I'm working on a pirate game, and i've got rules down for the combat, but it just doesn't feel right to me. I was hoping for some ideas.
The way it works right now is as follows:
Players have little sheets that record their crew and their cannons. (movement does not play a role in this combat)
Each player secretly allocates a number of their crewmen (they may have a max of 10 crewmen).
Each player rolls a D10, and adds his cannons (max of 3 cannons/ship). This becomes the Dice Roll.
The "Dice Roll" (Cannons + D10 roll) + the number of crewmen becomes the "Total"
The players compare their "Total" to their opponents "total".
The person with the lowest "total" loses a number of hull points (out of 5) equal to the differences in "Totals".
Then BOTH players lose a number of crewmen equal to the difference in the "Dice Roll".
As of right now, Crew members require money to replace, but play no other roll in the game except as combat fodder.
Combat continues until one ship is sunk, The two ships come to an agreement, or the attacker chooses to withdraw. There is currently no chance for a defending ship to "escape".
The changes I'm thinking of making go like this:
Ships need to keep 1/2 of their max crewmen, or their ship will operate at half speed outside of combat (making you less likely to throw them away in combat).
Instead of automatically losing crewmen, you roll a die for each point difference in the "Die Roll" and if its even you lose a crew member, odd you keep them.
I'm not sure if this will work or not, but I'm hoping it makes things work a little better.
I know the feeling. I'm trying to capture the fact that every time you place crew into a fight, you risk them, win or lose. With the current system (auto-lose) you are certain to lose most, if not all, of the crew members that you put in.
This seems a bit harsh to me, and I'm looking at some way to mitigate that. Though I guess I could just rule that at the end of every battle, you roll a die for every crew-member tossed in. Since the die rolls are usually that far apart, this will normally happen any-how.