Simultaneous Dice Combat

I'm working on a remake of an old Apple II game called Empire, which is a dead simple multiplayer space colonization/combat game. I came up with a dice combat system that is simultaneous both in the sense that all players roll at once and in that attack and defense come from one roll.

The basic idea is simple: roll your dice. Keep sixes for defense. Every other number is a "hit", with the value determining which opponent you hit. Here are the details:

1) Every player involved in a battle gets 1 "normal" die per battle fleet, up to a maximum of 5.
2) Every player adds 1 "special defense" die.
3) All players roll all their dice.
4) For "normal" dice, players keep any sixes, then pass the remaining dice around the table. They give all ones to the player immediately on their left. They give twos to the second player on their left, and so on. If the number on any normal dice is equal to or greater than the number of players, the die "wraps around". For example, in a four player game, all fours go to the player immediately on the player's left, and fives go to the second player on the left (wrap around doesn't count the player handing out his dice -- he can never give a die to himself).
5) For "special defense" dice, players keep a six result for themselves, otherwise, they discard the die.
6) Each player subtracts off the number of '6' dices he holds from the number of other dice he was given from other players. He then destroys that number of his fleets.

I hope that's clearer than it sounds...

You might wonder why you need a "special defense" die. It turns out, using this system, that if two players with equal forces are locked in combat and there is no special defense die, they will always destroy each other.

I have tried this solitaire and it seems to work well. Granted, it's very simplistic and not appropriate for all games, but you might be able to adapt it into more complex games.

One side effect of the system is its "lopsidedness". Using 6 sided dice, unless you have 3 or 6 players, you'll tend to hit the people on your left more often than those on your right, so it's dangerous to sit to the left of someone with a large fleet. I haven't yet run a game of Empire to see how this affects a game long term.

I hope you'll let us know if you come up with something better.

Kreitler

This solution might be too simple and not fit your concept, but if players attack and defend simultaniously, you could rule that a player that attacks hard and heavy, defends less well.

Players roll their die and that is their attack (to hit) value. The defend roll is whatever the player needs to get to the maximum die value. (Player 1 rolls a d6 and gets a 4 to attack and automaticly a 2 to defend; Player 2 rolls a d6 and gets a 3 to attack and automaticly a 3 to defend.)

They could still have other modifiers that influence their roll, or they could even use different dice... (Player 1 rolls a d6 and gets a +4 to attack and automaticly a +2 to defend; Player 2 rolls a d10 and gets a +3 to attack and automaticly a +7 to defend.)

Cheese!
-Fred-

Sorry I spammed you with a system, Brahm. In my own defense, your original post asked if there was any in existence. :)

As far as published simultaneous attack/defense, I'm drawing a blank.

K.