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So, let's say we want to give 40k an interleaved turn structure to eliminate the "alpha strike" issue that has dogged it from its inception. The simplest as close to 1:1 transition you could make is:

Player A Moves One Unit, Player B Moves One Unit, etc
Player A Psychics One Unit, Player B Psychics One Unit, etc
Player A Shoots One Unit, Player B Shoots One Unit, etc
Player A Charges One Unit, Player B Charges One Unit, etc
Player A Fights a Charging Unit, Player B Fights a Charging Unit, etc
Player A Fights a Non-Charging Unit, Player B Fights a Non-Charging Unit, etc
Player A Morales Their Units, Player B Morales their units (No need to alternate here, just do them all at once).

So, the first issue that immediately comes up would be tracking which unit has moved already. I don't think this is an issue because you have to do it anyway for your own units in the current game as it is. A generic "Has done their crap this phase" token will suffice and I am sure that's what most people do anyway.

The next is what to do when one player has more units than the other. The obvious answer is that they just move them consecutively since the enemy doesn't do anything on their turn. Does this need changing or addressing?

Thirdly, what to do with charging units if both players have charged. The solution here is simple, just have them fight simultaneously like in the bad old days of Initiative. Might be a little too complex so the good ol' Roll Off Then Alternate is a good backup solution.

The main and IMHO biggest issue is the fact that under this system units are actually fighting half as much. Making each unit fight twice or doubling everyone's attacks is too much of a cludge and too much to track IMHO, and I am not sure how to go around properly fixing this without needing to completely overhaul the Indexes or Codexes themselves. Suggestions much appreciated here.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Crude insults towards my progenitress and impassioned pleas to cease the vibration of my vocal chords by using my diaphragm to force air across them?

I think for simplicity, maybe instead

Player A Moves their units Player B Moves their units
Player A uses their psychic powers, Player B uses their psychic powers

It's slightly less back and forth, but it should be faster and simpler.

Jefffar wrote:
I think for simplicity, maybe instead

Player A Moves their units Player B Moves their units
Player A uses their psychic powers, Player B uses their psychic powers

It's slightly less back and forth, but it should be faster and simpler.

But that doesn't change the problem of Alpha Strike. One player might be able to move their units a little but player A will unload their shooting first.

Alternating phases is incredibly dull. It would take like.... 20- 40 minutes of units just moving around the table before anything actually started happening. That sounds miserable to me.

 Lance845 wrote:
Alternating phases is incredibly dull. It would take like.... 20- 40 minutes of units just moving around the table before anything actually started happening. That sounds miserable to me.

As opposed to 20 mins of one person sitting there doing nothing while the opponent moves his conscript blobs? This way there is no downtime where a player sits and does nothing but roll one or two saves for half an hour.

How about pick a unit. Do everything with that unit; move; shoot; charge; psyke etc.

Advantage to go first, but also an advantage to move several in a row at the end.

MarkM wrote:
How about pick a unit. Do everything with that unit; move; shoot; charge; psyke etc.

Advantage to go first, but also an advantage to move several in a row at the end.

That could possibly work

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Alternating phases is incredibly dull. It would take like.... 20- 40 minutes of units just moving around the table before anything actually started happening. That sounds miserable to me.

As opposed to 20 mins of one person sitting there doing nothing while the opponent moves his conscript blobs? This way there is no downtime where a player sits and does nothing but roll one or two saves for half an hour.

Oh no. That is also dull as dirt.

Why not have one unit activate and do all it's things and then the opponent can pick a unit and do the same? It's the only way to keep the action flowing for both players while cutting out the alpha strikes. And hey, what unit you activate and when becomes a tactical choice.

 Lance845 wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Alternating phases is incredibly dull. It would take like.... 20- 40 minutes of units just moving around the table before anything actually started happening. That sounds miserable to me.

As opposed to 20 mins of one person sitting there doing nothing while the opponent moves his conscript blobs? This way there is no downtime where a player sits and does nothing but roll one or two saves for half an hour.

Oh no. That is also dull as dirt.

Why not have one unit activate and do all it's things and then the opponent can pick a unit and do the same? It's the only way to keep the action flowing for both players while cutting out the alpha strikes. And hey, what unit you activate and when becomes a tactical choice.

That's a fair compromise and would also cut down somewhat on the micromanagement. Any suggestions/ideas on how to rebalance the halving of fight phases though?

 Lance845 wrote:

Why not have one unit activate and do all it's things and then the opponent can pick a unit and do the same?

Therefore you would need a new rule system because the current one has too many (special) rules that refer to turn
like does Overwatch negates a further activation of the unit or can a unit activate twice if Overwatch is triggerd, can a unit strike back in CC if it was already activated or not
are the actions of a unit limited or not etc

keeping turns and just handle alternate activations would just be to extand the rules for close combat to everything else (and that can work on top of the existing rules)

Don't try to balance it out. That's how I'm doing it in my "Interleaved Turns" setup. I'm trying to keep to some very "basic" principles when designing the game:
-KISS Actions: Every unit gets 2 activations per turn, and only one may be used for shooting. Rather than separate "shoot", "fight", and "charge" actions, you can use Pistols/Assault/Melee weapons with an Advance Action, and melee attacks let you take a 3" step. A key advantage of this system is it lets powerful melee units "double-charge", basically smacking aside lesser units in one go.
-Derandomize Activation Orders: A major issue I have with the Bolt Action system is the use of a die bag for activations. It doesn't scale upwards as both players add more units to their armies, officers that allow chain-activations, units that double-activate, and more! Ultimately the game becomes closer to IGOUGO! So I wanted a system where out-of-activation actions (such as Overwatch) are not "free"/are conscious choices (no "AROs" akin to Infinity), yet it would become increasingly expensive to retain the Initiative and allow for multiple consecutive activations. A major issue I have with 8e's Command Point system is that it's less a system for how you actually "coordinate" your forces on the table, so much as a glorified manabar for MOBA-like abilities! So I figured I would tackle two issues at once! CP is a "per turn" resource rather than a "per game" resource, but is used to bring units from Reserves, activate/interrupt with units that have taken a single action that turn, activate consecutive units, or Interrupt Interrupts (Aka "Squad C covers Squad A, when it attacks Squad B..." or so). You could spend 1 CP to have a round where you activate 2 units, 3 CP where you activate 3, 6 where you activate 4, 10 where you activate 5, etc. You "can" do a "Big" round of consecutive activations but the CP costs become impractical. That, and these are the same CP used for Reserves, so null lists have more overhead to work with.
-The system should be characterful: I put a few "fluffy" army-specific rules, to give CP discounts when certain conditions are met in-game. As an example, when an Ork unit successfully makes a round of Melee attacks, the Ork player may subtract 1 from the CP cost of the next Activation (I may just make this "replenish a CP" instead though). Waaaaagh!


I've been tweaking and adjusting, as minor mechanical playtests bring up questions related to the "Interrupt Mechanic" or other quirks/oddities. For now, my main questions are how I want to handle vehicles (Collisions? Boarding Actions? What about Aircraft?)

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/733847.page

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Alternating phases is incredibly dull. It would take like.... 20- 40 minutes of units just moving around the table before anything actually started happening. That sounds miserable to me.

As opposed to 20 mins of one person sitting there doing nothing while the opponent moves his conscript blobs? This way there is no downtime where a player sits and does nothing but roll one or two saves for half an hour.

Oh no. That is also dull as dirt.

Why not have one unit activate and do all it's things and then the opponent can pick a unit and do the same? It's the only way to keep the action flowing for both players while cutting out the alpha strikes. And hey, what unit you activate and when becomes a tactical choice.

That's a fair compromise and would also cut down somewhat on the micromanagement. Any suggestions/ideas on how to rebalance the halving of fight phases though?

Look to other systems that already do it. Bolt Action is one example. Others exist.

Here is a link to a now abandoned project I was working on late last year when 8th was a rumor.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/705473.page

Was more or less abandoned as the 8th rumors were solidifying. When info on 8th came out it was actually so close to 8th that I just ditched it until I could test 8th enough to make the few changes I wanted.

Right now I play games with alternating activations. For assaults we have been going like this.

-You attack in melee when you activate the unit. That means a unit that charges fights. You can spend Command points to interrupt that and fight first if you get charged (just like now except it's immediate). Doing so does not activate the unit. Units with weapons or abilities that always attack first get to do this for free when they get charged.

-If, when you activate a unit, it is within 1" of an enemy unit you have a choice. Fight, or fall back.

-Turns still exist. 1 turn is every unit being activated once. A single activation follows the phases that exist now.

-Psychic powers that last until your next psychic phase last unit that units next psychic phase.

-You either activate a unit in a transport. or the transport itself (since you can only disembark before the vehicle moves). If a transport shoots and an embarked unit can shoot from the transport they shoot with the transport.

-Markerlights last until the end of the turn instead of the end of the phase (because otherwise they wouldn't work)

-If, when you activate a unit, a character is within 3" of that unit, you may activate the character at the same time as that unit. This is a logical expansion of heroic intervention to keep auras in effect while keeping characters behind other units to protect them.

(I have considered expanding this to allow a protector unit to activate with their charges in addition to this. So for example, If you have a unit of necron warriors with a cryptek and some lychguard you would choose to activate the Warriors, the Cryptek would activate with it, and the lychguard would activate because of the cryptek. Example 2: Tau fire warriors strike team activates with a Cadre Fireblade and 2 units of drones (one protector unit for each unit it can protect). I am very concerned about possible exploitation in creating deathstar activations though which is why I havent implemented it yet.)

Both players moving all their units, then shooting all their units, then assaulting with all their units sounds a bit dull.

Player A moving, shooting and assaulting with one unit, and then playber B moving, shooting and assaulting with one unit etc, could work however.

It would need some tweaking sure, but it's probably doable.