boosh wrote:Hi, Peregrine perhaps i forgot to mention that this is not the finished game. This is a starting point and i agree it needs a lot of work we need suggestions for improvement. The point you made about unique game mechanics is the exact same point that i made to the creator Dan Townsend. In fact he wrote a blog post about it on the MAC wesbite which can be found here
http://massivearmour.com/blog/novel-game-mechanics
And this is exactly the problem: you're trying to add on detailed rules before you have a solid concept for the game. I don't care if a game has "a detailed repair/medic mechanic", I want to know about the overall look and feel of the game. What makes it fun, what makes me want to play it instead of one of the other games on the market. What you need to do, in order:
1) Come up with a concept for the game beyond "let's create a game". Note that this is a
high-level concept, think in broad terms about setting, what style of gameplay you want to have (small skirmish in 15 minutes, hardcore competitive tournament, week-long epic battles, etc), and, very importantly, what your concept has to offer that I can't get from playing
40k/
FoW/etc.
2) Come up with the core mechanics. Don't even think about stuff like special rules yet, focus on the rules that define how your game plays. To put it in
40k terms, imagine only having the rules needed to have a tactical squad with no upgrades fight another tactical squad with no upgrades with only 4+ cover for terrain. Don't even think about adding rules like characters, weapon upgrades, additional unit types, etc at this point. If you can't make the core mechanics work there's no point in adding all the extras. Also don't forget about that fundamental question:
what does your game offer that I can't get elsewhere? And don't answer that with some technical detail like "we use a
D8 instead of a
D6", you need to think in broader terms of how a player experiences your game.
3) Finally add detailed rules as necessary. However, don't add new rules for the sake of adding more rules, make sure that every single rule you add is required to represent a concept that was defined in an earlier stage. For example, don't add 15 pages of rules for aircraft just because
40k has aircraft and every cool game has to do the same, ask yourself whether your small-scale infantry skirmish game actually needs them in the first place (see item #1).
Unfortunately, it seems like you're doing this in the exact opposite order, coming up with mechanics and ideas in isolation without any real idea of how it all fits together or why you should be creating a new game in the first place. Don't feel too bad though, it's a common mistake.
Ok, so let's go through these:
Repair/medic: don't care. Unless I'm playing a game of Battlefield Medic (which it doesn't seem like I am) I don't care about detailed rules for whether my units are revived, it's just another save to roll. This is absolutely irrelevant to the question of whether I want to play the game at all. If anything it tells me that your game is likely to have lots of complicated rules where a simple "revive on a 4+" type rule would get the job done just as well.
Respawn: don't care. It could be interesting if you properly defined the high-level concept to be based around respawning wave mechanics (say, like an
FPS) but in what looks like a generic wargame it isn't very exciting. What makes respawning your units more fun than just having more units in your army? I don't see an answer to that question, so it seems like another "change for the sake of change" idea.
Base defense: finally, one that could be interesting if done right. An emphasis on fortress vs. fortress fights would actually be doing something different. Even if it isn't the most original idea none of the major games seem to use it very effectively.
Building in deployment zone: I'm not sure what you mean, are you talking about literally buying models and assembling them mid-game (
IOW, stupidly expensive) or bringing a list of components instead of a list of units? If it's the latter there's a reason why nobody does this, and it's a very simple one: assembling custom units like that takes time, and doing it mid-game would slow everything down too much. Pre-made army lists are necessary to keep the game moving.
So, overall I stand by my initial impression: you've got random mechanics in isolation but no high-level concept to tie it all together and turn mechanics into an appealing game.
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