Switch Theme:

Titanomachina: Armour Piercing Weapons  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
»
Author Message
Advert


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.




Made in ca
Decrepit Dakkanaut





Hola,

So I was working on a demo script for my Titanomachina game, and I noticed that the current set-up of Weapon traits has an outlier: Armour Piercing. Currently the other traits do things like:

Hard Rounds: Add additional target dice.
High Explosive: Add additional damage dice vs buildings.
Shield Breaker: Removes shield tokens before damage dice are rolled (usually shield tokens cancel the highest damage dice).
Shock: Increases the Charge score of any systems played by the target that turn.

Armour Piercing: Reduces the armour score of affected systems.

Attacking goes like this:
1. Select target (Titan or Terrain) within Line-of-Sight, Range, and Arc.
2. Roll target dice if target is Titan, and determine affected System Diagram Square.
3. Roll damage dice vs Armour score of topmost System in affected System Diagram, or Terrain. Any shield tokens in System Diagram Square or Board Square cancel highest damage dice results at 1:1 for green tokens, and 2:1 for red tokens.
4. Add damage to affected System or Terrain. Damage is cumulative.

So the problem is that, at step 3 players need to compare their Weapon System's Effect to the affected System's Armour score. Lower is 1D6, equal or higher is 2D6, twice equal or higher is 3D6 and so on. Making the affected system's armour score be affected by the weapon's Armour Piercing both makes weapons with Armour Piercing really good, and an extra hassle to use.

I'm trying to brainstorm a different effect for Armour Piercing that fits into the existing framework. My first thought was to have Armour Piercing affect an additional system beyond the topmost System in affected System Diagram Squares. But that would be tricky to do given how shield tokens work, and how such a system might have a different Armour score than the topmost.

Any ideas?
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






SoCal, USA!

Armour Piercing: Add additional damage dice vs Vehicles

   
Made in ca
Decrepit Dakkanaut





Hmm. That is a rather obvious one isn't it? Thanks!
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






SoCal, USA!

Glad to help

   
Made in ca
Decrepit Dakkanaut





It gave me the idea to simplify the damage dice operation. So where Effect is up to 1x Armour of the affected system or terrain, it's 1D6 damage dice. Where Effect is up to 2x of the affected it's 2D6, and so on. Then add Armour Piercing/High Explosive. Just like how target dice add Hard Rounds and/or Crew combo bonus.
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






SoCal, USA!

There's a basic concept of having uniform mechanics. Within your system, you could also have mechanics that conditionally subtract a die.

In developing KOG light, I selected re-rolls as my core mechanics, so for me, it was a question of assigning conditions to match each flavor of re-roll, maximizing the mechanics available.

In your case, you add a d6,but...
* What if your core roll was 2d6 +/- 1d6?
* What if Shield removed -1d6 from the damage roll?
* What if long range or terrain removed -1d6 from the target roll?

That's how I look at maximizing the "add d6" modifier mechanic, to extend from +d6 to +/-d6, and to unify modifiers under your "best" mechanic.

Instead of having a mechanic of "add d6" and "subtract -1", you simply have "+/- d6".

Or, you could do the reverse and have a table of +/- modifiers.

Personally, I dislike modifier tables, as the design space is unbounded, so you end up adding too many modifiers, and the thing gets out of control, whereas the ability to add (or subtract) a single d6 becomes significant, and you only need to focus on the "best" rationale for each situational modifier.

Good luck!

   
Made in ca
Decrepit Dakkanaut





That's why I liked the idea of adding a damage dice for each point of.Armour Piercing, since there's a complementary condition in High Explosive.

Because the core damage dice roll works best as at least 1D6 and bonus added. That's so shield tokens act as a -1D6 without being explicitly negative by cancelling damage dice results of an attack. The design principle being that players prefer bonuses to penalties, even where the bonus in question is a penalty to their opponent.

So if long range or terrain removed target dice from the target roll it would be adding target dice and allowing an opponent to choose the result. Which gets weird because that's how Return Fire reactions work, to make them weaker than Attack actions with the same weapon. If the weapon has no Hard Rounds bonus to its target dice then you roll +1D6 target dice. In an attack typically you'd just roll 1D6 with an equal chance of hitting one of three potential system diagram squares. Weapons with Hard Rounds, or a Crew combo, have the advantage of being much more likely to hit the opposing Titan where you want to hit them.

There's 'organic' penalties to target dice with range and terrain: Targets out of range can't be attacked. Targets behind terrain of the same size or larger can't be attacked. Targets outside of a weapon system's 90 degree arc from its system diagram square can't be attacked.

But once you can attack it's just a matter of where you hit (target dice), and how hard (damage dice) where the minimum damage dice result is Light damage or one point. Actually that can be nothing if all of those damage dice are cancelled by shield tokens.

So the choice is something like choosing weapons with Hard Rounds to try and target unshielded areas, or weapons with Armour Piercing to overcome shields by brute force, or weapons with High Explosive to attack an opponent's buildings. Then there's Shield Breaker for short-ranged weapons, and Shock to affect charging systems (systems suffering light damage also charge slower, increasing their Charge score by 1) that were played that turn. Which makes the latter choice a defensive weapon.


Which is why I'm pleased with the +1D6 damage dice suggestion, because it really fits well with the other bonuses and cognitive load/balance in the game.
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






SoCal, USA!

Got it, thanks for the explanation - makes sense

   
Made in ca
Decrepit Dakkanaut





Man, one little thing changes in the rulebook to make it easier to express an idea, and then the ideas behind it collapse into something much smaller and superficially different. Thanks John!

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/07/31 12:42:52


 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






SoCal, USA!

Thanks!

   
Made in ca
Decrepit Dakkanaut





<Redacted>

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/07/31 12:41:44


 
   
 
Forum Index » Game Design
Go to: