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Another Game Idea

10/23/2012

2 Comments

 
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The other day I was in the chat room of The Game Crafter, and a couple people started talking about an idea for a mech battle type game ala Battletech but with cards. It wasn't so much the specifics they mentioned but just the theme that got me thinking about some interesting mechanics for such a game. This post contains my preliminary ideas. It may be a bit rambling, so bear with me.
Whenever I consider game ideas now, I think about the logistics of getting it produced. That means considering what types of boards, mats, and cards are available on TGC. For this game idea, one of the key aspects would be taking damage via a simple card tracking mechanism. Each slot on the mech's body would hold one weapon represented by a card. The cards would be square, and when a hit takes place, you'd rotate the card. The hits remaining would be at the top. When the hits reach zero, you flip the card over to show it is disabled.

TGC has tiles similar to playing cards but thicker that measure 2x2". The standard size mat is 10x10". This would allow for slightly fewer than 5 tiles in each direction. These pieces informed a layout with 2 slots for each arm, 3 for each leg, 4 for the body, and 1 for the head. That makes a nice, even 10 slots.

Aside from the physical layout, I had ideas about other game mechanics that I think are novel and hopefully good. These involve the firing of weapons based on a hand of cards. The cards would be standard sized and numbered from 1 to 4. Each weapon is rated as to the number of cards that can be played for its attack and the maximum point value for each card. For example, a lowly machine gun allows up to 3 cards but only a value of 1 for each. The tough large laser on the other hand allows 4 cards with a max value of 3 each. The interesting mechanic is that when cards are used to fire, they go into the 'heat' pile. Heat tracking is a standard part of Battletech. It is a way to limit the amount of firing a mech can do; once the heat builds up, you can shut down or even eventually explode. By using the number of cards to track heat with each card having a maximum value, the weapons can be tweaked to set both their power and the amount of heat they generate.

With heat building up there has to be a way to dissipate it. This is handled by heat sinks. There is a default amount of heat (and therefore cards) removed each turn naturally, plus a mech can be built using slots for heat sinks to remove additional cards.

Another aspect to a weapon is its minimum and maximum range. Distance should be important, but with the game striving for simplicity I didn't want to have a board to move on. The compromise I thought of is just tracking the distance between mechs. At the beginning of each turn players can allocate cards for movement. The player who 'bets' higher gets to decide the new distance by using the old distance plus or minus up to the total of the move cards played. So if it's important to a player to use a particular weapon with a particular range, they can use up more of their cards to ensure that the distance matches the range.

So those are the basics that I thought of. The problem that I had trouble dealing with is exactly how it would be determined if a weapon hits. Having a deterministic weapon power versus armor strength mechanic seemed too easy to calculate the ideal with no variability. Dice seemed the natural answer. Since the total power (sum of cards played for that weapon) ranges from 1 to 12, a 12-sided die is perfect. In order to hit, the player rolls a number of dice for the strength of the weapon, and the target needed is the total of the attack cards played. For each die less than the target number, a hit is registered. Ones always hit. This seemed like a good compromise between a purely deterministic model and a very random one.

With these mechanics in place, the next step is to flesh out the details and attempt to reach game balance. It will be interesting in that players can choose pre-made mechs or create their own for an added level of strategy. I'll continue to play test myself and tweak these basic ideas. Then I will try it with other people. Oh, and there is the minor detail of seeing if the game is actually fun!
2 Comments
Paul "TigerShark" Simon (oh the days of battletech...)
10/23/2012 10:10:56 am

Thoughts, in no particular order:
1. I like the tracking mechanism. One of the problems with TT games like Btech or Silent Death was having to print out a sheet for each mech, which invariably was ruined by the end of the game. When you're young it may be hard to or expensive to find use of a copy machine, and even being older I don't like wasting paper. Don't tell me about clear sheets and crayons, nobody I knew ever did it. Ipads may partially solve this problem, but juggling multiple mechs/ships on one Pad will still be cumbersome.
2. Three or four arm weapons, one or two leg weapons please. Aiming with your leg seems downright silly.
3. I am concerned about your use of the words heat level and heat sinks, being that it is so close to the Battletech concept. I'm not even sure if I will find the right words to explain what I mean...it sounds like you are doing a remake of that game but in card form and you may be infringing on IP. If nothing else, someone who so much as glances at your game will think battletech - whether you like it or not. It may come off as a ripoff of the game, generating negative feelings.
3a. Admittedly, "rip-off" was my first thought - sorry. Heat level in BT was a brilliant way to achieve game balance between the various weapon types and also create some tension and tradeoffs. Can't give you an alternative, but in BT heat level was a core element of the game that did a lot more than tell you if your ammo exploded or not.
3b. That said, I do like the system you created to handle gain and loss of heat. Simple, but effective.
4. I like the idea of pre-built mechs; I don't like the option to make your own customized one. Reason being that people will min/max the crap out of it (don't get me started on the Clans) and everyone will be piloting the same vehicle.
4a. Silent Death has a system to make your own ships. Dave and I played a few games with custom ships - we min/maxed the crap out of them. Fun once or twice but only because Dave isn't a dbag. Playing random people at the hobby store your chances aren't so good. The ships that came in the book had more character.
5. Also, a huge thumbs down on the lack of a board. Your alternative, while logical, completely misses out on most of the reasons for playing these games IMO.
5a. There is no Wow factor. If you can't paint miniatures and build terrain to play on (commonly called "the hobby") you might as well play a computer game. The Hobby is half the fun for a lot of people, including me. It also provides a basis for a narative or story that goes along with the game. And all those models and hills and unit markings and rocks and stuff are cool.
5b. Maneuvering around said terrain is half the fun of playing. Imagine playing paintball in a completely empty field or one full of forts and walls to hide behind. Boring, unless you added cards that would declare you taking cover, or dodging or something. And how am I supposed to shoot you in the back otherwise? Or DFA?

My 2 cents, given out in nickel increments as always.

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Paul again
10/23/2012 10:26:43 am

And...the distance system you mention implies there will only ever be 1 on 1 battles - very limiting. One heavy vs 2 meds or 4 lights was always fun.

Even a 10 square by 10 square board would be a big improvement over the distance system, and the same size as the mech templates [printed on the back of the templates] for packaging purposes. You could have a variety of interesting themed locations printed on each board, and combine them for bigger games if needed. The downside to the idea is that the more mechs in your game, the smaller the board you play on because there are fewer templates leftover.

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    Dusty (CrassPip) has been playing geek games for 30 years(!) and making his own for nearly as long. Recently, he's actually gotten games beyond the imagination stage.

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