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Taltos
Joined: 06 Jun 2006
Posts: 19
Location: Sol/Terra/Western Hemisphere/USA/Illinois
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 Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 10:06 am Post subject: Dune? |
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I was browsing the Dune related stuff, and couldn't find anything on ground units? Am I just missing it?
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Lord Simeon Filmore Harcourt, Count Leonis, Sovereign of Aberdeen, Guardian of Pavonis, Protector of Wells, and High Son of the Empire |
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Demiurge
Lord of the Spice
Joined: 03 May 2005
Posts: 71
Location: Northern Virginia
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| Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 6:27 pm Post subject: Dune Ground Units |
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Well, the Dune conversion on Planetside is for B5 Wars, which concentrates solely on the space game. As there are a lot of different campaign systems, I didn't do one specifically for any of those. Actually I have my own ground unit system for my campaign based on the old Avalon Hill Panzer Leader/Panzer Blitz system.
I'm not conversant enough with VBAM or Gropos in order to do a conversion at the moment. Though there was a Dune faction for VBAM in the last game, the Ixians. You might be able to look at the rules for them.
Regardless, ground combat would be a real advantage of Dune units in any campaign. The ships are a tad weak compared to B5 ships due to their lack of computerization - they have to buy special officers to compete on an even level in most cases.
Dune Marines have very good combat bonuses - Fremen and Sardaukar should be the elites, Atreides and Ginaz should be very good. Fremen Feydaken are so good that they ignore any other marines bonuses while keeping their +2 bonus!
Sorry I don't have anything more specific for you. |
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Tyrel Lohr
Imperious Leader
Joined: 01 May 2005
Posts: 243
Location: Lusk, WY
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| Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 1:34 am Post subject: |
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I'm afraid when I converted the Ixians, I just kind of handwaved some troop statistics into existance since I don't have any real background knowledge on the Dune universe.
-Tyrel
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Taltos
Joined: 06 Jun 2006
Posts: 19
Location: Sol/Terra/Western Hemisphere/USA/Illinois
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| Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:32 am Post subject: |
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Well, I may slide this onto my list of "want to do".
The ground side is so important to that setting.
now to figure out sources...
But, yes, the Fedaykin in particular and the Fremen in general would be scary good. The same with the Sardaukar.
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Lord Simeon Filmore Harcourt, Count Leonis, Sovereign of Aberdeen, Guardian of Pavonis, Protector of Wells, and High Son of the Empire |
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Taltos
Joined: 06 Jun 2006
Posts: 19
Location: Sol/Terra/Western Hemisphere/USA/Illinois
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| Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 5:28 am Post subject: |
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| Taltos wrote: |
now to figure out sources... |
Ah, of course there is a Dune Wiki: http://wiki.dune2k.com/wiki/Main_Page
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Lord Simeon Filmore Harcourt, Count Leonis, Sovereign of Aberdeen, Guardian of Pavonis, Protector of Wells, and High Son of the Empire |
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Demiurge
Lord of the Spice
Joined: 03 May 2005
Posts: 71
Location: Northern Virginia
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| Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 5:04 pm Post subject: |
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Taltos - what format are you going to do the ground forces in? GROPOS or one of the campaign formats?
Love to see what you come up with!
Yeah, there's lots of good source material out there - the books of course, movie interpretations, even games - hell, House Ordos comes out of the Dune 2000 game (IIRC).
Unlike many sci-fi genres, a lot of the elite Dune infantry rely on hand to hand combat - personal shields invalidate almost all ranged attacks. This makes shielded units ridiculously difficult to take out in most occassions.
The Dune RTS games go in for a lot of tanks and mechanized units, though I'm not sure that reflects the source material very well.
Lasguns are very deadly, and only really contained by the threat of Lasgun/Shield interaction blowing up the entire battlefield. If the opponent doesn't have shields, Lasguns should do a pretty good job of cutting up even heavy armor.
The of course you have the Fremen with their Sandworms (!!!!!), and all sorts of super human abilities in the various dune factions - prescience, the Voice, facedancers, the weirding way, truthsayers, mentat master of assassins, all sorts of good stuff! |
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Taltos
Joined: 06 Jun 2006
Posts: 19
Location: Sol/Terra/Western Hemisphere/USA/Illinois
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| Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 11:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Demiurge wrote: |
Taltos - what format are you going to do the ground forces in? GROPOS or one of the campaign formats?
Love to see what you come up with!
Unlike many sci-fi genres, a lot of the elite Dune infantry rely on hand to hand combat - personal shields invalidate almost all ranged attacks. This makes shielded units ridiculously difficult to take out in most occassions. |
not sure what I will do (or when it isn't on the back burner, but it isn't on the front one either  ).
I will probably just abstract regarding the weaponry, and stat them according to relative, general ability. Sardaurkar superior to most, Fremen better than them, etc. Sandworm riders a Dune only unit, that kind of thing.
| Demiurge wrote: |
The of course you have the Fremen with their Sandworms (!!!!!), and all sorts of super human abilities in the various dune factions - prescience, the Voice, facedancers, the weirding way, truthsayers, mentat master of assassins, all sorts of good stuff! |
Now you got me thinking about officer abilities.... can't believe I didn't think of that before. 
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Taltos
Joined: 06 Jun 2006
Posts: 19
Location: Sol/Terra/Western Hemisphere/USA/Illinois
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| Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 7:00 am Post subject: |
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Oh, and Demiurge, do I correctly assume that you did the Dune Wars stuff in the Great Machine?
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Lord Simeon Filmore Harcourt, Count Leonis, Sovereign of Aberdeen, Guardian of Pavonis, Protector of Wells, and High Son of the Empire |
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Demiurge
Lord of the Spice
Joined: 03 May 2005
Posts: 71
Location: Northern Virginia
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| Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 1:06 am Post subject: |
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Yep, it was my first real attempt at SCS creation. A few things I'd do over, though all in all I'm happy with it. One day I'll do a Rev 2 with some minor alterations. For one thing I'd definitely scale up mentats role, and there was some information in the Brian Herbert books which indicated more heavy units than I'd previously surmised. A Corrino Planetary Siege Battlecruiser, and probably a heavier Atredies Battlecruiser has some precedent.
Since then I've done a lot of different stuff - Star Wars (all the prequel units and some alterations of Ben Rubery's designs), Stargate, Predators, Buck Rogers, some Battletech units, Vidiians from Voyager, just started a Battlefleet Gothic conversion ,and I host Faisent's Hyperion (from Dan Simmons novels) designs. |
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Taltos
Joined: 06 Jun 2006
Posts: 19
Location: Sol/Terra/Western Hemisphere/USA/Illinois
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| Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 7:52 am Post subject: |
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| Demiurge wrote: |
| Yep, it was my first real attempt at SCS creation. A few things I'd do over, though all in all I'm happy with it. One day I'll do a Rev 2 with some minor alterations. |
My compliments then.
Pretty complete stuff.
I am pirating to port it all over to VBAM as a way to kill some spare time (and I have no idea where that came from). The ugly part will be coming up with a map, but the basics of the campaign would look a lot like Tyrel's Terran Imperium.
| Demiurge wrote: |
For one thing I'd definitely scale up mentats role, and there was some information in the Brian Herbert books which indicated more heavy units than I'd previously surmised. A Corrino Planetary Siege Battlecruiser, and probably a heavier Atredies Battlecruiser has some precedent. |
Larger ships are always nice, but the general consensus I have seen is generally that Brian's stuff is not "canon", so not the end of the world if you don't get to it. I haven't read any of Brian's stuff, except the book he co-authored with his dad and 1 or 2 solo (non-Dune) works he put out about the same time (early to mid 80s).
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Demiurge
Lord of the Spice
Joined: 03 May 2005
Posts: 71
Location: Northern Virginia
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| Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 3:30 pm Post subject: |
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Taltos,
A lot of the ships for VBAM are already done - check out the last posting for the Starflight campaign, they include the turn records for IX, and IIRC they at least had all the Landsraad ships (ie the ships available to all factions) listed there, as well as of course the IX ships.
I actually kinda liked the first trilogy of prequels - several clever things in them. And of course the only starship fights in that era are portrayed there. You've got a Noship executing another ship in a Heighliner hold, and Corrino's fleet goes around destroying several planets, including Richese's moon sized research station.
Not nearly as good as Frank Herbert's original stuff, but still fairly good in my estimation.
The Butlerian Jihad stuff on the other hand... well, I bought the first book and thought the writing was so poor that I put it down after about 20 pages. Maybe I'll try again someday just to see if I can. LOL. |
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Taltos
Joined: 06 Jun 2006
Posts: 19
Location: Sol/Terra/Western Hemisphere/USA/Illinois
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| Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 9:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Demiurge wrote: |
Taltos,
A lot of the ships for VBAM are already done - check out the last posting for the Starflight campaign, they include the turn records for IX, and IIRC they at least had all the Landsraad ships (ie the ships available to all factions) listed there, as well as of course the IX ships. |
Thanks, I'll look. Be a helpful - beats starting from scratch.
| Demiurge wrote: |
I actually kinda liked the first trilogy of prequels - several clever things in them. |
First relatively positive thing I have heard about them. Cheap and easy to find these days, maybe I'll pick 'em up.
| Demiurge wrote: |
Not nearly as good as Frank Herbert's original stuff, but still fairly good in my estimation. |
Well, I did give Brian points for darin to try. Frank left big shoes.
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Lord Simeon Filmore Harcourt, Count Leonis, Sovereign of Aberdeen, Guardian of Pavonis, Protector of Wells, and High Son of the Empire |
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XSiberia
Joined: 29 Jul 2007
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 10:32 pm Post subject: |
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/shakes dust off thread.
| Quote: |
| A lot of the ships for VBAM are already done - check out the last posting for the Starflight campaign, they include the turn records for IX, and IIRC they at least had all the Landsraad ships (ie the ships available to all factions) listed there, as well as of course the IX ships. |
I'm working on a Dune conversion for VBAM as well (also Honorverse and Revelation Space), and I'd love to see what's been done before. I found a "Starlight" campaign, but didn't see what was Dune about it...?
Taltos, did you finish this project?
My project is an attempt to use VBAM to cover the strategic level combat and resource management, but with expanded/more developed rules for intrigue and ground combat. In the "Pauline" era covered in the first three Dune books by FH, I just don't see there having been much space combat, as the Guild would have prevented it. Warfare in general seems to have been highly ritualized by the Great Convention and the rules of kanly ("the forms"). When wars were fought, the emphasis seems to have been on troops. When they weren't openly fought, it was all assassinations and intrigue: thus the need to refine those two areas.
I also want a characterful game with RP aspects. For that I am reaching out to the Lumpley published independent RP rule system, "Dog's in the Verse." This is (in my opinion) a brilliant system of conflict resolution based escalating encounters. I was inspired to use it by a conversion for it for the Firefly universe, where in the rules allow the ship to become a character with its own traits (as fans of the series would agree is only right--actual play write up here at The Forge.). I think that this might be extended to Dune by making the house itself a "character" with its own traits and goals that would heavily influence the characters and thus the player.
This second aspect of the game would, I think, make for great, moderated and thematically appropriate conflicts between 'player characters' in a Landsraad-type forum that would then influence their strategic, VBAM moderated play. What I continue to struggle with is how I might relate one system to the other in, by way of XP and perhaps Diplomacy/Intrigue options, or if that is hopeless and if I should just have it as a game withing a game, each arena giving context to the other.
FYI, we have a great Dune strategy game here, which somehow manages to be a strategy game while relying on a primarily diceless, RP heavy system that reaches out to D20 for resolving conflicts. It's not 4x or VBAM by any means, but Dune fans who like to write might want to check it out. It will look shocking familiar..
Well, here's to hoping this gets an answer (it's quiet here... too quiet!)
-Josh
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