Battle mechanics for military units help..

Hi Krossus,

Based on your description of the game, DR value and list of units, my first thought was to rank each unit from 1 to 10 based on a single criteria. 10 being good; 1 being bad. You mentioned agility as being something that should be considered for DR (and I am inclined to agree!). As such, I would rank each of these units from 1 to 10 based on their agility only. In this example, artillery is likely to be very low while choppers and special forces would probably be higher. Repeat this process for the other considerations like armor, defensive weapons, ability to camouflage, etc.

Once you are done ranking each consideration, get a total score for each unit and rank them based on that score. In theory, this should give you a good starting list that can be assigned actual DR values. Let's say that infantry ends up in the middle so you assign what you consider to be an average DR to infantry. Units ranking lower than infantry would obviously have a lower DR and so on; it may even be simplest to say the best unit gets a DR of 10 and the worst gets a DR of 1. Your playtesting will reveal any need to adjust those value up or down and your overall ranking list will help you keep them in order when adjusting.

Alternatively, you could use the rock-paper-scissors approach (planes kill boats, boats kill infantry, infantry kills planes)

With regard to the d20 system, a single die roll implies that there is an equal chance of failure and success based on the roll alone, whereas multiple dice used per roll will give you predictable averages with higher middle values. In game terms, do you envision all attackers as being generally able to hit their targets (a case for using multiple dice) or do you envision them being very dependent on their AR to get a score high enough for a kill (a case for single die)

Good luck with your designs!