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So, the idea pitch: "A miniatures war/skirmish game, where you can design your units from the ground up. Play with a handful of miniatures, play with a full army."

Ideally, the game wouldn't say, "Here are the army options, pick the army you like and buy the models for it". It would be, "Create your force from the ground up". In other words, you choose races, traits, types of units, etc. An army of cyber-commandos, zombies, aliens, large monsters, etc.... all this would be possible. And entirely capable of mixing/matching.

Now, that being said- certain things would benefit. A Necromancer would be able to buff a horde of ghouls, but perhaps not do much of a bunch of androids.

More to follow, in very basic 'larval' stages here.

Good luck, you're almost certainly going to fail. Very broad unit/army construction systems like this are almost inevitably full of exploits and degenerate into min/maxed forces that take advantage of your mistakes. Good games have restrictions for a reason.

 Peregrine wrote:
Good luck, you're almost certainly going to fail. Very broad unit/army construction systems like this are almost inevitably full of exploits and degenerate into min/maxed forces that take advantage of your mistakes. Good games have restrictions for a reason.

The limitations, I would think, would be mechanical.

In other words, you can take the mix of things- but they will not synergize, and synergy would be the key.

I'm sorry if you don't like posts that aren't praise, but you posted your idea in a public forum for comment. And you're going up against a long and near-universal history of "build your own" systems being completely broken and degenerating into an unplayable mess unless the players agree to self-imposed limits that negate much of the freedom. I mean, just look at the mess with "soup" armies in 40k, and imagine if the army construction rules changed to allow any combination of units/upgrades, without even the minimal balancing factor of having to share the Imperium keyword.

Also, if you're going to make it so that taking a mix of things doesn't synergize in a system where synergy is key, what is the point of having the "build your own" freedom? There's no point in supporting list construction choices that are too weak to be viable, you're taking a major (and near-inevitable) risk of breaking your own game in exchange for something that nobody is going to use unless you screw up. Just have a system where the units that synergize are the only choices.

It's nothing personal, and I didn't even bother to look at who made the thread before forming an opinion. It is genuinely not a good idea, and "this is not going to work because of fundamental problems with the concept" is help. It saves you from sinking time into something that is almost certainly not going to work, and can not be salvaged in anything resembling what you have described. The best thing you can do is drop the idea for such a wide-open army construction system and figure out how to best apply a conventional system to the rest of your game, preventing a game-breaking mechanic from dragging the rest of it down.

It's a well-known fact of game design that wide-open systems that allow you to "choose races, traits, types of units, etc" essentially never work. There are just too many variables to control, and the chance of having a game-breaking combination approaches 100%. Without self-imposed restrictions (negating the whole point of having so many options) you inevitably get min-maxed choices and a complete lack of balance. And even if you miraculously avoid having something that is utterly game-breaking those min-maxed choices are seldom fluffy or interesting, creating a situation worse than 40k between "fluff" and "competitive" players. You are not going to make this work because success is not possible.

 Peregrine wrote:
It's a well-known fact of game design that wide-open systems that allow you to "choose races, traits, types of units, etc" essentially never work. There are just too many variables to control, and the chance of having a game-breaking combination approaches 100%. Without self-imposed restrictions (negating the whole point of having so many options) you inevitably get min-maxed choices and a complete lack of balance. You are not going to make this work because success is not possible.

Incorrect. It simply hasn't been done, or at least to your standards.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Incorrect. It simply hasn't been done, or at least to your standards.

It hasn't been done because it's virtually impossible. It's not a question of finding the right way to do it, the flaws are inherent to the system. And part of good game design is being able to learn from the mistakes of the past, not letting your ego get in the way by insisting that you know something that everyone else doesn't. Smart game designers have learned from the min-maxing problem and have systems where you are given pre-made units/army lists with specific fixed customization points.

(Now, it does sort of "work" in a RPG where you have a GM with final authority on what is legal and the players have less incentive to break things because they are cooperating rather than competing, but that's a whole different genre of game. If you ever push those systems you will quickly break them.)

 Peregrine wrote:
It hasn't been done because it's virtually impossible. It's not a question of finding the right way to do it, the flaws are inherent to the system. And part of good game design is being able to learn from the mistakes of the past, not letting your ego get in the way by insisting that you know something that everyone else doesn't. Smart game designers have learned from the min-maxing problem and have systems where you are given pre-made units/army lists with specific fixed customization points.

you must have missed the part that the game would require units to synergize.

While one would be able to take 'robot guys' because they can do certain things, and 'vampire guys' because they do something else- the two would not have abilities that benefit/buff one another, and would instead be standalone units- much like 'vanilla' armies in Infinity.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
you must have missed the part that the game would require units to synergize.

While one would be able to take 'robot guys' because they can do certain things, and 'vampire guys' because they do something else- the two would not have abilities that benefit/buff one another, and would instead be standalone units- much like 'vanilla' armies in Infinity.

I didn't miss it, I addressed it directly in a previous post. And it doesn't work. It can go one of two ways:

1) Synergy is powerful. If you require units to synergize then there is little or no point in having the ability to take vampires and robots at the same time, any army that does so will be weak compared to an army with synergy and won't be viable. You're putting a very dangerous customization system in exchange for nothing in return, because none of the things it enables will be viable options. You will only see people take these split units if there's an overpowered combination.

or

2) Synergy is weak. Taking those diverse units is viable, but the synergy mechanic is too weak to be a limiting factor. People will almost certainly min-max the system and find something that is more powerful than the synergy, and exploit it. This bypasses your synergy mechanic, and breaks the game.

And if there were restrictions on, say, the species or troop types you could take overall?

"You can take only three different species in one list"

"You can only have 2 Heavy Infantry units for every 500 points"

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
And if there were restrictions on, say, the species or troop types you could take overall?

"You can take only three different species in one list"

"You can only have 2 Heavy Infantry units for every 500 points"

This is moving in the right direction, but it's a direction that is exactly opposite from the concept of "choose your own stuff from the ground up". Now that you've acknowledged the problem and seen the correct direction to move in you should start applying more of these restrictions until you end up with a conventional system of picking options from a pre-made list. Because by the time you have enough restrictions that the system is balanced and controllable that's effectively what you're going to have anyway.

 Peregrine wrote:
This is moving in the right direction, but it's a direction that is exactly opposite from the concept of "choose your own stuff from the ground up". Now that you've acknowledged the problem and seen the correct direction to move in you should start applying more of these restrictions until you end up with a conventional system of picking options from a pre-made list. Because by the time you have enough restrictions that the system is balanced and controllable that's effectively what you're going to have anyway.

I think the main concept was I wanted a generic list of attributes, and someone to create their own force with its own look, feel, playstyle, etc.

In other words, you could create the robot army that is all tanky and heavy and slow, or the robot army that's all about speed and multiple strikes.

In other words, eliminate the "If you want tough army, you have to buy [specific race/faction]".

Or, perhaps, even racially keep the statistics, but rather have certain factions that included multiple races, but there are restrictions. "Evil Meanies" can get A,B,and C. Goody-Two-Boots gets X,Y,Z. However you can mix up racial groups and such within those parameters".

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
In other words, eliminate the "If you want tough army, you have to buy [specific race/faction]".

The way to do this is to disconnect the rules from the fluff and models. You (presumably) aren't making a line of miniatures to go with the rules, so you don't need to tie the rules to any particular miniature. Just make rules for, say, a tanky slow army, and let the players decide whether to represent this with heavily armored robots or zombies that keep walking at you no matter how much you shoot them or whatever other idea they come up with.

 Peregrine wrote:
The way to do this is to disconnect the rules from the fluff and models. You (presumably) aren't making a line of miniatures to go with the rules, so you don't need to tie the rules to any particular miniature. Just make rules for, say, a tanky slow army, and let the players decide whether to represent this with heavily armored robots or zombies that keep walking at you no matter how much you shoot them or whatever other idea they come up with.

I could, alternatively, make 'template' rules for races and such.

Undead are slow, and do undead things. Robots do robot things. Humans are baselines, etc.

Gentlemen, it is apparent based on what I left in this thread that you are capable of carrying on a productive conversation. Please feel free to continue along the lines of your last few posts above. Otherwise I will have to lock the thread rather than waste more time editing it. Thanks!

 Manchu wrote:
Gentlemen, it is apparent based on what I left in this thread that you are capable of carrying on a productive conversation. Please feel free to continue along the lines of your last few posts above. Otherwise I will have to lock the thread rather than waste more time editing it. Thanks!

Deleting would be preferable.

Also, if you ever call me 'gentleman' again, I will physically fight you in the mud on a holiday. F**k around and find out.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Also, if you ever call me 'gentleman' again, I will physically fight you in the mud on a holiday. F**k around and find out.

Just going to helpfully quote this so you can't edit it out while the report is pending.

 Peregrine wrote:
Just going to helpfully quote this so you can't edit it out while the report is pending.

Yeah, let's see how far an obvious joke goes. A blatantly obvious one. To Manchu, the most chill of all people, with a sense of humor.

It's pretty obvious what you're doing here. Report away, guy. I know you hold a grudge.

So do you guys just want this locked now?

(we generally don't delete, and I already took the time to edit)

- yes, I got the joke/am not offended

 Manchu wrote:
So do you guys just want this locked now?

Actually, I'd like the very obvious problem dealt with. I understand if you have to ask another mod.

 Manchu wrote:
(we generally don't delete, and I already took the time to edit)

I know, but- if you can delete a US Politics thread, you can delete something at the request of a member. I'm not being mean, but if the creator asks for something to be removed that should hold some weight.

Presumption is against thread deletion, request by user not generally sufficient to rebut. Lower threshold for OT threads.

Gonna lock now as thread is well and truly done.