Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Thanks all for the responses!

I' ve just been pondering this some more and I wonder if non-lethal approaches would work well in a game where the ability to control enemy movement is a key part of the mechanics - similar to in 40k when you spread out to keep deepstrikers at bay.

Effectively, you would need to have the battle end decisively - rather than 40k where it's simply "and you all stop fighting there", you would need decent systems to define the end of a battle, and then enemy forces which cannot fall back are captured. Maybe you even have to play out the end of the battle, getting your troops off the board, or running down the enemy.

This actually ties in with one of the loose ideas I had for a game mechanic - an overall morale mechanic which defines the army as a whole. If one side "breaks", they might have their morale drop to 0 (everyone runs off) whilst the other side can keep fighting.

To make this mechanic work properly, you need secret orders and preferably multiple fights in a row to make falling back and regrouping a valid tactic and not just some feature no-one ever uses because it ends the game and that's boring.

So, for an example:

one side is told to hold the line whilst the other side is told to steal secrets. Once the second player has made it to the other side and taken an objective (stolen secrets) with a unit, their goal becomes to get that unit off the battlefield and fall back. Meanwhile, the other side is set to hold their backline objectives and gains VP for doing so.

So player 1 (hold) might think they are winning when player 2 (secrets) starts retreating - but then after the final round, player 2 reveals that they succeeded in their mission, and their points go towards the next game.

Anyway, this is getting rambly now, so I'll stop!