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.