Should they bring BFG back?

[A D-B]

Honestly, I just want to see this one time on the big screen. Or in a 40K/30K novel. Just once. Two ships coming alongside, and then the cannons firing almost simultaneously, tearing each other apart. Fire spitting into the void, hulls being rent asunder, shields flickering into nonexistence, bodies tumbling into the void only to be caught by the crossfire. All the while, the ships jerk and shake as though the universe itself was being torn in twain.

A D-B, you got my wish of a moon being turned into a meteor shower to come true. I got my fingers crossed you can pull this one off too. Or at least give it to Abnett.

There was a pretty cool space battle cutscene in the game that shall not be named

Literature will never be able to do space battles justice in the era of computer animation. Even the greatest writers of all time could only write a scene each reader would comprehend differently. Only a visual representation with an awesome soundtrack can do a space battle justice.

I disagree, the pictures are always better in novels.

That Strike Cruiser is waaaay too close to the tau vessel. 40K ships fight at ranges of several hundred thousand kilometers, not several hundred.

Not... entirely. As cool as that style can be, it's not the entirety of 40K void warfare. It's certainly cool, and I've written it that way once or twice myself, as has Dan, but it's not the way all space battles go. In the same way battlefield warfare in the setting has much more in common with warfare in the Ancient World and the battles of both World Wars instead of a place like Fallujah in the 2000s, void war owes more the broadsides-and-boarding-parties Age of Sail than it does to anything else.

The reason most 40K artwork and writing shows ships lancing from afar and then running past one another at close range to hammer at each other isn't because everyone's getting it wrong, it's because that's Warhammer 40,000.

I never recalled that happening in many BFG games. Rather ships duked it out at (what was in game terms) of several hundred thousand kilometers, then closing or retreating depending on the weapon batteries being used. The idea of ships closing to start rubbing each other's noses just seems like a bad trope carried over from Star Wars to 40k. BFG did a fairly good job of brining sensibility back to the table.

It's in a great deal of lore and artwork, and the relationship between how well the rules represent the lore isn't a new topic. But even if you want to pit the rules of BFG against, well, everything else... then I can assure you a great many broadsides were fired in games I played.

I'm not sure why this is even a disagreement, really. You're saying "No, it's only this way". But that's objectively and provably not true. The lore, artwork, and even the game's rules disagree. It goes both ways, not just the one way you're insisting. That's not a bad thing.

[Artein]

I still want to see a video game that is basically Homeworld meets BFG. Space 3D RTS in 40k universe. I was hoping so much that Relic would do it one day, since they were Homeworld creators and they had rights to 40k video games....

[Nomus Sardauk]

I still want to see a video game that is basically Homeworld meets BFG. Space 3D RTS in 40k universe. I was hoping so much that Relic would do it one day, since they were Homeworld creators and they had rights to 40k video games....

 

That would be awesome, even if they only added it as the spacebound section of Dawn of War. Like, you have to break through or utterly annihilate the enemy presence in orbit before you can attempt to conquer the world itself.

[Kol Saresk]

Like Star Wars Empire at War.

 

Actually, what I'd like to see is something real challenging where you can manage the space and ground at the same time. Might be a challenge in single player, but in team deathmatch multiplayer, it could add an interesting dynamic as some people would be assigned attack while the others would defend.

 

But what I really want to see, is more space battles in the novels.

[*Furyou Miko]

I still want to see a video game that is basically Homeworld meets BFG. Space 3D RTS in 40k universe. I was hoping so much that Relic would do it one day, since they were Homeworld creators and they had rights to 40k video games....

You should check out Endless Space. It's a Civ-type space empires game, but with greatly expanded space battle mechanics and some... very... 40k-like ship designs;

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v205/KaguraHakubi/IK%20and%2040K/endless-space-disharmony-3_zpsebf75570.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v205/KaguraHakubi/IK%20and%2040K/Endless-Space-Disharmony-thumb_zps87589b21.jpg

[Vesper]

ES is a really cool game. And it's quite awesome to play with some friends.

[DinoDoc]

 

I still think GW is really missing a massive opportunity by ignoring lower-model-count games, and other game styles (a la BFG) that are an excellent introduction to the GW games system and universe.

The problem with that idea is that at some point GW have tried practically every possible variation on small skirmish games, including giving the rules away for free. They were selling skirmish games for the majority of their history. Really, nobody in the world can have better data on selling skirmish games alongside large scale war games than GW. And yet, they've decided not to do it.

 

So you can only really conclude one of two things:

 

1) GW looked at this great wealth of sales data, and decided they wanted to make less money.

 

2) Skirmish games don't actually have the net positive effect on their bottom line that you assume they must.

 

And let's face it, the answer isn't going to be number 1, is it?

 

Firestorm Armada points to the fact that BFG might have indeed been a net positive.

[Lucien Eilam]

Firestorm Armada points to the fact that BFG might have indeed been a net positive.

 

I don't think you've understood my point.

 

Skirmish games could be (and I'm sure were) "profitable", in the most simplistic terms, but if producing them draws investment, resources, retail focus, customer attention, etc. away from more profitable product lines (i.e. Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000), then they could still be better off not selling them.

 

Think of everything that goes into bringing a product to market for Games Workshop. Sculptors, game developers, artists, painters, writers, mould makers, a factory, warehouse space, retail space, distribution, staff training, photographers, studio time, website copy, safety testing, and all the other dozens of costs, large and small. It's a huge expense and a finite resource.

 

They could have all that directed toward updating a 40k army, and they have a pretty good idea how much money doing that will make. So if you want all those people doing something else, simply "profitable" won't necessarily cut it.

[Knight of the Raven]

 

You should check out Endless Space. It's a Civ-type space empires game, but with greatly expanded space battle mechanics and some... very... 40k-like ship designs;

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v205/KaguraHakubi/IK%20and%2040K/endless-space-disharmony-3_zpsebf75570.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v205/KaguraHakubi/IK%20and%2040K/Endless-Space-Disharmony-thumb_zps87589b21.jpg

 

I always run out of money before I even get the middle-sized ships in Endless Space. And I never know what technologies to search. I wish they made a battle skirmish mode where I can throw whatever ships I want at whatver enemy ships I want without having to spend hours on getting there in the campaign mode.

[appiah4]

I still want to see a video game that is basically Homeworld meets BFG. Space 3D RTS in 40k universe. I was hoping so much that Relic would do it one day, since they were Homeworld creators and they had rights to 40k video games....

 

The 40K space 'meta' does not lend well to the rock/paper/scissors thing Homeworld had going.. in 40K, the bigger, the better is kind of the rule :)

 

Firestorm Armada points to the fact that BFG might have indeed been a net positive.

 

I don't think you've understood my point.

 

Skirmish games could be (and I'm sure were) "profitable", in the most simplistic terms, but if producing them draws investment, resources, retail focus, customer attention, etc. away from more profitable product lines (i.e. Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000), then they could still be better off not selling them.

 

Think of everything that goes into bringing a product to market for Games Workshop. Sculptors, game developers, artists, painters, writers, mould makers, a factory, warehouse space, retail space, distribution, staff training, photographers, studio time, website copy, safety testing, and all the other dozens of costs, large and small. It's a huge expense and a finite resource.

 

They could have all that directed toward updating a 40k army, and they have a pretty good idea how much money doing that will make. So if you want all those people doing something else, simply "profitable" won't necessarily cut it.

 

 

That is all built on the presumption that I'd rather spend my BFG money on 40K than say X-Wing.

 

Which is outright wrong.

[Lucien Eilam]

That is all built on the presumption that I'd rather spend my BFG money on 40K than say X-Wing.

 

Which is outright wrong.

 

No. It's built on the logical conclusion that if they were more profitable with it, they'd currently have a game of that format in their core range.

 

What you as an individual want to spend your money on is irrelevant. It wasn't worth the distraction for their market as a whole.

 

I'd have to dig out the old shareholder reports to be sure, but my recollection is that the last time they gave numbers for Specialist Games, a year or two before closing the department down, the entire category was worth less than £2m a year. A decent small business if you're careful about keeping your costs down, but way below the kind of margin GW expect from their core business.

 

For that kind of income, the costs are a way bigger deal than what proportion of the lost sales convert to 40k.

[Karack Blackstone]

 

That is all built on the presumption that I'd rather spend my BFG money on 40K than say X-Wing.

 

Which is outright wrong.

 

No. It's built on the logical conclusion that if they were more profitable with it, they'd currently have a game of that format in their core range.

 

What you as an individual want to spend your money on is irrelevant. It wasn't worth the distraction for their market as a whole.

 

I'd have to dig out the old shareholder reports to be sure, but my recollection is that the last time they gave numbers for Specialist Games, a year or two before closing the department down, the entire category was worth less than £2m a year. A decent small business if you're careful about keeping your costs down, but way below the kind of margin GW expect from their core business.

 

For that kind of income, the costs are a way bigger deal than what proportion of the lost sales convert to 40k.

 

 

If I might interject, anything a customer expresses interest in that turns a profit is more money, even if it's not from a major product line the company in question has at that time.

 

The single largest issue with turning BFG into a profitable line was that most models were metal, too delicate for finecast likely, and plastics conversion work was not likely considered worth the investment loss to convert everything over into said plastic.  I would like to hypothesize that this project could in fact make GW massive amounts of money, however, unless things are different, and the company stops considering market shares and profits over losses first and foremost, if GW were to instead think of the fun they can turn into profit, then things might really improve.  The problem I see in this scenario is that the company prioritizes its business side and not its hobby side.  However, the email system they use for previews and orders might also request one day a poll or interest email system that can honestly give them a feedback system to go forward as to how GW operates from here on out.

[incinerator950]

Maximizing shareholder and short term profit gains is waaasy more important than customer satisfaction and support these days.

[Rune Priest Ridcully]

If they brought it back... it would be brilliant, it along side lotr are in my opinion GW's most fun, tactical and balanced systems with first turn not being an auto win, with most factions having different playstyles yet within each fleet there being different playstyles, compared to 40k where balance is vanishing and one sided matches becoming more common regardless of player ability or luck.
And then there are the models, I was honestly surprised they stopped producing the plastic cruisers, especially with the Horus Heresy book's success as the imperial ones are in my opinion, the best plastic kit GW have ever done, with 8 different ships being possible whilst at the same time not being %70 spare parts you would never use which is a damming problem on most 40K and Fantasy releases nowadays.
It would be worth it just to see the Voss Cruisers, the art is beautiful, the Apocalypse and Falcions are some of the best models in the bfg and gw range, and the pics I have seen it looks like they would have been just as good.
With all the art work of ships in the heresy books, FW must be at least thinking of making a couple of models even as display/event only ones.
I'd love to see either FW or FF do an epic and a BFG Box, the former set as the Dropsite Massacre, with the other being Phall, with boxsets released that contained xenos/Daemonic/Different ships, rules and missions to expand them, but all with rules so you oculd either do the missions in the book or points matches.
And please give up with LOTR bashing, the reason the Hobbit is struggling is that GW is doing it's best to strangle it via insane prices, lack of advertising and aking over half of it OOP.

[RADU LYKAN]

"Should they bring BFG back?"

yes

that is all

[Battybattybats]

Should GW bring BFG back?

If they saw how much people are paying for Mechanicus ships and some of the other hard to get ships on ebay right now I think they would.
Considering several other spaceship games are helping other companies build in size right now and so creating competition for GW that also would be good reason for them to return to that part of the market too.
The value-adding of BFG to 40k is well worth them considering, especially to narrative wargaming and campaigns as well as with brand-awareness.

I'm prepping for a campaign that will use BFG planetary empires, space hulk and 40k. 2 players who've never played BFG are joining in, one is only now building a 40k army the other is a veteran at 40k.

Now that i have Mechanicus for 40k i'm struggling to build a BFG Explorator fleet, i'd love the old miniatures to be re-released let alone nice new ones.
My Rogue Trader RPG group even got some BFG minis for use in our RPG campaign.

Now that FFG are making a board game which has several BFG ship designs in it i hear a lot of people saying they'll get it because of those ships. So there's a market there.

At the least they could licence the game rules and model designs to FFG.