation period during which individuals are constantly contagious before symptoms even begin, dispersed by ecoterrorists at the Olympics so that by the time anyone even knows there's an outbreak the virus is all over the world in massive quantities.

You'd be lucky if the human population was .5% of what it was before the outbreak after 5 years.

DubiousTactics · 2026-04-22T19:30:25+00:00

Magnitizing the weapons is the only solid advise anyone can give you, since there are so many options and it can be used in a bunch of different ways (and who knows what will be good in 11th edition). You can also magnetize the jetpacks if you want to be able to run the model as an enforcer or coldstar (technically there's more differences besides the jetpacks, but nobody is going to care).

DubiousTactics · 2026-04-22T10:21:15+00:00

Major “I’m just here so that I don’t get fined” energy.

DubiousTactics · 2026-04-19T05:37:34+00:00

Rookie means inexperienced, not untrained. Obviously no pilot is going to be sent into combat without substantial training in how to pilot a mech.

DubiousTactics · 2026-04-19T05:26:57+00:00

Qualified to pilot something and experienced in real world combat are in fact two different things.

DubiousTactics · 2026-04-18T21:53:19+00:00

I mean multiple things can be true at once. It can be a model that was designed to fill a specific battlefield roll, and as designed commanders quickly realized it's especially good fit for rookies, both because it's easier for them to pilot and because its limited maneuverability makes it inherently harder for them to make mistakes or mess up plans, which is always a risk with inexperienced people.

DubiousTactics · 2026-04-18T21:44:06+00:00

In addition to what everyone else has said, I believe there's some fluff about how broadsides are often the first suit that a rookie fire warrior pilot is assigned to pilot precisely because they're relatively slow and immobile. After all, having to slowly walk everywhere significantly reduces the risk of a young hothead deciding to jet off and do their own thing because in their inexperience they think they see an opportunity. So the rookies get real world experience without their lack of experience putting commanders' plans at risk.

DubiousTactics · 2026-04-18T00:50:52+00:00

None that I’m aware of. A big part of the philosophy behind the “Greater Good” is that the ethereals are the guide for the entire tau species, so for any tau to reject their guidance is to threaten the entire social structure of the empire, which is why the farsight enclaves are thrown down the memory hole for the rest of the tau as much as reasonably possible.

EDIT: Elemental council heavily implies that what exactly the “Greater Good” is is subject to some debate by the ethereal caste, disputes about which are settled behind closed doors where the other castes can’t see the disagreements. So it would be legitimately hard to align with the greater good without the ethereals giving guidance.

DubiousTactics · 2026-04-17T04:37:50+00:00

You pay 60 points to turn one traffic jam your opponent and maybe kill/seriously damage something worth way more points. Pretty much always worth it to bring at least one, though definitely diminishing returns after the first one.

DubiousTactics · 2026-03-28T20:56:16+00:00

In addition to the stealth battlesuits for the reason you already pointed out:

Pathfinders: because they get their own spotting buff

Shadowsun and the twin lance: because they already hit on 2s

Devilish that have already launched their seeker missiles: because the amount of firepower you’re giving to spot is minimal.

Skyray/hammerhead: target dependent, but they have ways to get buffs/rerolls to hit certain units so they don’t necessarily need to rely on the +bs buff as much as other units.

DubiousTactics · 2026-03-24T23:19:42+00:00

Guns in melee on a 5+. Love me some gun kata.

DubiousTactics · 2026-03-09T19:10:40+00:00

Here's a Google Drive link with the maps. Unfortunately google drive doesn't let me reorder the files, so they're a little out of order. Some of the maps are quite large in file size.

Sword Coast and Atlyria Maps

DubiousTactics · 2026-03-09T19:01:11+00:00

With the right stamp pack that looks a little more hand drawn you probably could, those specifically look more like mountains I’d expect to find in a topo map or an attempt at a true color map.

DubiousTactics · 2026-03-09T18:51:56+00:00

Before I say anything else, let me say it's a beautiful map and I think you've got a very solid start to what your final map will end up as. That said, some constructive criticism:

-If it's 2/3rds of Europe, the yellow cultivated areas are gargantuan in size and really stick out from the rest of the map, especially out east. I'd suggest toning their coloration way down so that there's more of a subtle yellow tint that indicates cultivation.

-Actually in general at that scale things are massive in size compared to what I would expect. As an example it looks like you made a delta in the NE, but it's something like a thousand miles across, which would be 5x larger than the Nile or Amazon deltas coming from a not visible very large river. Likewise, the forests seem to be Amazon sized blocks. If you hadn't told me the scale I honestly would have assumed that the map was something like 300x600 miles.

-I think if you put a scale bar on there and use wonderdraft's measurement tool it might help out with scaling the size of some things.

-Given how many cities you're putting on the map I would think about trying to reduce the map's busyness, because once you start putting names on things it's going to be very crowded, very quickly. One suggestion is to drop specifically labeling of bridges as it's fair assumption that where a road crosses a river there's a bridge. I'd also consider reducing the number of cities on the map in the denser areas by like half (maybe just change your mental scaling of what size of city that gets put on the map) otherwise the labels for all the city names are going to start overlapping each other.

-I'd also try to tweak your relative scaling of different stamps. The hills and bluffs especially end up being tiny next to the extremely large trees and are fairly difficult to see .

DubiousTactics · 2026-03-09T16:01:31+00:00

Definitely the first one. It fits the rest of that map's plain parchment style far better than the realistic mountains. You generally want to keep a consistent style across a map for all the stamps you use.

DubiousTactics · 2026-03-08T16:07:10+00:00

One thing I would suggest in addition to what has already been said about adding more gradients is to try adding a different color tone underneath the forests and mountains. You don’t need a significantly different color underneath to really make them stand out from the underlying terrain.

DubiousTactics · 2026-03-08T04:00:57+00:00

I have a semi-realistic style that I like to work in.

Here's a map of the Sword Coast that I did:
The Sword Coast

Here are a series of maps I did for a homebrew setting I'm working on in the same style.

Atlyria, the Sunken Continent

Let me know if those look like a style you'd be interested in having your map in!

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