Sunday 1 November 2015

Fiddling with mechanics and points.

I had an hour or two when the wife went out on Saturday so I thought I would do my first little test of the mechanics I put together for a Sci-Fi game (I really need to give it at least a working title). Just a quick test of the movement, ranges and damage mechanics.



It looks like a normal game of 40k but without points costs I had no way of trying o balance the armie 
The Heavy Weapons upgrade did a lot of damage but was well balanced by the fact they couldn't move and fire, though it did mean that the guard were pinned a lot.
the redeploy movement action allowing a unit to move up to 3 tomes it's Move value allowed the use of bait units as the survivors could peg it if they weren't pinned.
Overall it was useful as it made me realise a few things. Firstly I really needed to get points costs sorted even if it was just so that playing test games had some form of structure. So I have gone through the lists and added what feels right for each unit but these will obviously change as time goes on (the Dropbox file is all updated). Secondly that it will be a challenge to balance the desire for quick play with unit survivability. taking out one set of rolls means things can swing a lot more but also that I shouldn't be afraid of having a lot of units with similar stats to make things work. Thirdly that terrain seems to work well but the wide range of heights could prove annoying if players have to remember too many numbers as they play.

 Overall I'm excited to get something together that people can begin to fiddle with and feed back one. 
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3 comments:

  1. Unknown2 November 2015 at 08:20

    I was thinking on this the other day and to be honest I am not entirely sure that points matter given that another company has done the majority of the work and that we have to believe that they know (to a great or lesser extent) what they are doing why not adopt their points costs, its then a case adding in anything that exists outside of that canon?
    Given that most of us have vast collections of GW stuff it will only be the other companies that you have to worry about coming up with costs for, and at that stage I would suggest an allies approach, you can take the Terraton as a tau battlesuit but you have to take two units of fire warriors as well.

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    1. Son of Baal2 November 2015 at 10:13

      the problem comes from wanting to create a flexible system and units so that you don't have to produce one unit per GW unit so that if people want to create a flying Landraider they can just pay for a Linebreaker and buy it the Anti-Grav upgrade. Also the changes to the mechanics mean that whilst in other games units have a certain level of invulnerability from basic weapons in this all attacks can damage all units making things much easier to kill. Only time will tell but you may notice some similarities between unit costs and other games in places. I'm hoping that once I have the basics sorted I can keep expanding the number of armies as I was hoping to hit around 4 characters, 10 squads, 5 tanks/walkers, 2 behemoths for each army plus some unique units like the War Idols that function as mini bunkers or player owned terrain without over-complicating the game. If people have ideas for units and armies I would love to see them posted up on the blog.

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    2. Rich H.3 November 2015 at 02:48

      id argue the other issue with simply pinching GW points values is that theyre pretty freakin bad at it :P

      definitely finding this an interesting project, will try and chew the cud over it with you on sunday

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