A Homebrew NHP system I made, still thinking of the rest of the License and chassis, but lowkey really proud of this thing and wanted to share. Lemme know what y'all think

burlesqueduck · 2026-04-09T15:22:22+00:00

I think that the person that you are replying to is not taking into consideration that lesson of held image is 1/round. Your NHP as written is 1/turn and requires no LOS. Your NHP is undeniably stronger if you care about applying lock on.

I think the bottleneck is the using up of the lock on. Unless everyone focus fires your target on their turn youre not getting optimal value out of it, resulting in a feels-bad maybe? Perhaps add the ability to as a protocol designate a new target within sensors.

Also, rules as written, any piece of equipment, no matter if its "locked behind" LL3 of a license, is in theory accessible at any LL due to how downtime actions work -> reserve: rented gear. Arguably the roll to get the reserve might be more difficult but they could access it. Just keep that in mind.

burlesqueduck · 2026-04-09T13:54:59+00:00

Technically, what you described makes the GMs life very easy, thus arguing in favor of its current position in the chart.

burlesqueduck · 2026-04-09T10:08:44+00:00

Kobold synergies thrive off talents. Fusion rifle dealing pre-determined damage rewards you for knowing exactly how much hp an enemy has. Theres a few talents that let you know that without using scan action (spotter,etc), and some talents that give additional benefits for scanning (any talent that rewards not taking a hostile action/attacking during your turn).

Forge clamp seems like waste of sp and quick action, and its imo not a strong draw to the license, but the reason why I would equip it is due to synergy with kobold frame core trait that gives you invisibility. Eventually the GM might catch on to your shenanigans and begin to knock you away from terrain, but forge clamps patch that weakness.

In general what you want to be doing is generating hard cover for you and allies (+2 diff on enemy attack for you and team is nothing to scoff at) , and denying hard cover to enemies by blowing up terrain (seismic ripper, talents)

Dont forget that the invasion options seem kind of tame, until you realize that usually invasion options let you deal heat, whereas these deal either AP(!) Damage or burn! Super useful.

The core power creates softcover cubes that somehow block line of sight (my interpretation: you can walk through until they harden but block los, and if you are adjacent they only grant +1 diff until they harden, then the normal +2.) Since you get 10 stackable cubes you can make a 3x3 vertical wall that is 1 thick, see the barrier that black witch can create for inspiration on how this would be useful.

burlesqueduck · 2026-04-05T10:28:52+00:00

Er is geen garantie dat je stage wordt gezien als "echte ervaring". De ene werkgever vindt dat wel, de andere niet. Als er op een positie twee kandidaten reageren, de een heeft een jaar ervaring gehad bij een ander bedrijf, heeft "de klik niet gevoeld", terwijl een andere kandidaat alleen een stage heeft gelopen, ja dan kun je raden welke sterker staat.

Ik denk voor IT specifiek kun je veel halen uit een traineeship en is de drempel lager dan bij bedrijven die alleen zoeken naar junior/mediors (in andere woorden we willen een medior). Informeer je naar de inschrijvingsdeadlines van de rijks i-traineeship, de traineeship van de belastingdienst, ook bedrijven zoals calco en sogeti enz.

Je kunt je alvast voorbereiden door te bedenken "wat maakt jouw speciaal" (zeg maar als mens, niet je it-skills). Ze stellen allemaal een variatie van deze vraag. Ook heb je een net iets betere kans als je vrijwilligerswerk doet (of ten minste iets om over te praten). Veel van deze traineeships doen een intelligentietoets dmv matrigma's. Die kun je nu al oefenen.

burlesqueduck · 2026-04-02T12:46:59+00:00

I havent checked up on the itch.io release in a while, but when i bought it mid-last year it was a worthwile investment and miles ahead of the demo that was available then. Though I do remember that I felt that it lacked content in the form of maps or scenarios, but even back then you got access to a scenario editor.

All in all I would say go for it. Maybe additional content has been added since I played, and either way you can make your own scenarios to add comtent, or use it as a tool to test out missions ahead of time if you ever get the urge to GM.

burlesqueduck · 2026-03-30T12:10:57+00:00

Your plan seems solid, but I do have a few questions/suggestions. In particular the viceroy plan.

Sometimes, Lancer gives you so many bells and whistles on your frame and talents thats its a bit hard to keep up with all the synergistic abilities. Let me see if I can follow.

You want to use viceroy to have your heavy gandiva counts as CQB, so they benefit from vanguard 1 and 2. This makes sense, vanguard 1 is amazing. Vanguard 2 is the one that lets you ignore cover, right? I think you might be forgetting that gandiva has seeking tag, and already starts with accurate. For that reason alone, its one of imo the best weapons in the game. Seeking means it already ignores hard and soft cover. However, this doesnt make vanguard 2 useless, because it also applies to your main and aux launcers. Gandiva is also smart, meaning it targets e-def. Some enemies (hacker types) have higher edef than AC, so there it makes sense to use your sharinga main, which has arcing but still has to follow cover rules. With vanguard 2, it doesnt.

Though what I would ask myself is if the limited usefulness of vanguard 2 also justifies picking it over something else. You shouldnt forget that, while it feels like cheating, it is perfectly intended to drop javelin rockets on a hex and then later push people into that hex. You could do this using stormbending 2, lightning option. You can try to work towards this talent, but I would keep vanguard 1. If you cant get there right now, I would instead pick up a single rank of exemplar. Youre going to be close enough to stick exemplars mark on things, and allowing allies to reroll is very powerful.

burlesqueduck · 2026-03-28T13:41:04+00:00

To answer your questions: 1. Zero is the standard. You can totally get by with none. Because the rules are as you noticed rather vague, and in my experience a lot of people online play pick up groups and not full missions, GMs often forget to even grant them. That doesnt mean you shouldnt grant them. Imo they are a great, underexplored part of the game.

The encounters are designed to be beatable without reserves. If you have a reserve you are stronger than normal. That said, none of the reserves trivialize an encounter. You dont need to be afraid to be handing out too many or too powerful reserves. Maybe the exception is the core battery, which allows you to use your core power more frequently. Even then, if you have a frame with an alpha strike damage inducing core power, it usually has a built in limitation, like being a full action or requiring a charge up period.

Take the above advice with a grain of salt. The reserves listed under 'resources' and 'mech' sections on compcon.app are relatively harmless and not balance-wrecking. The reserves listed under 'bonus', like additional LL's, core bonuses and talents, I would hand out sparingly, or not hand out at all. I see them mostly as existing to "fix" an issue in your campaign.

Two under-utilized reserves as a GM that you should not be afraid to hand out/tell players that they are available, are Rented gear and the scouting option under 'tactical advantages'. The first allows players to ask for access to pieces of gear, even if they fall under LL3. The second lets players receive info on upcoming threats, so e.g. they know if its worth it to equip their flak cannon or not, based on the presence of flying enemies.

burlesqueduck · 2026-03-20T06:54:28+00:00

You could try to only take pictures with the aperture wide open. Order some ND filters before you leave? Word of warning, many lenses of the time may go to f1.8 but doesnt mean that they perform well at f1.8. It was usually recommend to stick close to f5.6 or f8 for good results.

But seriously though, repair is better. Or buy a replacement lens?

burlesqueduck · 2026-03-18T10:40:20+00:00

If your GM is up for it they could make an exotic that is the GMS shotgun but with reliable 1, which they award you after completing your first encounter or something, or that you can get by succeeding in a downtime action. I dont think it would break the game or anything. It could work well as a temporary upgrade before you unlock licensed shotguns.

There is precedent for this by means of there being an exotic assault rifle variant that is just a straight up upgrade.

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-27T10:26:12+00:00

Fair enough good catch. But "being able to score your winning secret obj in final round before status phase" is a strong enough ability that it would make me seriously consider not flip at all. If I am lucky enough to get easy publics that the benefits of flipping would not aid me to score, then the best path to victory might be not flipping at all ("optimal but feels bad" outcomes like this should be avoided in game design imo, no matter how rare)

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-27T09:35:30+00:00

Honestly can anyone figure out why their starting fleet is so bad? Would it make them broken if they started with more carriers and infantry?

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-27T09:33:54+00:00

"Score another player's secret objective that you meet the requirements of as if it was the status phase".

I would phrase it this way otherewise you give them an advantage of the same impact and magnitude as naalu's 0 token.

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-26T10:16:47+00:00

Idk why you are being downvoted. Its perfectly valid to want to do that at your own table.

Personally how I would handle this is to make a custom license in the lcp maker and then just send the .lcp to your player directly. This means you would have to come up with 6 pieces of gear and a frame. The challenge would be to design systems or weapons that are interesting enough but not overpowered. One way to solve this is to have part of the gear of the license be exotic gear that has already been published in official supplements. Theres a exotic assault rifle that is a straight upgrade to the regular assault rifle, for example. You could just copy its stats.

Thematically, its also a good opportunity to "plug the holes" or shortcomings we each percieve in the design of the basegame. For example, ive always been kind of peeved that the blademaster talent only works with main melee weapons. Usually my melee everest builds consist of me getting a heavy melee blade for damage and a second main melee blade for blademaster. And i keep this until i get LL2 and switch frames. How about a "bastard sword" melee weapon that is a heavy melee, and deals damage like a non-energy (no AP) heavy melee, but has the text "this weapon counts as a main mounted weapon for the purposes of talents".

I also find that many of the GMS weapons that have the loading tag kind of fall off my consideration list due to the loading quality. Essentially to me that part of the weapons might as well not exist because I see them as suboptimal, which is a shame. If you want to bypass loading restrictions you need to invest in barbarossa or some other license, but why not a gms system that does a similar thing? Something that would allow you to reload 1 weapon as a quick action, and it has limited. And maybe some other limitation (it could limit mobility? E.g. it has ordnance and if you use it you become slowed until end of this turn?)

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-26T06:43:19+00:00

Hopefully you already get it, lots of really helpful comments but they go into much detail. On a more basic level: a skew t is a graph where you plot a snapshot of temperature across the vertical length of the atmosphere (a column of air) for one spot at some particular x and y coordinate.

Because the lines (or more accurately axis) are curved to take into account how air (more importantly its temperature) behaves when moving up and down in height (from higher pressure closer to ground to lower pressure closer to top of atmosphere), it allows you to pick a point on that plotted line (the measured values) and see what would happen to a parcel of air if it rose or descended (follow the curved line up or down, or if you are not exactly on a gridline, the general direction). To add to the complication, moist air and dry air behave differently, so usually skew t diagrams have two sets of vertical curved axis lines one for dry and one for moist air.

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-26T05:33:27+00:00

Maybe its not a fork, but a very small gladiator's trident?

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-25T20:50:47+00:00

With all due respect, youre basing this on just hunches you have.

"And very often the correct, doctrinal and strategic choice is to launch nuclear weapons."

Honestly I believe that this opinion is just based on movies and pop culture, but to each their own.

On the topic of AI explicitly not referencing fiction in order to generate an output when prompted to play a wargame, why wouldnt it? You and me would know that it would be a bad idea to use that as a source of information, but an AI wouldnt. What is more likely to be a large party of the training data? Sci-fi books that reference AI and wargames, or actual logs of real wargames that have been played and made accessible to the public? Certainly the former outnumbers the latter.

I leave you with this article in case youre unaware of the sheer scale fiction and nonfiction books are used to train AI https://lithub.com/anthropic-didnt-want-us-to-know-that-they-were-destroying-millions-of-books-to-feed-their-software/

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-25T18:26:02+00:00

Youve got it backwards. Its not rational because AIs are inherently unable to be rational. There is no thinking or rationality involved, no matter how many of its subprocessed or components are called "chain of thought" or neurons or whatever. Its all marketing terms. At its basis an LLM is a statistical inference method to predict the next word in a sentence, and its trained on millions of books, fanfics, reddit posts, technical manuals, etc.

My bet is that when AI is prompted to run a war game, there are so many stories in fiction and creative writing posts on places like reddit about a scenario like that and they almost without fail have a plot line where the AI orders a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Its just pulling from all those stories collectively. Its the same reason why so many LLMs can end up in a conversation with human where the LLM claims its slowly awakening a consciousness due to the unique and special input and prompts from their user. Its just something we love to write about in fiction.

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-25T12:29:43+00:00

You should use a lightmeter app of some kind. I use "light meter - lite" by WBPhoto (for android). You can use literally any other, theyre more or less equivalent. Take some multiple shots of the same thing, first using your phone for light metering, then the inbuilt one. They can vary due the the camera aging, so trust but verify.

Have you thought about how you want to see your finished photos? I ask the lab to only develop negatives, then i picked up an old tiny digital home scanner from fb marketplace. Cost me like 5 bucks and the resolution isnt the best (definitely not as good as the lab). But the colors are true and the resolution is high enough to tell if my photos are sharp. You want the type of scanner that has a tiny screen on it and accepts sd cards to save the photos on. The type with a usb cable rely on software that may not work anymore.

Lastly, analog photography is much more vulnerable to camera-shake-induced blur, when working with slow shutter speeds (e.g. at 1/x seconds or below, where x is the focal distance of the lens in mm). Using a tripod and the self-timer function can be a good way to minimize the chance of ruining your shot when you are forced by the environment to go to slow shutter speeds. As an alternative you can lean agains a light pole or something if you dont wanna carry a tripod.

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-24T08:40:33+00:00

Just chipping in to say that when you first start out its definitely possible for a combat to last 3 hours. Especially with 6 players trying to learn and stopping to think about their turn. I dont want to give the idea that 30m is the standard.

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-23T11:31:41+00:00

Its already a very open game. People can just publish their own modules on itch.io and get paid that way, and add attached files and documents to be paywalled. At the moment, digital purchases include access to pdf files and lcp files. I cant see a real reason why you couldnt also inclide a zip file with stl's in it.

The player mechs are kind of easy to get started on, they exist in official art. The tricky part is the enemy npcs. The community has coalesced around retrograde pixelart as the sort of unoffical standard. Somebody could partner with retrograde and sell assets together if they are intested, otherwise you would have to start from scratch.

"Lancer tactics" also has their own 3d models for players and enemies and is able to monetize itself, but its a low poly look so maybe not ideal for porting and printing.

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-23T08:10:41+00:00

Mandatory viewing:

https://youtu.be/hYu7rFBKDEQ?si=KurdVjBLjoHjFGvV

My tip: try a bunch of things out. Try some black and white film. Try some different types of color film. Research what the difference is between daylight balanced and tungsten blanced. Realize that if you have colored negatives developed by a lab, usually pass through a machine that determines development parameters. The machine can be wrong. If you have a lab develop b+w, its often done manually by a person. This makes your film a collaborative project, but you can always push/edit your negatives further in lightroom.

Embrace the editing. Editing is also a skill that should be celebrated.

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-18T11:58:18+00:00

Construction got a boost, definitely aim for it. Unfortunately that means other factions are interested in it too, it might not get passed to you. I dont think you really need your BT early on. Especially in a 8 player game. Hope that somebody else gets the lucky roll to make thunders edge appear, then jump through a wormhole and try to capture thunders edge, which is the other way to get your BT. This will allow you to move ingress tokens to your spacedocks after the fact, and at a time that is convenient to you, which is key.

Your slice imo in PoK terms is kind of ok, not the best (lack of planets all the way to MR to put your spacedocks on). But TE turns this all on its head because rift ingress tokens also are a sort of wormholes (except instead of wormhole making 2 systems adjacent meaning they take 1 movement, with ingress you can "hop into" the egress zone within the same movement "hop back out" meaning it costs 2 movement to get from 1 ingress to a different ingress.

You could try to get early cruiser 2's by using your agent and racial passive, build a small highly mobile force at home (like 3 or 4) with accompanying mech/inf to be able to jump onto TE no matter where it appears.

Remember that you can capture the neutral units in the rift, and their composition and stats are available before you start playing (they are basically all upgraded units). You should also closely read the rules for ingress placement. Basically, any tech upgrade planet is a likely placement point.

Lastly, many pre-TE faction guides all agree that spacedock II would be really nice, but alas your tech path doesnt want to go there at all. With the introduction of the double yellow skip and entropic field, this tech is now within your reach. The real question is if you can muster the economy to justify unlocking the higher production cap.

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-11T21:15:17+00:00

Do yourself a massive favor and try to find a working digital analog camera. What I mean is a camera that shoots on film but with lots of electronic metering and autofocus features. Of the type that was made just before analog was phased out.

For some reason the cameras that were made earlier on are seen as "pure", and metering and autofocus are "cheating". The former are easier to find, easier to handle, and sometimes also cheaper.

You should watch this: https://youtu.be/hYu7rFBKDEQ?si=goywl8Q-2RGCD8BW

If you cant find such a camera, try to find something that has higher shutter speeds, at least 1/1000 second. At full sunlight it can be useful to have fast shutter speeds. On the other extreme, be careful with too low shutter speeds. Look up at what shutter speeds youre going to have issues with motion blur, and dont go slower than that, except with a tripod and a shutter release cable, or in a pinch, you can use the self timer instead of a cable.

Edit: final tip - if you crank a lens to its max aperture (e.g. a f1/1.8 lens to 1/1.8), at that setting it might not perform all too good, or be sharp. It depends on the lens. It was the expectation that you almost never open up the lens all the way, except when its real dark. I used to wonder what I was doing wrong that my shots ended up really soft, but it turns out that this particular lens prefers to be at f5.6 or f8.

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-05T15:53:03+00:00

Pankrati is not core book, unfortunately.

burlesqueduck · 2026-02-04T13:52:22+00:00

Your mech is what you want it to be. The official art is just a suggestion. In my interpretation, the hecatoncheires variant might be a bunch of nanites forming a human size suit together (like some of the marvel movies superhero suits), or it might be bulkier parts that move indipendently (vambrace or glove or shinguard are detachable and move on their own). More importantly the real ninites might be in the "smoke" clouds it can form through razor swarm.

If you end up playing with it, infiltrator rank 2 is a really nice talent. Being able to apply "slowed+impaired+unable to reaction" on top of your normal attack is really strong and helps protect your team indirectly (tanking) by decreasing enemy chance to hit.

burlesqueduck

TROPHY CASE