We’re thrilled to announce that all of the Dystopian Wars Launch ORBATs have now been locked! But what is a locked ORBAT? Matt from the Game Development team walks us through what this means.
Greetings Admirals!
It feels like only a few weeks since the new edition of Dystopian Wars was released, but so much has happened in this short space of time. Here in the development team, we've been constantly refining the Launch ORBATs (and the Rules Glossary) based on the amazing feedback from our player community. After a lot of hard work and several iterations of these work-in-progress ORBATs, we're finally ready to lock these documents and bring them out of beta.
In this final update, we have focused on amending Points Costs and Victory Point Ratings across the board and reworking Battlefleets to better reflect how players want to use their collections. We have also taken the opportunity to fix any errors that evaded us in the previous beta rollouts.
As we have stated in previous blogs, updating all the ORBATs for Dystopian Wars has been a gargantuan effort, and we always knew that this would require a lengthy review period. While we did our utmost to play as many games as we could prior to release, our sample size could never compare to the number of games our enthusiastic player base has under their belts since launch.
To the players who have shared their observations and experiences via our trusty feedback forms: thank you. Your eagle eyes have made this possible and allowed the design team to produce, in just a fraction of the time, what it would have taken a year or more without your help.
Locked and Loaded
All of the launch ORBATs and the Rules Glossary have now been ‘locked’, meaning that they will not be updated outside of these specific circumstances:
When we add something exciting, like a new unit.
When we do a Global Update, roughly twice a year.
If (and hopefully, this is a very big “if”) we find any major game-breaking errors that slipped through the net during beta.
But please bear in mind: whilst these are no longer in beta, they are still “Launch ORBATs”, and are far from the final iteration of these rules. The purpose of these ORBATs was to let our players get their models on the table the moment the new edition of Dystopian Wars launched, and in that, they have served admirably, albeit without some of the complexity, artwork, and Dystopian Age narrative that some of you are undoubtedly craving.
Rest assured, as we release new sets for each Faction, we will use these opportunities to update the ORBATs by adding new mechanics, revising existing ones, expanding the number of Battlefleets and Fleet Doctrines, and generally improving on the solid foundations that already exist. In fact, the first of these has already been released! Astute Admirals may have noticed that the Crown ORBAT is now Version 4.01 beta, and hasn't been locked. That's because it's the first full ORBAT, bursting with new artwork, rules content, narrative, and all the love and attention of the entire design team
This edition is only just getting started!
Feedback Appreciated!
In line with the ORBAT lock, we are now retiring the Dystopian Wars Error Report and Theme and Balance Feedback forms. We are still eager for feedback, however, and have produced an all-new Dystopian Wars Community Feedback form, similar to one we have recently produced for Armoured Clash.
If you feel that there is something in an ORBAT that we need to address, simply fill out the form, and we will use this data to inform future updates.
Thank you all for being a part of this edition’s launch period, and here’s to the future. Happy sailing, and may your Action Dice always explode.
Matt