News:

Cammerz brings us some fantastically painted and customised Alpha Legion. Check out their work with detail shots and design insight.

Main Menu

Crazy project - Bringing Command and Conquer to the 41st Millennium

Started by Railgun Convention, January 07, 2014, 04:20:35 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Railgun Convention

I've been a fan of the C&C series since Red Alert, and now there's green crystals available from Zealot Miniatures. I could hardly not do this :P

If anyone has any suggestions or things I've missed, post it below. I'll be listing units to start with, then figuring out where to put them. I've only really played 2 and 3, having been too young for 1 and not wanting to touch 4 with a barge pole, so if anyone could help with those that would be much appreciated.




Setting special rules for C&C

Tiberium
Tiberium is the driving force for the primary C&C universe. It (usually) takes the form of a translucent green crystal, which propagates via irradiating its surroundings. Tiberium has a tendency to attract all the heavy (and valuable) elements in the ground around it, collecting them in crystal clusters and making them very easy to harvest. However, because of the radiation it emits, the crystal is very dangerous to unprotected lifeforms.

Tiberium can be placed as a Tiberium Field, in which case it is treated as difficult area terrain that offers no cover save, or it may infest other terrain pieces. Tiberium, and terrain pieces infested with it, are Dangerous Terrain for all non-vehicle models. Models with HazOps suits are immune to this latter effect, and models with the Tiberium Mutant/Lifeform special rule gain that immunity, and +1 to Regeneration and Feel No Pain tests (giving them 6+ Regeneration and/or Feel No Pain if they did not already have this rule).

Blue Tiberium
As well as the standard green, some blue Tiberium also exists. This material is twice as valuable, twice as dangerous, and highly explosive.

Non-Vehicle, Non-HazOps, Non-Mutant models in a Blue Tib Field or infested terrain piece fail their Dangerous Terrain tests on a 5+ rather than a 6. Tiberium Mutants have their Regeneration and Feel No Pain bonuses boosted to +2 instead of +1.

If a blast weapon or template weapon strikes the field, roll 2D6 and add the weapon's Strength stat at the end of that shooting phase. If the total exceeds 15, all models in contact with the field (including Vehicles) take a S6 AP5 hit (vehicles are hit on their rear armour). If the total exceeds 20, the field explodes at S8 AP4 and is removed from the game.

Blue Tiberium is also vulnerable to heat; as such, flame, plasma or melta weapons add +2 to their roll against it.

Ion Storms
Ion storms were not recorded during the first era; during the second, however, they turned up anywhere and everywhere, usually in the Red Zones. Ion storms are much like regular thunderstorms; however, they are full of microscopic, airborne tiberium crystals and as such the "lightning" is supercharged and very lethal. GDI's Ion Cannons make use of this effect to deliver high energy, pinpoint accurate particle beams from space.

[insert Ion Storm summoning rule here]

If an Ion Storm is in effect, roll 2D6 for each unit at the beginning of each game turn. Every unit for which a 12 is rolled takes a S8 AP2 hit - vehicles are hit on their side armour.

In addition to this, on the turn an Ion Storm comes into effect, all skimmers and jetbikes are immediately grounded and may not move or rotate, while jump pack and jet pack units must move as if they do not have jump packs / jet packs. Any skimmer or jetbike grounded over normally impassible terrain must take a dangerous terrain check on grounding. Any fliers on the board at the time are instantly destroyed, and flyers may not enter from reserves until the storm has passed.

Ion storms are not totally unpredictable, but they can't be seen coming very well until they're nearly on top of the area. As such, when an Ion Storm is triggered, it does not come into play until two turns after it was activated.

Red Zone/Blue Zone/Yellow Zone
From the second era onwards, the world is divided up into zones, which are given colours based on their state of Tiberium infestation. Use a zone designation to help you plan how affected the game will be by Tiberium.

A Red Zone is heavily infested with Tiberium, so much so that any infantry in the area will be incredibly vulnerable; these areas may still contain ruined buildings, but most if not all of the map will be infested with the stuff. In the second era, the terrain will be thick with mutated flora, and Tiberian creatures will be common sights. Ion storms are also very common in Red Zones, enough that any given protracted battle will likely see two or three storms during the fight, and even a light skirmish may get caught in one.

Yellow Zones are infested too, but nowhere near as heavily as a Red Zone. These zones contain much of the world's population, observing the day to day battle of Humanity versus Tiberium. Many civilians in these areas are disenchanted with GDI as a whole, and Nod often sees a lot of its recruits and sympathisers come from these areas. Ion storms and mutations are rare, but still occur from time to time. Tiberium will be well spread out, but mainly in patches, with towns sometimes persisting in the middle of infected areas. It is very much possible to have intact cities in these areas, their walls prohibiting most tiberium growth and sonic emitters and other devices keeping underground tiberium at bay.

A Blue Zone is a safe haven from tiberium, and an area in which GDI managed to get everything right. The only tiberium in these areas will usually be very well contained, often behind force fields. In a Blue Zone you could almost forget tiberium even exists. Other Tiberium-related effects, including Ion Storms, will be non-existent. These areas are where GDI gets most of its recruits and hardware from.




A note on Eras
I'm writing the rules for what is actually at least 4 different games here; whilst continuity is constant, it also means that things change between eras. The first era has only Green Tiberium, and no battle-affecting Ion Storms; the second has absolutely everything, including a number of Tiberian flora/fauna mostly not present in the other games; by the third, Tiberium is so virulent that no flora or fauna can survive long enough to mutate, except in carefully controlled experiments or the pre-mutated Forgotten, and battles are mostly kept away from the Red Zones where the Ion Storms are concentrated; in the early fourth era, the yellow zones mostly become red zones, and some of the blues become yellows, but by the late fourth era, humanity has finally got a leg over Tiberium with the Tiberium Control Network [and I need to see what effects it still has].

Vehicles from previous eras may be carried over into the era being used; however, these units will be unpredictably affected by the passage of time. Use the following table to examine the history of each unit you bring from an earlier era, rolling once for each era it has to survive (so bringing a Mammoth MK1 to the third era would require two rolls on this table, and you'd have to stop to apply any effects from the second era before rolling for the third era). You may only select previous era vehicles from the same faction you are using for your current era force, unless mixed forces are allowed. It is possible to use an army list from an older era in a newer era, if you're feeling mildly insane(!); in this case, the units are not affected, but you may not choose newer armoury upgrades from the era(s) you're moving past/playing in. If temporal damage makes it to the end of the vehicle's history, you may pay 20pts per deficit to remove any one damage. You need not repair them all if you don't want to.

Note that this is used at the end of army list building; if you want to build a list around a group of older vehicles, you may set those up, roll for them, make any repairs, and then build the rest of your army.

D6 ResultEffect
1The vehicle looks really quite damaged, and may need an extensive overhaul to get it back into combat shape. Roll D3 times on the temporal damage table.
2, 3The vehicle has not fared so well over this time period, and is a bit rusty. Roll once on the temporal damage table.
4, 5The vehicle has survived the intervening years relatively intact, and is reasonably well maintained. It may be used as originally written. Remove one temporal damage result of your choice, if any exist.
6Not only has the vehicle survived unscathed, it's actually relatively intact and has seen some action in this era. The vehicle may use weapon profiles matching its weapons from this era, and may replace old equipment with equipment from this era's armoury of the appropriate faction. Remove d3 temporal damage results of your choice.

D3 ResultEffect
1Armour deficit: Roll a D3. On a 1, 2 or 3, remove an armour point from the front, side or rear armour respectively.
2Drive deficit: the vehicle must use 3" of movement before it can actually move; it does not get to move those 3".
3Weapon deficit: Randomly select a weapon. That weapon has -1S / +1AP.




Tiberium Dawn




Tiberian Sun

GDI
  • Light Infantry
    Spoiler
    Light Infantry are the basic ground troops of both factions. They're equipped with assault rifles and full body armour.
    (insert rules here)
  • Disc Thrower
  • Medic
  • Jetpack Infantry
  • Ghost Stalker (GDI commando)
  • Wolverine
  • Titan
  • Disruptor
  • Mammoth Tank MKII
  • Amphibious APC
  • Hover MLRS
  • Orca Fighter
  • Orca Bomber

Nod

  • Light Infantry
  • Rocket Infantry
  • Cyborg
  • Cyborg Commando
  • Mutant Hijacker
  • Attack Buggy
  • Attack Cycle
  • Tick Tank
  • Artillery
  • Repair Vehicle
  • Harpy
  • Banshee
  • Devil's Tongue (Flame Tank)
  • Subterranean APC
  • Stealth Tank




Tiberium Wars




Tiberium Twilight
So how many crashes have I survived now?

Thantos

QuoteBlue Tiberium
As well as the standard green, some blue Tiberium also exists. This material is twice as valuable, twice as dangerous, and highly explosive.

Ill see if i can get you in some of these blue ones too :D

Could really put people off using ordanace!


Narric

Using a Wiki for reference would be good, as it gets everybody on the same page of info. Just using Wikipedia isn't that good, but you can find some topic specific Wikis these days. Quick google fu got me this site: http://cnc.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Tiberian_Dawn
I find Wikia sites to have more info then a Wikpedia page, and often they're derict copy/paste from the games and official sources, meaning you shouldn't get too much non-conjoining info.

Mabbz

Are you doing Red Alert, or just the Tiberium games? Because I might take on the Red Alert series if you don't.

I like your rules for Tiberium. I kinda want to use them in a regular 40k game.

Have you considered making rules for the various buildings as well? I don't just mean the base defences; come up with rules for the harvester and you could make it possible to play proper games of C&C. The battles would probably take forever if the rules were in keeping with the games, mind you.

The Man They Call Jayne

Mammoth tanks really would be superheavies I think. The MkII comes with twin railguns, missile launchers and I think some kind of AA laser? So an Icarus Lascannon.
Jaynes Awesome Card Counter: +5

Secondspheres Crash Card Counter +4



Railgun Convention

@Thantos: Quite the contrary - people will probably bring ordnance just to stop other people placing Mutants in the blue stuff!

@Narric: That's a good wiki there. Should get me going quite nicely, although the C&C1 stuff is a little disorganised.

@Jayne: They seem to be about on the same level as Baneblades. The C&C2 MK2 had railguns for ground combat, and SAMs for anti-air. I don't believe there was one in C&C3, and haven't seen much of 4, although there was a mod that added one with a chin-mounted machine gun, probably to replace the MARV. I might use that as my base.

@Mabbz: I certainly wouldn't mind you doing a take on the Red Alert side - it'd take a load off me, that's for sure :P. Base building / structures / Tiberium harvesting would be impossible to do on a 28mm scale in any sane amount of time, simply because of the huge map size required for balance. I think a 40K turn would represent about 5 seconds of game time in the RTS, but if it's true to the game, you'd be training infantry one model at a time for the first couple of eras. It might be something I look into later, though.

Random thought on the use of points: if instead the points were replaced with the original cash value, and each player had to build an army with a cash limit, at that point it would definitely make sense to include the structures as an unlock system - i.e. you must build a Radar outpost before you can take HMLRS/Artillery, and the outpost would cost you.

Oh, and I'll have to add Ion Storms to the setting rules.
So how many crashes have I survived now?

The Man They Call Jayne

You could just ignore all that stuff and have the actual game be the bit AFTER you have built all the base and trained the models. That way, you get the combat without having to do all the base building. Unless of course the whole point is that you want the base building?
Jaynes Awesome Card Counter: +5

Secondspheres Crash Card Counter +4



Railgun Convention

Yeah, I'll avoid base stuff until I get the unit rules down. Otherwise I'll get bogged down in madness.
So how many crashes have I survived now?

Charistoph

Yeah, the 40K game isn't really designed for the standard RTS template...  Could you imagine bringing in Dawn of War or Dawn of War 2 mechanics in to the game?  (actually, DoW2 wouldn't be as hard, really, just a modified Kill Team with model introduction/reintroduction mechanics... hmm...)

But Tiberium Fields could be part of a Fortification, or just AS a Fortification by themselves.

I would start with unit design first and fit that in to the 40K mechanic before starting to put 40K in to the C&C mechanic as a tabletop game.  Otherwise, you might as well just create the game from scratch.
Are you a Wolf, a Sheep, or a Hound?

Quote from: Megavolt-They called me crazy.  They called me insane!  THEY CALLED ME LOONEY!! and boy, were they right."