Board Game Designers Forum

Well, I didn't know stress was such an issue in the XIX century. Thank goodness they got industrialist, scientists, philosophers, and architects gathered to address the problem. We only got psycologists in the XX century and haven't made great advancements so far...

;)

Nice storyline. Keep thinking!

(This post is caused by the discussion in the prototype design thread)

How do I select my Engine for the game?
Do I have to choose between the ones available for my faction, or is it a free-for-all on all Engines?
The first option means that the factions need to be balanced Engine-wise to avoid locking the last chooser into the faction with the least useful set of Engines, while the latter spoils the idea of faction-specific philosophy for Engine types.

Based on my comment here http://www.bgdf.com/node/3520#comment-12948, and subsequent comments on the same thread about size frigate etc, it has got me thinking on it all a bit.

If I may propose the following as a construction method of a Steam Mech (if I may call them that, I just like the name ... forgive me). The player dash board represents the their Steam Mech (SM). So what is required for a SM to exist, a chassis and Engines essentially. There was some talk about to many sizes (Frigate, destroyer, etc), why not consider 4-5 chassis and and 4-5 different engines, that would create a fair degree of flexability in the game. Given this I would propose that a chassis has two ratings

• Capacity: being the number of "slots" that can be mounted on the chassis
• Usage: Base steam required for the chassis to function.

If you use capacity as requirements for building a SM, then each SM be could become vastly more different, and combinations varied.

• Walker Legs: Requires 1 Capacity, 10 Steam, Gives -1 terain movement difficulty
• Tracks: Requires 2 Capacity, 20 Steam, Gives +1 Speed
• Small Steam Engine: Requires 1 Capacity, Gives 50 Steam
• Large Steam Engine: Requries 2 Capacity, Gives 70 Steam

Hard points and Capacity should be interchangeable. Even if you only consider 4 engines, 4 chassis, and 4 movement mechanisims that gives you 64 different SM variants.

Not at all. I was thinking more as I was typing. What I really wanted to get across was chassis v engine, and the thought that a chassis took X steam just to function.

Earlier in the brainstorming, we had discussed making different engines move at different steam costs...Excelsior might move from hex to hex at 25 steam while Reliant might move from hex to hex at 20 steam. Using this system I can see where Relexx's idea for differentiating Engines might be a better choice.

However, I think we're leaning more toward terrain-based movements costs now...moving into a Factory hex costs 20 steam while plowing through a downtown hex takes 40 steam. This makes movement requirements the same for all players and places more importance on steam management. If you need to get to the Reservoir hex you have to decide if you want to take the shortest route through the downtown buildings at a cost of 1 turn and 40 steam, or go around via two rubble hexes at a cost of only 10 steam each but requires 2 turns.

This seems to give players more meaningful decisions and I think that would make for a better play experience.

In regards to movement, you could still have both. Either have the terrain move cost, where the chassis move cost must be greater than, or you have to add additional steam (a), or the terrain costs additional steam regardless of the chassis (B)

e.g.
Chassis X Move cost is 30 Steam
Chassis Y Move cost is 40 Steam

In (a) Chassis X and Chassis Y could move into the Factory hex (move cost 20) at no extra cost to steam, however if they are to move downton Chassis X would require 10 extra Steam, and Chassis Y no extra.

In (b) a Factory Terrain migh be +10 Steam, and Down Town +20, there fore moving in them would cost 40 and 50 for Chassis X and 50 and 60 for Chassis Y

I regards to end production costs I agree, unless you had some plastic molds that could snap or slot together. A simple one would be the movement being one component and chassis plugging into the top, you could then easily have a flag pin to mark the players steam mech.

The chassis could just be a card just like the engine, so it just takes up a slot on the players mat also.

In another Blog I brought up the issue of running out of vital water, something that wasn't considered I guess.

I've been thinking on this and have yet to come up with a solution. Mojo mentioned that perhaps we have a closed system, where players really only need to pay wood and coal as the steam is re-condensed and returned back to a holding cistern. The only time you would need to use water, is if you Hull got down into the red. Every time you generated steam, you would then need to use some water to replace the lost liquid. This would work well and is easy, it isn't going to be an issue in the early, game unless you decide to get into a scrap with another Engine.

My idea was to spend part of a day cycle drilling/seeking out enough water to refill and hopefully get you to the nearest reservoir and gather more, which I'm not overly sure on.

I've done a little looksie about how steam engines worked, and came up with an idea that might work, and not overly punish you for running out of water. Perhaps we still need water (it's the reason that steam engines work) as a resource and when you run out, you can still generate power from the last dregs of water/condensation etc, but only 1/2 the amount of pressure and damage your Hull - maybe 5 points each time you stoke the boiler.

example: If you burned 2 coal + 3 wood + water you'd generate 80 points of steam pressure. If you had no water, you'd generate only 40 points of pressure + plus damage your engine slightly.

Yeah. I was thinking that players will start with at least 2 of the combustible resources as they load up on the dwindling supplies. It may be more mind you, but we'll only work out through playing it.

No probs about the name - they not locked in stone...yet. :-)

I'd say the v0.1 of the rules are roughly 50-60% complete, and shouldn't take too long to finish it off. I'm really working on a lot of the fiddly rules at the moment.

I hear someone objecting to math ;)

You could always just create a lookup table to avoid this, like Mordhiem (Attacker Down, Defender Across)

   | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 
 1 | 1 | 1 | M | M | M | M |
 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | M |
 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
 6 | H | H | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 |

I'd be the same about a CRT as well. I wouldn't want this pegged as a war game as it's not. I cribbed this idea from Arkham Horrors very simple combat system. If you beat the monster you win, if you don't you take wounds (that's pretty brief as there's mre to it than that). Most people should be able to take 2 away from a number under 6 without the use of a table to get a result. This is jsut an idea to try and get combat to be a set thing across the game and player

I know we decided to set a 5 limit on combat scores, but I was thinking about it on my way home from work and wondered f it needed to be that way. The earlier idea was a set thing, that gave highly skilled characters a 1:6 possibility of missing. This doesn't take into account the skill of the character they are facing. People with combat experience will know what to while under attack and maybe this needs to be reflected in the combat system. Critters could be from -2 to +2 - some are just easier to hit for instance.

Engine vs Engine combat is slightly different

Couldn't you eliminate the CRT if you used some specialty dice?

That seems like a much more modern solution.

Or use cards the way Rune Wars does.

(The cards are variable in a certain range but there are 4 outcomes on each card and you simply look for the outcome listed by your modifier, PVE just draw one card, PVP each player draw a card. This has the added effect of reducing your variance by eliminating cards as they are drawn. )