General Steam Sale Madness

[JudgeDredd]

I imagine I will too if I ever score!

[Nefaro]

in my experience only the Elves are any good at throwing and passing - i did it with my Ork team once and scored a TD, i ran round the sofa twice whooping like a tw**

Any player with high Agility, and/or the catching special ability that gives a bonus, is good at receiving.  There's also a Passing special ability that gives a bonus for that and midling teams like Orcs, Humans, etc. can kinda get by with these.   It's still a huge risk if the receiver has opponents near them as a drop could easily bounce right into one of their hands, if not fumbling right in front of them and handing the turn over.  But with all the risk can come big huge scores in fast time.  The Wood Elves are a blast to play due to all their dodging and catching ability but they break like twigs all the time and it's expensive to replace them when they are ruined by injuries so they are also very frustrating.

I read the forums a bit and it sounds like they pretty much only added the three new teams and are attempting to fix the terrible sync issues that have always plagued multiplayer games enough to ruin some matches. 

For some stupid reason, I took the discount while I could and picked up the $10 Chaos Edition.  I'm punching myself in the face because Cyanide Studios still hasn't fixed the net code bugs OR the stupid AI.  At least they're trying to fix the first one, but I'm beginning to believe the Cyanide devs are the 3rd stringers of the game programming world.  >:(

[Nefaro]

Oh.. and if some of you decide to give Blood Bowl multiplayer a go, that could encourage me to STFU with my complaints and jump back in.  Despite the issues, it's still a unique tabletop-to-PC experience.

If there's a few people, we could even create our own private GrogHeads League.  :D  Now that would be fun, if we could get the game scheduling lined up.

[JudgeDredd]

How does online work? PBEM?

I never play online (apart from the occasional BF3) - but I'd possibly be willing to play you online IF you let me know daft things I'm doing or clever things I'm not doing - and IF it's pbem

[JasonPratt]

I suspect the synch problems have to do with the crazy real-time system they implemented, which tries to run a dice-based game consonant with real-time behavior.

The "Blitz" rules that are new for the game (as opposed to the tabletop, not new for the Chaos edition) can operate in turn-based however, as far as I can tell (didn't actually play much this weekend, working on some other games).

Turn-based would be either LAN, TCP/IP or play by email. Okay, I guess the former two could involve desynch. Maybe the latter now that I think of it: the game allows one person to institute actions for all players (once per turn) until or unless someone on their side gets knocked down--doesn't matter who--and then the other player has initiative to act until they expend all pieces or one of their pieces get knocked down. (This has nothing necessarily to do with who has the ball at any moment, although getting hold of the ball obviously triggers initiative.)

The player who doesn't have initiative will have his pieces react to various conditions automatically until initiative for his side is restored. So a desynch could occur that way: Player A, having initiative, does thing that B's pieces react to in various ways, until something triggers a switch in initiative (usually one of A's players being knocked down), then the turn is sent to B who now has initiative--but on the replay for B so he can catch up with the situation, B's pieces don't behave the same way for a buggy reason leaving him with a different situation.

So I don't know. PBEM may also be have synch problems I guess. If I wasn't lazy I could actually do research rather than speculate about it.  ;D


As to the air game: this is affected by various factors.

1.) Environment: wind can screw up passes for example.

2.) Relative size differences between teams: hard for a halfling to pass over a treant.

3.) Inherent racial/faction factors: highly dextrous races or factions are better at passing and receiving. Elves (of various sorts), the rats, maybe the Amazons. This is partially reflected in whether a race or faction even has "passers" and "catchers" as an option! (Those are specially intended to throw and catch the ball. Some teams don't have them; others, like the basic human team, have them but aren't racially all that great with them.) Teams that don't will have to have members specially trained and outfitted over time to throw and catch balls, if the coach wants that as a strategic goal or as a tactical option. Basic Chaos, for example, is designed from the outset to win not by either passing or running the ball, but by murdering the other team to the point that they have to forfeit the match!--so developing either a pass/catch or run team (much moreso a team competent at both) can take a long time.

4.) Experience: just like most tactical RPG's (including Warhammer), novices suck and elites are leety. A subfactor here is that starting a new campaign usually means starting with novices.

5.) Loot: various things can be bought and more-or-less permanently assigned to players to kit them up for better passing and catching. This applies to chaos mutations, too.

6.) Temporary spells and similar effects.

7.) Co-dependency: last but not least, a good passer is worth almost nothing without a competent catcher or vice versa. (Although a good passer is worth more, because the rules are set up so that one viable strategy is to use the passer like a punter and just get the ball near a team member for him to pick up--except that unlike "Niffle Amorican" football  ;) intentionally grounding the ball and picking it up can lead to an end-zone score! (I think. There are lots of rules and I may be easily misremembering.) On the other hand, the mere act of picking up a ball is no easy feat for some teams or for player types on some teams!


I'm pleased to say that I was able to solve my graphic problem at least (don't use the highest level shaders), and that the game runs fine on XP SP2. I haven't tried building a team yet, but I'd be interested in a Grog PBEM league of some sort.

[undercovergeek]

id be right there for a PBEM league - i just dont know if it can be done like that - think its just head to head because of all the mid turn dice rolls for tackles,fumbles and interceptions - ill have a look

[JudgeDredd]

^ oh yeah - makes PBEM impossible I guess

[undercovergeek]

been to cyanide - no PBEM - lots of requests, but sadly no

man that would have been a time stealer!!!!

[Nefaro]

A single game, in PBEM, would take ages.  I don't think it's feasible at all.

I think the current online leagues works just fine.. other than the occasional sync problems that can ruin a match.  >:(  I dunno how many times I've sat watching a "resyncing..1..2..3..4..28" message during a turn but it's mf'ing annoying, especially so when a game ends because the program can't seem to stay sync'd.  This can become a bigger issue when playing people overseas and there are quite a few Brits, Spanish, and especially French players I've had matches against.

The Online Leagues are very cool since you just log in, create a new team, and start playing head-to-head games.  Level up your players, buy extras between matches, and play some more.  Each match is just a simple (you'd think!) turn-based affair so you'll have to play each one out or forfeit if your hooker/wife comes home early, demanding attention.  But I think you get a couple "time-outs" that let you pause the game for an extra 30 or 40 seconds, to put out any house fire you may get during the match.  I recall typically finishing a game in 20 to 30 minutes - you tend to get faster at making your moves the more experience you have.