-
1- : Strategy... How to build and reinforce an army?
You can think of credit value as how much you can use to purchase units. A unit can be anything from a soldier to an animal, a building, or a machine. A unit can be a soldier, troll, horse, tank, dragon, shark, submarine, bunker, obstacle or anything you can imagine. Each unit has strategic, control, movement, offense and defense skills that contribute to its total price.
1.1- Units and teams
As each unit has several skills, the same skill could be associated with many units. For example, if Human_Health:(impact=1, range=0, circumference =0, number=5, probability=100) is used by one or more units, it means that those units have 5 points of armor or health each. The enemy needs to attack them with effective accumulative impact that reaches 5 each to destroy them. Units in an army can be grouped in teams with cost equal to the sum of their costs. Grouping units into teams makes it much easier to reuse the teams in future games and finish the strategy step very fast (Fast-play). A unit's cost is the sum of the costs of all the skills the unit has. A skill is like carried weapons, hand to hand combat abilities, armor, health, communication ability, rank, movement ability on sea, in deep sea, in the sky, space, on land, and underground.
1.2- Skills
There are five types of skill categories. They are not to be confused with play steps even though they practically serve these steps. Defense [ Like health, armor, potions, food, medic or repair kits. Offense } Like guns, weapons, hand to hand combat skills. Movement > Like land, sea, space, air move speed, and maneuvers. Control ^ Like rank, decorations, communication with technology, psyche, the ability to solve puzzles, pick locks, and hacking. Strategy : Some skills that are special and penalized like team morale, and manipulating time. This also includes costless administrative information like vendor, and team with purpose of making it easier for the player to organize his or her army.
A skill cost is calculated as follows: $ = ( ! + @ + * ) x # x % /100 + & Cost$ = ( Impact! + Range@ + extension* ) x Number# x Probability% /100 + Penalty & Where !, @, *, #, & and % are properties of each skill.1.3- Properties of a skill are:
Description \ This describes the skill usually by just giving it a name. Impact ! Describes the impact of using a skill once. In other words, how much impact does the single application of this skill would have. Range @ Describes how far can the impact of this skill go. Extension * Does it have a depth, an explosion, or propagation effect? Number # How many times can this skill be applied. Probability % determines the usage probability of this skill. Use Conditions ~ Can be used to define limitations on skill use. Penalty & It should be avoided as much as possible and it is directly representing credit value to deal with very small corner cases. Cost $ How much does this unit cost based on the values of all its properties.
1.4- Benefit of teams
Organizing troops in teams increases morale which means dice + bonus when the team charges or defends. Attack speech ! gives the unit bonus (!+1) in attack. Range @ is how many people in a team. * is sacrifice speech which gives the unit bonus (!+1) in defense. Here are two ARC troopers team. Note the different skills that the two units have. ARC troopers:
1.5- Starting the battle
Fighting parties agree on a credit value. For example, 20,000 credit points for each team. One team chooses the terrain and the other takes the first turn. If conflicting roll for it. Teams can agree on objectives instead of complete annihilation. Who starts first, who picks terrain, extra credit, treasure chests, who picks budget? This is all defined in the battle template and it makes sense to divide it between contenders.
1.6- Reinforcement at the beginning of each turn
Some units can hold some extra credit to deal with smugglers and smuggle more units or resources into the battlefield. They do pay a much higher rate, but the purchase items are delivered in the middle of the game.
2- ^ Control... Commanding the army.
If Attacker has high ranking or decorated personnel s/he can choose one of them to order many units to move and attack. Here is an example: Attacker choses Sergeant Whoever to communicate with 2 Corporals and 5 Privates to launch a coordinated attack on an enemy tank. The Sergeant has !=7, *=2 as properties of his Sergeant rank skill. This means he can order up to 7 soldiers directly or through corporals and he can give up to 2 unique command streams. He also has @=20 for his radio range property. This is also true for all the Corporals and Privates. All soldiers except for one Private are within radio range so the Sergeant orders all 6 within radio range to: “Close in on the enemy tank and attack it with your heaviest weapon”. Decrease attackers' radio energy # by 1. Decrease Sergeant and Corporals command energy # by 1. Note: In puzzles and smartness decisions rank is equivalent to education level. So, for example, if someone is faced with a challenge, like outsmarting another entity or picking a lock, if her rank is higher than that of the puzzle then she can solve it. Then decrease her command energy by # 1. She can keep at it multiple times until the puzzle energy # is depleted. Signal flag, Banner, Trumpet, smoke signals, and Horn are all types of simplex communication. Computer, radio, sci-fi comm, etc. are all types of duplex communication. Here are samples of Control skills.
3- > Movement... Maneuvering in the battlefield.
To follow up on the previous example, the attacking units move closer to the target enemy tank. Each to its maximum speed per role @ but considering staying within radio range @. In this case they are ground troops and their movement elevation is basically how tall they are. This could give them a dice + bonus point while attacking if it its higher than the target unit. Some important points: After the move, decrease attackers' unit(s) move energy # by 1. Elevation gives the unit bonus (!+1) in attack. It is interpreted as air superiority. Depth gives the unit bonus (!+1) in attack. It is interpreted as stealth by tunneling or sub-marine, or maneuverability in deep space. Here are samples of Movement skills.
4- Offense... Delivering the damage.
4.1- General rules of engagement
Offense is the only step in the game the requires throwing a 10D or more (10 sided dice). Let’s continue the example: Attacker announces that its unit(s) will attack defenders' unit(s) with specific weapon(s). Attacker rolls the 10-sided die and decide the impact accuracy. Attacker might choose to use one die for all weapons, one for each, or one for every type of weapon. If the attacker has higher ground, we add 1 to the dice number. In land, sea or sky if a unit is higher than another it gets a +10% impact reward. Similar underground, under the sea surface, and in deep space, if a unit is maneuvering deeper it is awarded the same impact leverage. If one unit is higher while the other is deeper, the deeper gets the reward as deeper is usually more stealthy. If the attacker is attacking from behind, attacking fleeing enemy, or has stealth capabilities add 1 to the dice results. If the weapon is a sniper rifle or a guided missile with high accuracy, you add (1-9) points to dice based on the modified probability of that weapon. For example, if a nipper rifle has a modified probability % of 110, his means its original % 30 (for medium range weapons) was upgraded to % 110 because we will add 8 points to the die for accuracy. If defender is behind an obstacle we subtract 1 from the dice number. If defender is inside a house or vehicle we subtract 1 from the dice number. If defender is on higher grounds we subtract 1 from the dice number. If defender is inside a house or vehicle and the attacker just moved inside this same house we still subtract 1 from the dice number till the attacker kills enough units in the house to have the upper hand and then the situation is reversed. Attacker verifies the distance with a measuring meter. (To speed up the game verify the distance just before rolling dice and roll only if it is going to reach.) Attacker decreases attacking units’ ammunition. Decrease defenders' unit(s) armor then health by the weapon’s single impact ! multiplies by weapon’s accuracy (die value divided by 10 and rounded up). If defenders' unit(s) health and armor reaches 0 it dies or is destroyed. If a unit dies it cannot exercise the defense step.
4.2- Zero range combat
The range @ of hand to hand (H2H) or face to face (F2F) combat is 0 because they must be in direct contact. The probability % is 10% because it is unlikely to travel that far without being killed. At the same time, we want to make it cheaper to encourage the use of such fantasy weapon. The number # is called durability and is equivalent to ammunition. Here are samples of Movement skills.
4.3- Disarming an opponent
Instead of targeting the opponent’s health, the attacker can try to use his or her weapon (Range or melee) to disarm the opponent from one of his or her weapons. Any weapon can be used to disarm any other weapon as long as it is in range @. Attacker declares which weapon is being targeted. Both roll a D10. If the attacker gets the highest D10, the defender loses the weapon. The attacker still gets to defend itself, but gets to use two defense moves instead of one.
5- [ Defense... Taking the hit and fighting back.
If the defender unit was a house, vehicle, obstacle and got destroyed. All the units protected by it will suffer a penalty. Any remainder impact from attackers’ fire power will impact all of them. If Defenders' unit(s) is not dead, it can choose to react by: Attack back: Same attack rules apply. or Retreat: Decrease energy as per move rules. or Recover: apply healing, fixing, refueling. Decrease recover energy exactly like ammunition. For example, the target tank driver has a repair kit that can be used 3 times #=3 and each time it adds 10 health points !=10. He used that to fix the tank health by re-adding 10 health points # to the tank and decreasing his repair kits # by 1.
5.1- Extra armor
Any unit typically has health which is not really different from armor. It makes sense to have one type of health for all humans, for example, but different armor depending on the character. Armor can be extra body plating, extra shoulder, extra side shield, extra side shield, full body armor, force shield, magical barrier and more.
5.2- Crashing
One unit can move and crash into another unit as a desperate act. Simply the attack impact ! becomes the health(+armor) of the attacking unit. It gets reduced by the amount of damage it makes to the target unit. Think of health(+armor) as the weight of that unit. Here are samples of Defense skills.