Game design thoughts - A drone-centric sci-fi game...

Delta Vector recent post got me thinking... Enough that I'll write it down in a post rather than just making a reply to his.

One of the newer GZG drones, armed with missiles... Pictures from manufacture's website.

So starting with these specific ideas (just a few of the one in Delta Vector post, go and read it, in fact while you're at it, go and read all his "game design" posts)...

• In an EW-dominated battlefield, an unhackable human (with a gun aimed via a Mk.1 eyeball which can't be fooled by EW chicanery) still has an important place;
• Remotes are powerful, but can be jammed and have vulnerable operators, vulnerable to EMP;
• Hackers act like "wizards" who can hack (...) robots (...);
• Combined arms might be a balance of robotic and conventional humans, rather than the armour-infantry meaning it has today; 

And adding a few of my own (whithout much of a structure, brainstorming here)...

More Quar Memoir

Although my Quar infantry + All Quiet on the Martian Front steam tanks + Memoir 44 rules idea didn't exactly end up as promising as I initial thought, I kept toying with it...

After having a look at the other Command and Color system like the original Battlecry (ACW) or C&C Napoleonics and browsing through the Memoir 44 cards database I came up with the following solution...

This cute little Panzer III is about to be eaten by a huge All Quiet on the Martian Tank Baldwin MkIII!
Picture by Steven MacLauchlan at Outpost Zero.

Use cavalry instead of armour as the third basic unit of my games and demote steam tanks to special units. After all, this is not-WW1 so tanks are much less prevalent and cavalry much less anachronistic than during WW2.

Some play testing and fine tuning will definitely be needed but I expect to end up with basic unit looking like this:

• Infantry moves 2 hexes without fighting or moves only 1 hex and fights, fights with 3/2/1 dice at ranges 1/2/3, may Take Ground on a successful Close Assault.
• Cavalry moves up to 3 hexes and fights but does so with a slightly shorter range than infantry (3/2 dice at ranges 1/2, or 3/1, or maybe even 4/2 or 4/1?), may Overrun on a successful Close Assault.
• Artillery moves 1 hex or fight with 3/3/2/2/1/1 dice at ranges 1/2/3/4/5/6, ignores LOS and terrain.

The steam tanks would take a leaf of the Memoir 44 Tiger special unit's book:

Memoir 44 Tigers special unit cards. Picture from Days of Wonder website.

• Each unit is a single miniature (thereby solving my initial problem of not being able to credibly fit three tanks in an hex) but each hit needs to be confirmed by a second die roll. That gives them a 1 in 12 chance of being hit but a single "hit point" (thus on the average needing the enemy to throw 12 dice at hit to destroy the unit) making it both tougher than the regular Memoir 44 armour unit (1 in 3 chance of being hit and three "hit points" thus needing an average of 9 rolls to be destroyed) but also making it possible to destroy the unit with a single die roll (albeit a lucky one). I think it gives the steam tanks a nice "monster with an Achilles' Heel" feel that suits early tanks quite well! And I can live with introducing a second die roll in the fight system as it stays confined to a select few special units.
• I'll probably reduce the speed to "Move 0-2 and fight" and drop the Overrun rule (but maybe give them Take Ground instead, although taking ground sounds more like a purely infantry affair?) to make them more the pondering behemoths I want them to be and give the cavalry more of its own tactical niche instead of just making it poor man's armour...

And with this Memoir of All Quiet on the Quar Front is back on the rails!

Neat little randomization system stolen from This Quar's War

As you can tell from my posting those days, I'm quite taken by my All Quiet on the Quar Front project. While reading This Quar's War for inspiration I came across a very neat system I might just stole for other (nefarious of course) designs.

28mm Designated Rhyflequa. Picture from Zombiesmith website.

Most things (with the notable exception of units firing at and assaulting eachother) are resolved by throwing to good old 6-faced dice. A result of 6 on any of those indicates a positive result, a result of 1 a negative one. Combining both dice results together you can have the following results:

• Two 6s (±3% probability): very positive outcome
• One 6 and anything but another 6 or a 1 (±22%): positive outcome
• No 6s nor 1s (±44%): neutral outcome or no effect
• One 1 and anything but a 6 or  another 1 (±22%): negative outcome
• Two 1s (±3%): very negative outcome
• One 1 and One 6 (±6%): a mixed outcome,  somehow combining the positive and negative one