A Clunky Theory

IGOUmightGO

I work with action points.
Each player has 6 in a default game.
Each round, the order of players is decided randomly.

So after that we clearly have a player 1, 2 and 3.
And player 1 begins. Player 1 is "forced" to do something. All other players have a choice.
By forced I mean that he/she will spend at least one action point or discard one action point.

However, depending on what player 1 does, 2 and 3 can react at any time.
Player one most likely will attack or move or do both.

Player 2 and 3 can do the following to that:
They can use any event card.
They can intercept the moving army.
They can defend against the attacking army.
And if the army does both, they can intercept and/or defend.
They also could cut in with their turn by paying extra action points. This can come in handy if you suddenly want to block a moving army.

Each option costs a number of action points. And sometimes one option is clearly better then another. However, players can also choose to save up their action points by spending just 1 each time they are in turn. When one player runs out of action points, that player is no longer able to command his/her troops until the next round.
Event cards can be player any time though. No need for AP for that.

My patience? No need for it if I like talking about this. :)

Well, I do have some rules regarding the action points. Might as well give these examples. They work well with my game, perhaps you did not know well yet how to implement them.

There are different costs. And there are additional weaknesses.

For example, if a squad passes by and you want to intercept them because it is the only chance in doing damage. This costs 1 action. But there is an extra chance for you to miss. On average, this 1 action is only worth somewhere near 60%. Due to the fact that this strategy is depending on their speed and your range. Which normally is not the case with a normal fight. The most extreme case that could occur is a reduction of hits to about 8%. But that still can kill of 1 to 3 units.

To give you an idea. The list of costs copy/pasted from my manual:
- 1 AP for movement.
- 1 AP for an attack.
- No movement or an attack while the player is in turn, results in 1 AP discarded for that Round.
- 1 AP for defending (not forced).
- 1 AP for moving "away" with a reduced damage effect (not forced).
- 1 AP for intercepting a moving player with a reduced damage effect for the interceptor (only one squad/player).
- 2 APs for moving and attacking with a reduced damage effect for both players. (Comparable with an Assault, which costs 1 AP + the Event Card)
- 2 APs for defending and moving with "an extra" reduced damage effect for both players.
- If the Squad already paid an APs, then the next one costs: what has been paid + what has to be paid = the total AP costs.

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So eventually there are at least 6 AP for each player on the table. And spending them could be chaotic for new players. But it is only those 6 and then a new round begins. Removing al those AP again. I am not forcing every squad to do something.

This mechanic has proven to balance the game and actually add a lot of strategy as well. My favourite is intercepting while being assaulted. It simply means, you shoot down the incoming enemy before they shoot you.

My friend used the running away option a lot. Eventually he needed to make sure there was room to retreat to. :)

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I do have to say that certain situations slow down the game. And that chaotic situations might occur.
Yes, it is true that the effectiveness of a squad is less, but you use that specific strategy for a purpose.

Why would you intercept a squad? Well it is heading to another squad that might not have the power to fight this squad. So you damage it by intercepting it.

But I think that AP works so well in my game because my game resembles RTS a lot. Each statistic in general has a use and does not change. And I only have numeric statistics. There are no special abilities like confusing the enemy and such. In fact, you could say that I tried to copy the micro management that you can see in RTS games.

Fun fact: It took me 6 months to perfect this part of the game.

Well, that is a neat approach.
But after doing that in my head, I think the number of actions that can be played by one player will grow exponential once you have 3 or more players.
This in a chain reaction. Simply say, for each resource I can do 1 action.

Are there limits?

Yeah, I think that is what can make this mechanic fun. You would make it so the more actions you do on the offense, the greater the advantage that the defender gets. But then there would be other mechanics that can benefit the offense, like taking key locations on the map, or destroying some key goal that weakens the opponent, while they just killed a few troops. In this way, you could have a large number of actions available to you every turn, but it would only be an advantage to use those actions to get a strategic advantage.

It could be simple, like the player getting one exposure per action. Or more complex where different actions give different amounts, and different soldiers having different ratings, like a tank that's big and loud, vs a stealthy sniper.

You could consider my action point to be a mouse click.

You select a group of units on the screen (1 region/hexagon)
And you give an order. 1 AP.
All 4 tanks are given the order at the same time.

Since you want to have 2 groups doing different things. You select them separately. Giving 2 orders, and thus using 2 AP.
In my game, giving 2 different orders to the same hexagon happens very often. Especially in choke point situations or awaiting the reaction of your opponent.

I've done something not unlike DifferentName's mechanic. (this explanation is simplified for expediency).

Imagine a card game card where each turn consists of drawing a card into your existing hand and then playing a trick of cards. This is the sort of system where everyone sits around watching the person whose turn it is. What I did is to use reactions as the main method of determining whose turn it is. So, every time one player plays a trick, the other players have the opportunity to either draw a card or play a trick in response (the order of this opportunity depends on the nature of the trick). If no one responds, the player who played the trick can play another, and if he can't play another, everyone draws until someone can play.

So, applying that mechanism to a war game (I don't), might look something like this... Instead of drawing cards you build units. Instead of playing tricks you move or attack. The opportunity to interrupt (or respond, or take the next turn--whatever you want to call it) first goes to the player being attacked, then to the closest player, then to the player with the most units, etc. You could add mechanisms for changing how the order in which players get an opportunity to respond are determined, and mechanisms for changing what players get when they forgo an opportunity to respond.

Shorter version: rather than thinking of reactions as a special mechanism given to players who get attacked, think of reaction as the means of turn order but where attacked players get priority.

I just bought Nuts (and Chain Reaction, but that rulebook doesn't cost anything) about a week ago. Have not had time to digest that reaction system.

Have you looked at CrossFire? It has a quite simple and elegant reaction system where you take actions until one action fails (for instance if you move in LOS of an enemy unit and it reaction-fires successfully) and then the other player takes actions until they fail etc. No need to count action points or keep track of what units have already fired (mostly) etc.