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Post by CELS on Jan 8, 2005 22:26:26 GMT -5
I hope this isn't too much to ask, but I posted some kind of suggestion up there. You were looking for suggestions, right? Well, some feedback would be appreciated. Clearly, none of you liked it, but I'm going to need your opinions if I'm to be of any help.
Well, that's why you have specific campaign scenarios, each with their own background, map and objectives. In the Dark Eldar scenario, the setting is a human colony. The Dark Eldar player must fight to gain control of population centers and the camps where civilians are kept for protection. In the Genestealer scenario, the beacons could be found where the infestation is stronger. In certain cities, where Genestealers have lived for generations. To stop the beacons, you'd have to gain control of all these cities, and cleanse the Genestealer infestations.
That could be one way to go. Personally, I prefer scenarios with specific backgrounds and specific objectives. It helps set the mood and it makes it more interesting for me, rather than just choosing a random map with some standard objectives. "Kill the boss / destroy the hive node."
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Post by KeirLeslie on Jan 9, 2005 1:48:42 GMT -5
I think that the ability to continually attack is too strong. To counter this I would leave the ability to continue attacking, but make the player declare before any games are played how far each detachment will attack. This means that you could finish up with one detachment stranded deep in the enemy territory, completely cut off, or it could be sitting in front of a clear path to the heart of the opposition and unable to move.
Remember, the majority of casualties in a battle are not dead, merely incapacitated somehow. I would create 4 results, Draw, Minor Victory, Major Victory, Massacre. Troops lost in Draws survive on a 5+ all round, Minor Victories on a 5+ for the loser, 3+ for the victor, Major Victories, 6+ for the loser, 2+ for the victor. In a Massacre, the victors survive on a 2+, and if they fail, on a reroll to get 4+, the losers on 6+/4+. This is harsh on Draws to promote decisive battles, and to wear down detachments that don't do something. What qualifies as each result would depend on the system. However, I don't think it'll be too hard to work out. This is almost definitely too complex for most peoples liking, but it might be worth thinking about.
Could you clarify? I like the idea, but I'm not sure of exactly how it works.
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Post by RascalLeader on Jan 11, 2005 22:40:16 GMT -5
We all Share the Sentiment ;D Fine; but as long as it can be scaled up for those who want massive campaign forces. However as my prevous shows; their are ways around doing even a low number of detactments. However if that is to be ignored then perhaps the "starting limit" for detactment numbers should be considerd. Or perhaps you have a 1000-3000pt army list. The points ammount depending wether your attacker or defender, or incase of tyranids and Imperial guards how heavy they should outweight their oppoinants. Then you can arrange this force into how many detactments or individual elements of forces you want . This means you can have dozens of them moving about the battlefield or one huge force moving slowly from hex to hex. Granted; but what else would be exceptable for the basic version? Supplies? (basics only) Victory conditions? (how do we win?) Campaign size and set up? Capturing/controlling Hexs? Movement? All those must be decided upon, to produce a framework of the system. I like the ideas we have had so far but approving them, or simplfied aspects of them will have to be agreed upon. Perhaps we should write up list with ideas we have aggreed with so we can green light them into the offical basic rule system. In both of your examples the senerios invove capturing terratory; which is also "Kill the boss / destroy the hive node." as far as I am concerned. We have to make a system which has some verity in this respect, so that neather become the boring 'standard' for the campaign. Thats why I suggested race specific objectives since each have different wants and needs. The Dark Elder for instance only want to raid terratories not take them, so its not how many the control at once but how many they can move through that counts. A Defending imperial Player's campaign objective would be to drive off the enemie forces, by contain and elimenating. They would send in units to "Kill the boss" since it would weaken their oppoinant. The Enemy would have to own a lot of terrtory to start with so the player could be so deep in that they could cut off. It also brings up the point of how does one capture terratory? if we have a limited number of detactments not all are going to be in one perticuler area all the time, but moving about. I would assume that in order to capture a Hex you would have to hold the area for a campaign turn (i.e. not make a movement). This by it implication mean that a player can move through his oppoinants Hexs without capturing them if he is going dirrectly for their forces instead. Would 'Owning' hexs have any benifits? for instance attacking a Hex with a detactment in means that your pushing your troops into terrtory the enemry might be lying in wait in. A suggestion for this, which I would admit being enspired by the Assaulting into cover rules, is that the Defender always gets to go first when fighting within their own territory. I quite like this idea, since if a army that has its enermy on the run would problerbly keep hitting it untill it was dead. However if we do have multiple detactments, each of them would have to win/lose several times in succession for this to happen so that the odds of doing it is hard. Perhaps not all forces should be deployed so that they can hit each other in the first couple of campaign turns. Detactments should have a set size, but I think you should be able to spilt them into differently sized elements, in order to spread the risk. Since the player can set the size for those, battle sizes will not be completly uniform, and will have to do with how much of their force they are willing to gamble with. Once their gone; their gone and have to be replaced. However if you keep doing that your force will rapidly shrink. For a simplistic system; it takes up too much time. However saying that I would have a casualties, but perhaps not as complex as that. I realise in a real battle their chances of survival will depend upon the victory/Failer conditions, but if your going to get that why not have some races having a much better chance because of their physiology? Keep this in mind when we get back to the "Gamma Level" campaign rules. Certainly; and thanks. [shadow=red,left,300]The Automatic battle result system [/shadow] It goes like this; For every 100pts within your detactment/Element the each player gets to roll one dice for their force. The result of this roll takes away -50pts for every ammount scored. This means a 520pt force would get 5D6 (rounding down) and a 1000pt force would get 10D6. Now say the 520pt force rolls a total of twenty with their dice and the 1Kpt force rolls only 15. 20X50pts = 1000pts of damage, so basically the smaller force has wiped out the large one. However they caused 15X50pts of damage (750) which also wipes out the smaller force. Now this might seem a bit odd or over the top but I remind you that its function is to give the results of smaller battle that neather would want to play, so at most your only really going to have less then 10 Dice each since a 1000pt game is worth playing.
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Post by KeirLeslie on Jan 12, 2005 2:56:30 GMT -5
I would say that the side defending the hex could: Flank march: Roll for reserves as normal, except allow them to come on on either flank.
Get fortifications: Obvious, place 2 walls in deployment zone.
Morale boosts: Obvious, plus 1 for Leadership.
Hidden reserves: By hidden reserves I mean the ability to deploy, in terrain, and unrevealed, up to 1/4 of your force. They would be revealed when the opponent's troops could see them.
You could only use one per game, but you wouldn't have to tell your opponent which one.
However, to balance this, when a detachment is securing a hex, if attacked the opponent may take first turn, deploy after the suprised detachment has finished, and cause pinning tests in their first shooting phase.
The idea here is to encourage securing areas near landing sites etc, but to discourage it on the frontline, as it would be easy to surprise them.
What goes into the basic ruleset? In the basic ruleset I think the following needs to be included in addition to what Cels has already got: Supply, Movement, Hex control: Guidelines for campaigns, And, Internet gaming.
At that point I suggest that the rules be play tested, using solo play to get in a lot of quick games. Then work out what needs improving, and whether it is something to go into the more complex versions, or just a design flaw. But I get ahead of myself.
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Post by CELS on Jan 14, 2005 3:51:43 GMT -5
What is the point in having detachments with a set size then? I'd say that this makes the system inflexible. For example, if you have detachments of 2000 points, you would only play games of 2000 or 4000 points. Or did I misunderstand? Feel free to explain.
I will try getting around to do a comprehensive suggestion this weekend, including detachments, movement, victory conditions, supplies, etc. It will be very basic, but it will allow us to play-test some campaigns using RascalLeader's suggestion for playing battles with a D6.
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Post by RascalLeader on Jan 16, 2005 12:21:13 GMT -5
Yes you did. For one the 'standard' size of a detachment is 1000pts, but I was working on the basis that no everyone wanted this, so thats only an average at the moment. And for the rest, the ARMY TOTAL was the 3000pt+ not the size of detachment. Have stupidly huge detachments was why I was going on about limiting their size (to 1000pts) in the first place. After all very few people have that size an army to play with. The whole idea is that you fight with the detactments you have formed over multiple fronts instead of having one single ridiculously sized battle. I have also trying to shift through all the suggestions we had on the thread. Hopefully I can use it to give an update at where we are at. Guess it was not that stupid a suggestion then.
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Post by CELS on Jan 17, 2005 8:49:43 GMT -5
Ok.. before I start working on the comprehensive suggestion, I want to sort out this stuff with set sizes for detachments. Here's how I see it. Set sizes for detachments is a great idea for campaigns with low numbers of detachments and a small scale. If, say, your campaign is the battle for a single city, with a few thousand warriors on each side (or less), then set sizes for detachments allow you to keep track of how many soldiers are still alive, what vehicles are operational, and it also lets you fight unfair battles (2000 points vs 1000 points). The problem with this, unless I misunderstand once again (in which case, I would appreciate a really elaborative and detailed explanation of the whole idea, so I can stop stumbling in the darkness and making a fool of myself ) is that when you're talking about large scales, these advantages are pretty much lost. If a detachment is 1000 points, and your average 1000 point Imperial Guard detachment has 50 guardsmen, then if you wanted to do a full planetary invasion campaign with a million or more guardsmen, then you'd need..... a whole lot of detachments Keeping track of which chimera is immobilised is also obviously a waste at this point. As I've said before, the advantage of not having a set size of detachments is that battles are resolved a lot easier. Has anyone played Risk? This is a perfect example of a perfect solution. The Risk system can be used on any scale. I just... *sigh* I don't see the problem with my suggestion here. Apparently, I'm so ignorant that I can't see how it is flawed. Flexibility and simplicity, and you can add detail if you want. The same can be said for the system with set sizes, maybe, but it's not as flexible (as I understand it) and certainly not as simple. So please. Explain. In detail
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Post by RascalLeader on Jan 18, 2005 19:22:20 GMT -5
Sorry I am always doing that.
With the system I suggested this is irrelevant.
You start off by Writing up ONE SINGLE 'FIXED' detachment army list. This is your personal fighting force, so that you can use experience point rules and so forth for Campaigns.
However realistically that would be but a small part of the planets defence force, which could have many millions of troops. To represent this you get a 'pool' of other forces to also use. Instead of writing down an army list for every single detachment there you would instead get them in POINT VALUE (i.e. the point cost for an uncreated army). These are not real armies, but ‘false’, they don’t really exist. They are counters to be pushed around the maps. Which I’ll explain in a minute.
For example the total armies worth on the whole planet could be within 100000pts for the Imperial guards, comprising of 100 Detachments worth (each 1000pts each). HOWEVER (before you start rolling your eyes) these are not fixed; its just a way of gauging the total sizes of the forces combating each other over this planet. It also does not even have to be that big a size, you could limit it to a much lower number in the simplistic version of the game. You could only get five or six extra detachments at most (5000-6000). As long as the attackers and defenders of the planet stay within some sort of size agreement (so that the defenders would always have superior numbers) it does not matter.
These ‘false’ detachments (I can’t think of a title for them, so forgive the inverted commas) move about on the campaign map like a normal one. When it encounters another false detachment of the other teams then you could use the Automatic battle result system TM ( ;D) to find the winner instead of playing it all out for a battle. Its only when the ‘real’ detachments are involved that any battles are fought out. Its only at this point one of the ‘false’ detachment can be used in battle.
You can create a temporary detachment using the point VALUE of the detachment (1000pts in most cases- unless you have two detachments in the area). Now this could be done even before the campaign started, by having a back up army list in addition to your ‘real’ one, but the point is that it does not have to be set in stone and you can adapt it whenever. However this army does not receive any experience, it does not need to be rebuilt after the battle, since the people involved are assumed to sinks back into the general pool of forces. However any damage it takes within the battle reduces the size of that ‘false’ detachment i.e. it is worth less when you next come to use it.
The battle damage is worked out the same as Victory points in the 4E (50%+ of a unit gone, its worth half of its starting value, for example). The size of the force is recalculated, dropping from its initial 1000pts it started with.
Now because its basically points you could decided to merge it with another unit, so you could take two damaged ‘false’ detachments and put them back together, or siphon the points off to rebuild your one ‘real’ detachment after battle damage. This is why the pool analogy work so well. Its like you start off with a large amount of water and you can move it between different buckets, but your always losing bits of it all the while. When one becomes half full then you can spread it out to refill all the other ones which have lost some.
The idea is NOT to have massive battles (But its an option), but to be able to have small battle across a large campaign map. It allows you attack from multiple fronts, to hold territory and all the like. Having these ‘false’ detachments running about the place allows you to do this. They can be the ones doing all the boring stuff, the one who protects an area, who can flank the enemy while you do all the real important stuff. Its helps create the impression of a much large conflict going on.
You don’t have to fight hundreds of battles ether; using the Auto battle thingy, most can be rolled for very quickly. Its ONLY when ONE ‘real’ detachment is involved that the battles can be played. However even this is open to debate, its just a nice way of laying down things for the moment.
I Hope this is enough detail for you CELS; I think I am getting a nose bleed from concentrating :-).
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Post by CELS on Jan 19, 2005 11:05:49 GMT -5
Sorry I am always doing that. Doing what?
RascalLeader, if you've actually read about the system I'm suggesting, I hope you realise that our systems are quite similar. Actually, they're basically the same, except you add extra detail by letting the 'false' detachments have different strength. Of course, you would get the same effect if you just increased the number of detachments in my system. (For example, instead of reducing a 'false' detachment from 1000 points to 700 points, you reduce 10 detachments to 7 detachments). The only real difference is that you have found a way to include veteran units, something that I am all for. But I'm not sure your way is the best way, because 1) You do not include a way to represent this for people who don't play wargames, such as Kage. Kage specifically asked for a system that can be used without ever touching a miniature, and I agree that this would be useful. For one thing, it would allow us to run campaigns on the web! An army with veteran units would have an advantage over the plain detachments, so how do you work that out when using the Automatic Combat System? 2) You do not include a way to represent this across systems. What happen if you want your 'personal fighting force' to engage the enemy in a game of Epic 40,000? How is experience and veteran skills translated across systems? I'm going to try and come up an alternative in the other thread (v1). Please tell me what you think.
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Post by RascalLeader on Jan 20, 2005 17:25:28 GMT -5
Not going into detail No I have not; but then thats me not going into detail. I have been toying with the idea that an Extra D6 in combat. Neither had you the last time I looked but I have done. Go and have a look at my new thread.
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Post by Kage2020 on Feb 13, 2005 18:00:03 GMT -5
Apologies for my lack of contribution to this thread, but it is generally outside of my knowledge area except in terms of the 'final product' and the over-arching linking concepts. CELS is currently away, but I advocate that you do as much as possible to develop the system in his absence. If you can, utilise other boards to comment on the structure...
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Post by CELS on Mar 5, 2005 5:17:21 GMT -5
Oh. I thought you meant you always went into detail Will do. Oh, and I encourage you to look again, since my system allowed for total freedom between 40k and Epic. I just haven't figured out how to include BFG yet... Apologies for my lack of contribution to this thread, but it is generally outside of my knowledge area except in terms of the 'final product' and the over-arching linking concepts. CELS is currently away, but I advocate that you do as much as possible to develop the system in his absence. If you can, utilise other boards to comment on the structure... And now I'm back. I understand that you have precious little to say about the wargame-related stuff, but you might find it worthwhile to comment on how the suggested systems work for you, the non-wargamer. If you read my suggestion, you'll find an alternative for people who want to participate in campaigns, but don't want to play the actual games of 40k and epic. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts about that.
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Post by RascalLeader on Mar 6, 2005 20:46:07 GMT -5
Just noticed it, sorry I am so slow to reply. Okay, we have two quite developed campaign systems. Both pretty much cover all the different gaming systems. So how do we move forward from here to develop them? Their are several things both me and CELS broadly agree on, like supplies, movement and the campaign map itself so those can be left alone for now. On the other things, we will have to build some sort of consensus on. I am not really an avocate of picking one system over another. My ideas defenatly can't be described as perfect , but they work; and so do CELS. So we are going to have to go for simplicity as well as which are fun (not most of mine then ). So the question is which bits do we want to put into the offical system and what other things do we need to think about adding? The struture of the campaign system is something that you would probably be quite good at helping us with Kage. Its the getting the big picture to work rather then tinkering too much in any of the wargames. Considering how you manage to orginise this project; this little microcosm should not be too difficult.
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Post by CELS on Mar 7, 2005 8:32:27 GMT -5
Just noticed it, sorry I am so slow to reply. No worries. The project isn't going anywhere ;D Agreed! I've actually thought a bit about this, and I forgot to mention some thoughts I had last time. The major difference between our two alternatives, is simplicity. Your alternative is without a doubt more realistic and complex than mine. Now, since we've already agreed that we want to create a basic campaign system which can be 'upgraded' with advanced rules modules, why not use your alternative as a more advanced option? IIRC, you've suggested that we divide into Alpha, Gamma and Omega grades of complexity. Well, how about if my suggestion is used as Alpha, and yours is Gamma? Of course, I agree with you that neither suggestion is perfect as it is (and they probably never will be), but if everyone agrees that both systems have their definitive strengths and that they compliment eachother in a way that lets either version please most types of players, then... *takes deep breath in middle of long sentence*... then we can at least start the process of tuning our suggestions into a working system. Eh?
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Post by RascalLeader on Mar 11, 2005 18:40:14 GMT -5
Perfection is unobtainable; but lets keep trying anyway I did not think my rules were that complex; a little more detailed maybe..... Having mine as Gamma would be fine, but we need to get them complementing each other more, so they actually seem like the same system.
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