I'm working on a game that will be played on a hex or square grid; I've been tinkering with both as far as tile layout but this random movement thing will probably end up being a deciding factor. In other words, systems designed around either grid would be viable.
What I need to happen is fairly simple. Each round I need enemies to move from one tile to another. It needs to be unpredictable enough that players can't dance around it, while still following basic rules. Here are the conditions that need to be met:
A. There will be many enemy units on the board; depending on how far into the game it could be over a hundred.
B. The enemies need to recognize players as a threat/target and respond appropriately
C. There needs to be a way to move these units quickly and efficiently; moving 100+ individual units would be tedious and likely result in a lot of errors.
To deal with these conditions I've come up with a few ideas.
To address both A & C, I've considered some type of clumping/grouping system. Basically, once so many units occupied a space (say 3 or more), they get joined into one single group that moves as a unit. They will remain as one unit until they drop below the previous threshold. There would have to be a maximum limit (say 12) that after which point the group doesn't pick up any more new units.
In regard to B, at the beginning of each round a player could do a simple die roll to test whether they are detected or not. If they pass, they are simply ignored during the enemy movement phase.
Based on this, I still have a couple problems. 1, how to randomize the movement, and 2, how to track the movement. I've considered using some sort of coding of tiles and the roll of two dice to randomize movement. If there were 3 tile types, a roll would would be done first to decide which tiles were actives, and a second roll to decide which direction units on those tiles moved.
So with all this in mind, this is a very basic idea of what I thought of as far as a structure to this system:
1. Players roll to see if they are detected.
2. Players who are detected are attacked by enemies moving into their tile.
3. Roll to select which enemies move randomly.
4. Roll to select which direction previously selected enemies move.
5. Move enemies.
6. Player turn.
This is already getting excessively long so I'll end here but I'd love to hear input, suggestions, etc.
Thanks everyone!
It is a modern day survival themed game.
I've been tinkering with this for a few days and have come upon a solution that so far seems to work fairly well.
Instead of marking zones on the board, I decided to mark the units themselves. I chose 3 unit types that correspond to 3 different colors on a d6 (2 sides of each color). I used the hex grid, since the 6 directions match nicely with a d6. The structure I've used to move things around is this:
1. Roll colored die to select which units move
2. Roll directional die to select direction
3. Move unit markers to their new locations
if moved into...
a. empty space - piece is done for this turn
b. space occupied by other enemy units - unit that just moved goes on top of whatever stack is there
i. if the new stack is less than 6 tall, movement is done and this stack remains as its own unit.
ii. if the new stack is 6+ tall, it is "exploded" meaning distributed to the surrounding hexes. Any remainders from this (if the stack is 7+ tall) remain in the current space.
c. space occupied by a player - combat
4. Player turn
I have a few more things that I need to work on now, and would love input. The first is the detection roll. Players will have rudimentary statistics, set to a 1-6 scale. There will also be a basic item system. From this there will be differences in players' detection rolls. A players turn consists of two parts, a movement and an action. They have the option of doing both parts, and in whatever order they decide. I'm planning on having them roll detection once per location, per turn. For example, if they choose to move, once they arrive in the new space they must roll detection. If they choose to action in this same space, they have already rolled detection and don't have to do it again. If they choose to action first then move, they must roll in the first location (action), then roll again when they move into the new space. The next turn if they action in that space before moving, they will have to roll again. I'm open to variations on any of this; the idea being that they want to be conservative in how they move and act... moving and acting through heavily populated territory could be dangerous and/or painful.
The second thing is enemy population growth. There are two options that I can see. The first is to have random sets of spawn points that occasionally create new enemies. These could be coded like the units so there would be a die roll to see which, if any, points spawn new units. The other option is to populate based upon existing units. A die could be rolled to see which, if any, units were eligible for an growth. A second die could be rolled to determine the eligible size for a new unit to be added to the stack (it could be an over or under, depending on which stacks we wanted to grow).
Thanks again for the fantastic input :)