I went into the Dollar Store the other day and found the game Parchisi. Basically its like Sorry with dice. You roll the die, move your pawns equal to the value, get all pawns home to win. Simple.
What sparked my imagination though was Parchisi had this mechanic where if you had two or more pawns on the same space it would create a blockade, preventing any pawns from passing. That was cool!
So I started brainstorming and decided I wanted to start messing around.
Objective:
Your race amongst many others are racing in droves to obtain the secrets of the center of the universe.
To win, your race must place three units on the middle of the universe space before the other races do.
Turn Structure:
1). Roll two die
2). Activate special command if you roll a double
3). Choose to either move, attack, or build
-Move: You may move one or two units a number of spaces equal to one of the die.
-Attack: Choose a friendly unit and a die to deal damage to an enemy unit in range.
-Build: You may place one unit with a value equal to the value on the die for each die on the launch space.
or
You may replace a unit with a value equal to the value of one of the die with a station. Stations allow units that take a lethal hit, move on it's space instead of back home.
Races:
Each race will have six different units, three special commands, and one passive ability.
-Units: Each unit will have a number from 1 to 6. This value represents their range and defense. Lower value units have better abilities, higher value units have worse abilities. Range determines how far away a unit must be in order to initiate an attack. Defense determines what amount of damage is needed to cause a lethal hit (ex. Value 3 has a lethal hit of 3,4,5 or 6).
-Special Commands: These are when you roll doubles. Each special command will have a tier (meaning the value of the double needed i.e. tier 1 is a double of 1,2,3,4,5 or 6). These can only be used once per game.
-Passive Ability: When two or more friendly units are on the same space, the passive ability is activated.
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Potential problems:
1). Scaling for more players would be difficult.
2). Combat might be under powered
Your thoughts are welcome!
#1 Combat was weird. Having a different range for each unit was not so much fun. Lots of counting spaces. Very fiddly. So, I made the range consistent (any neighboring or same space) and made it so you could only attack with units having the same value as one of the die rolls. This proved to be much better.
#2 It was a slug fest. The beginning was just building and moving. Not very interesting at all. So I removed some of the distance between players (I might even remove even more). Plus I included that if you move across a space with a friendly unit or station, it doesn't count towards your movement.
Both of these changes sort of balance the "hording units on one space for better probability of attack" and "spreading out units so mobility is better".
#3 There is only one double ability per race now, just for simplicity sake.
#4 Scaling for more players is solved. Instead of going around the entire board, each player must move a set number of spaces. So in two player, three player, and four player, you will have the same distance to move. This means in a three or four player game, the only difference is that you will be defending against a different player than who you are moving against. In a four player game there will be one player you do not interact with at all. This also simplifies balancing for races and encourages diplomacy ("Hey! focus on attacking him and I will leave your units alone over here.").
Overall, the combat probabilities are still in the works. Attacking units seems too random and building/moving units seems too slow. Placing a unit next to a group of enemy units is a death sentence. But at the same time, when you want to attack something, it is a 1/6 chance that you can attack them (see as how you need to roll the number of the unit attacking to attack with the unit). Plus you roll again to see if the damage goes through. This makes it even less for a lethal hit!
I'll definitely be testing more.