Never Give In dev diary #2

OK so second dev diary. See #1 for concept; this one is about my first playtest.

key:
AD - Admiral player
OP - Operations officer player
WC - Wing commander player

I wasn't sure where to start with testing, but I've noticed that I tend to spin ideas round and round in my head and get attached to them, only to find they don't work when it comes to applying them - so I figured jump straight in and see what works; that way the unworkable ideas won't have time to take root. This blog will go through the system I used to work up a first playable version: v0.1

The map
For the map I just made a 10x10 grid. In previous ideas for this type of game I've had a big star field, but for this I like the idea of a small tight space with not much room for manoeuvre. I went for squares instead of hexes because I hate hexes for some reason. Space is 3D but I'm happy to go with 2D for this game. I would like each move to feel important, positioning of ships and fighter squadrons to matter tactically.

Each scenario would have several of these small maps ('rooms'), and ships can move between them by using a short range FTL jump.

The Operations Officer Grid
This is a key element of the game: each turn the OP player gets a different number and type of workers, and she deploys these workers to her grid to determine which moves the AD player will be able to take this turn. She can also deploy them to give AD or WC bonuses in combats they're having.

Here's the (in my head) clever part - the AD player draws 3 order cards and the beginning of the turn which will tell her how many moves and attacks she can make; she chooses 2 of them, but each order card also determines how many and what type of worker OP gets this turn. So AD has to think about where she wants to move / attack, but also which workers to give to OP and so that could present some interesting tactical choices (it didn't)

There are 5 different types of worker in this version: Engineers, Officers, Science, Analysts, and Ratings. They are deployed on the grid pictured below to do various things. Order 1 & 2 put some upgraded orders into AD's deck; spooling allows ships to jump between 'rooms'; fighters is how much resource they are putting into refuelling and repairing fighters; Target Solution, Analyze Fighter and Hacking all assist in combats this turn; finally there are some more powerful weapons they can build up to using like a big beam.

Ships
I didn't put much thought into player ship types for this version, choosing to focus more on the OP grid. Future versions might see different ship types with strengths & weaknesses

Weapon types
Normal weapons and special weapons. Normal weapons are either Beams or Kinetic Batteries. I usually don't like dice but I've chosen to use dice in this game, with all players contributing towards a roll when it comes. I chose Kinetics to use a D20 and Beams to use a D12, and a hit would only be on the highest value (20 or 12). i.e. shots miss most of the time, and having the other players help you is a big deal. Beams have 2 square range and Kinetics are unlimited.

Ships roll 2, 3 or 4 dice per shot, and this could increase if OP puts resource into it. A global rule is that all enemy ships have flak, which always removes your highest dice. A fighter squadron moved onto an enemy ship can't attack it, but it negates the flak. So a high / low scenario is:

Low - AD doesn't have support from other players; OP is busy putting resources into moving ships or getting fighters ready; she rolls two D20 and hits on a 20; since the first die will be cancelled by enemy flak, she is almost certain to miss (0.25% to hit)

High - WC has moved a fighter squadron on to the enemy, negating the flak; OP has put resource into Kinetic attacks this turn, giving an extra die and +2 to hit. AD now just needs to roll 18+ on either of the dice to hit (closer to 40% chance to hit)

Fighters
Fighters represented by a squadron moving together. In this game they have multiple roles including: taking out enemy fighters; harrying enemy ships to reduce flak (but not able to damage them); shooting down torpedoes; defending ally ships from attack; blocking enemy ship movement. A key element would be that they have to return to refuel and repair, so they have 2 'use points' (flip counter over when used once, remove when used again); OP has to decide how much resource to put into keeping the fighters coming vs. other priorities. Didn't make it for this one but I imagine a Repair Track: OP can pay workers to move fighters towards the 'launch' end; when they are removed from the board they go onto the track, close to 'launch' if they completed mission successfully, farther away if they were damaged or destroyed.

Dog fights and knife fights
A key way of managing the number of active units a player would be controlling is that fighter squadrons and big ships become 'locked' for a few turns sometimes, when they come into contact with the enemy ('dog fights' for fighters; 'knife fights' for big ships - a close range exchange where two ships fire everything they have at each other); the player can't control the unit but the fight plays out over, say, 3 turns. The players can contribute resources towards the fight if they think it's going badly.

Dog fight system is dice-based. The player rolls 4D6 for herself and 5D4 for the enemy. I hadn't fully fleshed this system out for this version, but I imagine player having to beat the enemy score by a certain amount (e.g. 5 points); if she doesn't beat them she can choose to knock out some of the enemy dice to make it easier next turn; AD could also support by moving a ship adjacent to the fight to give support.

Knife fight system is counter-based. Knife fights last 3 turns and each turn you draw a counter from the bag. Different coloured counters represent different types of damage, or occasionally a 'block'. The idea is that both ships will likely be destroyed from such an exchange, but you have a few turns to help. This allowed me to bring in the damage types idea I mentioned in Dev Diary #1, scaled down a bit. At the end of the knife fight you count up the damage from a destroyed ship, and that determines whether it explodes, breaks apart etc., and that affects things around it.

Enemies
Just made some generic enemies for this version; controlled by a simple card-based AI that I stole from Gloomhaven. I'd work this up into something more complex for a future version. Wary of trying to cram too many concepts into this early test version. There's a backstory to this game I'm not going into here, but thematically the enemies are a low-tech horde type - worse ships than the player but more of them.

Turn order
Final mechanic I'm testing out for this one is a variable turn order thing. There are 5 phases to the turn, and AD gets to decide which order they come in - each of them is assigned two initiative values from 1 to 100 at the beginning of the turn and AD chooses one for each. Phases are 1) enemy move, 2) enemy attack, 3) player execute order card, 4) fighter move, 5) dogfight.

The idea is that it creates an interesting choice for AD; does she want the dogfight to resolve before fighter move this turn, so fighters win dogfight and then immediately get to act? can she swing it so that enemy ships fire when they are out of range, then player ships can move in and shoot? etc.

I dealt two cards for each phase from the game 'The Mind'

Scenario
Finally, I said this game would be scenario-based; I haven't come up with a detailed scenario with setpiece events yet - I think that is a job for a later version. As a proxy for this one, the scenario is that the players control 3 or 4 ships and have to fight through one 'room' worth of enemies and jump to the next 'room'; final room has a space station that it under attack, so it's a race against time.

The Verdict
All very well thought out eh? Lots of ideas, mechanics; things seem to slot into each other. Well no, this version was an almost complete failure, and I just couldn't see at all how anyone would ever want to go near it. The biggest problems were:
- There was no tactical complexity in the ship movement; they just started relatively far apart, and moved towards each other firing. There weren't any interesting choices about where to move your ships.
- The OP grid just did not work at all - there was nothing driving OP to place workers in any particular space; she just had to place them in whatever was available after AD's cards were picked. I couldn't see either how AD would choose anything but whichever cards gave her the most shots - nothing about choosing between moves or OP workers.
- I couldn't see why you would ever use Kinetic shots unless you just didn't draw any Beam shots - the weapon types weren't interesting and had no character

But actually this approach worked really well. Instead of spending months preparing the perfect game from my head and then it not working, this approach allowed me to get stuck in quickly and really easily identify what needed to change and be worked on. I found I was much more easily able to abandon concepts that didn't work, rather than being emotionally tied to them. I 'exorcised' the evil spirits through the process of playtesting.

I came away from this playtest with two actions:

1) the OP grid was the biggest thing that didn't work, so I needed to completely overhaul this for 0.2
2) I decided to take a detailed approach to components, and keep a changelog where I would have an entry for each of the elements of the game system and whether they worked or not in that version; this gave me a good exercise to do after testing, where I would methodically go through and decide whether each component worked or needed to change; this meant I could identify future actions quite easily.

That's probably enough for now eh. Next dev diary will focus on what happened in playtest for 0.2

(and by then I may have worked out how to insert images inline)