Precinct Omega
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Infinite Dark - Design Blog 2 - "Divert power to shields!"
🕑 Added 2020-04-09 13:00:00 +0000 UTCWell, I haven't solved the "3d space on a 2d playing surface" problem, yet. Many possibilities, but none of them are satisfying. They all make the game considerably more complicated whilst adding nothing in terms of entertainment.
However, on the plus side, I have made some progress in other areas of the conceptual design of the game.
Obviously, a key feature of a Precinct Omega game is the ability to customize your stats to accommodate whatever miniatures you want to include in the game. In Zero Dark, this was about creating a hero with stats and upgrades etc. In Horizon Wars it was focused on the mechs and the aircraft, who could be customized to whatever you needed them to be, but they could also lose stat point from damage and recover them from repair.
I want to carry this across to Infinite Dark, but in a new way that captures something of the spirit of the massive vessels we're talking about. And, delightfully, this means dragging up an abandoned concept from a game called MechaWar, which was the prototype for Horizon Wars (I know some of you own it and I love you for that - it's not impossible it might see a Patreon-exclusive re-release in the not-too-distant future). That concept is Mass.
Back in MechaWar, mechs were defined by their Mass. This eventually became Presence because I wanted it to be possible for there to be small, powerful elements as well as big, weak ones.
But when you're talking about movement in space, where conservation of momentum is absolutely core to capturing that sense of a space battle, mass becomes absolutely vital.
First, mass will dictate how hard a ship is to manoeuvre. But, second, mass will also dictate its maximum power capacity. This is simply because powerful engines are big. More powerful engines are even bigger. So as the mass goes up, so does the potential size of a vessels engines.
Of course, big ships aren't necessarily the most potent, because there might be slow, ponderous trading vessels, too. But if the ideas of "mass" and "power" seem a bit like the relationship between Presence and stat points in Horizon Wars, that's because they are!
My current working concept, then, is that a ship will have a Mass and a Power stat, which together will dictate its cost in your fleet. But, unlike Horizon Wars, in which you allocated stats as part of the design process, in Infinite Dark my idea is that you distribute power to the stats throughout the game, as needed. You might, for example, start with power evenly distributed between engines, shields, weapons and scanners. But in the early game, you might want to transfer power from engines to scanners so you can detect your enemy, before moving power to weapons to shoot them. Then quickly transfer it back to shields to defend against their return fire.
I like this concept. At the moment, it's a little unwieldy because I'm testing it with dice. So each ship needs a BIG stat card and I shift dice backwards and forwards each activation. Fine for a small fleet of three or four ships, but a bit clunky when you're heading upwards of six. And as I'm aiming for a sweet spot between five and ten principle vessels, I need a way of more effectively managing the transition of stats.
The obvious solution is some sort of app, but I have no budget for that kind of thing. The other option is some sort of rotary dial thing made from card or HDF. This is a bit more achievable, I think. But if I can come up with a more accessible solution I will. A core part of the Precinct Omega design process is that, if a clever mechanic or design feature requires an accessory, it's not that clever.
Oh, and I referred earlier to engines, weapons, scanners and shields. Those are my working stats for Infinite Dark, although I'm wavering between scanners and command. Whether I force them into alignment with MFAD from the first two games will depend a bit on my mood. Yes, it's forced, but it's also distinctive. We'll see.
Comments
Precinct Omega
A very good point. I'm almost at the stage where I can start putting minis on the table and trying out some of my ideas and it's very likely that some of them will start to break down just as you describe and get confined to the bin. That said, BFG was also very much Age of Sail in Space, with its vast and unwieldy crews and ancient, unknowable ships, so this kind of abstraction was in lock-step with the feel of the setting. I'm looking for something that gives a slicker sense of command and control.
Gavin Thorpe
I think you may run into a fundamental disconnect in what you are trying to do. Whether hardwired into the rules or not every game has the player assume a role or roles within it, particularly wargames. It is difficult, and often undesirable, to try to emulate vastly different roles within the same mechanics. In this case you want to have lots of ships, indicating fleet commander- (admiral) level decision making as well as putting the player in the position of every single ship captain. Not only are you responsible for grand strategy - break the cordon on the left while holding on the z-plane - but also every single ship’s power allocation. A game like BFG tempers this dichotomy by making the ship commands extraordinary and mostly abstract - brace for impact, reload ordnance - and uses squadrons for numbers of smaller ships. That decision making still slows down the game at higher model counts. So is it up to the player to manage every single ship or should the system abstract the captains’ choices to best implement high commands?
Precinct Omega
We'll see how it looks once I start play-testing, but I certainly think that larger, capital ships will have *more* points to allocate each turn. I'm currently modelling out the difference between forcing admirals to allocate all of their power points at the start of each turn and allowing them to allocate power only at the start of each ship's activation. I prefer the uncertainty of the former option - the sooner you activate a ship, the more relevant you can be sure your allocation was, providing a nice fog-of-war element - but it comes with an administrative burden, effectively introducing a new game phase that needs to be sensibly managed - a little like prepping manoeuvre dials for X-Wing.
Jonathan Lupton
I knew I had a space combat game with some kind of power allocation in it. A quick search through my bookcase and I found it. Renegade Legion: Interceptor did have rules for power allocation but only used them for larger ships. (In Interceptor small ships are space fighters, so larger ships in this case are Gunboats and Corvettes with a crew of up to 6-7 people). As most games are played with a maximum of one Corvette per side the decision making and tracking is limited to one ship and so is manageable. Perhaps a similar approach in Infinite Dark could work. Small ships don't have allocatable power and large ones do. So each player only needs tracking boards/counters/dice for a limited number of their ships.
