New Forest Method

Here is a test piece for a very dense forest.

I went the route that Architectsofwar.com and http://www.6mmacw.com/forests.html have by making a lift off canopy. I used thin, black craft foam for both the canopy and the forest floor. 

Here it is taken with the flash to show the tree trunks:

I painted them grey and than added a dark brown wash. The flash shows the gaps in the canopy where this is no foliage. In normal lighting, these gaps are much less obvious. 

Here is was it looks like with the canopy off:

Each square on cutting mat equals 1/4"

The main challenge was trying to get the trunks to stand vertically. This proved to be a mixed success.  I used craft sticks that I bought at a craft store, but I am seriously considering flat head nails that would have solved the vertical trunk issue. I probably could have stuck a lot more trunks on there. The two in the middle are to provide a little more support. 

Both methods in the links above used a hot glue gun to attach the clump foliage, which I did, which predictably was a mess (unless you are trying to recreate the spiders' lair in Mirkwood). Clump foliage is kind of expensive, but I used up only about maybe a fifth of a bag, if that, for this 6 1/2" by 3 1/4" forest.  I probably won't make any more that are much larger than this one. 

I am a lot happier with these than the hex-based forests that I presented in a previous post. Now to get cracking on that second bridge as I inch closer to having enough terrain for a battle.

AI Decision Tree for Solo Games

I've really become hooked on the  Delta Vector blog site. The author, evilleMonkeigh, deals a lot with rule design, often from the standpoint of solo gaming. Recently, he has been discussing non-player character AIs. I've been playing around with AIs for a while, but it got me tinkering again, especially since I am getting closer to having a game.

I have been focusing on building AI for battles involving battalion level and higher micro armor games. This decision tree is what I've come up with so far:

Click on chart to better read it.

A lot things on the chart are very loosely set up. For example, final actions, those in the light green boxes, have more than one possible action to take. It might be that which one to take would be decided by die roll, or it might be that several actions could be taken based on available unit command pips. Even some of the early decisions may not be automatic. A percent dice might be used for the "Yes," "No," and "No, but..." decisions. 

What is meant by Scurry? I borrowed the word from Ivan Sorensen's various rules, particularly from his Fivecore Company Commander rules. In his rules, it has a more positive meaning (move to a better firing position or gain ground) but right now, I'm using it as a place-holder term to mean, go to ground, redeploy to take cover, or fall back to a safer position. 

This is in the very early stages of development. I don't know how fluid this tree is, but guess is that its probably not in its present iteration. Also, I don't know what then happens after a fire fight. Does it go back to the intital state at the beginning? Does it fall into some sort of loop at or past the "Yes" state until there is no more enemy? Bizarre results might be entertaining, but that is not what I am going for! 

I still have not decided what rules to use. It might be a mash up two or several. That discussion is for another post. The hope is that the AI will be generic enough to be used with any rules.

Any thoughts or comments are welcome.

Update

The crack in my stomach (as my son calls it) from my surgery is healing, but I have not had much energy to do much. I started back to work last week, but it was basically, teach my classes and go home and crash. 

I am nearly finished improving on some old hills that I had made a long time ago (sorry, no pictures yet), and I thought I was pretty close to being ready for the first land battle of my campaign, but when I looked at my map, I discovered that I needed some paved roads, and some more dirt roads, and more river segments, and more forests.......ah-h-h-h!

Table top map for game

I THINK I can get it all done by this weekend, providing I have some spare time and I don't get all detail-ly, which I am prone to do. I also need to focus. I finished some trees for my friend Will, who is venturing into Warhammer Age of Sigmar, that I had started before all the medical issues erupted. As I finished them, a thought came into my head about making some houses for him. Nope, they will have to wait! I need to stay focused on getting things done for this game.

Building Bridges, Part 4

Here is the completed larger bridge that I previewed two posts ago. I would have finished sooner, but the heart attack turned out to be an acute gall bladder infection and it had to be removed, stat. The doctor wasn't sure what the cause of it was, but it was probably a combination of it being "sluggish" which propagated an infection. It was a messier operation than expected and they had to remove it old school. My 3-year-old says that I now have a big crack in my belly. I came home yesterday from the hospital and managed to have enough energy by the evening to finish it.

Two trucks loaded with rebels head off to the front

Overall, I'm happy with it. I could add more detail, but I'm more in the mood to move on to get closer to playing a game. I think it will look fine on a gaming table.

Big Scare

I had planned to post my completed second bridge, but this weekend took me on a different path that led me to the hospital. Early Sunday morning, 4 am to be exact, I thought I was having a heart attack. Thankfully, turned out not to be.

It was a huge wake up call. I've struggled with my weight for a big chunk of my life. My main issue is food, not so much healthy vs. unhealthy because I by-in-large eat fairly healthy, but the quantities that I eat. I exercise three times a week and can even get up at 5:00 in the morning to do that, but I have little control over eating. So, I need to do three things:

1. Cut down some on certain foods.  As I said above, I do eat pretty healthy food. Over the years, I seemed to have lost my sweet tooth so sweets are not an issue. My sugar levels are normal. Its the other numbers that are high. I do eat a lot of vegetables and fruits, but I love cheese and starches. I need to try to cut back on those somewhat. Cheese will be the hardest.

2. Portion control. This is the big one! I can't seem to stop shoveling it in. For me, I think, food is sort of a drug for me in that its comforting. Eating is also the few times where I have social interaction. I eat lunch with my colleagues at work, and Wednesday nights the church that I attend has a pot luck dinners. When I am in these situations, I feel like I am on auto-pilot. A more minor situation is that both my wife and I finish up whatever is on our kids' plates. Both my wife and I came from families where you didn't leave anything on your plate.

3. Stress, I eat when I am stressed, and I seem lately to be stressed a lot. I have almost no "me time" anymore. My two big personal activities have been my wargaming and my research. For the past several years, the research has been non-existent. The hobby activities have been limited for an hour or two at night when everyone's in bed, and that might be once or twice a week. Other than some church activities, I don't have any social activities. This will be, in some ways the toughest one.

Building Bridges, Part 3

Working on another bridge.  I hope to be done soon.

Building Bridges Part 2

In last post, I started building a simple suspension bridge.  In this post, I  finish it.

The next thing I did was to make the posts. I used 1.5mm styrene rods and cut them with my new tool, the Chopper II.

I bought it at my look hobby shop chain, but I think you can also order it from Micromark. I'm not sure what great improvements it has over the Chopper I. A couple of issues. First,  it would be an improvement if the guides were a little thicker aND the locking screw was better. Second, and a bigger issue is that the measurements are in inches!

Come on! If you're trying to make  precise cut of tiny things, metric is the way to go. Not only that, but each hatch mark was a little thick, so there is a larger margin of error.  It managed to do the job and I got a whole mess of poles that I then glued onto the sides of the bridge:

I then built up the base. I first tried polymer clay,  but I couldn't pull it off the styrene base without distortion.  I then used a air drying clay, which worked well.

Once the clay was dry, I then glued the bridge on and covered it with some caulk.

Thought I had a picture of it with caulk. I guess not.

The last part before painting was putting the railings. I superglue thread. I am not too happy with how ends turned out.

Here it is all painted up:

Here's a GHQ Nyala RG-31 attempting to cross it: 

It's too narrow for my infantry stands to sit on, but it's supposed to be a narrow bridge.  I didn't think about it until now but I should have made a copy of the base and built a destroyed version!