Making a balanced 40k esque tabletop wargame

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Laertes
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Post by Laertes »

TheNotoriousAMP wrote:To be fair, even today most combat squads are basically "the machine gunner and his far less useful buddies".
I'd like to disagree with that, on the ground that if that was true then armies would consist of every dude carrying an LMG. Modern British fireteams have one LMG per four guys; the army are professionals and I am not, so I assume that they've tested this and found that one in four is the optimal ratio and any more LMGs would actually be less useful. Possibly it's to do with ammunition carrying capacity, possibly cost, whatever. The point is, real fireteams are not "the machinegunner and his three mates", they're "those four guys who, between them, have the correct ratio of machine guns to guys."
I think the core question in this is whether or not we want to have vehicles playing an important part in the game. If no, then the squads have to be designed around what their weapons do to enemy infantry and the individual roles in ensuring movement and establishing a base of fire. If yes, then individual roles matter a lot less and its more about rifle/bigger faster firing rifle/anti tank shit.

Personally, I don't think that armored vehicles belong in games under battalion level. It just makes it too much about list building, as you're not sure whether your opponent is taking armor or not and thus have to plan accordingly. Plus, armor would mess up the normal flow of movement, considering they can basically cross the field of play in about 45 seconds.
I'd like to include transport vehicles, because that gives the game a cool dynamic. As you point out, they can cross the field of play in the time it takes to empty a magazine, which means it allows extremely fast-flowing battlefield-taxi style tactics. Full on AFVs, maybe less so.

As you point out though, we need to decide this, and decide it now.
I'd keep the core of things infantry vs infantry and maybe include vehicles later.
If we're including vehicles at all, we need to design them in from the get-go. Incrementalism is bad with things this fundamental.
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Post by TheNotoriousAMP »

Laertes wrote:I'd like to disagree with that, on the ground that if that was true then armies would consist of every dude carrying an LMG. Modern British fireteams have one LMG per four guys; the army are professionals and I am not, so I assume that they've tested this and found that one in four is the optimal ratio and any more LMGs would actually be less useful. Possibly it's to do with ammunition carrying capacity, possibly cost, whatever. The point is, real fireteams are not "the machinegunner and his three mates", they're "those four guys who, between them, have the correct ratio of machine guns to guys."
Good point, though most military doctrine at the fireteam level is based on the squad support weapon being the key casualty causer, the the other three men's basic role being to protect, help serve ammo and scout out enemies for the support weapon. Basically everyone copied German WW2 infantry doctrine.

What could be an interesting game mechanic would be the separation of factions based on fire team or squad based tactics, sort of like what we have now, with NATO troops operating in fire teams and most other armies relying upon squads, mostly thanks to lack of NCO's, amongst other things. The increased flexibility of fire teams vs the resiliency of squads and the trade off within. Especially if we are working at platoon level, you can definitely have this effect a measurable change.

What I'd aim for is more of an rpg style system where officer point buys make up the major part of list building. Most armies work on a pretty standardized framework at anything below battalion level, so a 40k style weapon buy system would be a little strange. Instead, you could make officer and nco traits and levels be a core part of the game. That way, you balance fire teams vs squads by having the increased expense of skilled NCO's and the need for more really good leaders at lower levels. This helps minimize list building for materiel (you can't do shit because you didn't remember a lascannon and thus got fucked by the meta) while maximizing list building choices tactics wise (and allowing you to redesign your army without having to buy new models).
I'd like to include transport vehicles, because that gives the game a cool dynamic. As you point out, they can cross the field of play in the time it takes to empty a magazine, which means it allows extremely fast-flowing battlefield-taxi style tactics. Full on AFVs, maybe less so.

As you point out though, we need to decide this, and decide it now.
The only thing is that troops can already cross the gameboard in a turn. Battle taxis mostly work to 1- protect troops on the way there and 2- move them quickly on a strategic level. 2 is irrelevant in a platoon level game and 1 basically means that anti armor weapons become necessary in list building. In game, battle taxis tend to be there because movement is artificially slow and you need it to speed them up. You could have a system of platoon assets for heavy weapons. These could be a pool of items that you chose from before deployment. You could create your list and then set aside any portion of points that you like for these assets. That way you have to balance known's (your list) vs preparing for the unknown. A player could bring armor to force his opponent to invest in anti-tank, therefore sacrificing artillery. You could balance this with a recon mechanic. Before deployment you roll on recon and depending on how you do, you get a selection of things. For example, you could spend some recon points on questions (do you have armor, IFV's, ect?) or you could spend it on giving your troops movement benefits, or preferential terrain placement.

So, the flow chart would be:

(at home): build list, buy fire teams and squads at set lists, choices in leaders and heavy weapons at platoon level. Decide on how much you want to spend on company and battalion level assets.

(game)
Deploy terrain
Determine recon points: (ask questions, shift terrain ect)
Choose high level assets
Deploy troops
If we're including vehicles at all, we need to design them in from the get-go. Incrementalism is bad with things this fundamental.
Agreed.
Last edited by TheNotoriousAMP on Wed Jul 16, 2014 7:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

I'm not sure I agree that heavy weapons are the cause of most casualties - at least not among infantry teams. Heavy weapons are often used for suppression while other infantry move into an advantageous position.

Do you have any statistics to support your assertion after World War I?
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Post by TheNotoriousAMP »

deaddmwalking wrote:I'm not sure I agree that heavy weapons are the cause of most casualties - at least not among infantry teams. Heavy weapons are often used for suppression while other infantry move into an advantageous position.

Do you have any statistics to support your assertion after World War I?
No one has really gone through and crunched the numbers, but the US Army Field Manual and James Dunnigan's "How to Make War" both place the light machine gunner as the primary casualty causer within an infantry team.

The German's did the same thing, they explicitly acknowledged (unlike most of the allied nations) the importance of the machine gun post WW1 and designed their infantry squads as essentially an ammo carrying and bodyguard unit for the squad heavy machine gun.
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Post by Username17 »

According to This Vietnam War Thingy, 51% of deaths were caused by small arms fire in the Vietnam War, as compared to roughly a third in Korea and WW2. As I understand it, ratios are even higher in more recent conflicts, which have tended to be even more retail oriented and less about battle lines and shit.

So I don't think it would be at all weird for a majority of causalities to be inflicted by assault rifles in a futuristic war game.

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Post by TheNotoriousAMP »

FrankTrollman wrote:According to This Vietnam War Thingy, 51% of deaths were caused by small arms fire in the Vietnam War, as compared to roughly a third in Korea and WW2. As I understand it, ratios are even higher in more recent conflicts, which have tended to be even more retail oriented and less about battle lines and shit.

So I don't think it would be at all weird for a majority of causalities to be inflicted by assault rifles in a futuristic war game.

-Username17
Light machine guns are considered to be small arms, so they would be included in that 51%. That being said, it would be a mistake to base a futuristic war game on those lines of stats. The ratios are only higher because most conflicts lately have been 1rst vs 3rd world or 3rd vs 3rd. We have never really seen two, modern, fully equipped, forces duke it out barring Yom Kippur and the 7 day war. The closest we can really come to a 2nd vs 2nd world war would be the Ethiopian civil war or the Iran-Iraq war. In both cases we really don't have solid numbers, but artillery played a decisive role in the latter and a fairly important role in the former. The Persian Gulf war is also an excellent example of why, in a toe to toe fight, the rifle is relatively meaningless. There it was all about armor, airpower and artillery. Of course, those are beyond the scope of this game, but just want to point that out.

Within this futuristic game, unless we are designing it around a guerilla war, we are assuming that we are seeing an upgraded Cold War like situation gone hot. Two, mechanized, industrial and fully equipped armies going at it. In this case, unlike in the matter of the hide and seek fights such as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, where its all about patrols and occupation, the gloves are off. Two smaller parts of independent formations are clashing over an objective with support from battalion level assets. Machine guns and mortars are going to rule the day here, even at a platoon level.

This sort of illustrates why people just tend to make futuristic games WW2/Korea in SPAACE. Because you really don't see the type of situations occurring in a 40k like game that often these days.
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Post by Laertes »

I read through some books about South Africa's war in Angola, where we and our allied militias fought the Cubans and their allied militias. Among militia-on-militia clashes, most of the casualties were caused by AK47s; among formed troop vs formed troop infantry clashes (of which there were not many), hand grenades were the big decider. LMGs were mostly used to suppress defenders while the assault troops got up close enough to throw grenades into their foxholes.

Artillery is, as always, the decider; but in serious battles artillery tends to suppress rather than destroy formations. What makes it deadly is that it can keep pounding you as long as the spotters can dial it in, and there's not much you can do about it.

Are we going to have artillery in the game? At this level, battalion mortars and division artillery are more or less identical: they're off-map assets either way.
Last edited by Laertes on Wed Jul 16, 2014 9:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by OgreBattle »

On the modern 4 man fireteam, the roles (using loose terminology) are....

-Grenadier that can fire in an arc over obstacles
-Machinegunner that can lay down suppression fire with plenty of ammo
-Leader* that coordinates team and leads by example
-Scout/spotter/ammo carrying guy, sometimes becomes the MARKSMAN of the team with an enhanced accuracy rifle whose job is to pick off high value targets like enemy machinegunners and leaders.

*In the marines the fireteam leader is the grenadier, in the army the grenadier is not the fireteam leader.

Reading a book on fireteam tactics (I think US marine guide) it talks about how the grenadier+machinegun creates 'DILEMMAS'. If you are being shot at by a machinegun you find cover. If you have a grenade incoming you leave the area you are in. But if you are being shot at by machinegun fire AND a grenade is coming down on you you have a dilemma, either get hit by the grenade blast or venture out of cover into machinegun fire.

There's also been talk in the US marines to remove the machinegun and give everyone higher rate of fire riflesi instead, because the marines are meant for mobile strikes while the army is meant for occupying territory.
Are we going to have artillery in the game? At this level, battalion mortars and division artillery are more or less identical: they're off-map assets either way.
A grenade launcher would fill the role of "fires pieplates over walls". But pretty much any weapon that Solid Snake can get his hands on (like nikita missiles that can turn corners!), up to anything that can be mounted on an infantry fighting vehicle/Landmate is viable. The scale of combat be like this (Lost Planet 2, game with infantry, jetbikes, power armor, robot vehicles, and the occasional elephant sized monster):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6RsvtktipU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOPo1cHqsgs
Last edited by OgreBattle on Thu Jul 17, 2014 1:47 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Laertes »

In the modern British army the four-man fireteam consists of:
- LMG
- Grenadier
- Antitank
- Marksman

Both the grenadier and the antitank guys use assault rifles as their main weapon when their specialised role is not called for. Apparently the main use of the grenadier is to deliver smoke so they can advance across open ground without getting shot to pieces. The entire fireteam has ways to deal with almost any threat. However, if even one guy is lost then the fireteam hasn't just lost 25% of its strength: it's lost all its ability in one field. Thus the fireteam is fragile even if the individual dudes are hard.

If we don't need an antitank capacity, we can replace that slot with a sensors guy or a comms guy or just a specialised NCO. We can then have individuals like medics, artillery spotters and senior NCOs/officers darting from unit to unit as they're needed.

I think having the Marines in this game be an army of specialists might be quite fun and faction-defining. It would certainly give them a personality and make the small number of models be individually interesting. We could go the opposite way for the horde: have their units be one or two powerful guys and a load of warm bodies to absorb the fire. That way each unit keeps its combat efficiency until the last few guys are removed.

It's a simple thing but in each case it helps to define the faction: cooperation and force preservation for the Marines, vast numbers of warm bodies for the Horde.

Edit after mulling it over during my morning commute: is there interest in doing this as a board project? If so, I'd like to suggest that we appoint some leads in various areas of it to give a sense of structure to the project. Naturally everyone will be contributing to and critiquing every part of it, but having someone as a lead will make it move much easier and (importantly) will mean that each area has a single guiding vision so it doesn't appear disjointed to the players.

I'd like to put OgreBattle forward as overall project lead and myself forward as system lead. I suggest that NotoriousAMP be the Marines faction lead; this means we need leads for the other two factions.
Last edited by Laertes on Thu Jul 17, 2014 11:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by TheNotoriousAMP »

Project and section leads sounds like a really good idea. However, I'd probably suggest having people lead different parts of the game rules and then doing the factions communally. The game rules are the more difficult part and if we all pool together for factions, its easier to ensure balance and avoid one person having a hard on for his own group. Ogre Battle should be project lead though, he really seems to be on the ball for this.

I guess the major pre requisites before really cracking down on it is settling on a time period/style. That way we can design the system around the setting.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

Specific roles for individual models will encourage a WYSIWYG that will ultimately be bad for the game. If the Defender chooses which models are casualties, but only one model can be seen by the opposing force (for example, he leads the advance into a new section and the opposing unleashes an attack using Overwatch), as the only model that COULD be targeted, it doesn't make sense that the Defender chooses to pull the model at the back of the line.

Rather than assigning roles for specific models (outside of Champion units), teams should have simplified composite values. The full team can respond using any of their 'abilities' as long as even one of the models remains. Fluff wise this can represent the redistribution of weapons to other team members as other models fall.

To represent the degradation of the unit as they take larger casualties, you may want to use a token that reduces their effectiveness. Ie, even if you're using your 'Tank Busting Round', you roll 4 dice if you have your full team (4 members) reducing the number of dice by each 'casualty'. Thus, if Team Leader is the only one left but he's using the tank gun, he still has a chance to succeed; but the team is much more likely to have a success if they're still fully operational.
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Post by Laertes »

I agree with deaddmwalking about teams having composite values. It ties in very tightly to my ideas in the Laertes Chews Scenery thread; I don't know how much people want to use that but I've tried to keep it compatible with what we have here.

A fireteam would have a firepower given by the number of guys in it (since even if only the LMG is firing, the others can spot and feed it ammunition and stuff), and each special weapon would give the squad a new ability.

For example:
- A marksman would increase their long range firepower
- A flamer would increase short range firepower
- A grenadier would reduce enemy cover
- An antitank weapon would allow anti-vehicle attacks (if we have vehicles)
- NCOs might add morale
- Officers might add APs
- Comms guys could dial in support fire
- Sensors guys could increase the maximum effective range of the squad

That feels good as a way to portray a human-style army. The alien factions should probably feel very different, so let's not tie the mechanics too tightly to this. One faction being a modern-day army is probably enough.

Edit:
While I agree that having the rules designer have a favourite faction is a bad thing (cf Matt Ward), each faction's unique mechanics should be overseen by a single vision - players are going to engage with the game through their chosen faction, and it helps if those are cohesive and iconic rather than cobbled together by compromises and many different drafts. The rest of us will still contribute of course, and will hold the lead to account if they go down a rabbit hole, but we want someone whose decision is final on it.
Last edited by Laertes on Thu Jul 17, 2014 4:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by TheNotoriousAMP »

Sounds good, but I think we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves. Before we get too deep into factions, we need to answer several core setting questions, which then have major gameplay impacts.

First and foremost: What kind of conflict are we modeling? Is this a matter of corporate conflict and espionage, tiny teams working to steal data and people? Or is it a shadow war, with multiple factions sending in squads of commandos to sabotage each other? We seem to be going more towards the multiple faction high explosive gang bang of inter-stellar chaos, but still we should really think about locking this down.

Secondly: What is the scope of this futuristic conflict? Is everyone in power armor and bouncing all over the place like in Starship Troopers? Or is this WW2 in space with people in flak armor running along side tracked armor.

Thirdly: What are the objectives of an armed clash? Are people fighting to control territory, or is it primarily about controlling certain spaceports and cities on a planet? Or, are physical resources no longer that huge of a consideration and its mostly a fight to control arid land. This would have a pretty huge impact on how gameplay objectives are designed, so this is a biggy.

Now that we have a sketch of what we want to do, we really need to set ourselves a baseline.
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Post by Laertes »

TheNotoriousAMP wrote:Sounds good, but I think we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves. Before we get too deep into factions, we need to answer several core setting questions, which then have major gameplay impacts.
Cool, let's do that. I answer each of the below both in my own voice and my attempt to interpret Ogrebattle's original vision.
First and foremost: What kind of conflict are we modeling? Is this a matter of corporate conflict and espionage, tiny teams working to steal data and people? Or is it a shadow war, with multiple factions sending in squads of commandos to sabotage each other? We seem to be going more towards the multiple faction high explosive gang bang of inter-stellar chaos, but still we should really think about locking this down.
Laertes voice: I would really, really like to do a game sometime about tiny espionage teams or shadowy commando units, but this doesn't sound like this is it. Those require a very attacker/defender paradigm in which only one person gets to feel like the protagonist. That's a very asymmetrical game, and while asymmetrical games can be enormous fun I don't think this is the project for it.

Original spec: If it's intended to be a tabletop wargame with factions like Appleseed-like Marines, a zerg-like Horde and a zooming-around-the-table Eldar-expy, then we're pretty firmly on high explosive gang-bang of interstellar chaos turf.
Secondly: What is the scope of this futuristic conflict? Is everyone in power armor and bouncing all over the place like in Starship Troopers? Or is this WW2 in space with people in flak armor running along side tracked armor.
Laertes voice: One of the successes of 40k was making each faction feel like they were playing a different game. Space Marines made people feel like they were playing a Robert A Heinlein thing crossed with Space Knights. Imperial Guard appealed to those who like their armies to feel like those out of the world wars. Orks were fun and rampagey and comedic and you didn't care if you lost as long as you had a good time, which is fortunate because you would be losing a lot. Et cetera. Therefore, to answer your question: Both!

Original spec: The Marines from Appleseed put us pretty firmly on the Robert A Heinlein camp here, I suspect.
Thirdly: What are the objectives of an armed clash? Are people fighting to control territory, or is it primarily about controlling certain spaceports and cities on a planet? Or, are physical resources no longer that huge of a consideration and its mostly a fight to control arid land. This would have a pretty huge impact on how gameplay objectives are designed, so this is a biggy.
Laertes voice: I'd like to do it as being about objective control or mission achievement. I have fond memories of the Objective cards from 2nd edition 40k, where you would secretly have a mission like "hold the centre of the table" or "put an intact squad in the enemy's deployment zone", and at the end of the game you got to find out what the other guy's mission was and which of you had accomplished them. That caused a layer of second-guessing and tactical deception which was fun. It also meant you had to design forces capable of achieving any mission, which was fun.

Original spec: No idea.
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Post by Username17 »

My thought would be to have it default to fighting over cities, since that is a place where small, medium, and large scale infantry engagements that are not settled by aerial or space based weapon systems will probably continue to happen well into the science fiction future.

Objective cards are a good idea, although objective cards need to be screened heavily for unachievable objectives. Warhammer has historically been quite bad about that, handing out missions to kill a number of enemy monstrous creatures and shit (good luck achieving that one against the Guard).

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Post by Laertes »

City terrain is also easy to make out of card and wood, while trees are hard and expensive; this is why in my experience most 40k battles are urban. However we should probably write the cover and movement rules in such a way as to maximise the amount of different terrain types we can support. If someone wants to model a giant fungus forest or an interior labyrinth or a Tangle like from UFO Aftermath, we should support that.

Regarding objectives, even a small number of possible objectives will give a large number of possibilities. Just off the top of my head, here are some which might work for any given faction:
- Dawn Raid. Get to the other person's table edge.
- Take & Hold. Secure the centre of the table.
- Assassination. Kill the enemy general.
- Secure & Retrieve. Go get the McGuffin and bring it back.

Since all but one of these is about maneuver, anyone can do them. Assassination is a very different beast depending on whether the general is the hardest guy in your army or is the officer hidden safely behind the lines, but is playable, achievable and fun either way.

Four possible missions means sixteen different combinations, each of which is a different beast. Since you'll be trying to achieve Sun Tzu's "ambiguity even to the point of formlessness" to dummy your opponent about your mission, that makes it even more complex. This is a satisfyingly large design space.
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Post by TheNotoriousAMP »

FrankTrollman wrote:My thought would be to have it default to fighting over cities, since that is a place where small, medium, and large scale infantry engagements that are not settled by aerial or space based weapon systems will probably continue to happen well into the science fiction future.
Definitely agreed here. The only problem is is that good urban fighting at a 28mm and platoon level would need strong support for multiple level buildings, which can get kind of clunky. You can definitely justify open terrain fighting too, as war expands in scale, you'd assume the ratio of fighting men to fighters and ships (space ships) would continue to decline as it does now. Putting a rifle in a man's hands is easy and that's all you really need to enforce your will on territory. A plane on the other hand gets more expensive every year (even as a proportion of GDP). Which means that there's plenty of room for brushfire wars and small scale encounters on the fringes and backwater's of planets where it just isn't worth the immense investment in resources of aerial or space support.
(Also responding to Laertes but don't want to flood the quote boxes) Objective cards are a good idea, although objective cards need to be screened heavily for unachievable objectives. Warhammer has historically been quite bad about that, handing out missions to kill a number of enemy monstrous creatures and shit (good luck achieving that one against the Guard).

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Personally what I would go for would be an "objective buy" system. Each game has a set amount of objective points that the player's must spend on missions. Each mission has a different cost, depending on the ease of accomplishing it.

That way you can actually model hit and run guerilla warfare in a way that most games can't. A ponderous top heavy force for example could want to go all in on expensive territory control missions because it doesn't have the flexibility to go for multiple small things at once, yet has the firepower and blunt force needed to seize objectives. Or they could instead aim to take prisoners, with the main goal being to swarm and trap enemy troops to acquire info. They'd be more obvious in what they are trying to do, yet also be able to concentrate fully on achieving one thing (casualties would matter less, as they are all aiming for one point). Meanwhile a far more flexible small unit force could instead invest in lots of smaller missions because they can't really take and hold an objective from the better equipped force. Instead they could be focused on killing leaders, harming morale and sabotaging communications.

You could even have faction missions, representing racial goals. These would be easier to tell if someone was going for them while being a good way to balance groups. So the marine faction could gain points for minimizing casualties, while a fanatical religious faction could gain points for sacrificing enemy troops, and the insect hive mind could win by being able to reclaim their dead to be reprocessed into new troops.
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Post by Grek »

FrankTrollman wrote:Objective cards are a good idea, although objective cards need to be screened heavily for unachievable objectives. Warhammer has historically been quite bad about that, handing out missions to kill a number of enemy monstrous creatures and shit (good luck achieving that one against the Guard).
One answer here would be for you to draw objective cards based on the faction you're fighting. The objective cards for fighting the Space Marines might look like:

1. Rout the squad holding the Chapter Banner and then take the banner to your edge of the map.
2. Hold the Marine's staging area for 3 rounds. These do not need to be consecutive.
3. Move your Commander to the Marine's edge of the map. Your Commander must survive.
4. Kill at least one member from each Marine squad and destroy at least one squad completely.

While the Zerg expys might have:

1. Completely destroy any one squad, then hold the territory it was destroyed in for 3 consecutive rounds.
2. Prevent the Zerg from reaching your edge of the map before Turn 3.
3. Simultaneously hold both the Zerg staging area and the center of the map.
4. Hold your own staging area on Turn 6 and suffer less than 50% casualties.

The clencher is that you don't know what objective the enemy drew, but you do know what all four of the possibilities are. In effect, you have 5 objectives each game: the one you drew, and then preventing all four of your possible failure conditions. The space marines, in addition to whatever objective they drew, have to protect their chapter banner, defend their staging area, keep the enemy commander away from the marine side of the map and avoid excessive casualties, as any of those things could (but probably won't) cause them to lose the game.
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Post by OgreBattle »

I started this thread to just get down some 'best practices' and avoid bad ideas for tabletop games, so the conversation was more focused on mechanics than flavor. The gameplay I'm aiming for is something with small squads in a setting with pretty dense terrain, like these:
Image
Image
I've got some faction flavor ideas, but my main interest is getting down gameplay mechanics for archtypical units such as...

*assault rifle tier
-skittering bugs/cyberdogs
-skittering bugs with wings
-Floaty drones using antigrav/turbofans
-regular cannonfodder infantry
-stealthy commandos/ninja
-green muscly gorilla men
-green comedic relief lackey little bignose dudes



*heavy machinegun tier
-power armored/cyborg badasses
-The above, with jetpacks/super jumpy legs
-one man vehicles like an armored bike/buggy
-A cyberknight on a cyberhorse with a powerlance
-horse sized monster
-bigger green gorilla men


*autocannon tier
-3 meter tall mecha
-3 meter tall monster
-infantry fighting vehicle
-the Metal Slug


*anti-tank tier, at the extreme limit of the ruleset left out for a future expansion:
-battle tank
-battle tank sized mecha
-battle tank sized monster
-antigrav/turbofan gunship


And some cool pictures of cool light vehicles from various model kits
Junk tank Rock
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the kind of armored vehicle favored by the Orques, a race of large muscly aesexual green gorilla-ish men based off of the French people from Les Miserables and WWI. They love truffles, and may be a form of humanoid truffle themselves.


Venus Wars
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the kind of speedy vehicle that the pointy eared not-eldar favor in their swift piratical raids
violence in the media
Duke
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Post by violence in the media »

I like the dense terrain angle. It might be worthwhile to have some rules about how much terrain to use and how to place it. IME, when left to their own devices, one or both players will gravitate to open boards or will place terrain pieces to give them clear fire lanes.

"Hmm, we have to place six terrain pieces? Looks like were fighting in the open field between the farmhouses and the forests on either edge of the board."

If you have rules for terrain placement, at least it's clear to the players and observers when a particular game is deviating from the intended setup.

"Y'all know you're not supposed to line up like redcoats and roll dice at one another in this game, right?"
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TheNotoriousAMP
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Post by TheNotoriousAMP »

violence in the media wrote:I like the dense terrain angle. It might be worthwhile to have some rules about how much terrain to use and how to place it. IME, when left to their own devices, one or both players will gravitate to open boards or will place terrain pieces to give them clear fire lanes.

"Hmm, we have to place six terrain pieces? Looks like were fighting in the open field between the farmhouses and the forests on either edge of the board."

If you have rules for terrain placement, at least it's clear to the players and observers when a particular game is deviating from the intended setup.

"Y'all know you're not supposed to line up like redcoats and roll dice at one another in this game, right?"
Pretty much this, good point. There's other ways you can subtly reinforce it too. For example, recon sytem where you get to move terrain a bit after deployment, objectives have to be placed in terrain or landmark, ect. Basically "hint, think about terrain". That being said, people still probably won't realize it until their first game when a unit gets clobbered in the open. As much as reading a rulebook can tell you things about the game, you really only learn stuff on the tabletop itself.
LARIATOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Laertes
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Post by Laertes »

That's a good idea. Maybe make some rule about the maximum distance between terrain pieces? For example, have anything more than 6" across count as a "street" and anything more than 12" across count as a a "plaza", with rules for each which make them unattractive deathtraps.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

With warhammer, city fight terrain is pulled off as "everything is in ruins with the roof missing and only the corners remaining so you can stack your models floor by floor" like this:
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But sometimes you'll want intact buildings and battle bunkers so there needs to be mechanics for resolving a group of guys assaulting a group in a building. The rules for close quarters combat/shock seems to be the best fit with modifiers affected by the nature of the building, grenades, room sweeper specialists, and so on.
violence in the media
Duke
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Post by violence in the media »

Yeah, and since I think you mentioned not wanting to be rigid jackholes about measurement distances, you'll want to bake that in as many places as possible. I've played with way too many people that were assholes about 1/8th of an inch, even in situations where their dice collided with the model in question.

So abstract rules for assaulting models that are simply "in this building here" will help reinforce that the physical location of a model is not the ultimate arbiter of anything. Same with an example movement rule that might say movement within a structure is not counted against a unit when they go to leave it. I.e. you always measure movement from the edge of a terrain piece.
Laertes
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Post by Laertes »

You'll want to have a well thought out definition of "building" and "terrain piece", then, to allow people the flexibility to play with things like preset one-piece modelled boards and modular jigsaw terrain pieces. What is the definition of "terrain piece" when the entire board is one single one? What is the definition of "building" when you're tunnel-fighting?

I was thinking about the rhythm of the game - how the phases of a turn will play out when you do something like assault a building. Here's how I think a building assault would go:

1: the attacker moves up to the building and declares an assault.
2: the defender gets to pour fire into them.
3: based on the results of this fire, the attacker is suppressed or pinned to some extent, and so needs to make a morale check to continue attacking.
4: if they do get to continue attacking, they then make their attack rolls as they go room to room with grenades and bayonets.
5: the defender takes some casualties and makes a morale check, which should send them fleeing.
6: the side which won/lost by the most leaves the building. This is important - the turn must end with one or another side in control of the building. Multi-turn abstracted melees are dull in a game about fire and movement.

There's also a step zero here, which is the attacker using support weapons like LMGs, mortars and sniper fire to pin the defender and so prevent them getting off their initial volley. Nonetheless this gives us lots of design space for things like unbreakable zerg hordes (autopass their morale checks but take extra casualties) and stealth units (defender doesn't get the "first strike" advantage) which is fun.

Based on my own quibbles about 40k I would also like to suggest that we keep the casualty rate low. A single turn of shooting should not be enough to devour a substantial amount of your army, and Imperial Guard style gun lines need to not be a thing. Instead we need a suppression or morale mechanic which means that the squad is broken and rendered combat ineffective so it flees, but can come back and therefore doesn't lead to a positive-feedback loop.
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