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Battle mechanics for military units help..

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Krossus
Krossus's picture
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Joined: 01/15/2010

The board game is the geo-political landscape, however the actual battles are performed on individual strategic maps included with the dossier for each player's country. Each military unit will have pre-determined movement values (M), attack ratings (AR), and defense ratings (DR).

The (AR) is basically a +/- value depending on the unit(s) targeted. Example, an assault chopper attacking a tank would have a bonus of +(enter value) to hit a tank.

The (DR) is units combined armor + movement (agility), or simply put.....what a player needs to roll to destroy the unit. There is no hit point value per unit. A successful roll equal to or greater than a target unit's DR results in a kill.

I have considered using D20s to determine unit assaults/attacks. I would like some input as to whether you think D20s would be feasible and if so, what values for defense ratings (DR) would you allocate to units such as:

- Tanks

- Jet Fighters

- Bombers

- Assault choppers

- Artillery (stationary)

- Infantry

- Special Forces

- Submarines

- Cruisers

- Aircraft Carriers

Orangebeard
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Joined: 10/13/2011
Averaged DR

Hi Krossus,

Based on your description of the game, DR value and list of units, my first thought was to rank each unit from 1 to 10 based on a single criteria. 10 being good; 1 being bad. You mentioned agility as being something that should be considered for DR (and I am inclined to agree!). As such, I would rank each of these units from 1 to 10 based on their agility only. In this example, artillery is likely to be very low while choppers and special forces would probably be higher. Repeat this process for the other considerations like armor, defensive weapons, ability to camouflage, etc.

Once you are done ranking each consideration, get a total score for each unit and rank them based on that score. In theory, this should give you a good starting list that can be assigned actual DR values. Let's say that infantry ends up in the middle so you assign what you consider to be an average DR to infantry. Units ranking lower than infantry would obviously have a lower DR and so on; it may even be simplest to say the best unit gets a DR of 10 and the worst gets a DR of 1. Your playtesting will reveal any need to adjust those value up or down and your overall ranking list will help you keep them in order when adjusting.

Alternatively, you could use the rock-paper-scissors approach (planes kill boats, boats kill infantry, infantry kills planes)

With regard to the d20 system, a single die roll implies that there is an equal chance of failure and success based on the roll alone, whereas multiple dice used per roll will give you predictable averages with higher middle values. In game terms, do you envision all attackers as being generally able to hit their targets (a case for using multiple dice) or do you envision them being very dependent on their AR to get a score high enough for a kill (a case for single die)

Good luck with your designs!

Krossus
Krossus's picture
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Joined: 01/15/2010
DR Rating

Each DR will be a cumalative value based on the level of protection (armor), and ability to evade (agility). I like your idea of assigning a value to each unit's level of defense and agility separately. You could add those two values together to get the actual DR (Defense Rating).

I went with the D20 mechanic because it made sense with some of the more agile and heavily armored units. For example, I dont want an infantry unit to be able to take out a tank/jet with ease which would be offset with a high DR of maybe a 16 (DR) value. I'm not saying that both the jet/tank will have the same DR value, but they would be similair due to the speed of a jet plus its manueverability compared to a tanks massive armor but less agility.

I'm also thinking that each unit will be more geared towards being more successful as you referenced in your "rock - paper - scissors" analogy. Those advantages would translate into bonus (+) points to the unit(s) AR (Attack Rating) values.

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