I am making a game that involves a combining Mecha. Players start off as the individual pieces before combining to form a giant robot.
I am having a hard time coming up with a system for cooperative control of the robot that doesn't involve adding new components.
My initial thought was to let each player control it individually on their turn, but that seems boring. The next idea was to let a die roll decide who controls, but that can lead to streakiness where one or more players may not get to do anything for a long stretch of time. My final idea is just letting the players discuss and vote for the actions each turn, which seems like the most fair way to do it, but could slow down the pace of the game.
Any thoughts or ideas you have about this would be appreciated.
Letting Multiple Players Control One Avatar
I think each mech was usable as individuals but then they combined & each could control a separate thing. They had to coordinate to do the special stuff
Sounds like s challenge. My initial thought (assuming the traditional 5-mecha combined into 1 scenario) would be to have a 5 step turn-order overall...let's say 1) move, 2) draw/power up, 3) defend 4) attack, and 5) special. When combined into 1, each of the pieces takes one of the steps in the turn order...as separate players, they'd do every step individually. This would be set by the designer (so the player knows what step they take over when combined). That way, the combined player ACTS as if it were 1, but it's individual steps in the turn order is taken over by a player.
Still, in a game like this, you'll have to present challenges where the individual pieces can only take on the challenge, or the combination lasts for X amount of turns, then you have to "power up" every piece to combine again.
Meh, they're just ideas. Do with it what you will...
If you gave each player some sort of token both when combined and not combined, it could maybe work. The tokens could represent actions you could take:
-Move forwards
-Move backwards
-Attack, etc
Each player puts down a token and then the majority action happens. You could give penalties or bonus for how high/low the majority was as well.
At first glance, this sounds like a cooperative game. If that's the case, voting seems counter-intuitive as the players will be deciding their actions as a group anyways.
My first thought would be to have some sort of a "Blind contribution" system.
One player each turn is deemed the "Leader" and applies the actions. They may all discuss what they need to do, but can't tell exactly which actions they will contribute to the pool.
So, the players may decide that "We need to move forward 3 steps and strike the enemy"
Each player will select card(s) from their hand that contribute Move, Attack, or Defend. When all players have finished they'll reveal the cards that the first player may choose to activate.
He may only act as much as the players had prepared for. So, if you didn't play enough MOVE cards you'd fall short, but if you played too many they'd be wasted.
Keep in mind: The robot attacks would be included on whichever cards the players are already collecting. If cards aren't collected, then players could each close a dice in their hand or some other way of concealing their choice.
Have you seen Captain Sonar? It's obviously different from what you're talking about, but it handles the "1 team - many jobs" thing extremely well. The game's mechanics might give you some ideas.
I am thinking along the lines like Gabe talked about. Once the individual parts join together, each part gets an assigned role.
So if you have a giant robot then one player controls one functional part of the robot another player another part.
So if the giant robot can shoot, one can control the shooting aspect. Another player would control the movement of the robot, and another the coordination of all the functional components.
To make it interesting, you can have the robot head be the commander who issues basic commands such as "move", "turn" or "fire" and so on. The individual player responsible for that command would determine exactly *how* to execute the command.
So, for example, if a "move" command is issued, the moving player can try to move really fast (more squares) and thus make a more difficult "move test" which is more likely to fail rather than a more conservative move action which is more likely to succeed.
You would maybe have some rules where communication would be limited so there would be no collective decision making involved.
I think you would need to experiment and see what it feels like.
--DarkDream
@DarkDream
Exactly! And this style gives you the opportunity to make each role unique and appeal to different play styles.
Perhaps, one role is more about resource management. Another role is tactical. Another role is all about blowing stuff up. Etc.
Doing this could potentially appeal to a larger group of gamers as well.
Maybe one person can control how much power to supply in one turn. Say, you have 100 units of fuel. Maybe one turn, the player chooses one unit, then each action takes one unit of fuel and has a multiplier of x1.
There are a lot of cool suggestions here, but seem like it could be potentially frustrating for people if they're trying to work together but aren't in sync.
*Every player besides the head puts in an action card. The action can be something like "move forward 2 spaces". The player who is the head uncovers the cards and can execute them in any order. (Co-op programming)
*Shared action points: the mech has 10 ap per round. You can move from 1 to 3 spaces a round, but each space uses 1 action point. Firing a gun costs 1 ap per distance (more time to aim properly). Each player's mech has a particular bonus, such as "Good Eye, firing from up to 3 spaces away costs only 1 action point". Each round you change who the starting player is, in case the early players too often use up all the AP and the later players have less options. Alternately, each player can use 2 ap, but you can use up to 4 if you skip your next turn.
*Each player chooses an action secretly (behind a screen, from a set of cards, whatever). No communication is allowed. Simultaneously the actions are revealed. If there is a "move left", and a "move right", they will cancel each other out. But if all of the players play the "move left" action, the mech will move far. Game is about how best to communicate what to do next - perhaps you discard the action cards so you are counting cards to see what others are most likely to have available to play, or you just read the game board and hope that everyone is coming up with the same strategy. Twitch plays pokemech.
*Each mech part has some rule that slightly alters how the big mech drives, and players simply take turns controlling the same mech, but with slightly different powers. So the guys on the legs are going to end up doing most of the movement, because they get a bonus there. Each arm and the head might have very different firing radiuses and attack damage for their weapons. So the leg guys do their best to put the mech into position so that the arm guys can get a good shot, but everyone also gets a chance to do some movement and shooting as well.
