I'm at it again - Strategy Combat

I like the concept that big guns/ships are not necessarily better at hitting small targets. I have a game in progress that uses the same concept. I think it creates interesting opportunities rather than rewarding players for always buying the biggest guns/ships. It also explains why in real life a battleship never travels(*) without a host of smaller escort ships.

(*) More correctly "travelled", since in real life all battleships have gradually been phased out of service following WW2. They are simply too expensive to operate, and are vulnerable to subs/planes/cruise missiles. Which I guess is what you are trying to simulate.

Variation on Option 1
Custom dice have a combination of the following symbols:
- Crit: Hits small or large
- Small: Hits small only
- Large: Hits large only
- Miss
This way you have more flexibility in ship creation and dice creation. You could have 3 or 4 different types of dice to represent different ship classes, rather than being restricted to only 2 dice types. It's also faster to read the dice results, because you only have to look at the symbols you rolled, rather than translating "A hit on a small dice means it hits small, but a hit on a large dice means it hits large."

Option 2
I also like Option 2 for its simplicity, though it doesn't present as many elegant options for variation in ship design.

Taking Damage
It sounds like you currently use a "defender assigns hits" rule.
What would happen if you did the following:
- Attacker rolls dice
- Defender selects a ship to take damage, which absorbs hits until it is destroyed
- Attacker selects a ship to take damage, likewise
- Repeat Defender and Attacker until all hits have been allocated.
- Ships not destroyed heal up to full at the end of the combat.

Taking Damage 2
Normally, "attacker assigns damage" results in making special ships useless because they automatically get picked on. In contrast, "defender assigns damage" makes special" ships invulnerable because the defender will not remove them until the very last.
However, what would happen if you did the following:
- Both sides roll dice (assuming concurrent damage resolution)
- Crits can be used as "hits anything" or "protects one ship"
- Both sides assign hits to the opposing side, but cannot hit "protected" ships until all other ships have been destroyed.

This system lets you protect certain ships (e.g. command ships) at the cost of less damage inflicted on the enemy because you are using up a "crit" result for each ship you want to protect (in effect, it is hiding at the back instead of attacking). There's also no benefit in trying to protect everything, because once you have no unprotected ships then all your protected ships are fair game. And you're not guaranteed to be able to protect your command ships because you might not roll any crits.

If combined with my Option 1 Variation above, it would allow for some interesting dice to match certain ship types. E.g. if an Assault Cruiser used a die with 1 crit, 2 large hits and the rest misses, an Escort Cruiser might use a die with 2 crits and the rest misses. So the Escort Carrier has less damage potential but is more versatile and better at, well, escorting.

Damage Types
For the name of the damage types, I would probably just go with "Light damage" vs "Heavy damage".

Alternatively, if in your game world you make the damage types consistent with the attack type, you could go with "Laser" vs "Warhead" with the explanation that lasers are useless against capital ships, while warheads (torpedoes, bombs, etc) are useless against small ships.

Regards,
kos

I like where you're going with this mechanic and it's given me a few ideas.

On assigning damage.

Have you thought about giving the units an "initiative" score that assigns damage instead of leaving it to the players to decide?

Example:

small fighter= init: 1
large fighter= init: 2
cruiser= init: 3
transport= init: 2
etc...

This way you can still have the defender assign damage during an initiative TIE but you could arrange the tiers so that the decisions would be unpleasant for them to make.
The small units would get eliminated first leaving the big ships to duke it out in the end or maybe giving players time to bring in reinforcements.

On combat damage in general.

What about not using custom dice (just reg d8 or d10) and instead having the cards tell you what numbers = what kind of damage (small, large, crit)

Example:
on a d8

small fighter= dmg: S- 1,2,3, L- 4,5, C- 6 Miss- 7,8
large fighter= dmg: S- 1,2, L- 4,5,6, C- 6 Miss- 7,8
cruiser= dmg: S- 1 L- 2,3 C- 5,6 Miss- 7,8
transport= dmg: S- 1,2,3 L- 4,5 C- N/A Miss- 6,7,8

On keeping damage after combat.

In the game I've been designing (Arena combat with decks and dice) I ran into this same problem (chits everywhere!!!!! ARGH!!!). What I came up with is using these pointy plastic paper clips (found at office max).

I printed the unit's HP vertically total along the side of the card from 0-X and just attached the paper clip to that side and used it like a little slider and it's worked great for me.

As for damage names, what about: (S)= Hull (L)= Core (Crit)= Life Support

Hope this helps, lots 'o' luck.
-Clay