Thursday, April 26, 2012

[Open Design: Mercenaries #2] Battle System

This article continues my Open Design project to build a new game from the ground up with the help of my friends here on my blog. The game we’re working on has the working title Mercenaries, and game play consists of two important phases – bidding and battling. Last week we discussed ideas for the game’s bidding system. I’m going to let some time pass for those thoughts to percolate before we settle on a specific model. In the meantime, let’s talk a little bit about the games battle system.

The basic premise of Mercenaries will be that each player hires a small group of mercenaries with which to do battle with the other players. Each merc will be represented by a card, and each merc should have some unique characteristics. The combination of mercenaries that make up your army will determine your strategy. We need the battle system to be something that allows us to represent this action. The first thing we need to decide, is how abstract or specific we want the battle system to be. Let’s look at some examples.

Summoner Wars is a tactical board game about battles between fantasy armies that uses cards to represent your units. The game board is basically a 6×8 grid upon which your units move. Players take turns moving their units and having them attack enemy units. When one unit attacks another, you roll dice to see how much damage is done, and then you place wound markers on the damaged unit. If a unit has enough wound markers on it, it is destroyed, being discarded from the board. In this setup, specific movement and attacks are very important, and unit cards come and go throughout the game.

Frenzy is a card game of real-time fantasy battles. Each player gets a deck of cards representing their army. Each deck consists of about 6 different types of cards, including one type of unit specific to that army. Player each have three stacks of cards that line up with their opponent’s three stacks of cards. Once the game has begun, players pull cards from their draw pile and slap them down on their stacks of cards as quickly as they can. The game ends automatically when one of a couple of conditions are met. Then players compare the top cards only in each pair of stacks (one of yours vs. one of mine). Each pair represents a front on which the battle was being fought. If your top card on that front beats my top card on that front, then you won the front. Whoever won two out of the three fronts wins the game. This is fast paced and very abstract.

I don’t think either of those systems would work exactly for Mercenaries, but they do illustrate two extremes – one very specific and tactical, the other very abstract. Before we can get into the nuts and bolts of designing the battle system for our game, we need to decide how specific or abstract it should be. One thing to keep in mind, is how making the battles more or less abstract will effect the way the bidding system is perceived. A more abstract battle system will emphasize bidding, while a more detailed battle system will deemphasize bidding.

Please share your thoughts on this aspect of the design by leaving a comment below. I appreciate all of your input.

5 comments:

  1. Hmm maybe some sort of blending of the two ideas? Like if we're each supposed to be ruling our own territory and in conflict with each other, I could see maybe having a board to map out our areas.

    But if we wanted to add some elements of randomness, at the beginning of each round we could draw a location card to identify which area will be under contention and that'd be another factor that goes into the bidding. If it's an area a player doesn't care about getting involved in it might influence their decisions on bidding.

    And as far as conflict real-time is a nice idea but I also like the way some of the games I've played have worked where you kind of queue up the cards you want to use in the conflict and then resolve it based on what everyone lays out.

    Not sure if any of that made much sense, but I wanted to contribute. lol

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  2. This is where my inexperience definitely comes in, since games of this type I can't say i've ever played before. Due to that fact, I don't know how useful the following will be, so here I go.

    If I am understanding correctly, then humandisaster's idea may be good referrence point. Would it, though, be illogical or detracting to the game to be able to have alliances? I know that goes with particulars to be understood. How would they go about being made? Are there countries that will or will not work with each other,and can those situattions be switched up between rounds?

    Addressing whether or not a country would be involved sounds like an interesting thought. The leader could probably either declare neutrality in the conflict or if they feel it necessary, still bid for defense purposes. Discernment would be encouraged in the use of resources.

    That's what I can think of for now, sorry if it doesn't help.

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  3. Thank you both for your input. You've both brought up some interesting ideas. I may not have done very well with my earlier examples, and that's probably because I was trying to use existing games as examples. Let me try it again using two possible models for this game, and see if we can make a little more headway on the discussion of how abstract or involved the battle system should be. Bear in mind that all we know about the game for sure right now is that it will have cards representing specific mercenaries, and that you will bid on them with some kind of resource.

    Abstract Example
    As soon as you buy a mercenary card, you put it into play in front of you. Each card is worth 1 point at the end of the game. Certain combinations of cards are worth extra points at the end of the game. When the game ends, the player with the most points wins!

    Involved Example
    When you buy a mercenary card, it goes into your hand. The game has a board, with a map representing territories being fought over. Players can spend resources to move their units to fight over a specific territory. Once the various sides in conflict over the territory have been determined, those players begin playing merc cards to do battle. Each merc might have an attack value and a defense value. If one merc's attack beats another merc's defense, they take out that merc. Merc's also have special abilities that can contribute to battle. Perhaps, an assassin can take out another merc without attacking. Maybe a commander gives a boost to the attack or defense of your other mercs. Maybe a sniper can attack without being attacked back. Etc. Once there is only one side with any mercs still in play, the battle is over and that player claims the territory. Different territories might have different features as well, effecting who the battle favors, how many resources you collect at the end of the round, or providing some other bonus or penalty.

    Those are just two examples, which I intentionally tried to make extremes. Specific ideas are very helpful, but it would also be good to get some kind of consensus on how where the battle system should fall in the abstract vs. involved spectrum. Perhaps we could get a rating on a 1-10 scale, with 1 being very abstract and 10 being very involved. Remember, this is important because it will effect how important the bidding phase will feel to the game. In the first example, bidding will probably feel like the most important part of the game. In the second example, bidding might feel like a little mini-game played off to the side.

    Thanks so much for all of your input all ready!

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    Replies
    1. I'd put my rating at like...8?

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    2. Since this is the prototype and I forementioned my lack of experience, i'll second humandisaster's rating.

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