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Welcome back to another thread about Games design. I hop eyou have liked the series so far.

We still have open discussions about:
Leadership Tokens
Card Decks
Time Limits

You can find all of those in the Dakka Discussions thread with a search., but enough about those. Let's talk about this week’s topic. Turn Sequence. To me, everything about a game hangs on how the game asks the players to interact with each other during the game, and the heart of this is the turn sequence. Let's take a look at some of the popular versions and talk about their pros/cons and what games use them successfully.

1. IGOUGO- The old stand-by the I-Go-U-Go system where players take turns completing all of the actions for their force, before the alternate player can go. Of course, the most commmon is Chess, but also Risk, Monopoly, and Warhammer and a few others. I think we are all familiar with this so let's not belabor it now.

2. Interrupts- This is the IGOUGO process, but in this version the opponent can "interrupt" the active player to perform key actions such as Overwatch or reaction moves. However, for the most part it is similar to IGOUGO. I believe this system is used by Battlegroup for their WWII game systems. Some edition sof 40K used it as well.

3. Alternate Activations- This has one player complete all the actions for a unit before trading off to the other player to do all of their actions with a units back and forth until all units have acted in a turn. This is used by the Spartan Games line such as Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada. It was also used by the old Void game.

4. Alternating Rounds- This is a combination of IGOUGO and Alternating Activations where one player completes all of the same actions with their units, and then the other player completes all of the same unit for his units, and then player 1 completes all of the next actions for his units until all units have completed all potential actions. I have seen this used mostly in historical games.

5. Action/Reaction- In this version, one player uses his units as he wishes, but the other player can opt to try and react. This is similar to Interrupts, except the opponent can choose to react to a large variety of moves by the first player. This is used in Force-On-Force and Tomorrow's War.

6. Alternating Like Mad!- In this process, each player takes turns performing a single action for all the units, but alternate between players after each unit does the action. So, Player 1 moves ship A and then Player 2 moves Ship B and then Player 1 moves Ship C. Once all ships have moved, they do the same thing but with shooting next. The difference is subtle.

7. Initiative Order- Each unit has a certain initiative. They then perform actions in the order of their initiative.

8. Random Activation- Random cards or dice rolls determine which player can activate a unit to complete all their actions. This is the Bolt Action and Tomahawks and Muskets method.

So, which ones did I miss? What are the relative merits of one system versus another? What are the pros and cons of some of these systems? Which do you prefer and why?

I am working on an system where models activate based on tokens pulled from a cup. Obviously small scale, each player adds one token to the pool for each model in play. Incidentally melee combat is opposed rather than one side attacking- you can't attack without risking getting hit back. Of course you can stack the odds by going 2:1 or more.

In short I like both players involved abd with the ability to react a maximum amount of the time.

One that I've become a big fan of recently is the combination of IGOUGO and random turn length, which I came across in Lion Rampant. There's no interrupt actions or anything, but once you fail an activation test (2d6 vs a target number) your turn ends, and any units not yet activated essentially 'lose' their action for the Turn. It adds nice element of unpredictability to proceedings, keeps things moving at a good pace, and forces careful planning as you're unlikely to get to activate everything in any given turn.

In a system I'm developing myself, in I've taken that further, putting the Order phase before anything else in a turn, so not only do you not know exactly how many units you'll get to use, but you have to nominate targets and pick the order of operations before anything moves. So far, that's yielded pretty tactical game, simply as you do need to plan and consider the chance of any given activation; there's no point planning a 3-unit manoeuvre if you're only likely to activate 2 units.

You've missed out simultaneous sequencing, in which both sides start by writing orders which are then carried out at the same time within a defined order. (E.g. move then fire.)

The basic game turn variations as far as I can remember are.

Alternating game turn.(Players perform actions with all units in series of phases, eg move, then shoot. then assault .IGO UGO as some call it.)
Some games include conditional reaction mechanics to increase the level of interaction.(Charge reactions A.R.O. in Infinity etc.)

Alternating phases.(A moves then B Moves, then A shoots, then B shots etc.)
This can be sequential or interleaved.

Alternating unit activation .(One player selects a unit and performs a series of actions like move and shoot for example.Then the opponent does the same.)
Many game use a method to randomize the activation.Cards or counters or dice draw etc.

Variable bound game turn.One player keeps taking actions with his models/units, until they have activated all models/units or fail to perform an action successfully.
Then they suffer a turn over , and the other player activates models /units until they have activated everything, or until they fail an action..

There are variations on these basic themes but I think that covers all of them.

Lanrak has a succinct summary there. The one thing missing is simultaneous, which Killcrazy mentioned. I'll add real time simultaneous in which players take their actions at the same time in real time, rather than pre-planning the actions blindly.

It is also important to note that more than one method can be used in a single game turn.

The usual cop out answer is that turn order should serve the desired gameplay experience. Simultaneous blind activation puts distance between both the player and his units and between the players. This helps to create a sense of tactical detachment and fog of war. The commander (the player) must make command level decisions without the benefit of immediate feedback from the enemy. As a turn develops, you see the success or failure of your plan unfold without being able to directly influence it.

But in some games you don't want to have that sort of cerebral atmosphere. Some games want the player to feel more like the individual soldier, and emphasize a quicker, more reactive turn order that encourages players to be 'in the moment'.

I think that a lot of what these rules discussions have shown is that players want to be surprised. That's fundamental. On some level, you don't want to know what is going to happen. Games accomish that in lots of ways, but one of them is turn sequence.

Another thing I'd like to add is that turn order can be a big part of turn sequence. Who goes first? In some types of turn sequences, this is terribly important. In others it is almost or entirely irrelevant.

Personally I feel interuptable IGOUGO is a nice compromise for planning and interaction, I am looking in hybrids of systems atm, because pure strains show their age.

IMO some form of alternating activations or action/reaction with a lot of reactions is best. It maintains a decent sense of realism in representing things that are supposed to be happening simultaneously, and avoids the problem of one player having a 30-minute turn while the other goes off for a lunch break. Simultaneous actions with hidden orders would be nice for some games, but imposes a lot of constraints on what kind of game you can use. You have to keep unit counts down to a level where you aren't doing excessive amounts of paperwork each turn, you have to have some kind of grid-based system so that you don't have people exploiting the vagueness of "move over that way" when it's their turn to execute the "simultaneous" movement, etc.

The clear worst option here is IGOUGO. It's an obsolete system without any redeeming qualities. It kills any sense of realism, it creates long periods of boredom and non-interaction if you have more than a tiny handful of units/models on each side, etc. Honestly, anyone who uses a straight IGOUGO system in 2015 is an incompetent game designer who needs to learn from the mistakes of the past.

I don't think that Alternating Game Turn means incompetent game design.

I think it is pretty clear that the market is trending towards smaller, faster games that work to maintain player engagement. But tgat does not mean Alternating Game Turns is obsolete.

Alternating Game Turns is still used by plenty of game systems that players enjoy.

That said, I do agree that if your goal is to make a game that keeps all players engaged all the time, Alternating Game Turns is probably not a great starting point. As you mention, there is a risk that the opposing player(s) can lose interest if they have nothing proactive to do for an extended period of time.

But the same thing can happen in other types of turn sequences. It also depends, like I said, on the experience you want to create. If you are looking for a game that requires very little proactive attention, Alternating Game Turns can be a boon. Maybe you want a game where a player can leave the table without stopping the flow of the game.

It would be bad, in my opinion, if you had a turn sequence within a game that gave you the worst of several world, e.g Alternating Game Turns in a game with few turns that take a long time to play out where the opposing player must be present, but has nothing stimulating to do.

Good catch Paradigm and Kilkrazy!

Paradigm- That system is used in Warmaster and all its hybrids as well as Blood Bowl.

Kilkrazy- I have never personally experienced such a wargame, but I bet they are popular int he Historical realms. Can you site me a few examples?

Also, how does the setting/time period of the game fundamentally alter the type of Turn Sequence you decide to use? Is there a correlation?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lanrak wrote:
The basic game turn variations as far as I can remember are.

Alternating game turn.(Players perform actions with all units in series of phases, eg move, then shoot. then assault .IGO UGO as some call it.)
Some games include conditional reaction mechanics to increase the level of interaction.(Charge reactions A.R.O. in Infinity etc.)

Alternating phases.(A moves then B Moves, then A shoots, then B shots etc.)
This can be sequential or interleaved.

Alternating unit activation .(One player selects a unit and performs a series of actions like move and shoot for example.Then the opponent does the same.)
Many game use a method to randomize the activation.Cards or counters or dice draw etc.

Variable bound game turn.One player keeps taking actions with his models/units, until they have activated all models/units or fail to perform an action successfully.
Then they suffer a turn over , and the other player activates models /units until they have activated everything, or until they fail an action..

There are variations on these basic themes but I think that covers all of them.

I think these are the broadest and most common categories, but the devil is in the details. How you Alternate in the Alternating Phases can make a huge difference in the feel of the game, for example if you alternate by action/phase or by unit; that is a big game difference.

To talk about games I have played that I can remember:

Warp War
Simultaneous strategic movement. There isn't any tactical movement as such because that is not how the combat system works.

Star Fleet Battles
You write orders to allocate energy to shields, movement and weapons. Movement and shooting is done in 32 initiative phases during a game turn. You have free movement and shooting within the constraints of orders and the initiative plot.

MechWar 77 (SPI game published 1975)
It was a tactical game of modern warfare in western Europe in the 1970s-80s.
You had to write movement and combat alertness/targetting plots for all your vehicles and helicopters.

Star Soldier (SPI)
You allocated task points (TPs) to movement, shooting and countermeasures, and did a movement and firing plot.

Harpoon (1980s naval)
You set course for your ships. Once an enemy was detected you moved to tactical turns that were I think 10 seconds long each. Movement and shooting decisions are essentially simultaneous in such a short time frame.

It is worth mentioning that a number of boardgames have simultaneous movement/orders, such as Diplomacy.

X-Wing also has a hybrid where movement is determined blindly, and then attacks are performed in an initiative order.

 Easy E wrote:

Also, how does the setting/time period of the game fundamentally alter the type of Turn Sequence you decide to use? Is there a correlation?

In general, I think that the more modern/futuristic a setting is, the more it benefits from quick switching between players, reactions, interrupts ect simply as units tend to be smaller, more autonomous and generally freer in movement. You can easily see how a squad of a dozen men in a firefight could react quickly to the battle just on sight and/or instant commands via radio ect, thus lending itself to faster turns. Meanwhile manoeuvring a Fantasy/historical army is far less instant; you'd need a great deal of flag waving, bugle blowing, order yelling and such to get a block of 60 men to reform, hence the connection to longer turns, perhaps requiring more foresight as more can happen between now and your next go.


Of course, those aren't prescriptive. Scale also comes into it (skirmishes will naturally suit faster swaps, while mass battles even in a futuristic setting suit longer turns), and I think the further the player is supposed to 'be' up the Command structure, the longer/more spaced out turns should be. For example, in Infinity 'you' represent the strike team leader, giving orders and reacting on an action-by-action basis, whereas in something like Epic where you're essentially the overall commander leading from a base or even orbit, you're concerned more with large scale ebb and flow, and events are going to unfold more slowly, both in 'reality' and in the game.

I agree. The larger the forces involved, the more 'reactive' the turn must be. Also, the more primitive the communications system.

I used to play Heroscape with my son. It used a form of alternate activations, but not one that has been mentioned in the thread yet. IN that game each player had 3 activations per turn. Your "army" may consist of more than 3 units, so before each turn the players would place a 1,2, or 3 token in secret on the units they wanted to activate during the turn. You could activate the same unit more than once, or 3 totally different units. In addition to the 3 activation tokens, players would also place an "X" token as a decoy to somewhat keep your activations a mystery. After each player placed the tokens a 20 sided dice was rolled to take innitiative. Then player 1 did activation 1 and then player 2 took activation 1 etc... unitl all 3 activations were revealed. Then the next turn would start.

I really liked this system as it did not weight gaining innitiative so much. A real "alpha strike" was not possible. It di also add some tactical portions to the game thinking about the way you would use activations. it also made you look at the opponents activations because in a turn obviously the units with activations were essentially more "valuable" targets that turn since by striking them you might reduce the other sides activations or what they can do with their activations. The "x" token as a decoy added depth to the system, but usually it was easy to figure out which unit had the "x" but sometimes it did affect your choices. I have never seen any other game use this kind of system, but I thought it was really clever.

Again, going back to my standards (Striker/Striker II/Command Decision for WWII - Sci-Fi, and Hoplon for Ancients/Medievals/Fantasy):

for the former (WWII - Sci-Fi) you have a combination of Written Orders, and IGOUGO with Reaction.

But because of the written orders, the players are highly constrained in their actions.

With Hoplon you have a combination of Alternative Actions, combined with Initiative, with the option for an Interrupt.

AND. . . the actions themselves are split into a variety of categories (Charge/Routs, Regular Movement, Break-off).

So, each player, by order of Initiative (I will come back to that) declares Charges. If a player declares a charge with a Unit in a command, then that command has "Seized the Initiative" and must then perform all other actions (Regular Movement, and Break-offs) by order of their initiative.

However, a player with a higher initiative can offer to surrender that initiative, until another player has moved, and if another player moves, they can then "Seize the Initiative" and interrupt that player's moves to perform their own.

This occurs with each action phase for movement.

MB


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Paradigm wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

Also, how does the setting/time period of the game fundamentally alter the type of Turn Sequence you decide to use? Is there a correlation?

In general, I think that the more modern/futuristic a setting is, the more it benefits from quick switching between players, reactions, interrupts ect simply as units tend to be smaller, more autonomous and generally freer in movement. You can easily see how a squad of a dozen men in a firefight could react quickly to the battle just on sight and/or instant commands via radio ect, thus lending itself to faster turns. Meanwhile manoeuvring a Fantasy/historical army is far less instant; you'd need a great deal of flag waving, bugle blowing, order yelling and such to get a block of 60 men to reform, hence the connection to longer turns, perhaps requiring more foresight as more can happen between now and your next go.


Of course, those aren't prescriptive. Scale also comes into it (skirmishes will naturally suit faster swaps, while mass battles even in a futuristic setting suit longer turns), and I think the further the player is supposed to 'be' up the Command structure, the longer/more spaced out turns should be. For example, in Infinity 'you' represent the strike team leader, giving orders and reacting on an action-by-action basis, whereas in something like Epic where you're essentially the overall commander leading from a base or even orbit, you're concerned more with large scale ebb and flow, and events are going to unfold more slowly, both in 'reality' and in the game.

For just 60 men (6 lines of ten men, or roughly ten yards by four yards - roughly the size of a medium apartment), you only need one guy saying "March" or "Turn Left" to get them moving.

Most Ancient Units were units of hundreds or thousands of men. For instance, the Cohort of the Later Republican, and Early Imperial Roman Army was 600 - 1000 men, and this was the field maneuver unit for the army (They then broke down into 6 - 10 centuries of 100 men each).

And, when you look further back in time, at the Hoplite Greeks, the Taxeis or Moros was roughly 1000 Hoplites or Phalangites. And for Ancient Persia or India, you saw "Units" that were 10,000 men strong.

During the Dark Ages, we saw a reduction of Set-Piece Battles, and thus in the sizes of units.

But 60 men would not be large enough to be a unit of Heavy Infantry on their own. Even if the individual soldiers were heavily armored, they would fight as Skirmishers, for the most part, using mobility as a primary defense.

You would need at least 4x that number of men before you could effectively use a "Unit formation" of Heavy or Medium Infantry (where the mass maneuver of the unit was a question - and keeping in formation was important).

If you look at the development of Ancients War-games rules by people who actually made the study of ancient warfare their business, then you can see these discussions over the issue of the basic maneuver unit of an army existing as far back as the 1980s on Usenet (with the number 200 - 400 men being agreed upon as the smallest number for which formation maintenance would be an issue).

MB

Pulp Alley is a great little pulp gaming system where they've detached initiative from the turn sequence. Essentially one player has the initiative and gets to declare which player has to take an action. So they can either coordinate their own models' actions, or encourage their opponent to waste their actions. There's a couple of conditions for seizing the initiative, and it's really neat the way that everything gets to act, but the challenge is wrestling the initiative back and forth.

I left 'simultaneous actions' out of my original list. Because unless the players are using a double blind, (with or without umpire,)for real time simultaneous activation.
It leaves players with minimal interaction , and most players like the social aspect of gaming.
This tends to be used only in 'serious simulations' in my limited experience.(More war than game if you know what I mean?)
.
Pre planned orders , just add another way of structuring alternating phases generally.
But most modern games replaced writing out orders with simple actions sets, (2 action set orders usually.)
Which can be used in alternating phase or alternating unit activation games.

Variable bound game turn , and simultaneous real time actions , are very akward and complicated to use in war games well, with a minimum of complication.
Unless some 'serious' abstractions are used.

I believe the use of alternating game turn (IGO-UGO.)Is a good choice for games where tactical maneuvering into effective weapons range is a big part of the game play.
This covers Ancient right up to the start of WWI land warfare types, and fantasy games that follow this game play type.
(Also games at higher level where infantry units are mounted on a single base or are reduced representations. EG 1 model = a unit or a unit group etc. )

Alternating game turns can be used for more modern or sci fi games , if the amount of tactical maneuvering into weapons range is large enough part of the game play.
HOWEVER, most developers are acutely aware of the lack of interaction and tend to mitigate it with reaction mechanics and or tactical depth on the interaction.

Generally , most modern type games ,(where 1 model -1 combatant,) use alternating unit activation or alternating phases, to represent the more tactically flexible units in modern warfare.And increase the level of player interaction, over Alternating Game Turn.

I think Alternating Phases is a better fit when there is a wide variation in ability and effect across the units in the game.
(Death Star units can decimate the opposition nearly as bad as an entire army, when they can move and shoot and assault unopposed.And MSU can remove the need for tactical planning as they get to act unopposed for the second half of the turn...)

Alternating Unit Activation is a better fit when the units are closer together in comparative ability effect.(EG WWII game like Bolt Action.)

Getting the right (basic) game turn mechanic for the game play you want is crucial to arrive at an elegant and intuitive rule set IMO.
(Twiddling with the fine detail helps refine the game turn.It can not however, address the issues caused by picking the wrong game turn!)

The main advantage of IGOUGO is that it is very simple.

I actually think it can be very counterproductive in games where the two sides must advance into shooting and charge range. It potentially gives a massive disadvantage to the side that has to move into the other side's charge range but cannot charge the same turn, then awaits being charged.

It can be alleviated by several mechanisms including defensive fire, variable charge difference, charge reactions and morale tests to charge.

You can also have an interlaced 'impulse' system ala Star Fleet Battles, here you have a list of the order things occur, and a method for determining what acts in what order when the same action is attempted.

Crude example, if two units are moving the slower will be moved before the faster - regardless of which player is controlling it.

SFB split the turn into 32 'impulses', with a strict turn sequence (seriously it was several pages long but covered everything in the exact order - if you wanted to know if firing a probe as a weapon came before or after firing one for information it would be in there somewhere.

net effect was for most units you could elect to fire in any of the 32 impulses, but would have a delay before that weapon was ready again, but were unlikely to move in every impulse, and when your set speed came up you had to move.


To convert to 40k for example, in the pre turn section, in secret, you note how far all your units will move, in inches. the units are then moved, inch by inch - with a firing chance after each inch of movement - but fire too early and the enemy has time to get closer before they fire from a better position, leave it too late and they may be out of sight.

Worked very well, and actually pretty fast.

No need for 'reaction fire' or overwatch as mechanics, the rules in effect simulated the passage of time by breaking movement down to the smallest atomic unit the game had (a single hex in that case.

Also with movement not being optional, if you moved at speed 'x' when the chart said you moved, you moved - and in that impulse the slower units overall moved first - a bonus to faster and more nimble units.

The game has a level of pre-plotting, determining which weapons to power, how fast to pump the engines and so on, then allows these choices to be acted out over the full turn.

Have often wondered on something similar for a ground combat game, note specifically you don't need the overwatch stuff, and troops can no longer run from cover to cover never being shot at - but if you fire at the first one you see, you don't get the chance to fire that weapon at the second one, and if you hold fire the second one may never move - all without needing a slew of rules to cover it - think 40k, except units move 1" max a turn, but not every turn - and weapons fire every 'x' turns, so a laser cannon may take 5 turns to recharge, firing on the 6th, an assault cannon maybe firing a single round every turn, but over the six turns firing six shots.

 Peregrine wrote:
IMO some form of alternating activations or action/reaction with a lot of reactions is best. It maintains a decent sense of realism in representing things that are supposed to be happening simultaneously, and avoids the problem of one player having a 30-minute turn while the other goes off for a lunch break. Simultaneous actions with hidden orders would be nice for some games, but imposes a lot of constraints on what kind of game you can use. You have to keep unit counts down to a level where you aren't doing excessive amounts of paperwork each turn, you have to have some kind of grid-based system so that you don't have people exploiting the vagueness of "move over that way" when it's their turn to execute the "simultaneous" movement, etc.

I'm actually trying to write a ruleset for a Platoon-level (20-50 guys, so maybe 10 "Units") game that uses a system like that. What I plan to do for movement is to give each terrain piece a number (or name, if you want things to be more "Cinematic") before the start of the game, and then make i so movement keys off of moving towards certain terrain features. When a player assigns their orders, they would then have to use specific commands ("Advance", "Run", "Re-position", etc.), and state which terrain piece they are moving to. I hope that this not only feels more organic than a grid system, but also makes increasing terrain density increase mobility.

So, for example, I order an Infantry squad to "Advance on location 23". They would have to move straight towards a part of the terrain feature (lets say a copse of trees). The only exceptions would be to avoid other models and such, and I'm working on phrasing it so that movement may be altered to take an easier route (so if, say, they would use "less" of their movement going around a bit of intervening terrain, they can do so). Once they are inside the terrain feature, they can move any direction (same with the "Re-position" command).

Finally, this is where I can see some sort of command resource coming into play, to help players react to their opponent by changing their assigned order (but at the cost of reduced combat efficiency later on).

I've always liked alternating activations as it has a nice balancing effect on a game.

Players who take a smaller number of heavy units will have a firepower and armour advantage, but are prone to being out maneuvered. Meanwhile those who favour a larger number of lighter units can respond to enemy actions, but will have less actual combat ability.

Battletech used this system, as does FFG's Star Wars Armada - Armada also goes further by making smaller units more reactive and flexible with their commands as well. Assuming units are costed reasonably accurately it works to prevent the "Death Star" mentality where players compete to bring the largest, nastiest, most invincible unit they can - those who do this are giving up a lot of tactical responsiveness for their super unit.

I like alternating activations combined with the action/reaction mechanic. I quite like the idea of "action points" that are used up whenever a unit has performed an action and reaction, with more complex or powerful actions taking more points. Kind of like how you can perform two short actions or one long action per unit per turn in Deadzone. I also like how in this ruleset you can hand off the initiative when you have it.

I'm not 100% struck on completely randomising who goes first, though at least it can give each player a chance. Maybe it could be possible to generate some sort of "command score" for each side to determine who has the initiative? I don't know, this is something I've given too much deep thought to.

IGOUGO feels old-fashioned to me now. I won't discount it altogether, but it can lead to long periods of inactivity while you wait for your opponent, and can give a big advantage to "alpha strike" lists. It's the only thing that's made me unsure about trying Kings of War - it looks like it's about as IGOUGO as you can get and you don't have to pick up dice even once during your opponent's turn. However, I also hear the turns are very quick (to the point that the game is designed to work well with timed rounds) and the mechanics are pretty fair, so that would help...as long as I'm not sat around for ages doing nothing.

leopard wrote:
You can also have an interlaced 'impulse' system ala Star Fleet Battles, here you have a list of the order things occur, and a method for determining what acts in what order when the same action is attempted.

Crude example, if two units are moving the slower will be moved before the faster - regardless of which player is controlling it.

SFB split the turn into 32 'impulses', with a strict turn sequence (seriously it was several pages long but covered everything in the exact order - if you wanted to know if firing a probe as a weapon came before or after firing one for information it would be in there somewhere.

net effect was for most units you could elect to fire in any of the 32 impulses, but would have a delay before that weapon was ready again, but were unlikely to move in every impulse, and when your set speed came up you had to move.


To convert to 40k for example, in the pre turn section, in secret, you note how far all your units will move, in inches. the units are then moved, inch by inch - with a firing chance after each inch of movement - but fire too early and the enemy has time to get closer before they fire from a better position, leave it too late and they may be out of sight.

Worked very well, and actually pretty fast.

No need for 'reaction fire' or overwatch as mechanics, the rules in effect simulated the passage of time by breaking movement down to the smallest atomic unit the game had (a single hex in that case.

Also with movement not being optional, if you moved at speed 'x' when the chart said you moved, you moved - and in that impulse the slower units overall moved first - a bonus to faster and more nimble units.

The game has a level of pre-plotting, determining which weapons to power, how fast to pump the engines and so on, then allows these choices to be acted out over the full turn.

Have often wondered on something similar for a ground combat game, note specifically you don't need the overwatch stuff, and troops can no longer run from cover to cover never being shot at - but if you fire at the first one you see, you don't get the chance to fire that weapon at the second one, and if you hold fire the second one may never move - all without needing a slew of rules to cover it - think 40k, except units move 1" max a turn, but not every turn - and weapons fire every 'x' turns, so a laser cannon may take 5 turns to recharge, firing on the 6th, an assault cannon maybe firing a single round every turn, but over the six turns firing six shots.

I Almost brought up Star Fleet Battles. I was one of the original Playtesters for everything that came after the main rules (working with Michael Thompson to produce the X-Ships Supplement, Fighters and Pseudofighters, and we even developed the game that Steve Cole completely stole from us - ours was called Star Fleet Admiral - to produce a fleet-action game. I ran it at Gencon in 1985/86/87, with crowds of players amazed that they could easily control fleets of dozens, to hundreds of ships relatively easily. . . And Steve Cole then ordered us to never show it to another person again - he has ego problems).

But the turn sequence in Star Fleet Battles came from the days before Abstraction was a "thing" (obviously abstraction existed, but it was not something you promoted, but rather hid, trying instead to claim as close to "Accurate Simulation" as possible), and other games like Squad Leader tended toward similar complex and detailed turn sequences.

MB

X ships were fun, ditto fighters and PFs, my thanks for the work on them

Yup it's a game from the simulation era alright, but one of the better ones. Most of what you do impacts the outcome.

its like Victory at Sea against GHQs micronaughts, same subject matter, different approach. The way GHQ handles movement is interesting. Player with initiative gets to decide. Move first, or make a half move then opposition moves fully then finish off. Game is faster when the fleets are further apart but gets more involved when it starts to matter

We used to play a variant of the Micronauts game with a guy in Dallas, TX who was an Admiral in the Naval Reserve (Chuck Dalafield).

He was HUGE into WWII era Naval Warfare (He was a WWII Veteran), and we used the same movement system for other games as well (Half-Whole-Half).

It works surprisingly well.

for SFB, one of the systems we used as an interlaced recorded Impulse movement system.

You have 32 Impulses during the game.

So, you divide that up into four periods of 8 impulses.

The Player with Initiative would choose to either plot 4 or 8 impulses to begin with.

Then, the other player would plot either 8 or 4 (depending upon whether he will move first or second).

Then both players move four impulses, and the player who only plotted 4 would plot an additional 8.

Then you move another four impulses. And plot another 8, etc.

This carried on for the remainder of the game, with no breaks (save to re-allocate power).

It was mainly used for the Star Fleet Admiral game, where we would have a dozen to a hundred ships or so on the table.

The only real "Turn sequence" that was involved was in dealing with the power-allocation, and with certain special actions.

But, otherwise, once the impulses began counting, the interlaced system of plotted movement continued, so that whichever player only plotted four impulses of movement to begin with would wind up having to plot four impulses into the next turn before that turn had actually arrived.

It made for reactive (action-reaction) gaming pretty easy.

MB

@BeAfraid.
I think the more detailed interleaving of interaction as you outlined above , was from the more serious simulation type games that were very popular years ago.

Most of the more popular modern games tend to use simpler methods to set a reasonable level of player interaction.

Interleaved phases like this.
(Either attacker goes first,(with balancing factors for defenders.)Or roll for who goes first each turn.
A moves.
B shoots
A reacts.

B moves,
A shoots ,
B reacts.

A 'reaction' can be an assault, or move or snap fire , but costs the unit their 'shooting' action.

Or even interleaved actions...

Command Phase.(Place 2 action set order counters next to units on good morale.)

First action phase.
Players alternate taking the first action of their units order counter.

Second action Phase.
Players alternate taking the second action of thier units order counter.

Resolution phase.(Tidy up before the next game turn.)

The good thing about this basic game turn is players can alternate activating units or alternate the whole phase,
And the 'place' 'flip' 'remove' of the order counters records exactly what units have done what for the entire game turn!
(Which is great if you suffer from a poor memory, due to old age and or beer. )

IIRC, in Helldorado, it is a sort of modified alternating system...

At the beginning of the game, each player tallies up "points" for their force, this gives them an overall initiative. The player with the higher score has initiative, but may elect to go second (similar to 40k's roll-off to determine who goes first)

At the beginning of the second turn, the players tally up their remaining forces again, and that score is then the initiative. This allows a skilled player to focus his/her efforts on "high yield" models, thus lowering their opponents subsequent turn initiative scores.

Played with the 'Bag the Hun' system yesterday, uses a card activation system for a WW2 air combat game.

Essentially a unit gets a card on which it must move (obviously a ground game could make movement optional), a second card on which it can fire.

There are then a range of bonus cards, characters get to move on their card (and can take a unit with them), other events get cards as well.

Once the deck is finished, the turn is over.

Works a lot better than I expected, you can get into the perfect position, but the enemy may be able to move before you can fire, or your firing card could come up when you are out of position. Means a fluke in getting position has less of an impact, you need a better tactical approach to get and stay in position to take advantage of the cards.

Not come across this before, have played Bolt Action with the activation dice - think of something similar except each unit has two dice, one for movement and one for firing, and you get no choice of the unit when the dice come up

The advantage of the card activation system is that it levels itself. If one side gets lots of cards early, the other side will have more actions later in the turn.