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Just testing the waters here. I'm a small ways into development for a scifi miniatures game with a setting that's a mix of Mass Effect's bright future (with a dark secret) and Killzone's gritty plausible scifi and politics. There won't be fantasy analog races in this game, no space orks/elves, or scifi knights, but you'll see races and politics akin to David Brin's works, maybe as fantastical as Star Wars, but less stuff that looks like men in rubber suits.

Right now I'm looking at 20mm (aka 1/72) for the scale, with a line of plastic miniatures on par with at least Plastic Soldier Company's work. The reason for 20mm is that 15mm is a bit too small for the fantastical infantry designs of the game, while 28-35mm is a bit too big (and expensive) for mass battles.

I've gone ahead and commissioned some concept art from artists well known for working on popular video game titles at great cost, and would be willing to post a snippet if interested. If anything, it would make a great generic miniature that I could produce at 15mm or 30mm should there be interest.

I've gotten mixed responses on other forums, but I'd like to see what Dakka thinks of the idea. Please don't get hung up on scale though, as many things are in flux. But in general, you will field a similar number of soldiers as a 40k game depending on the army.

The biggest problem I'm having is the rules. I'm trying to come up with a decent system of variable alternating activations. Where instead of one player handling his entire army, then another player handling his entire army, both players will alternate handling small portions of their army using a variable number of command points each turn. This combines the ability for players to use their units in combinations at high efficiency, while still allowing your opponent to react.

Another aspect I'm toying with is using specialty dice, or even a combat resolution deck of cards, to make handling combat quicker since the dice, or cards, could resolve many smaller rolls in one roll/draw, allowing for extra depth without extra bookkeeping or rolling.

I'm looking for some help developing this, especially the rules.

How about a unit activation system based on orders and initiative?

At the start of the turn both players place an order counter face down next to each unit. When this has been done all orders are revealed. The unit(s) with the highest initiative act first, irrespective of which army they are from, then the next highest initiative and so on until all units have acted.

I wouldn't go with specialist dice or card decks, simply because if you're looking to get into a new game, having to buy lots of game-specific paraphenalia will put people off. If they come with the rules then fair enough, but you then restrict yourself to having rules available only as a hardcopy in a box with the stuff you need to play (and that's heading down a major manufacturing road...)

You could always use polyhedrals for more variety - they are easy enough to get hold of and most existing gamers (who are likely to be the first to try any new game) will have some knocking about.

Feel free to PM me if you like the idea and want to discuss it more. I've got some stuff kicking about from my own game design musings that I'd be happy to dig up too.


Good luck in any event

C_C

Well Im just making the masters for a 20mm Sci-Fi vehicle range...

The order initiative system I've seem similar aspects before in other games like Clan War, or Wargods, although not combined as such.

One problem with such a system is that a unit that's given an order, if its initiative is low or high, tends to not be able to use its order to good effect as you need to wait for enemies to move within LoS, or miss shooting at them before they move out of LoS. Likewise, initiative becomes a bit of a focus for army building.

I should probably have given more details on what I was attempting to do.

The system I was trying to develop needed to have a heavy element of player choice and resource allocation. There needed to be something that would make a player want to perform actions with 2-3 units a turn, and maybe could push a single unit to do extra things but at some cost.

So, a player could do something like Activate and use one unit to do a lot of actions or one major (powerful) action, which then exhausts them, and then have another unit do some minor actions.

Then, after his opponent takes a turn, have 3-4 units do 1 minor actions all in a row, but then when do I determine what's the limit? How does a player get those 3-4 actions to use on his units in the first place? Should it be like Infinity and certain other games where a unit is never really exhausted?

One of my original concepts, back when I was thinking about cards, was a system of Order Cards that had actions on them that units could perform. On each card was also an initiative value. At the start of a turn, players chose a number of these Order Cards and placed them face down on the table to lock in their choices. Once done, all players reveal the total initiative values for their order cards, with the lowest value taking all the locked actions first. The more effective Order Cards would have higher initiative values. So the player who did less got to activate first. But this had all sorts of problems.

However, because each order type were physical cards, it prevented players from doing an unending stream of movement or shooting actions in a row, because there were only so many cards with movement or shooting on them. Thus a player didn't have to worry about keeping track of how many shooting or movement actions his units had done.

The idea after that was much simpler, basically at the start of your turn or round, the commander of the army got a certain number of command points. Activating a unit and having it take one action costs 1 command point, the second action costs 2, and so on. However, once a unit has activated that turn, he cannot be activated again that turn, placing an Exhausted token on them.

So just moving costs 1, but moving and shooting costs 3 CP. So, there's diminishing returns that promotes players to spread CPs a bit. But, during a turn, a unit could take some kind of major action, like aiming and shooting, or Running, that costs the same as taking 2 consecutive actions or slightly cheaper (2CP). Which leaves another issue of just when can they do these major actions and how many a turn/round? Should they even be in the game?

I could just remove the concept of these major actions, leaving only simpler actions limited to 2-3 a turn. Or maybe just declare that units can not take the same action more than once a turn?

These command points could also be spent on other things, like certain special abilities and actions.

But, how do I prevent players from, every turn, having a single unit constantly moving or shooting?

Anyway, my mind is a jumble of ideas. The game itself is all about shooting, there's no melee combat, although there are assaults into close combat to force enemies out of positions, along with a plethora of special weapons. Since the game is all about shooting, I wanted to make sure that making command decisions about what units were acting when was interesting as well.

I'm actually a 3D artist by trade, so I'm handling the aesthetics of the setting with a keen eye (which I hope to show in the near future). But, coming up with an interesting, player choice focused turn/initiative/action system is pretty daunting to me.

You are literally thinking of arcane legions. They do almost the same thing, and have command points (CP) to the exact word. the only difference is unit sizes. In the game you get say 14 command points and get to use those to command your troops, bigger regiments cost 2 smaller cost 1, you can push your unit to do another move etc. Just my 2 cents.

Hi all.
My favorite game turn mechanic for large scale battles is alternating actions , driven by order allocation.

EG every unit has the options to perform the following actions in any order.
Move,(move up to thier movement value modified by terrain.)
Attack, (attempt to engage enemy forces in wapons range )
Ready,( ancilery actions that give bonuses to the following actions.Eg set up heavier weapons so they can fire , or stow equipment to move more stealthily etc.)

This gives the following orders,(2 action sets.)
Advance, move then attack.

Charge ,move then move.

Evade , attack then move.

Fire support, ready then attack.

Infiltrate,ready than move.

The game turn runs like this...
Command Phase.
Request off table support,(reserves,air strikes and artillery bombardments.)
Issue orders to units on good morale.(Place order counters face down next to units.)

Primary Action Phase.
Player A takes the first action of the order counter.(And turns the order counter face up.)
Player B takes the first action of the order counter.(And turns the order counter face up.)

Secondary actions phase.
Player A takes the second action of the order counter.(And removes the order counter.)
Player B takes the second action of the order counter.(And removes the order counter.)

Resolution Phase.
Attempt to rally units on poor morale.
Plot arrivials .

Morale damage , supression , neutralisation and routed, simply replaces the order counter , and defines the unit actions in a similar way.

I have a rough outline for a modern wargame I am working on.Some Ideas you may find usefull.Would you like me to post a link to it?

TTFN

I used to play stargrunt 2 some time ago. I loved many of the concepts of it and even modded it to play 40k.

Basically it covers all types of armor from none-heavy power armor.

Pretty much modern and sci-fi weapons are similar but if there's something lacking it's very easy to make rules for it.

There's differences between untrained, trained and veteran troops, I think there's even one more.

Differences in motivation of troops from poor to religious or some sort I think 3 levels.

Both these two affect, defense of a unit when being shot at, moral, and offensive capability.

Casualties, as in hit but not dead, most models are 1 wound.

Vehicles and customizable size/weapon templates.

Close combat is brutal but I think rarely happens, good way to finish off units.

Officers have an effect, commanders can motivate their troops to perform. Basically giving up and order to make and entire unit get another.

Normal squads get one order with this they can do any two: can move, shoot, charge, CC, and perform other actions.

Alternating unit activations

Drawbacks.

Lack of point system without getting dirtside 2 as I understand it.

Uses every dice from D4-D20

I've playtested many rules of games. I really liked Stargrunt 2 however the lack of point systems makes people uncomfortable playing it. Of the many systems I've tried the ones that sound closest to your idea of game rules are Stargrunt 2 and Infinity both heavily modded. Though that doesn't mean you need to use them, but If you are looking at ways to build a rule-set they are great examples to start with. Though infinity has issues from translation and organization, both rules should be able to be downloaded so you don't have to purchase them to read/experiment with them. Good ways to figure out what you can/want do and not to do/avoid.

On a side note infinity suffers from cheerleader syndrome. That's where figures end up doing nothing all game as one or a few figures consume the entire order pool. However, even doing nothing they can still react and have more purpose.

Hi all
Action point allocation works fine for skirmish games.
But it is prone to become too unbalancing in larger games.
Allowing every unit on good morale 2 actions per turn allows for more tactical interaction and general ballance in the game play IME.

Hi guys, thanks for the suggestions.

I've started moving the design much closer to the old Starship Troopers style of IGO UGO, but with enemies able to react to you within limits. All units get 2 actions on their turn, and 1 reaction. Some powerful abilities will use up a unit's reaction during its active turn. Reactions are usually not simultaneous, occurring after the active unit that triggered the reaction finishes an action (again, like SST).

This game is meant to be closer to 40k than ASL, but I like having elements of both.

Elements of the previous design will be used in the skirmish version of the game.

You may measure any distance at any time, but the distance is public info.

I'm definitely putting in a training/skill level stat into the game that will affect a lot of things. I like the idea of how Flames of War and other games allow two armies of the same models to be drastically different in play. It will probably tie the training level to reactions among other things, including something that represents elite troops being harder to hit/kill, but not to the level of FoW. This will probably take the form of a special Hunker Down action or ability triggered with command points.

There will be army lists similar to, but not exactly like FoW's historical lists. This seems like a better way to go than a catch all list that's impossible to balance, and each list can have fun little additions for the players that use them.

There's still a command point system, probably tied to training level and actions. Most special actions will require the spending of a command point. Other core actions or rules can be "boosted" to borrow a Warmachine term using Command Points. For example, a unit with a Regular training level has an enemy unit that completed an action just outside of their reaction radius, the player can spend a command point to increase their reaction radius and allow the unit to react to the enemy.

Leadership/command is handled by on table teams or attachments that will often have their own special actions to use on units, or their own localized command points that can only be spent on themselves (to power their ability) or units in range.

To encourage mobility, there will be no default Aim or Focused Fire actions. Some units, officers, or army lists could have a special action or ability that does this though, but will be limited by training. For example: Rerolling a number of misses up to the unit's training level.

I've decided that the full rules, and basic setting info, will all be made available online for free and will stay that way for my game. There will be full rulebooks available, filled with color, fluff, extra army lists, and other nice extras.

Hi Vertrucio.
Can you give me an example game turn, as what you propose sounds awfully over complicated.
(Compared to 2 action order allocation, alternating actions , alternating activation.)

If you use an apropriate game turn the action and reaction is 'built in' and doesnt need to be 'bolted on.'

I have attached my rough outline for my new rule set.It may contain some useful ideas.(I apologise about the poor layout, I have no DTP skill at all.)