Post by null painter in Star Cadre: Team Command comments

Viewing post in Star Cadre: Team Command comments

Nice - gives me that ‘laser squad’ feeling, but with enough unique qualities to make it really stand out. Have played 3 missions, tend to lose one member each mission, but armored up and with competent medic, feel like I can get that number down.

The rescuing of hostages and scavenging for gear are super cool systems.

Haven’t yet played around with the ‘training’ function just yet - should probably roll an extra recruit or two just for that.

I love how transparent the ruleset is - thank you for writing a delightful manual. It seems like a well-balanced ruleset, and you’ve rendered it in enough detail for tabletop play!

I wasn’t able to understand what constitutes critical success - I see that a 6 in the skill is needed, and that 11 out of 36 2d6 rolls provide them, but not what rolls qualify? Mathematically, I’m guessing a one on either die (5x2) plus a double one, so any number of ones?

Also a little unclear how creeping works - do you have to make a skill check for every step, or some other interval? And does using ‘detection’ get ‘contested’ by creeping, or does a success just automatically reveal all creepers in LoS?

Important rule when considering how brutal overwatch can be.

Cyningstan26 days ago

Thanks for your message! I'm glad you're enjoying the game. Laser Squad was one of the main inspirations, alongside the Traveller TTRPG. At some point I might to a "rules" document that details everything as if the game were a tabletop RPG; I was thinking of it in those terms when I designed it. As for your queries:

(1) Two dice are rolled for a skill check, one must be equal to or under the skill level, and 1 on either die is a critical success if the skill in question is level 6 (since a double 6 counts as failure for even level 6 characters, the critical success mechanic is what separates level 5 and 6 skills).

(2) There's a check for each step when you're moving. At the end of your turn, there's an extra stealth check to see if your character stays "alert" during the next turn, which allows them to fire immediately if an enemy appears in their line of sight. Normally a character has a 1-turn reaction delay during the opponent's turn.

(3) Creeping status ends when a character's side's turn ends, after which they're either "ready" or "alert". So nobody's creeping when the enemy does their detect action.

Training will definitely improve things, especially as you find interesting equipment that nobody's particularly competent in. My usual strategy is to recruit cheap characters at the start to maximise money for equipment, then gradually train them up.

There's also item study in the equipment screen, which will be useful for making use of alien items if you recruit anybody with the Xenotech skill.

null painter25 days ago

Thank you for the clarifications. I think I misunderstood a few things about creeping and especially detection!

When I read that detection let you ‘detect characters out of sight’ I imagined that creeping was like ‘hiding’ and let you be invisible (if successful and not attackign) between turns, and that there would eventually be ‘stealthed’ enemies. Now I suspect detect lets you ‘see’ nearby enemies through walls, etc?

I think I get it now and was just confused by the proximity of the rules and wrongly thinking of ‘stealth/ambush’ systems from other games.

In my very first battle, I ‘creeped’ my scout into position near an enemy and passed the turn, thinking I was setting up an ambush with lots of AP for next turn… my first death :)

“At the end of your turn, there’s an extra stealth check…”: That’s a cool ‘bonus’ effect. Does this mean that you should make all characters with any skill ‘creep’ before end of turn to get this ‘initiative’ bonus to reaction fire, or is this check automatic?

The sections on training and studying did seem clear, even if I didn’t use them yet; I’m looking forward to diving further in.

Cyningstan25 days ago

You need to manually set characters to creep at the end of the turn if you want them to stay alert at the start of the enemy turn. Since creeping relies on the Stealth skill, it's sometimes not worth spending the extra action point to do it—I only tend to bother with Stealth 2+ characters. Sometimes your character might have exactly 6, 12, 18 action points left, and that extra opportunity attack might be worth more than getting in the first shot on the enemy turn. So I leave the choice to the player.

null painter23 days ago(+1)

This is really great. I’ve had more time to play several more missions, and it’s a blast. Thank you for sharing it and answering my questions!

itch.io

Viewing post in Star Cadre: Team Command comments