Making a balanced 40k esque tabletop wargame

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fectin
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Post by fectin »

Also, what does "balanced" mean? Units are equal? Points/effectivity is constant (ha)? Different factions are equivalent? Is RPS balanced, or do you need every option viable against every other? Etc.
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Post by Mistborn »

fectin wrote:Also, what does "balanced" mean? Units are equal? Points/effectivity is constant (ha)? Different factions are equivalent? Is RPS balanced, or do you need every option viable against every other? Etc.
I'd assume that it would be MtG style, every faction has several working army lists and while your list will have good and bad matchups none are insurmountable.
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Post by TheFlatline »

FrankTrollman wrote:Dean, there's totally already a 40k rule that works like that (from the 3rd edition meat grinder mission) and it does not even remotely feel like you're facing an unending horde. First of all because battle is quite limited in the number of turns allotted to it. Secondly because reinforcements necessarily trickle in and have large gaps between them and the front line. And thirdly, because it creates a perverse incentive for the other player to avoid actually destroy your units.

Once you conceive of zerg rushes as shock attacks rather than very short ranged trading of volleys, then zerg rushes become tactical automatically. Zerglings, then, are expendable troops that you use up to force enemies to cede ground and take morale checks. If your opponent has troops that are low morale, you might be able to spend a bunch of zerg lives to route them. If your opponent is holding a particularly valuable piece of dirt, you might be able to expend a bunch of zerg lives to take it. And of course, if the enemy has nowhere to go, you might be able to spend your zergs to destroy them outright. But if the enemy is disciplined and has places to fall back to, you'll end up spending your zerglings for worthless centimeters of dirt.

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This is basically the intent of cavalry vs infantry in the early Napoleonic era. The "counter" was to form disciplined squares.

I'd add to this. If you shock attack troops and they have nowhere left to retreat to, they immediately take attrition.

This makes hammer and anvil tactics incredibly lethal. It also makes flanking pretty important.
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Post by tussock »

Infantry squares defeated shock cav because they were better at close combat. There's just a lot more pointy bits per meter of front line. With Zerg rushes it's the other way, you've got an opponent who's better than you at close combat and better than you at moving.

To which the solution is more dakka.
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Post by Laertes »

It's also because horses dislike charging into hedges of sharp pointy things. There was some debate about this at the time, including a considerable belief from old-school cavalrymen and Jominians that the horse would become "inflamed by the spirit of ardour of its rider and throw itself willingly upon the bayonets", but to a modern reader that smacks of so much Jominian bullshit.

If zerg are not afraid of charging into formations, and they are better at close combat fighting, then forming tight squares would be the worst thing you could do. A Heinrici-style defense comprising widely spaced, mutually supporting "hedgehogs" would be your best bet against them.
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Post by Username17 »

Lord Mistborn wrote:
fectin wrote:Also, what does "balanced" mean? Units are equal? Points/effectivity is constant (ha)? Different factions are equivalent? Is RPS balanced, or do you need every option viable against every other? Etc.
I'd assume that it would be MtG style, every faction has several working army lists and while your list will have good and bad matchups none are insurmountable.
Basically this. At least five factions that each play differently, and enough intra-faction RPS and synergy to make combined arms armies a thing, while also making sure that the available missions are all completable by any likely list fielded by any of the factions.

That's a tall order, but I think it is doable.

As for factions, obviously you're going to want 'humans' and 'bugs,' but the specifics of those might vary a lot. There is support for highly elite humans in power armor, and for scummy human soldiers sent to die in groups. Either or both of those concepts could be in one or more factions. Factions are going to vary by unit eliteness, overall mobility, available weapons, and vulnerability to various kinds of attack. You could do all that with different flavors of human if you wanted to, but you probably don't.

One thing I'd make sure to minimalize is high altitude air forces. Those things exist, and they are important for war, but they have no place on a 4x4 table. My thought would be to have the default game be a skirmish in a city and simply declare aerial bombardment to be moot.

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Post by Laertes »

You could just fold artillery, air support, orbital bombardments and other such things into a generic "support fire from off-table assets" concept that does very little damage but suppresses like a mofo. It could be a good way to encourage people to come out of their defensive positions, because otherwise the God of War is going to come calling and is going to keep pounding them.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Laertes wrote:...generic "support fire from off-table assets"...
That's no fun in a miniatures game, because its a notable power not attributable to a toy on the table.
... a good way to encourage people to come out of their defensive positions, because otherwise the God of War is going to come calling and is going to keep pounding them.
You know what... just, no, no, no.

I recall 40K options/eras/scenarios/bullshit that had random orbital strikes on terrain pieces and "defensive positions". And it was a bunch of bullshit that took a tactically weak game and made decisions, terrain and position matter even less to the point of not at all.

Things that "encourage people to come out of defensive positions" should be objectives and abilities attached to enemy (or your own) units that need appropriate positioning, range and risk to go off. THAT is how you make decisions, positioning and terrain that matters. Generic off table bombardment from "the god of war come calling" undermines that and turns it into a mindless "scatter dice lol random hur hur hur" time.

And really, as for excuses for what to do with high speed aircraft, off table bombardment, and why weapon ranges aren't "anything you can see". First of all you just don't need excuses for all those things. Second of all you don't need all those things. Some things just fall outside of the scale and scope of the game (high speed aircraft), maybe they exist, who cares they aren't involved in the events the game covers. No reason required, they aren't at home right now, whatever. Some things are obvious liberties taken for the benefit of game play (short weapon ranges) because it helps make positioning and ranges an interesting thing the game can care about more, it needs no other excuse.
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Post by Koumei »

Honestly, you can just have hovercraft that look a lot like aircraft and hang pretty low to the ground, moving with all the speed of a helicopter that's at traffic level and trying not to hit anything. That lets you have the nice toys, and you can see a good reason for them (hovercraft tell bumpy roads and man-height barricades to get fucked) but they're restricted to the same speed as APCs (or worse).
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Post by Laertes »

PhoneLobster wrote:
Laertes wrote:...generic "support fire from off-table assets"...
That's no fun in a miniatures game, because its a notable power not attributable to a toy on the table.
So have it be a thing connected to a model on the table. Have it be a thing that your commander / communications relay / spotter / satellite uplink can do. That way the enemy's snipers can shoot them to deny you of support, you have to balance bringing them forward with protecting them, and so on.
PhoneLobster wrote:
... a good way to encourage people to come out of their defensive positions, because otherwise the God of War is going to come calling and is going to keep pounding them.
You know what... just, no, no, no.

I recall 40K options/eras/scenarios/bullshit that had random orbital strikes on terrain pieces and "defensive positions". And it was a bunch of bullshit that took a tactically weak game and made decisions, terrain and position matter even less to the point of not at all.

Things that "encourage people to come out of defensive positions" should be objectives and abilities attached to enemy (or your own) units that need appropriate positioning, range and risk to go off. THAT is how you make decisions, positioning and terrain that matters. Generic off table bombardment from "the god of war come calling" undermines that and turns it into a mindless "scatter dice lol random hur hur hur" time.
I agree with you, scatter dice need to die in a fire. Game-determining randomness has no place in a competitive game.

What I'm suggesting isn't scatter dice, it's timing. It's "put a counter on a place on the table. Next turn, things near that counter take a load of suppression / some damage." You can say that you need to get a spotter or commander or whatever to nearby it to place a beacon or shine a markerlight or something, so it becomes an ability that your guys have. Then you can pound an objective over and over again to stop people taking it, which is a tactical puzzle that they can solve by killing the spotters with their snipers or assassins or jetbikes or whatever. Then you need to use your line infantry to protect your spotters, and suddenly the game has a paper-scissors-stone element in it.

Artillery shouldn't kill a lot of guys. It should drive people into cover, cutting down on their mobility and firepower, and allowing you to advance on them with your troops who will actually do the killing. This creates a mechanic that you can then exploit for faction definition. For example, the horde might be able to lose more guys in order to ignore the suppression. The fast-but-fragile faction might be extremely vulnerable to it, making their mobility a survival skill as much as a weapon. The very defensive faction might be able to resist its firepower reduction but not its mobility reduction, so their units turn into immobile strongpoints when you pound them. And so on.

Artillery needs to be a game of trying to predict where the other guy is going to be next turn. As you point out, that involves actual tactics and decision making, rather than pure randomness.
PhoneLobster wrote:And really, as for excuses for what to do with high speed aircraft, off table bombardment, and why weapon ranges aren't "anything you can see". First of all you just don't need excuses for all those things. Second of all you don't need all those things. Some things just fall outside of the scale and scope of the game (high speed aircraft), maybe they exist, who cares they aren't involved in the events the game covers. No reason required, they aren't at home right now, whatever. Some things are obvious liberties taken for the benefit of game play (short weapon ranges) because it helps make positioning and ranges an interesting thing the game can care about more, it needs no other excuse.
Be wary of taking too many liberties and writing too much fluff around what's convenient for mechanics. Even in moderate amounts, this leads you to "drive closer, I want to hit them with my sword" syndrome: it works, but it feels... silly. Games Workshop actually dodged that bullet fairly well, in that their games are camp and over-the-top but have a certain amount of internal setting consistency.
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Post by Username17 »

While I think it obvious that some weapons such as flame throwers and pistols should have limited range, I see no reason why an assault rifle shouldn't just shoot across the board if need be. The basic weapon of any futuristic war game must be something very much like an assault rifle or people's minds rebel. And note for this purpose it matters not at all whether the pov faction's assault riflelike weapon is agyrojet, a laser, a sonic pulsar, or a slug thrower, merely that it recognizably does things an assault rifle can do. An assault rifle can be used in many ways, and firing at distant targets in the open is certainly one of them. All other weapons are compared to the 'basic' assault rifle, with perhaps the gauss rifle being better at distant fire (at the cost of being unable to use sustained fire in shock and cqc action), while the machine pistol is useless at distance firing (but more deadly in cqc).

So to wrap your mind around what special weapons are good for, you have to first plot out what the basic assault rifle does. First of all, you can shoot people with it. Close targets are cut to ribbons, far targets are moderately annoyed, and targets in the middle are intermediately threatened. Secondly, it does sustained fire. This can be used to repel shock attacks and assaults on a held position, but it can also be used as covering fire to protect moving or assaulting allies from enemy sustained fire. Thirdly, it can be fired on the move as an assault weapon, inflicting casualties during shock actions. Fourth, it can be used to modest effect during actual cqc in tranches or buildings. And lastly, to a limited degree it can be used as an anti material weapon. No use against tanks or other hardened targets, but able to take out a motorcycle or whatever.

That's a pretty versatile weapon, and there are obvious ways that weapons can differ, over and above having different profiles at short, medium, or long range. The heavy machine gun, for example, does better sustained fire but is not an effective assault weapon. The anti material rifle is good against armor but doesn't do sustained fire at all.

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Post by OgreBattle »

Laertes wrote:I would be really, really interested in participating in this project. Just sayin'. I came to the Den to take part in interesting design stuff, not to rant about geology and left-wing politics. This would be a lot of fun....
C) Decide what the size you're designing for is and then write that into the fluff. Part of the reason 40k turned out as clunky it did is that it was designed for small-unit commando skirmish battles and then people kept using it for immense meat grinders instead and they didn't have the guts to rewrite the core assumptions of the game to reflect that.

D) Decide whether the game is going to be about specialising or about generalising. I'm going to use the word tentpole here, which is a term in my industry but maybe not in yours so let me define it: a tentpole is the highest point in your framework, so the tent ends up that tall. Other tent poles of a lesser height are meaningless. For example, in D&D the guy with the best Pick Lock score is the tentpole for that ability. If someone else has a lesser Pick Lock score then they wasted their points: the group already has its level of competence in that sphere defined.
Glad you're enthused. Yeah the game mechanics discussions are why I'm here. As for the scale of the game, I really disliked 40k adding in goddamn jet fighters to a game where guys powerpunch one another. If there are flying vehicles they'll be more like hovercraft or a power armor with thrusters. I'd like to aim for a M:tG level of variety where you can specialize, but there are also things that can completely shut down your specialization.

Foxwarrior wrote: It is extremely important that you have an interesting objective, mass slaughter makes the game drag on too much.

Morale checks have a high return in amusing story moments when retelling battles.
Definitely going to have capturing ground rules. Morale too, at the very least as a 'forced movement' kind of thing.
Dean wrote: 2: The minutia of movement should matter as little as possible.
Yeah, going with the 6"/12"/18"/24"/etc. movement on boards that are at least 4x4, and if both sides set their units really far up they can get their slow guys into the shortest range of combat on the 2nd turn. It's what I'm familiar with based on Warhammer.
Koumei wrote:You have your own mini production facilities? Awesome! (I can only assume you do, seeing as nobody would try to make a minis game without this.)...
You should probably just have a unit act "as a unit", where they all use the same weapon and reach the same point and the whole unit is in or out of cover and they can either all attack in melee or all stand there uselessly, and it's not made up of individual guys. Because that saves a lot of time.
I know folks that do in China, though you can't do much without the funds to do it. As for the 'units', I've got squads of 3 in mind as the average unit size.

unit of 1= a suit of powered armor with a machine gun and rocket launcher
unit of 3= Tacticool operators operating 1 or 2 special weapons
unit of 5= 'horde' of not-orks dressed like mad max villains, one has a big shoota
FrankTrollman wrote: In any case, in the shock maneuver, you definitely are not measuring melee range on models, you're measuring movement through the target.
You figure being 'locked in close combat' should be taken right out of the game and one side should always break? I'm aiming for a game that finishes in 3-6 turns.
So to wrap your mind around what special weapons are good for, you have to first plot out what the basic assault rifle does. First of all, you can shoot people with it. Close targets are cut to ribbons, far targets are moderately annoyed, and targets in the middle are intermediately threatened. Secondly, it does sustained fire. This can be used to repel shock attacks and assaults on a held position, but it can also be used as covering fire to protect moving or assaulting allies from enemy sustained fire. Thirdly, it can be fired on the move as an assault weapon, inflicting casualties during shock actions. Fourth, it can be used to modest effect during actual cqc in tranches or buildings. And lastly, to a limited degree it can be used as an anti material weapon. No use against tanks or other hardened targets, but able to take out a motorcycle or whatever.
Sounds like a good base to work with.
Now how about resolving flanking fire? 40k doesn't touch this at all, but from the little I've read of modern warfare, being shot at from multiple angles is a big part of a firefight.

Image
From http://www.everycitizenasoldier.org/id42.html which covers basic infantry tactics.

How about the structure of the turns? Warhammer goes with "I move my whole army, now it's your turn", though I've heard of other games where you only move X units, or everyone has a movement phase, then a shooting phase, etc.
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Post by Lokathor »

Ever played MageKnight? You get a number of actions each turn based on the battle size. Each action can make a unit move / attack / whatever. But you don't get enough actions to make all your units go every turn, and I think there was also a rule where a unit that goes on two turns in a row takes a point of damage. Also, formations of units could move or shoot as a unit, but you could have an individual unit move/shoot on its own if you wanted. Such a system might work for this kind of game as well.
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Post by TheNotoriousAMP »

Personally I would suggest basing the game off of movement and the suppression there of. Normally the main way you foil someone's goals is by causing casualties, which is 1- highly unrealistic and 2- renders most models into wound counters while the ones who aren't basically can tank oceans of lead without problems. As people have suggested before, make the games objective based and ideally cover dependent. Assume people are in cover and instead make it that a 'hit' is more like something that forces someone to hunker down or scares them. That way the game becomes more about where your troops need to go as well as paying more attention to the plastic crack you lavished time and cash on.

I would use an order marker type system and simultaneous turn resolution. That way you're not the individual spirit behind each unit, but are instead a co trying to get your orders accomplished. This can help separate factions by their ability to react to things or work in smaller groups. It makes no sense for a horde of orks to be as disciplined and coordinated as a tyranid swarm.

A suggestion for the order marker system would be to give each squad a movement goal at the beginning of the game, with the ability to modify this following a test. Combat occurs either through direct orders or through contact. You should be represented by a CO figure on the table, with rationing your attention and leadership being a key part of the game. Divisional assets should be pre planned depending on the army. More technological or flexible armies should be able to call in barrages with less warm up time, hordes should need to have their fire missions entirely pre planned. I'm a little tired to go into full details but I will post an expanded version of what I'm seeing tomorrow.

Thirdly, I kinda suggest this matrix for factions. Earth-Water-Fire, representing a general balance of staying power, fluidity, destructiveness. You can then expand this to Earth-Mud-Water-Steam-Fire-Steel. In WW2 terms (most games are basically futuristic upgrades of WW2 combat):

Earth (tough, reliable, hard to shift): English and American Armies. Tons of fire support, but slow moving and lacking aggressiveness. Hard to shift and very well supplied, but don't really destroy the enemy and can be slow exploiting victories. More designed towards holding strongpoints than entire defensive lines.

Mud (slow, suffocating, tiring but traversible): Nationalist China. Much better at holding lots of objectives than trying to take them. Lacks precision coordination though and can have problems reacting to new openings.

Water (fast, fluid, can find weakspots but needs time to wear objectives down): Imperial Japan. You're not going to be blasting holes in a defensive line with this one. That being said, with fast moving troops and aggressive spirit, you will keep moving and can find weak spots to crack the foundation of defensive positions.

Steam (fast, powerful, fragile): There's no real equivalent to this in WW2 terms, but Communist China in the Korean War works great. A stiff breeze can save you, but otherwise they will swarm you and destroy you. If you lose the initiative you're fucked, but if you keep your cool they are highly vulnerable.

Fire (destructive, volatile): Early war Germany. You don't really have a technological advantage, but you've got an edge that allows you to quickly apply your firepower to where it needs to go. Gaps in the enemy line are quickly filled and you are always pressing the advantage. On the other hand, you're vulnerable to being smothered in the counter attack.

Steel (tough, potent, quick moving): Late War Germany. Tank for tank you will win. Unfortunately, its not tank for tank. You've got firepower, you've got toughness, you've got speed and they've got a lot more. You're now even more reliant on counter attacks and local initiative.

Have each faction occupy one of the six and let them branch out to either side a little to give them more room for list building flexibility. That way each faction has a strong core, without seeming locked in.
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Post by Dean »

If the number of minis you are working with is large then just go for "my turn your turn". If the numbers you're planning are small enough then you can do something like "Every model/unit has a Leadership rating between 1 and 10. Move units from lowest leadership to highest.". How many models do you want on the table, that's a question I and several other people want to know because it's pretty important.
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Post by Username17 »

Alternate squad activation is still better than my turn / your turn even when the number of minis on the table is large.

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Post by Laertes »

The activation system is what broke Epic Armageddon. Gaming it to ensure that your units activated in the right order was so important that it became the main component of strategy and one of the main things influencing how people built lists. As such, I would exercise caution with how I wrote those rules. My turn / your turn (known as IGoUGo in designer circles) is ugly but it's not as hackable.

OgreBattle:
Flanking and enfilading fire sound like an excellent idea. It needs an easy, no nonsense test to see if units are being flanked though, otherwise we're back to arguments between players which don't feel any different from ones about cover and line of sight.
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Post by Username17 »

While doing some variation of igougo is necessary, the big point is that when I go, I should be activating one unit plus whatever support that unit can draw upon. And not, for example, moving and shooting with my entire faction. More Warzone, less Warhammer.

The game is only going to go like six turns, it's unacceptable for the player who goes first to have an advantage that proportionately large.

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Post by Laertes »

That is precisely the thing that dominated Epic Armageddon's metagame. If you had more separate units (more "activations" in the jargon of the game) then it would mean that you'd end up with every round ending with your opponent having used all her units and you still having a few unactivated, which would mean that you could get a series of actions which couldn't be responded to or interrupted. This was considered to be a very strong position and it genuinely was, because the game had been balanced on the assumption that each move would be followed by your opponent's move, and when this stopped being true it meant that high-risk high-reward strategies turned into low-risk high-reward strategies.

Therefore players would build their armies consisting of a lot of "weak activations" like small units of Rough Riders which you could use early in the round while the opponent still had moves to make, and then at the end when they've run out of moves, you would use the activations you actually cared about, like your Titans or entire armoured companies or suchlike.

When two such lists met it was even more degenerate, because all strategy centred around wiping out your opponent's smaller units in order to deny them the ability to postpone their strong activations. It became a very abstract game centred around denying the opponent the ability to manipulate the initiative system, rather than actually fighting a battle in a way that looks like battle fighting.

So no. That way lies madness. I have walked that road and it is not one that I wish to follow.

Where Frank is right, however, is that there should not be a first-turn advantage that allows a game-winning alpha strike. But really, that's just a matter of making sure the armies start out of range of one another.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Laertes wrote:If you had more separate units (more "activations" in the jargon of the game)
... then just don't give out extra activations for free with extra units?

There is no reason why every unit should activate every round.

The only motivation that will then place on you is that armies would be best at or around the same number of units as unit activations. And that's fine because that's just a motivational force to hover around a similar scale.
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Post by Laertes »

That's an interesting concept. It's almost chess-like, because by forcing your opponent to concentrate on a different area of the table you end up making them spend their activations there rather than elsewhere. It also means that the turns go by quickly regardless of army bloat.

It's not the direction I would go, but I think it would be a fun game. If you resurrect the old PhoneLobster Chews On Wargame Scenery thread, I'd like to see how you develop it.
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Post by Username17 »

Whether it is more advantageous to have more points worth of your army go earlier in the turn or to have more units able to act sequentially without rebuttal depends hugely on the specifics of your game. In general, combination maneuvers favor multiple actions at the end of the turn, while large casualty infliction supports larger point totals condensed into smaller numbers of units and getting your turn's actions in as quickly as possible.

But regardless of where the incentives lie, if you don't want that consideration, you don't have to have it matter. For example, you can give every player the same number of activatable units at each point total. Just as wh40k requires one HQ and two troop picks,in a detachment, you could require exactly 10 picks in a thousand point detachment (or whatever).

Alternately, you could force one player to activate two units in a row whenever they have more than one more unactivated unit than their opponent.

Alternately, you could give players a set (or semi random) number of activations each turn, and have it not depend on the number of fielded units at all.

Players getting a free table by running their opponent out of actions is not necessarily a problem. But if it really bothers you, with just a minimum amount of design work, it doesn't have to happen.

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Post by Laertes »

On the working assumption that we can design to avoid manipulation of the initiative mechanic becoming a strongly dominant strategy, I am happy to move forward with an activations concept rather than an igougo.

I feel intuitively that the number of units you divide your soldiers into should not matter; that is, that two five-man Combat Squads should have the same total firepower as a single ten-man Tactical Squad. The small squads might have more tactical flexibility and the big squad might have more morale, but they should be more or less identical choices. Locking people out of using five of those guys's firepower because of lack of actications just feels weird: it's a case where the game mechanics and the fluff are in violent opposition.

Is there some way to do both of these things?
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Post by Username17 »

If you want splitting units to provide greater tactical flexibility and you want to prevent one side or the other from getting a very large number of actions 'left over' to be either taken at the end or skipped, that is doable.

The first way would be to give each player a fixed number of platoons, which could in turn be divided into however many squads and be attached whatever support units you could afford. Then you'd activate one platoon each turn until the round was over. Thus, until someone got a platoon routed or destroyed, it would involve zero people being lapped.

The second way is to have people activate their squads two or three at a time if their number of queued units exceeds their opponent's by a sufficient number. You'll get increased tactical flexibility by cutting your units in two, but since you'll then be activating two mini units per turn compared to your opponent's only one, you'll still end the round at the same time.

-Username17
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Post by Grek »

So, something like...

Each player gets 4 platoons worth 1000 points each. The initiative order is:

Player 1 moves platoon 1A
Player 2 moves platoon 2A
Player 1 moves platoon 1B
Player 2 moves platoon 2B
Player 1 moves platoon 1C
Player 2 moves platoon 2C
Player 1 moves platoon 1D
Player 2 moves platoon 2D
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