============ OGRE/GEV list, July 11th (Last: July 5th) ============= ===== Impulse movement/combat system for GEV From: "Mark E. Johnson" ------------------------------ From: "Mark E. Johnson" Subject: Impulse movement/combat system for GEV I'm thinking about experimenting with an impulse system for GEV instead of the standard (and possibly dated) IGO-UGO. My exposure to this is pretty limited, mainly coming from a couple plays of Victory Games' Across Five Aprils. For all I know there are many different ways of doing this. The way I'm imagining this would work is to require both sides to separate their units into 3-4 groups that move & fight together (they don't have to deploy near each other, though that makes the most sense). I may make my own counters for this, since they need to be color coded. Then each brigade/company/whatever has a similarly colored marker, which is thrown into a cup. During each turn, we draw those markers one by one. After each one is drawn, that brigade gets to move and fire. It adds some unpredictability to the game. There are other variations that put an extra marker for some units in the cup. They don't get to move+fire twice--the extra marker is a dummy--but having two in the cup means they're more likely to get drawn sooner. A better commander, in other words. This system also means it's never the other guy's turn (not for more than a handful of units, anyway). I'm not sure if grouping units by type (all GEVs, all infantry, etc.) is a good idea or not. Have to think a little more about it. Another wild idea is to incorporate some "fog of war" into the game. I'm thinking of a poor man's version of Columbia's block games. Basically, your counters are wooden blocks, so you can set them up Stratego-style so that your opponent cannot see what they are. This is a big deal for historical games, but maybe not so much for science fiction. Even in Desert Storm, however, with one side having dominance of military surveillance, I doubt the troops on the ground knew very much *detail* about what they were facing. The way I'd do it for GEV is to get a square wooden rod, then saw or clip it into cubes (I figure I can produce about a hundred before I keel over from arm fatigue and boredom). Then I glue a counter to each one. The counter faces the player until it's been "spotted" by the opponent, after which the cube is turned to place the counter on top. Heck, this stuff might wreck an enjoyable game, but I think it's worth experimenting. Comments appreciated. -Mark ----- [Random splitting of groups puts a damper on combined fire. In the classic OGRE vs everything else game, the robot gets an edge if the human forces are uncoordinated in their responses. Consider also the effect if you switch to a battlesuit system of you shoot while I move or a continuous movement system (With continous fire, every impulse you shoot, at very low chance of kill). Speaking of Battlesuit, "Starship Troopers" is coming this fall to a movie theater near you (Without the suits naturally!) -HJC] Henry J. Cobb hcobb@slip.net http://www.io.com/~hcobb