it's the start of a long wait!

Hi I'll be your tour guide for the day...

All is quiet on the Eastern front.. There has been a big decrease in posts and progress in these last few weeks. Adepticon is over, the Palladium Books open house is over and well I have been busier than a One-legged man in a butt kicking contest. ( no offense to any one-legged men out there).
The reasons for the lack of posts or updates is because we don't have any.  Not for lack of trying. Both myself and Paulson games are in a holding pattern. We are at a point where we are awaiting further confirmation from Palladium to see if the project gets the full greenlight. There are many things that need to be discussed between Palladium and Harmony Gold before any further action can be taken. That is all that I can say at this point.
Until any resolution is made the only thing that can be worked on is the updating of the current rules to a more player friendly version and do additional playtesting. First up; nail down the clarity of the rules, so they are easier to read and understand. Second is to test an easier close combat systems that I have been toying with. Thanks to the playtestors that so far have stepped up and given some incredible insight to the current version of rules and the theories behind creating balance to the games we play. Third is to test some different versions of elevation rules to create a more Robotech feel to the game. Elevations are a large portion of the game and making the elevations a set height or just making them layers are being reviewed. There are many arguments for or against the current set height per elevation system. more news to come on that.
Getting into the rules there are many small items that can be a detriment or asset to a game system. First off I want a fast but efficient game, so some of the items that are bogging the game down will be streamlined or revised altogether. Sometimes you are rolling way too many dice just to do one or two actions. Sometimes this is necessary  such as how missiles hit/miss/reacquire and others need revising.. such as Close combat.

I'm seeing room to expand the rules to include some initiative order to the players. currently there is not alot of downtime while turns are played out, the action/reactions take care of that quite nicely.. you are rarely just sitting there with nothing to do.
As more things are being worked on, I was thinking of moving to a two game format for Robotech Battles: Macross - A quick start rules set and an advanced piloting rule set where you can play smaller games with alot more detail associated with the pilot and building your pilots and expanding game play with more actions and reactions based on the pilot stats as well as the mechas stats..
I would like to hear everyones thoughts on this. Do you want to see the pilots get fleshed out further in the game? I am already planning to release special characters in the second book of Robotech battles, covering the second half of the first war. But I can add a few of the special characters in the first release of the game.. Is this what you would like to see?

Post your comments. (please)
Tom Roache