Something between a board and a card game?

Having a body and room for at most 3 weapons.
We had these partial cards that would simply be put together. And a symbol would be in the fields. It was confusing since most players used the same symbol, while designing a different unit.

It is better to have the design in the field itself, right?
I could go in different ways with this.
But handling should be kept to a minimum.

1.
Each body gets only 1 weapon. Both pieces are together as a puzzle.
A location would have like 3 or 4 little puzzles.
The cost of each piece could still be different.
The backside of the pieces have the statistics.
Maybe the pieces are standing up too. Perhaps, you can get up to 6 designs this way.

2.
Each body can get at least 1 weapon. But there is room for only 6 pieces. They are placed clockwise, so it is clear which body carries which weapons.
If you have bodies without weapons, these can be used as fodder. And I am willing to let the defending player decide the damage placement.
The cost of each piece should be exactly the same.
The backside of the pieces have the statistics.

3.
As mentioned before. The designs are on the side of the table. But each player gets a unique symbol.
The statistics are also on the side of the table. There is more room for information too.
After all, they can now be printen on cards.
The cost of each piece could still be different.

So, what do you think? Which option would be best?

Seems to be harder than anticipated.

I already set up some rules of that each unit and structure is going to cost the same.
Which means, every unit and structure that serve as wall, will have a doubling in health.

Speaking of health, this is the factor in which bodies should be balanced.

But the body consists of health and movement speed. Nothing more, nothing less.

The movement speed is a divider of the health, IF we want equal costs.
The divisions are 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc.

The types are multipliers. Where each tier is exactly the maximum ammount of damage. I can now set this at 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Yip, the 1 has returned as 1, not 2. :)

If I pick for example, 60 as main health for minus 3 movement speed.
Tier 1 has the following optional health value's, ranging from 0 to 9 movement speed:
20, 15, 12, 10, error, error, error, 6, error, 5.

Other tiers are simply a multiple of these health value's.
As for the combat stat mechanics... these numbers are still squared. Meaning that tier 2, has twice the health. But takes 4 times more damage from most weapons.
Still, most weapons will deal less damage due to their balanced costs. Thus while a tier 2 weapon does 4x damage on a 2x health, it will do only 50% damage in the long run. So, a simple 2x damage on tier 2 body, while 50% damage on a tier 1 body.

Ok, I am sure no one get this. But let's put it this way. The damage value's themselves are squared.
So, 1, 4, 9, 16 etc.

***
Ok, the "error's" are the new challenge here.
The first error is a division by 7 (movement of 4). Only tier 7 has good health value's here:
140, 105, 84, 70, 60, error, error, 42, error, 35

And tier 11 has this with the division by 11.

Clearly I need to think of something, in such a way. That I can use tiers with certain movement speeds. And yet maintain the balanced cost of.... 1=1

I am going in circles constantly. When trying to balance the cards into perfect equal value's.
Main issue is trying to get the health managable.
But now I am thinking that it would be better to have a 3 digit health. And cards. Or else the game wouldn't work.

I better give this a pause.

Asking me to continue on this is simply asking for it to be stalled even longer.

Had these paper tanks. It wasn't balanced though. Basic balance mistakes if you will.

Anyway, the basis would be having 6 health.
And then 7 flavours of weapons, against 3 types of units.

The armor types are light/medium/heavy.
The damages would be:
2-2-2 Explosive
3-2-1 Rifle
3-1-2 idk
2-3-1 Missile
2-1-3 idk
1-3-2 Cannon
1-2-3 Rocket

There isn't room for a flamethrower or sniper or anything with this.
It is a bad design. Fun for me, just personally. But not good for a game or others.

But honestly, I am just very tired at the moment. So I am just wandering around with my thoughts.

I could cut even further.

Only allowing 4-0, 3-1, 2-2, 1-3 and 0-4 as weapons.
With 12 as being the minimal health. Nice round numbers.
Naming the 2 damages, against which of the 3 armors they are effective. With leaving the third one as an average of 2.

I even could introduce "armored".
Thus subtracting 1 from any damage. Thus we get a 2, 1 and 0.
Great for certain walls etc.

Special things like healing and repairing would cost the same. And the negative damage would be 6 or 3.
That is, if I would have infantry and vehicles/tanks.

A cannon or sniper would be 3-1 for sure. Aiming for the wrong target would simply mean a factor 3 in duration.

But really, we would be having this 12 as minimum health system. And higher tiers would be multiplies of 12.
24, 36, 48 etc.

You know, I kinda had something like this on a starcraft map that I made myself. But then, the game calculates for you. It was fun.

I think I should give it a rest. The health is the main issue. And maybe I should discard everything and start from scratch. With health being a single digit. In such way, that is is very easy to track.

It would be threshold again. lol.

But very hard to balance though.
The game should still feel like combat.

Just like how ASL feels like combat.

When playing a wargame, it should feel like war.
And war is several combats linked together.

If it is a 1 hit kills game. You get something like Risk.
Those games aren't fun from my perspective.

I said from my perspective.

Sure I can have a 1 hit = 1 kill.
And multiple rifle's can't kill a tank if they all hit. Unless you got 9 hits at once.

I can try to work with that.

But the threshold might need another push in a certain direction.

If a cost of 1 vs 4 is considered.
Then a game with health tracking would roughly have this unit of 4, having 16 health.
And the little guys, if you have 4, you deal 4, then 3, then 2, then 1 damage. And you deal a total of 10 damage.

If I keep the effect of 3 attacks in 1 turn.
And an average hit of 1 per 1 turn per soldier. Then I know that I can keep the 4 riflemen per heavy tank.

12 riflemen against 3 heavy tanks.
3 battles can roughly have 50% survive of the riflemen.

But this is the RPS at its sharpest.

I can discard health.

The costs of the cards will probably be double digits.
The squad slot will keep track of accumulated damage per turn.

Then if a squad compiled, every round, they also get strategy points. The squad might cost 57, then they get 3 SP per round.
If the total of the squad is only 3, then they get 57 SP per round.

If they loose units, the SP will increase.
SP can be used to buy an extra turn during a round for that specific squad.
You have to buy more turns if the squad has a salvo.
You may only buy a new turn if a previous "round" has been completely bought (no cooldown abuse).
You may only play this extra "round" when it is the players turn again. Or buy the extra turns at the end of the round in case you want to return fire if the enemy will fire on you.

The extra round costs like 3 times the worth of the squad if you think about it.

1 man squads can be very fast this way. Bigger squads become naturally slower.

The 57 squad needs to gather 19 rounds.
The 3 squad can play 1 round and then another 19 turns. Of which 6 are complete rounds and the last one is just 1 turn.

I doodled this for now. If it works, I might return later with making this into proper rules.

But it is a defence against your mobile HQ.

Of course, the towers are fixed. And running forever might not be an option.

Also, the towers can only be rebuild if they are destroyed.

***

Well, if the units are 1 piece and different in costs. I think it would be on average... idk, 6 squads 12+8+8+6+6+4+4+3+3+2+2+1= 59
On average 10 pieces per squad. And this roughly the same as Risk.
The difference is, there is RPS in the combat.

***

Overall, this would look a bit like C&C4. I don't like that fact.
Especially if this goes in the direction of a video game. No one is able to make my game. AND I CANNOT do this myself either. Especially since I have only 1 hour a week to actually play test or design.
Anyway... the mobile HQ would be 1 piece that moves around on the board. You can trap it, or hunt it. There is a certain extra strategy connected to this.

After all, we had a lot of fun with mobile resource gatherers. The best designs where those that brought in resources while being on target. But could always run away when needed.

***

I always try to cover every possible stupid idea of the players. (Also the very smart ones that bring imbalance)

***

But hey, enough of this. We reached a point where I have to work a 60 hour week now. Only because people are yelling that no one listens to each other.
I am going to grab the money, since some hours are calm and relaxing. And it can bring me much more in life too, than just sitting at home playing with a paper game for which other don't have time for anymore.

I await the video game. And will relax now.

Also, I need a break.

I tried having more health and stuff. But it seems that for a board game, I need to stick to some basic rules.

So, perhaps I should go for a 1 on 1 match between units.
And allow players to design their own units.

What we get is that the covering mechanic is not used anymore. Byebye cover mechanic.
But we do keep the RPS mechanic, the one without threshold. Since the 1 on 1 battle's are without losses till 1 side dies.

While I am still trying things out. I am trying out squads.
This time, "armor" must return.
And damage dealt will be reduced to this armor value.
Yes, reduced to, not by.
Every hit deals damage own its own.

Health tracking will be needed.

***

Players will have "body" cards.

Infantry squad (Like the one in Dune2)
1 Armor
9 Health
2 Movement Speed
3 Value

A "body" card can have a value of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5.
A balanced "body" card has a value of 3.

***

Of course, "weapon" cards are needed too.

Combat Rifle
2 Attack Range
1-1-1 Multiplier
5-5-5 Accuracy
1-1-1 Damage
1 Value

Grenade Launcher
1 Attack Range
0-2-0 Multiplier
0-5-0 Accuracy
0-4-0 Damage
1 Value

Rocket Launcher
3 Attack Range
0-1-0 Multiplier
0-4-0 Accuracy
0-8-0 Damage
1 Value

Flamethrower
0 Attack Range
4-0-0 Multiplier
5-0-0 Accuracy
1-0-0 Damage
1 Value

Players have a maximum of 6 value per design.
So, the infantry squad can get for example 2 Combat Rifles and 1 Rocket Launcher.

***

I included the Flamethrower.
Let's say, we got 3 of these.
Thus we roll one time 3*4=12 dice.
There is no adjustment of dice.
The specialist body of value 1 could have 5 flamethrowers. And thus 20 dice... Well, I got a solution for that soon.

As for the accuracy roll. We got the one by the weapon.
But we also need one that will give a bit of risk.
The average die value should be 1 and rolled after the accuracy roll.
In a sense, changing the number of hits.
111111
011112
001122
000123
So, which one?
I think I will go with...
000123
Or a d6-3

Now we can reduce the number of dice in a fair way when needed.
From 5 to 3 would change the dice into...
001234 or d6-2
From 5 to 2 would change the dice into...
012345 or d6-1

So, the following number of dice caused by the flamethrower can be reduced:
4; 4d6-3
8; 3d6-3 and 3d6-2 or 3d6-3 and 2d6-1
12; 2d6-3 and 2d6-1
16; 1d6-3 and 6d6-1
20; 8d6-1