Recap from last week:
We have all been afflicted by high sodium levels at some time while playing games. Whether it's because the game seems to be against us from the start, we get tilted by (perceived) statistically improbable outcomes, or just from getting our ass whooped a million times and not wanting the beatings to continue until morale improves, it's inevitable that we'll start to get a bit testy. Sometimes a game stops being fun when it's totally non-competitive, and also fails to create any kind of narrative (failing on both axis that make wargaming worthwhile).
This often is a side effect of falling behind, and this is often caused by game pieces being removed from the board. In most games, the pieces are multi-dimensional resources; they exert control over a space of the board, they are a source of actions, and they provide a means to interact with the opponent. When pieces get eliminated, a lot of games enter a death spiral that it's very hard for one player to dig their way out of. Combine this with most games rewarding focused fire as an optimal tactic and often units are extremely frail, and you kind of have a recipe for producing one-sided beatdowns. So why not sidestep by removing unit elimination altogether? Recap last week's activity: Outer Dark
Well, this wasn't unexpected, but I did get a lot done--and not just administrative stuff like typing a lot of words, but made a few important changes to the automata structure. Outer DarkI played a lot of games against the Biocraft this week, and was going back through their automata and making some minor alterations and corrections, but then I made a couple of other decisions that seem like favourable improvements to the overall way they work. Opening Move I really liked the change to Biocraft where their first action is always appearing on a random Waypoint, so I'm going to implement that change. It works very nicely, and gives the player the ability to actually strategize their opening moves. It will require some more adjustments to certain Biocraft to keep them from getting ambushed and killed instantly (a lot more will have a Level 1 Signature Value of 0), but this is good as it increases the value of the Flak Hammer. Initial Location Markers Some Biocraft have an issue with durability. They're too easy to destroy because they're not deploying all their Location Markers; this is because they don't understand, like a person might, how many LMs they haven't put into play yet. They can't follow the context of the game since it's a die roll with a maximum of one modifier applied. This is especially true against some of the Biocraft where the best strategy is to creep into play using an initial STL movement with the target Biocraft being backlit by an Object that provides a positive modifier to it's Signature, then just shoot it. Sometimes the Biocraft's randomization of behaviour gets around this with a movement or something, but it's a consistently effective strategy that isn't very interesting. Against a human opponent this is risky because when they see your Action Marker placement, you're taking a risk of at best trading attacks and at worse you're executing an attack that raises your signature and your opponent's Ship might just move out of the way or use Countermeasures to nullify the Signature bonus. you end up behind in that case. But the AI can't make these kind of judgments of the board state, or it will become complex and boring to use. The easy and somewhat lazy solution is to just let Biocraft deploy a certain number of their Location Markers before the game even begins. This is an easy fix that also makes sense: Biocraft don't use the same methods as STARCOREs or human Ships to move through time and space, and their means of appearing on the battlefield through Waypoint jump gates also means they're creating other space-time disturbances. These can be LMs that get distributed onto Waypoints. Some Biocraft will now have an "Initial Distribution" of extra LMs, allowing them to be a lot more durable. Priority Reversal I've swapped Priority so the human player always has it. This is a good change because now, the human player has to make their first move and then see where the Biocraft end up. Before it required some strange wording in Biocraft automata to accommodate the fact that there were no player Ships in play on the first Frame. Contact Kills I've added a special rule to some Biocraft where if they end a Frame adjacent to a Ship, the Ship is destroyed. This lets the Soldier kill a Ship by ramming it. I also added a stipulation to the Chaser where if it uses it's FTL ramming action against Ships with a high enough Signature, it survives the collision, adding more incentive to keep Signature levels low. The Dozer The Dozer is where I want it to be. It's durable and dangerous, but not invincible; it crashes through obstacles and kills them. It's kind of predictable, but it's so dangerous that it doesn't matter. Biocraft Reference Cards Right now using my computer to reference Biocraft actions and their modifiers for Automata rolls is... inconvenient. But when making the physical resources so I don't have to flip back and fourth in the word processor, I also decided to leverage them as "Action Marker" equivalents for a given Biocraft group. Now, I keep a separate pile of dice to assign to each Biocraft in a frame, and then use the reference card for their Automata to place their Action Dice for frames 1, 2, and 3. It helps keep things organized. Goals for September 21 to September 28This is going to look familiar.
There's lots of different reasons to play games. But in the realm of wargames, specifically, you can kind of roughly divide the types of people who play them into two camps that have a lot of overlap: people looking to play 'gamey' games, who want a mechanical and competitive experience (whether they are competing against automata or other people), and people looking for their games to craft a strong narrative. These two are not mutually exclusive, but pushing towards one type of experience does often impede the other end of the spectrum.
This is good and healthy. Some people want to play out adventures with their tokens and miniatures, and others want to play a tight game that's a mental challenge or puzzle. There is lots of room for both, and there's glorious overlap between them as well. I bring this up because I want to discuss what makes a game crappy, and why they aren't fun to play. This axis of narrative vs competition is important, because if we can't move along either direction, the game is going to be shit. Recap for last week:
Outer Dark
50% isn't bad I guess. I'm currently in a bit of an odd place in that I only have one project to work on and the progress on others is gated by how much I can play with other people. This could mean some significant delays in progress on quite a few things. Additionally, normally I make a lot of progress by working on a computer. Right now, without going back and working on The Empire Has Fallen (which I will someday, but not now), I don't have any projects that need purely "writing" work. Additionally, after finishing the very large project of Split Second, I also kind of wanted to take a break and do some other things. Here's my Byarlant Custom: Time for an admission that I feel is unsavoury, but can't really tell you why:
I have never made a game without the intent to expand it at some point. This feels weird because I've railed against the problems of Open games vs Closed games in the past, and firmly believe in the superiority of the Closed game at this point. I've even gone and made Closed systems out of Open games. But that doesn't mean expansion is necessarily bad; sometimes, it just gives you that extra little bit that pushes a game from "good" into "great" territory. Other times, it provides a refreshing spin on an existing product that gets it back on the table. Of course, expansion implies initial completion, which is of course plenty hard. But I feel the expansion ideas are the type that most people would want: they aren't just "reskins" but often include a lot of new ways to use old materials, while deliberately keeping the old materials in the spotlight (this is especially important to me). I don't want to release something new that outclasses something or makes an old asset or mechanic obsolete; if anything I want people to look back on what is already there and think of it in a new, superior light. Another big part of why I want to make expansions for games is that I often have more ideas than I can reasonably cram into the initial product. for Split Second, I did twenty scenarios; testing them took well over twenty weeks. But I still have many, many more ideas and some of them will require new and more advanced mechanics that would be best suited for people who have played the game a good bit... perfect for an expansion product. Similarly, I want to do a campaign module. Another good expansion. And for a product like Plamo vs Plamo, I of course want to do some kind of automata. But knowing this does have an advantage; it gives me the ability to deliberately design the products with future expansion in mind. While the expansions might not be very solid yet, knowing I want to add to a game in the future means I try to keep it's existing assets as flexible as possible. Recap of last week:
Split Second
Well... I finally finished some things. It's with a great deal of personal gratification and no fanfare that I can say I have finished work on Split Second: Solitaire Firefights Against The Clock. This has been by far my biggest and most ambitious undertaking as a game designer, involving tons of stuff I'd never really considered before; graphic design, art assets, presentation, and even publication. It was fraught with frustrations and lessons in all those fields. Ultimately, I think the product is extremely good and one of the best "build teams and guys and shoot bad guys" games on the market. It has comparatively advanced solitaire gameplay, varied mission structure, and a lot of content for a very modest price tag. If you're interested, you can check it out on Wargame Vault for free; if you like to see a guy stammer through a tutorial video, you can watch a small movie I've produced about it as well: Split Second started out as a game I was designing where you would play as a robot pilot who would jump into and out of the robot like Titanfall to meet various threats, and a timer would force the player to adapt to changing circumstances in the style of Space Alert. It transformed into something very different when I realized the mechanics seemed better suited to good ol' shootouts.
This was a complex undertaking and absorbed many hours of my time. It's a game made entirely by one person and in some realms, it shows. But I'm quite proud of the end product despite the faults I'm aware of. It's a full game with 208 cards, tokens, two books, and all kinds of other components; the player only needs to provide a timer and dice. However, I definitely took some lessons away from it that will transfer towards future games. |
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