Was gone for too long.
Yes, it
has been over a year since I’ve made a post on this blog. I have not been idle
however. Since the last post in here I have:
-
Created and released a video game with my
cousin.
-
Moved to a new apartment.
-
Worked on my comic art and writing.
So although I’ve been absent, stuff has still been
completed. This is a return post of sorts. I would love to promise a blog every
two weeks, but as with most side-projects I usually fail to deliver on
deadlines. A more optimistic approach would be to make one post a month until
that becomes a habit and then try for one every two weeks. The subjects of this
blog are still the same; discussing the development process of board, tabletop,
and video games. Along with this, every now and then I will review a board game
or tabletop game I have tried. Ok, I think I have enough of the formalities out
of the way, on to subject matter.
MetroSiege:
Ah
MetroSiege, the on-again-off-again tabletop game I’ve been working on for the
better part of a year. There have been large breaks in between development
periods, so maybe more like a total of 4-6 months. I picked up the torch again
over this April, testing stuff as usual. There have been some significant
shakeups though.
Original
Attack Mechanics:
One major
change is how one unit attacks another unit. Originally we were using a single
D10 roll and the result was checked against a chart with varying degrees of
success.
ROLL
|
1 WPN
|
2 WPN
|
3 WPN
|
4 WPN
|
Critical Hit
|
|
1
|
M*
|
M*
|
M*
|
M*
|
Critical Failure
|
|
2
|
M*
|
M*
|
M*
|
1-H
|
Shield Emitter
|
|
3
|
M*
|
M
|
1-H
|
1-H
|
Shield Generator
|
|
4
|
M
|
1-H
|
1-H
|
2-H
|
Weapon Destroyed
|
|
5
|
H
|
1-H
|
2-H
|
2-H
|
Weapon Destroyed
|
|
6
|
H
|
1-H
|
2-H
|
3-H
|
Leg Damage
|
|
7
|
H
|
1-H
|
2-H
|
3-H
|
Targeting and Tracking
|
|
8
|
H
|
2-H
|
3-H
|
4-H
|
Reactor
|
|
9
|
H
|
2-H
|
3-H
|
4-H
|
Capacitor
|
|
10
|
H
|
2-H
|
3-H
|
4-H
|
Critical Failure
|
This was a straightforward way to keep most information on
one table. M = Miss, H = Hit, M* = miss, ammo expended. The number next to the
H (i.e. 2-H) meant that two weapons have successfully hit the target. Depending
on how many weapons were put into the group determined the odds of how many
weapons were going to hit the target. The last column is determining which Critical
Hit the unit has suffered. Critical Hits only occurred when all armor was
destroyed and no shield tokens left to soak remaining damage.
Original
ruleset also included unit movement modifiers when either attacker or defender
moved. If the Attacking Unit used the Cruise movement mode; it suffered a -1 to
its D10 roll, -2 to the roll for Flanking. Also, if the Defending Unit used the
Cruise movement mode, then an additional -1 was applied to the roll and -2 for
Flanking.
The net
result was not very pretty. Of the handful of test games we played, the game
devolved into stationary shootouts towards the middle and end of the game.
Successfully hitting a Unit with one attack proved incredibly difficult. Even
with attacking with 2-3 weapons, rarely would the Attacker score enough hits to
do any last damage. Regenerating Shield tokens allowed the Defending Unit to
literally undo the minor damage that did come through. So, this system had to
be scrapped and we had to go back to the drawing board.
New
Attack Mechanics:
After a
week of idle thought, I stumbled upon something that might work. I’m not going
to claim that what I propose is at all completely brand new. There are only so
many ways to roll D6’s. Oh, did I mention? Metrosiege is back to being a D6 game
rather than D10; buckets of D6 ahoy! I have not finalized the complete set of
new rules for attacking but I have a foundation that can be worked with. First
was an update to the stats of Weapons. Every weapon has a ‘DMG’ stat which is
short for Damage. Damage dealt by a weapon is still 1:1 to Shield and Armor
tokens. The change now is, DMG also determines how many dice to roll. Therefore a Particle Beam Cannon has a DMG
of 5, therefore the player using the Particle Beam would roll 5D6.
The second part of the equation now
is the To-Hit number. Once the player rolls the requisite number of dice, each
roll result must meet or exceed a given number. Going with our Particle Cannon
example, the player rolls 5D6 for the attack. The results are a 3,1,4,2,3. The ‘To-Hit’
of the Particle Cannon is 3+, so out of the 5 dice rolled 3 dice count as hits.
Therefore the amount damage dealt by this particular attack is 3. The intent of
these changes is to make damage dealing easier to accomplish. Metrosiege is a
game that should be able to be completed in under an hour, hence units should
be able to constantly throw damage at each other. Fast and Fun are the pillars.
Energy/Shield Dynamic:
Original ruling on Recharging
shields was the following. At the start of the turn, before rolling for initiative
and after regaining the amount of Energy tokens equal to a Unit’s Recharge stat
the player may choose to spend Energy tokens regaining Shield Tokens. This
allows a Unit with depleted Shield tokens to regenerate spent tokens up to
their max amount. The Original ratio was 2 Energy tokens to regain 1 Shield
token. I have decided to change this ratio to 1 Energy token to 1 Shield token.
This makes recharging Shield tokens easier but may come at a cost to game speed
as Unit become more difficult to bring down.
Models:
Creating official resin or plastic
models for the game is still a design goal of this project. Currently the scale
I’m aiming for is 40mm base size for most mechs, maybe smaller bases for
vehicles. A solution that I have explored recently was using Lego pieces to
construct Units. It took a week to assemble some examples but the net result is
pretty cool looking. A benefit of going the lego route is making assembly
instruction and the cheap availability of parts. Still another advantage to using
Lego pieces is they help enforce the WYSIWYG mantra of most tabletop games.
WYSIWYG = What You See Is What You Get, if an item or model is not present in
your army then you cannot have the particular item. Likewise if a model is
holding a certain weapon, then unless otherwise specified, that weapon on the
model is what the rules say it is.
Planned:
-More games, this is crucial. I
plan on playing at least 10-12 games with the current ruleset.
-updated Vehicle Info Cards.
-New sketches for units.
-Explore new game mechanics like
Electronic Warfare.
-Create a table of lego parts and
their corresponding description.
