Costing Out Initiative Differences

Euriochrome and I have been kicking around some ideas for what the objective 'value' of initiative might be in the game. In the process, we've discovered that there isn't going to be one value, but at least 3 major types. I think I've come up with a decent value to start with though.

The Sort Of Work That Balancing A Game Requires

Last week, I dove into the task of balancing WarStrike numerically. Having done this before at earlier stages of the project, I had a good feel for the kinds of approaches that would work best in Excel (my primary tool for this), but I didn't really have an appreciation of how involved the process would be. Or how many variables would be involved. So read on, and you'll get a feel for the kind of complexity that just four little special rules can add to the calculations for what a particular weapon range might be worth. Then you'll have a better appreciation for why so many games just don't bother trying to figure out the math behind their mechanics, and just wing it.

Taking Another Shot At Weapon Ranges

After our last test, I found myself wanting to tighten up the weapon ranges a bit. I also need to work out the costing of those ranges and their associated special rules. So I've worked up a new range chart for most of the major weapons that the human factions will use.

The Real Meaning Of A One-Point D10 Gain

As I bury myself in Excel trying to craft a meaningful costing system, I try to keep in mind something that I learned from a Flames of War player once. Which is that the most important gain is going from (In a D10 roll) a 10+, to a 9+.

Firing Through Other Units

Ok, here's some ideas on how to handle firing though other units.

Floating Initiative Test

Things got pretty crazy this week on the home front for me this week, but CaulynDarr and I were finally able to get together on Saturday for some more testing of the new turn sequence using the Meeting Engagement mission. This time we were trying out the free-floating initiative concept, along with a few other ideas.

Formalizing Some Initiative Ideas

This is how I annotate rules changes.

I've been pretty busy these last few days with parental care problems and the finishing of my son's pinewood derby car. But now I'm back to preparing for the next round of testing. Which means formalizing exactly how this whole floating initiative system is going to work.

Linking LD To A Unit's Current Initiative

Been thinking about the whole floating initiative idea some more. I've talked previously about adding a unit's current IN to their LD when rolling tests. But looking at this chart makes me think that we could just go with a version of our original LD/Nerve split. Where Nerve is replaced by a unit's current initiative, and LD just determines how many dice you get to roll to try and have at least one come up equal to or less than the current initiative.

Charting Out The D10 Toughness Test

Toughness is how many dice you roll, Firepower or Strength is what you need to roll on EVERY die to kill that model.

I haven't done a D10 version of this chart before, but here's the likelihood of killing a model of a given toughness with a given Str/FP. The zero results aren't really zero, of course. But I didn't want to have to show percentages out to 10 decimal places. Let's just say that zero means 'very unlikely'.

A More Compact AP/AR Chart

Since Eriochrome thought that my last chart had too many Armor/AP levels, I decided to see how compact I could make it. This version cuts four levels off of the Armor side, and two levels off of the weapon side. I think that this is about as compressed as I'd want to go.

Armor Values & Weapon Penetrations

Since I need to properly work up a new set of armor/penetration stats for our switch to a D10 system, I've created a couple of charts that show the armor save chart with typical weapons and armor types added as I see them happening. That way we have a basis for discussion.

First Play Test Of The New Turn Sequence

Yeah, I went a little overboard on the terrain... :)

It's been a while since we've done any actual testing on the game. Since I wanted to complete a full written version of the new turn rules before we started tearing them apart with fixes and test-derived changes. But now that we have that, I wanted to see if the new sequence worked on-table or not. So CaulynDarr headed over to help me try it out.

Infantry Weapons & Their Effects (1943)

I ran across this old American training film from 1943 that does a nice (and retrospectively entertaining) job of running down the various anti-infantry/anti-tank/anti-aircraft weapons available to US infantry during WWII. This being a film made during a war, all of the targets are, of course, Germans. With all of the patriotic "oh yeah" relish one would expect every time they're killed. Oftentimes hilariously as the actors clutch their middles and keel forward.

Turn Chapter Introduction

Fairly straightforward introduction to the now-complete chapter. There's another chapter before this one called 'Beginning a Game', which will go into specifics on basic setup, picking the attacker, placement of obstacles, etc. So I don't need to go into any of that here.

Melee Section Is Done: Part 3

Here's the last two pages of the Melee Section. Please check it over carefully!

Melee Section Is Done: Part 2

You've seen most of this one before, although the layout has changed thanks to the building rules being yanked out into their own section. Some of the terminology in the rules did change to reflect the Melee Groups -> Melee Sets switch.

Melee Section Is Done: Part 1

Happy New Year!

As of now the Melee Section is Complete. I've yanked out all off the Building (and most of the obstacle) rules from the Shooting and Melee sections and gathered them into their own "Advanced Rules" section for now. I've also done all of the reformatting that action subsequently required to the Movement and Melee sections, and am still working on the reformatting of the Shooting Section. plus a few tweaks here and there.