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Hidden Units - Thoughts?

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Fri, 01/21/2005 - 10:42
DSfan
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Joined: 12/31/1969

Hi Ya'll,

Here's as question that maybe someone will get, because I'am stuck.

I want to make a Rainbow Six type game (tactical shooter). But I can't think of a way to hide the enemys, so players would never know what they are about to run into.

This to me is one of the hardest concepts (but maybe the coolest) I have ever run into. It is so tough to think of a way to make hidden enemys because all players are in "god view" (I.E. Looking over everything).

Some of the games work well with some-what of the same same mechinac, like Stratego with it's oddly shaped units, and only two players. Another game that I have played with younger kids, is Break the Safe which has tiles, with obstacles underneath them.

Yes, I know what your thinking Tiles would work, but I wanted something new and fresh.

So any ideas?
(Thanks in advance)
-Justin

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Fri, 01/21/2005 - 10:51
#1
jwarrend
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Joined: 08/03/2008
Hidden Units - Thoughts?

I haven't played it, but you might look at "Doom: the Boardgame". It must handle some of these aspects.

It depends what you're looking to do. Do you just want something whereby, when you move into an area, a bad guy appears, or not? If so, also check out "Betrayal at House on the Hill", which has a pretty simple way of handling this.

If instead the bad guys need to be "coordinated" or "guided" by an intelligence, that's going to be tougher without a player controlling them. It's still doable, probably with cards or with dice, but you'll need to whip up a good set of rules to govern their movement. I believe that the game "Fearsome Floors" has an NPC monster who is moved by some AI rules.

Good luck!

-Jeff

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Fri, 01/21/2005 - 11:01
#2
DSfan
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Hidden Units - Thoughts?

jwarrend wrote:
It depends what you're looking to do. Do you just want something whereby, when you move into an area, a bad guy appears, or not? If so, also check out "Betrayal at House on the Hill", which has a pretty simple way of handling this.

I like both idea's somewhat, but I guess the best (and easiest) way would to just make a bad guy appear in a room.

"Guided" movement would also work. This might add some suspense to the game (I.E. You know there is a bad guy there, but you don't know how strong he is)

Thanks,
-Justin

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Fri, 01/21/2005 - 11:16
#3
phpbbadmin
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Joined: 04/23/2013
Hidden Units - Thoughts?

Just curious. Is this a cooperative game where all players fight the bad guys or are some guys the antiterrorists and some guys are the terrorists? If all the players are good guys, it's probably easy to accomplish. If the players are either, then that is a whole new ball of complicated wax.

Do you want the bad guys to move around or just stay in one place?

-Michael

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Fri, 01/21/2005 - 11:47
#4
DSfan
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Hidden Units - Thoughts?

Thanks Michael,

Well I haven't really started the game yet. It's more of a thought.

What I got for now is that the game is a cooperative game (As it is a big thing right now)

As for a whole theme, I don't have. I have a few ideas on some themes, because so many things could work with this. A few of my idea's were along the lines of video games. (I.E. Splinter Cell, James Bond, Rainbow Six) But some aren't (I.E. Players are all Thiefs)

Darkehorse wrote:
Do you want the bad guys to move around or just stay in one place?

I would like them to move around the board, as this leads to a randomness of enemys.

Thanks,
-Justin

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Fri, 01/21/2005 - 12:03
#5
phpbbadmin
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Joined: 04/23/2013
Hidden Units - Thoughts?

DSfan wrote:
Thanks Michael,

Well I haven't really started the game yet. It's more of a thought.

What I got for now is that the game is a cooperative game (As it is a big thing right now)

As for a whole theme, I don't have. I have a few ideas on some themes, because so many things could work with this. A few of my idea's were along the lines of video games. (I.E. Splinter Cell, James Bond, Rainbow Six) But some aren't (I.E. Players are all Thiefs)

Darkehorse wrote:
Do you want the bad guys to move around or just stay in one place?

I would like them to move around the board, as this leads to a randomness of enemys.

Thanks,
-Justin

There are a couple of ways to do this:

If the enemies are doing 'rounds' you could have a mechanic in the game that keeps track of time. Then for each room you could have the enemies appear in the room at certain times. So for example, say there is a guard and he roams the walkway around the castle court yard. You could say he walks from the north tower to the east tower to the south tower to the west tower then back to the north tower, etc. So every time segment he would be in a different tower. So the players could enter a room, check the time segment, cross reference if anything is in the room at the time (one of those rotating wheels would be a cool method for implementing this), and then resolve the encounter, if there is one. After every round, you would increment the time segment. This way, you don't have to really physically keep track of the enemies. If the players had already killed the guard, then you would simply ignore the encounter.

Another method would be to assign a percentage chance that an enemy would be in a particular room. For the above example, there is a 25% chance that the guard would be in one of the towers. So you would roll percentile, and if you got 25 or below, then you would encounter the guard. I personally like the first example personally because for each mission you could give the players a tid bit of information to help plan their mission. I.E. "From your telescope you notice a guard circling the walkway around the courtyard".

Just some thoughts.
-Michael

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Fri, 01/21/2005 - 13:40
#6
RookieDesign
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Hidden Units - Thoughts?

I remember years ago, I played Alien the game.
I was handling the poor marines (got my ass kicked).

Interesting fact, the game was using a system of decoys. Some alien were real and some were fake. You see them all but you have to choose which one to shoot. You only know the real from the decoy when resolving the injuries. Of course the one controling the Aliens know the exact position of the Marines.

In your case, you could flashbang a room to find out it's only decoys in there. The SWAT could look into a decoy to find out if it is real or not, in that case he spend an action.

Hope this can give you some more ideas.

Good luck.

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Sat, 01/22/2005 - 16:16
#7
Anonymous
Hidden Units - Thoughts?

Darkehorse wrote:
If the enemies are doing 'rounds' you could have a mechanic in the game that keeps track of time. Then for each room you could have the enemies appear in the room at certain times. So for example, say there is a guard and he roams the walkway around the castle court yard. You could say he walks from the north tower to the east tower to the south tower to the west tower then back to the north tower, etc. So every time segment he would be in a different tower. So the players could enter a room, check the time segment, cross reference if anything is in the room at the time (one of those rotating wheels would be a cool method for implementing this), and then resolve the encounter, if there is one. After every round, you would increment the time segment. This way, you don't have to really physically keep track of the enemies. If the players had already killed the guard, then you would simply ignore the encounter.

I don't know how Darkehorse was exactly saying this should be done, but I thought of a way based upon what he said. Like darkehorse said, you could have a way to keep track of incremental time periods. I imagine this time keeping mechanism to have 4 different phases, call them 1,2,3,4. then in addition to this, there could be random chips for the game which describe the difficult of an opponent and at what phases they are at the location, these could be hidden and deployed at the beginning of the game or randomly drawn at each place an encounter could occur. then you check with the time keeper to see if there actually is an encounter. Although difficulty in doing this would be a problem if there were ranged attacks involved in the game, as you would need to know where something was for shooting to occur at a distance.

As for hidden units as a general idea, I like it. A game that handles this well from what I hear and have not heard talked about yet is 'Hammer of the Scots'. If the game is based upon a small scale area (like a building or a field) then you would likely be able to tell what type of unit you would be going up against, but not neccessarily the abilites of that unit. For example, I could see across the field guys with polearms, swords, horses, bows or for a more modern example, I could tell vehicles, and maybe be able to differentiate different weapon types, but I wuld not be able to know the skill of such a unit. But if you are on a larger scale war, like Scotland, then I would know where the opponent is keeping their garrisons and maybe how many are there, but I would know neither the skill of the garrisoned troops or the type of troops that are there.

I have no idea if this is helpful at all.

I like the idea of hidden units, because I feel it creates a more realistic simulation of a war situation, while being simple to implement once figuring our how to do it. meaning that extra rules for hidden units are likely to be simple.

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