Board Game Designers Forum

Began working on some mechanics. I am going to start with tweaking how factions play, and then work on the faction-to player portion.

So, the galaxy is divided into a number of universes, equal to the number of players in the game. Each universe is divided into 5 planets. So, lets to some math. . . take the dirivitive of this. . .about 3 planets per faction to start. One planet produces one ship (the type is determined at random at the start of the game), so that equates to 3 ships/turn. In addition, the "fleet" gets 10 ships to start (it's assumed that the commanders fly in some big command ship.)

So, at the beginning of the turn, said command ship is in one universe. It (may) send out a bunch of units to attack a planet. Whoever owns the units there defends (duh.)

Off to the side at the start is a "battle board", used to facilitate these battles. It has three sections, one for each type of unit. Each section has a spot for units to go, dice, and 2 cups (one for each player.)

Each player puts their units in the sections, and gets one dice per ship in each section. The dice are rolled in secret, under a cup (the player controlling can see, but the one that is about to take the punishment can't)

Ex: A player has 3 fighters, 1 bomber, and 2 capital ships. It takes 3 dice, and rolls it in the fighter cup, 1 die in the bomber cup, and 2 in the capital cup. Thus, the player can see how successful the attack may be before they. . .

A) Retreat. The attack may always retreat. They go back to the command ship. The defender can retreat IF there is a friendly planet in that universe. Units on a planet can NEVER transfer between universes.

If no one retreats, then the players. . .

B) Send out units. The attacker starts, and sends his fighters to attack one of the other 3 boxes.

Ex: lets say our guy was attacking a fleet of 2 fighers, 5 bombers, and no capital ships. He rolled a 1,3,4 for his fighter units. For reasons to be revealed later, he decides to let his fighters attack the enemy bombers.

The units work in a RPS system (in this case, FightersBombersCapitals) attacking someone of your own kind requires a 5+, attacking someone lower 4+, and attacking someone higher 6. In addition, each unit gets a special kind of ability. Abilities can be used on ANY dice, not just for their own kind. The ships are "tapped" when the ability is used.

The fighter can re-roll a dice,
The bomber gives a extra dice to the pile (rolled, of course,)
The capital ship will decrease casualties by one (used after being attacked).

Every hit causes one casualty. The other player either uses up a capital ship ability, or destroys a unit. A destroyed unit does not reduce any dice, but does prevent it's ability from being used (if it wasn't used up already.)

The defender then attacks with fighters, then attacker attacks with bombers, ect., until all units have fired.

Then start over. Re-calculate dice totals (taking into account any ships lost as casualties,) roll, possible retreat, resolve. Repeat until someone is wiped out, or someone retreats.

This sounds long, but take into account that each faction gets 3 ships per turn. That means that, on average, they will have only 3 dice to roll (more at the beginning, so players can "expand" a bit faster.)