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Movement less war games

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larienna
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Joined: 07/28/2008

I realised that in my pacific war game, what made the game very fiddly was the fact that troops needed to move on the board. But if there was no troop movement, it would remove many of the problems I have.

So I was wondering if people knew any movement less war games that I could use for inspiration.

My first idea would be that adjacency of hexes determines who can attack what. The more adjacent hex you have to the target the better the bonus. The units by themselves would come from a central supply for the whole nation. Which means that when you lose troops, you remove troops from the supply. It creates some problems:

First, there must be a way to win without killing everybody, else you will need to kill all the soldiers in a nation to capture a single base.

Second, I thought it would be more interesting to have a certain form to troop distribution over the map.

So I though of having key bases that can supply a certain radius of base. Each key base would have it's own supply in troops and if a base in it's control area get attacked, it can send immediately a land troop to defend. Troops can move from key bases to another between turns if the bases are in the supply net.

A problem is that I need enough key base to cover the whole map, else I could end up in a situation where a certain area of the map cannot be covered which prevent the player from progressing. (For example, if you land on the USA west coast and there is no key base in the middle of the US, the troop will not be able to reach the east side.)

So the solution would be to have to option to build a head quarter anywhere you want that will make the location work as a key base. It will make the game more flexible and avoid dead locks I could not predict.

What do you think?

hulken
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Joined: 04/18/2009
One idea could be to try and

One idea could be to try and eliminate the number of troops. Less troops = less movement. The onley think I can think of it games like Starcraft the boardgame and Twilight imperiom, they both use orders, you place a order where you want to move, al units that can move there may do so. This would very much eliminate fidly movement. Also simulat comand, you are not able to give more than x number of orders per turn. Make them count.

pelle
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Joined: 08/11/2008
air

This sounds a lot like the air unit rules used in almost all operational war games I have ever seen, but applied also to other types of units.

Typically aircraft are restricted to being located on airfields. You can send them out to attack targets within range, or intercept enemy aircraft within range, or transfer to another airfield (typically within double or triple range; you obviously can move much further when there is no need to have fuel to return to base, or carry bombs). In some games you physically move aircraft counters across the map during missions (or move a generic air mission marker), but others are true "no movement", just temporarily teleporting aircraft to the target hex to resolve combat, then teleport them back to their base.

pelle
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theme

I have no idea how key bases will fit the pacific war theme though. Not having to dedicate resources to defend individual islands (or groups of islands) also sounds as if it takes away some interesting decisions from the game. Maybe what you need are just fewer groups of islands and a point-to-point movement map (or areas) dividing the map into a good number of possible locations to cut down on movement?

kos
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Joined: 01/17/2011
Movement-less wargames

I can't think of any examples of Movement-less wargames currently, but I think this idea definitely has merit. It simplifies the game enormously thus allowing you to represent the war on a much larger scale.

larienna
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Joined: 07/28/2008
Quote:One idea could be to

Quote:
One idea could be to try and eliminate the number of troops

I already shrunk the number of troops. There are many bases and I want it to be that way. Too few troops prevent to cover much ground.

Quote:
Typically aircraft are restricted to being located on airfields.

In my game, aircraft are assumed to be there, no need to supply them.

Quote:
I have no idea how key bases will fit the pacific war theme though.

It fit perfectly well, there are base much more important than others for example some have dry docks to allow ship repairs. I intend to use these.

Quote:
can't think of any examples of Movement-less wargames currently, but I think this idea definitely has merit.

Twilight struggle is a good example, I like some ideas but do not intend to use the same system.

I drafted a system that might work, I'll give more details. in another post.

larienna
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Idea in progress

The solution I will be testing is similar to what I have explained above. There will be a key base that hold the troops and which can cover a certain area. When another base in range get's attacked, the troops are moved to the destination and fight.

Now the combat resolution might be different according if it's a land reinforment or sea reinforcement. On land, generally both armies have a front that will progress and reduce according to the battle resolution. So it somewhat makes sense that you send troops, engage in battle and if troop survives, they get back to the base.

But for naval landing that is completely different, because the attacker land troops outside it's supply range and they cannot easily get back to the key base. Most of the time, fleet will do "drops and forget", the troops there continue to fight until exhausted. So I was thinking instead that when you reinforce by sea, the troops stay on the base. You will place the troops engaged in battle stack outside the board that will be identified by a numbered token over the stack and the map, or with a token that contains the base name.

The fact that land reinforcement will work differently than sea reinforcement will reduce the number of battles that must be marked and stacked outside the board. So it will reduce the fiddlyness for land invasions.

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