Hello everyone, first submission to the forum from this lurker. I don't know if tabletop style wargames are as much discussed on here, but I wanted to share a mechanic I came up with to simulate a ship's turning, and get some thoughts on it.
I have always been a fan of naval tabletop games. Most have been fantastical, such as Battlefleet Gothic, but they all still share the same wet navy 'feel' that I enjoy. I am designing and attempting to produce a game, Clockwork Armada, that while fantastical in setting is very much wet navy in feel.
So far I have seen two primary means of simulating ships turning in previous games, neither of which I found satisfactory. The first was simply 'move>turn x degrees>continue with move' which felt very unnatural for a ship to just move up and swivel on a dime to put its broadsides into you. The latest variation has been the use of 'templates' of varying degrees to move your ships along and does better simulate the curving trajectory of a vessel. The part I didn't like about it was that it put a ship 'on rails' and made it hard to turn if a player wanted his ship to turn less than the maximum allowed but more than straight ahead.
So I got an idea from the segmented toy snakes I played with as a child: A ruler that could flex, but only so much.
Each segment is exactly an inch long, and there are four different rulers a ship can use depending on its agility.
Clumsy ships are bound to ruler level 1, which only allows for a few degrees of turn per segment, while more nimble ships use higher ruler levels with greater turn ability. The faster ships can end up in a greater turn because how far you turn depends on how far forward you move along the ruler.
http://www.4shared.com/video/oYvxQzbG/rulerdemo.html
This is a 3d model I had my designer make, some of the pieces are seperated into two parts for ease in the casting process. It is relevant up to 00:55, at which point he just starts talking about ship bases.
Basically I am very excited about the mechanic and how it will lend to gameplay, and was curious, being only one mind, if other gamers found this a valuable mechanic as well. Also, for those who have produced games, I have been told by a couple people that this is a mechanic I should patent. I have read that patents are difficult for games, and didn't know if it would be worth it or simply a waste of time.
Heh, oops. So I've already invalidated myself? Guess I made it an easy choice for myself :p
I hope I haven't violated any rules, I had no idea wargame style games were looked down on. I just always considered them in the same genre as board games, just a bit more free form. LARPing to RPGing? :)
Drafting curves somewhat influenced my idea, I find move-turn-move-turn mechanics to be fine mechanically but I wanted to be able to simulate a more realistic curve. It also changes game play as a model has to move further forward to draw line of sight with its broadsides on certain targets depending on positioning.
The current way I have it set up is: Every ship has Thrust points. Every Thrust point they spend, they get to move forward two inches. You can turn using your Turn rating, so a ship with a Turn Rating of 2 could use a level 2 ruler.
But you have to spend a Thrust point for the ability to turn during the ship's movement, since you lose forward momentum when you turn. So the amount of turning does relate to the distance traveled. Since each ruler segment is exactly an inch long, it acts as a proper ruler as well during movement.