The story about nourkias having a relationship with the O12 commissar, Lady Numiria, which obtained various benefits from the combined army during the last online campaign... apparently including plasma rifles that were sent to TB as a fiancial gift.
With double the shots though... Edit: re cutter vs Silverstar Prime Actually they're both hitting on 12s but the Cutter passes its saves on 6s, the SP on 11s, and has less wounds. I'd say if you stand up a SP in a core vs a Cutter, it's going to die.
A meme form the community produced storylines from the latest online campaign, well worth the read. There are quite a few Plasma rifles in the Human Sphere, Exrah made sure and died for that.
Of course it is fanfic! The whole narrative campaigns are one big shared fanfic, after which CB develops something cohesive and non-ridiculous (most of the time) in the next year or two. But the fanbase is really good at the fanficking. For example, the Universal Warcor Union which featured in the latest Dire Foes box started from the Shattergrounds campaign.
A good example of what community engagement should look like: the best material from the online campaigns could be sorted, edited if needed, and brought into canon in the campaign summary, which should come out like 2 weeks after the campaign (and actually explain what happened well for people reading about it afterwards, new players, etc.). There's good material among all the barely-concealed-slash-fic out there. Incorporating fan material does happen (good example @UpirLihi ), but it should happen with the summary, attached to that big, easy-to-find-on-the-internet website that has already been published for each global campaign event.
The lore stuff is pretty good on the campaigns, for Asteroid Blues I had compiled the lore in 4 books, I thought I'd do the same for the other two other campaigns (that's why I've compiled the comic batrep and made my comics in A4 format), but I missed half of Durgama, and I was too tardy to do Shattergrounds, all the images I had compiled on french forum were sourced on discord and the links broke. And a RP fanbook without your memes, is it still a fanbook of RP... My first AB book look like : https://cjoint.com/c/IKcrdjejtrY For the moment, we don't know why TB has plasma, but as Gutier takes elements from the campaign stories, it's not impossible that in the future CB book we'll learn that an O12 commississar got these weapons by striking a deal with an umbra.
The last campaign did a great job of incorporating fan work. I hope that CB continues to cultivate and integrate fan work in the campaigns. I am also looking forward to the community week initiative later this year.
It's because all Faction Commanders provided CB with a comprehensive summary of the major fanfic events which happened during the campaign. And it has been put to good use indeed, so we're hoping this sort of thing will continue in the future, since it's show how the game community and CB staff can help each other.
Also, because they had - effectively - a member of the community handling the fluff layer of it all (Killian at BOW, once a very active member of the forum). Which is the way to go, if you ask me - if CB can't handle the thing themselves (because they lack time / processing power / enthusiasm to do it), find someone who'll love to do it for them. Give that person boundary conditions for the narrative / event, and let it go. Nb. I have loved the Asteroid Blues campaign in the regard it was a self-contained microcosm. I.e. whatever happened there was of utmost importance to people there, but totally of no consequence to the overal shape of the Human Sphere. We could be fighting over one asteroid or another till the end of the century, without affecting the main storyline CB has for the Sphere.
Heck yeah. There's a certain degree of monitoring that community efforts will always require from the company. But community creators with great track records (WarLore, Human Sphere, Killian) are exactly where trust can be placed reliably. The stuff that's already out there is GREAT. Recognition, permission, and linking from the permanent CB website are what those resources need to be accessible to new players, and to have the momentum that will keep them creating. That recognition needs to be accompanied by a top-level link from the CB site ideally, so new players can find these resources. The permission would allow Human Sphere to dig up and index the best past lore. This depth draws interested people in to the setting.
Army got updated with TLB Changes I've noticed so far (haven't looked at fireteam compositions yet): Striders got 2pts more expensive Rovers: select loadouts got 1/2pts more expensive, ML Rover lost Tactical Awareness Kludgers acquired Shock Immunity Stormbots got 3/4pts more expensive, non-FTO loadout lost E/M Mines ...let the list crunching begin ;)
Samus also lost the "Samus" in her name... Seems like someone at CB finally realized it was a bit too obvious plagiarism ;)
TB also has Raveneye Lt. with +1 order, one with CoC, and both have Holomask. The price is also higher. That sucks because he was a great source of a cheap Lt.
Works as usual, with PanO getting shit end of the stick. Seriously though - KC gets slightly better stats, MA that is pure fluff and bloat on a model you want to keep as far from combat as possible, and no SMG discount.