EV Blueprints/Overview

[Peter]

I think I've reached the point where trying to do more research isn't going to add much to the game, so now seems like a good time to work out exactly what will go into the second draft. So, here goes:

• Each ship will be represented by a model - which shows where it is - and a counter which shows where it's going. It's basically an adaptation of Triplanetary's movement system to gridless gaming. At the start of your activation, you can move the counter a short distance in any direction (to represent acceleration). At the end of your activation, you get the fun of moving the ship to the counter's location and working out where the next counter goes.
  
• Spacecraft have a number of Action Points which refresh every turn and a number of Core Points which refresh every game. Action Points are used to enable the most basic technologies on the ship, while Core Points are used for the more advanced stuff.
  
• Weapons such as missiles and mines have ammunition limits.
  
• A hit has a chance of mission-killing one or more of the modules on the enemy ship. Which one is chosen by either the ship's controller or their opponent, probably based on a dice roll. The effects of losing a module vary.
  
• I'm also thinking up environmental effects, including local wells, gas pockets, debris clusters and similar bits and pieces.
  

[Oliver]

Good call on the acceleration mechanic

[Adam]

Mission-killing? What do you mean there?

Rest of the stuff sounds solid, plenty of resource management and thinking ahead.

[Peter]

Oct 11, 2009 6:00:14 GMT -5 Adam said:

Mission-killing? What do you mean there?

Rest of the stuff sounds solid, plenty of resource management and thinking ahead.

It means that I've spent way too much time researching this. Somehow.

It amounts to "disable" though. When you 'mission kill' a nuclear missile, you make it incapable of engineering a detonation, for example. And yes, you can do that by shooting it (in the unlikely event that you managed to cause the device to go critical, it still wouldn't do anything interesting).

My plan for atmospheres is to ignore them for the most part - I don't think spacecraft would actually fight each other while deep enough in an atmosphere to make much difference.

Otherwise, pretty much every single number used in the game would change when fighting in an atmosphere.

Now I have to decide whether or not there should be any rules for 'melee'.

[Peter]

OK, I've been doing a little thinking, and I might have come up with an interesting core mechanic. Which has been completely ripped off of World of Darkness, but never mind.

I'm not sure whether this will use d6s, d8s or d10s as a starting point - I think d8s would work best, but I'm sure plenty of people will have other ideas.

[Adam]

Well, tell us what it is and we'll give you ideas ;D

So mission-kills are basically like vehicle damage results in 40K or IF? A more descriptive name might be helpful.

[Peter]

The rule is not unlike stuff you've seen before (roll a load of dice, pick out the ones that hit).

However, in NWoD, instead of changing what you need to roll in order to score a hit, almost all circumstances change how many dice you are allowed to roll.

That's the bit I'm stealing. Rolls of 6 or more to hit inflict a point of damage. A ship takes a serious damage result whenever it suffers a hit which cannot be stopped by its Defence fields, and whenever it suffers a hit on a roll of an 8.

Serious damage results are chosen by one of the players, which one depends on a dice roll - roll the number of serious damage points inflicted, every roll of 6-8 allows the attacker to choose the result, while rolls of 1-5 allow the defender to choose the result.

There are two sets of serious damage results (Major and Catastrophic). There are some harsh restrictions on when catastrophic damage can be inflicted, to prevent the attacker going straight for the kill.

The rules should be nasty enough that people try to defend their ships, while not being so horrible that ships explode the first time they are shot at.

[Adam]

Ohh that system! I've seen that somewhere before - perhaps heard it on a gaming podcast or something. All sounds well, I assume you're going for d8s there. So skill, accuracy, difficulty of hitting, etc, all affect the number of dice similarly to BFG's gunnery table? What about armour and stuff - does that reduce the number of dice too, or just allow increased absorption of damage/ignoring of a small number of results/ignore the first X damage points per turn? Does weapon strength add dice or fully/partially negate armour bonuses?

So many questions there

[Peter]

Oct 14, 2009 12:22:30 GMT -5 Adam said:

Ohh that system! I've seen that somewhere before - perhaps heard it on a gaming podcast or something. All sounds well, I assume you're going for d8s there. So skill, accuracy, difficulty of hitting, etc, all affect the number of dice similarly to BFG's gunnery table? What about armour and stuff - does that reduce the number of dice too, or just allow increased absorption of damage/ignoring of a small number of results/ignore the first X damage points per turn? Does weapon strength add dice or fully/partially negate armour bonuses?

So many questions there

Armour determines how much punishment a ship's Defence fields can withstand, and also has the possibility of penalising some incoming attacks.

Agility comes with the possibility of penalising some incoming attacks as well.

The actual size of a salvo depends on the attacking ship's overall Power rating, unless Superweapons or Missiles are employed.

[Peter]

OK, another round of draft ideas.

As before, dynamic armour repair exists, but it's a more realistic version - pipe some more armour material to the location, and set it.

Each ship will have the following attributes:

• Armour - the amount of damage a ship can take without suffering system damage.
  
• Agility - the ship's ability to manoeuvre
  
• Command - How well things get done.
  
• Action - How much gets done.
  
• Repair - the ship's ability to repair armour damage.
  

There will be a small chance that the ship doesn't regenerate all of its AP, and armour will also become less useful as the ship takes damage.

[Adam]

Are there no hit points? Is Armour the stat that gets reduced by damage?

[Peter]

Repair, actually - each time you roll to fix some damage, you lose a Repair point, whether the damage gets fixed or not. Eventually you run out of Repair points, indicating that there is nothing non-essential left to take a bullet any more.


In other news, I just played Iji, and it was awesome.

[Adam]

Ah, cool. That sounds reasonable.

Yeah it's fantastic isn't it? How psychotic were you? I love the unexpected moral consequences the game puts in if you just kill all of the baddies. One day I'll try a pacifist run...

[Peter]

First run I played a complete psychopath. Second run I didn't kill anyone. The game becomes quite a bit easier played that way, although there is a counter-intuitive segment where a pure pacifist run requires the use of the Velocithor super weapon.

[Kelcart]

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