As some of you might recall, I talked about a super fast war game where units still have some health.
I have been re-working on a health free version. Meaning, no health tracking. I got tired of that peg stuff etc. Just simple pieces. (I honestly see this as the only legit way to ever get a game like this going more publicly)
All you see on the board are pieces of units like in Risk or A&A.
Combat is entirely dice now.
That said, to keep my RPS running, I thought of the following mechanic:
Default Accuracy
All weapons start with a default accuracy of 4/6th.
If a player is outnumbered, I have this bonus rule that will make sure that some weapons are a sure hit by removing this default accuracy.
The bonus rule still has to be tested, if it is sufficient enough.
The 4 classes
4 weapons and 4 armor types; from low to high:
Rifles/Grenades/Rockets/Cannons
Infantry/Troopers/Vehicles/Tanks
(I might change things, like replacing Troopers but I am thinking Dune(2) here)
Secondary Roll
Rifles have the following hit chances on set targets:
3/6th on Troopers
2/6th on Vehicles
1/6th on Tanks
Grenades have the following hit chances on set targets:
4/6th on Vehicles
2/6th on Tanks
Rockets have the following hit chances on set targets:
3/6th on Tanks
All other combinations are a sure hit if accuracy was already a hit.
The secondary rolls are rolled twice!! Meaning, that 1/6th is going to be 1/36th. And including the default accuracy roll we get 1/54th. Just one Rifle, the weakest weapon, has only 1/54th chance on killing a tank.
A&A rules
When combat occurs. Players will set up before hand which unit order the victims will be. Meaning that an infantry unit placed in front can protect a tank.
Army sizes
With this RPS in mind. For every tank, there will be 6 infantry. If I keep it to 6 points per hexagon, the game is as small as possible. But tanks will have no fodder protection. So I am going to go with 12 points.
2 tanks or 4 vehicles or 6 troopers or 12 infantry.
One Rifle Infantry has as said before, 1/54th chance on killing a tank. That is 1,85%.
6 gives 10,61%. 12 gives 20,09% for 1 and 2% for 2 dead tanks.
20% still feels like a lottery. Only by several rounds, this number goes up.
Number of Dice
Leaving math asside. It seems that roughly 8 dice on average are needed per combat.
A higher number would be, 12 Rifle Infantry require 12 dice.
But I know of designs that need 15, 18 or even 30.
Players will be rolling sets of 5 or 6 dice, until they are done.
Piece designs
I have 2 options again. 3D or 2D
3D are simple 3D pieces, you need to clearly understand what the piece looks like and what statistics go with them.
I have only 6 statistics now:
- Price
- Armor attribute
- Damage attribute
- Number of combat dice
- Speed
- Range
I would hate it to put them in a manual.
2D pieces. They open the option to have 2 health per piece. Meaning that a piece could be flipped over. I don't see the point in changing stats for a damaged unit.
If I keep them one sided. One side would look like the picture of an unit. Then in the 4 corners the armor attribute, damage attribute including the number of combat dice, speed and range. The price, well, I don't know, the bottom?
The attributes could be nice symbols.
If I manage to keep myself in check, even speed and range might become symbols. But numbers would do just as fine.
***
Putting other problems aside from now.
If you feel that this is a bit to strong in certain events. Or that 4 types is too much. Then I can cut back more. I also have the 1, 2 and 4 set out there to recycle. Not just this 1, 2, 3 and 6 set.
Can it be even simpler? I am looking for opinions.
What if I simply make one side a 1 unit.
And the other side is 2 units?
That way I can cut the number of pieces in half.
The total of pieces will not be cut in half but by 1/3th or so. It is that per hexagon; the pile will be cut in half.