Board Game Designers Forum

I am working on a ww2 pacific war game and want a standard mechanics for resolving all kinds of attack. In general, the way battles are resolved is that each player place their ship in various parts of their battle board that represent the weaponry used (gun, torpedoes, etc). The the combat is resolved 1 weapon at a time in a specific order.

Now I have 2 possible way to resolve the damage and I am not sure which one could be simpler or more elegant to play. For example, lets resolve the gun weapon with the following ships.

1 Battleship(BB) - Strength of 8 each

2 Heavy Cruiser (CA) - Strength of 4 each

3 Light Cruiser (CL) - Strength of 2 each

The target number for a die to hit is 4+ (technology can reduce it to 3+)

Method A

• Roll 1 die for each ship.
• For each ship that hit, sum up it's strength.
• Each slice of 5 points will damage an enemy unit.

For example, if 1 ship of each type hit, then the total strength is 8+4+2 = 16. 16/5 = 3 rest 1. So the opponent get 3 damage.

Method B

• Sum up all the ship strength
• Roll 1 die for each slice of 5 points
• Each hit will inflict a damage on an enemy unit.

For example, the fleet above will have a strength of 8+4+4+2+2+2= 22. The player will roll 4 dice, if he rolls 3 hit, he makes 3 damage.

Average rolls (optional)

If there is more than 4+ dice to roll, it could be possible to make an average roll with 2 dice. For example, instead of rolling 6 dice, you roll 2 dice where each hit makes 50% of the dice hit. So with 6 dice, 1 hit = 3 damage, 2 hit= 6 damage. That optional rolling method would not be possible with method A.

Excess points

What ever the rolling methods, excess points are always carried over the next roll. So excess points are never lost unless it's the last attack.

Pro and cons I am trying to see the pro and cons of both method.

• Method B gives an optional average roll for large forces without requiring additional dice.
• Method B seems easier to calculate.
• Method A would require the player to keep track of units that hit and would not be able to roll all units has the same time since they are mostly different.
• During the placement phase, it could take more time to assign ship with method B since players will want to round up their numbers. Still, since the excess points are used by other weapons, it might incite players not to calculate too much.

Do you have any other pro and cons?

Is there a method you prefer over the other?

Mirror Thread

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/9859024#9859024