Random thought on the issue of mechs facing off

Private forum for DragonMech Battles development.

Moderators: walrusjester, mythfish

Post Reply
goodmangames
Cold-Hearted Immortal
Posts: 2704
Joined: Sun Dec 01, 2002 12:41 pm
Location: San Jose, CA

Random thought on the issue of mechs facing off

Post by goodmangames »

On the subject of mechs standing off, facing each other, and just slugging it out... I was playing some Star Wars minis recently and that's always a risk when both sides get Jedi. I started thinking about parallels to DMB and why, in SWM, you rarely get the stand-still-and-fight-it-out issue. A couple reasons came to mind, and some of these may have application to DMB:

* Cover from others firing at you. As long as there are several characters on the board, someone is shooting, so the melee fighters maneuver to get cover from that person.

* Attacks with limited range. SWM has lots of special powers w/ range of 1, 3, or 6 squares, sometimes following targeting rules and sometimes just line of sight... and the creatures that have those abilities are often the same ones who have close-range attacks. Thus, the ones most likely to stand still and slug it out have an incentive to move around in order to catch more bad guys in their short-range attacks.

* Initiative order and multiple attacks. In SWM, many creatures get multiple attacks only if they don't move. So you want to be the one receiving an attack, not having to move forward and attack. This results in lots of maneuvering to force your opponent to be the one to move, sometimes through initiative results and sometimes through threatening with other characters.
Joseph Goodman
Goodman Games
www.goodman-games.com
walrusjester
Hard-Bitten Adventurer
Posts: 150
Joined: Tue Jun 22, 2004 9:02 am
Location: Surrounded by corn

Post by walrusjester »

I don't know how I went a week without noticing this, but these are all useful ideas. We've already incorporated cover to an extent. I can see some value to the other two as well, although they require some finagling in order to avoid our core problem - otherwise they could turn into rewards for standing still. One difference between DMB and SWM is that, as our rules stand, each DMB player has a smaller number of units, each of which is relatively powerful. You have the reverse with SWM, which leads to different unit values... but these are still useful ideas. I believe in scavenging good ideas from other games.
DragonMech line developer, freelance writer, tall guy named Matt.
goodmangames
Cold-Hearted Immortal
Posts: 2704
Joined: Sun Dec 01, 2002 12:41 pm
Location: San Jose, CA

Post by goodmangames »

walrusjester wrote:I don't know how I went a week without noticing this, but these are all useful ideas. We've already incorporated cover to an extent. I can see some value to the other two as well, although they require some finagling in order to avoid our core problem - otherwise they could turn into rewards for standing still. One difference between DMB and SWM is that, as our rules stand, each DMB player has a smaller number of units, each of which is relatively powerful. You have the reverse with SWM, which leads to different unit values... but these are still useful ideas. I believe in scavenging good ideas from other games.
Random thought: many SWM squads also consist of only a few characters (a couple powerful Jedi can fill up a 200 point squad fast), but there's always room in SWM for small fry to open up doors, soak up shots, force the enemy to waste a shot on the wrong target, etc. -- so even the armies with only a few big guys often contain a couple grunts. In DMB, you in theory have a role for these in the storyline: aside from individual single-pilot mechs, there are infantry, support crews, mech tribes following behind, rust riders lurking on the edge waiting to scavenge, etc. If there are options for small-point-cost secondary characters, who can interfere with the action enough to affect stand-off fights, that might make the game more interesting.

There could even be a rule that at least X% of your army has to be dedicated to support troops -- maybe this applies only to armies over a certain point cost -- to reflect the need for support crews, extra fuel, and so on.

(This also reminds me of the old GW Epic rules where there were plenty of titans, but they were always accompanied by support troops.)

One other factor that encourages movement rather than stand-offs is area effect weapons, especially those with a short range. It creates an incentive to attack and then retreat past 6 hexes, so your opponent can't use his 6-hex electro-blast...
Joseph Goodman
Goodman Games
www.goodman-games.com
Post Reply

Return to “DragonMech Battles Development”