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Going between different styles/projects of games

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X3M
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Joined: 10/28/2013

(Just some personal rambling, no questions asked, really, just comment if you feel like sharing your thoughts)

Having several "projects" at the same time helps a lot in progressing one of them with a greater speed.

I currently have 3 "projects". All sharing one core mechanic. But further are different in many other aspects:

1 - The hobby game;
A war game that tries to resemble RTS as much as possible.
Where everything is also as complex as possible. Yet still at a manageable level for people who know a lot of math. Balance, which soon became practical balance, is very important here. There are features that create down time, in such way that 1 game might take days. But it is our own, no one else will see the light of this game. We experiment a lot with new idea's here. And many idea's, while kept. Will never used in other projects.

2 - The "maybe one day" public version;
A war game that is stripped from everything named above. Only the true one core mechanic remains. I am still stripping this game even down further.

3 - The card game;
If there is one other way to get a public game. It would be a card game.
However, I am experimenting a lot on this one as well. Trying weird rules to get a certain feel for balance. This is way harder that first anticipated. Especially the need for remove any health tracking. Yet trying to keep Speed and Range. The combat mechanic has as basis the MtG combat. This game was looked the least at.

***

Back and Forth
My last issue was the usage of dice and "NOT" sorting them. That turned out to be a nogo. But I looked into it for several weeks. That would be for project 1.

My issue right after was having Speed and Range in a card game. I found a weird solution. Thus far project 3.

Now going back to my second project. Where I still had health tracking for some of the bigger units. It was rare to use. But for practical balances still very needed.
What if I used the non health tracking from my card game?
The combat is already simple.
AND I could use the Speed and Range in their natural forms.

The costs of 2, 3, 4 and 6 for 1, 2, 4 and 8 health are replaced by. 1, 2, 4 costs for 1, 3 and 9 health.

I can keep BOTH the costs and the health in single digits at first. The costs will be prolly 2 digits for the stronger tanks.
And there is room for exotic numbers like 2 and 6 health with costs 1.5 and 3.
The biggest advantage about the 1;3;9 system is that infantry will have a much better role in it. The card game has proven this.

And the combat mechanic could follow that of the card game. But in much simpler form as well.

Problem wrote:
Shared regions are no go

Seeing as how players don't like to put units in the same region. I need to discard this.
The minimum movement is 0.
The minimum range is 1.
I think that most default units will be at 1 movement and 2 range.

Problem wrote:
Combat is deterministic at the basis

One accuracy roll could be added to add randomness. Weapons that use this are either cheaper or have a chance to do more damage by luck.

I could experiment with a health:damage ratio of 2:1 in the form of a "roll 4 or more" dice roll. It also encourages to have multi shot units have a place in the army.

But whatever I decide to use for accuracy.
Vulnerability will never ever make it to this game!

Time to do some testing.

***

All I can say is that things go faster if you DO work on several projects. As long as you keep track of any change or experiment that you conducted.

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