"Whoops." Topic

Some of y'all may remember my thread on an orbital space combat game. I actually cut foam on that one around a year or two ago, and initial playtesting was actually quite promising. It captured the general 'feel' without being swamped by calculations (there are none, miraculously)

Only recently, I've developed the CAD skills to distribute my own miniatures through Shapeways, and decided to put pen to paper and write up a saleable ruleset based on the unwritten-rules playtesting we did.

There's the issue.

The draft I'm coming up for is starting to resemble a physics textbook (complete with equations), and has a brief intro describing orbital mechanics. Movement rules require numerous diagrams to describe permissible and impermissible orbital transfers.

Honestly, this plays great, but I'm not sure if players (at least those lacking an engineering background) will be willing to take the time to grasp the underlying science. The number of people griping about tired WWII-naval-warfare-in-space movement gives me some hope, but I'm still not entirely convinced.

Well, there's a market for everything, even more difficult/expanded rules. SFB has been around for ages despite the hefty rulebook… maybe it's not the biggest game, but it sure supports a small company with several employees.

Put the rules out there, many companies go for free downloadable betas today… or just the movement part…
I sure am interested to look at stuff like that

I'll definitely be willing to check it out.

I'd be interested in something like that, but not sure I'd want to have to do a lot of math.

It sounds like perhaps that is just for background info about the rules.

I suspect if you can keep it fairly streamlined, with charts, or other aids to keep people from having to compute a lot of calculations, more would be interested.

I'm sure brief descriptions, and/or overviews of orbital mechanics and other issues will be fine for many.

Do they really need to grasp the underlying science, or can they just play with the rules, charts, and examples you provide for them?

You'll probably get more people to try it out, if they can run some simple scenarios to get a grasp of the rules.

Hmmm, can you put the maths equations into an Excel/Libre Office spreadhseet, distribute the spreadsheet as a free download, and have it that the player just puts the 'choice' into the spreadsheet and it just returns 'Go/No Go'?

I'm just thinking of an easy way to insulate non-engineers from the maths. Might speed things up as well.

Classic Traveller managed to make vector based space combat movement reasonably non-threatening and accessible so it can be done.

With the ubiquity of smart techniology perhaps you could write an app to do most of the maths for the players? I think BattlerBritain is on the right track here. If I don't have to actually crunch all the numbers every time I'd be more willing to play.

Three attempts at orbital mechanics of which I'm aware were/are the Sierra Madre's High Frontier, SPI's Battlefleet Mars, and the solar system part of TSR's Buck Rogers in the 25th Century board game.

I've played the latter two, both usable but simple science; the first merely blows my mind looking at it.

Are you familiar with any of those, and how does your work compare? They are all heavily map dependent (which isn't an all bad thing), and sounds like yours isn't.

Ad Astra tackles another part of not-WWII-Naval, 3D, but there are a fair number such as myself who find the method 'not fun'.

By the way, I'm actually a defender of the science of cinematic Full Thrust. Inertia, curves reduced to one or two angles, and velocity change as 'instantaneous' actually work for me. ;->=

Doug

I can say no, I wouldn't be interested in a game that I need an "engineering background" just to play.

I'm certain there are some that not only will, but would even prefer such things.

As a suggestion; write the rules as you want them. Then pass them off to a person, or game designer, you trust. Let them look them over. They may find a way to explain the same concept, or achieve the same effect, without the technical jargon.
Different people have different skills. Utilize them.

Have you looked at the orbital mechanics rules in Attack Vector: Tactical?

Many games go through a design evolution where they get more and more complicated, and then the designer or developer figures out how to make them more elegant, or is able to focus on what's really important to the design.

I didn't read your original post in detail. What is the scale of your game? That's going to make a difference to what's really needed.

Play aids can make all the difference. If you come up with sufficiently clever play aids, you can suck all of the math out of the game.

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

The purpose of a game is to disguise the physics so the players don't have to calculate them. If you have done this, you don't need to explain how or why you did this in the rules. You just have to say, "To move to a higher orbit, pay X per orbital slot difference and move Y forward along the path and Z upward" or whatever it works out for your system.

Personally, I can think of two general ways to go about this. One is the hex-based or grid-based vector system inspired by GDW's Triplanetary, only with gravity vector components along bands of hexes (I did this in my own games, and a version of it is an optional approach in G.O.B.S.! You can look it over here: thegobspage.com ).
The other is to create circular tracks divided into abstracted movement spaces (or values), with the spaces offset (like in a racing game or chariot game) so that a relative speed effect is created. You then establish the energy cost (or velocity or thrust or whatever) to transfer from an inner track to an outer track, or vice versa, and so forth.

Think of it as the spaceship crews (or satellite command) "letting the computer do the calculations" and then simply deciding whether to pay the cost and accept the risks.

For an orbital mechanics game, I can see this as players having ships or satellites with limited fuel and weepons reserves, and knowing that using up fuel reserves will result in either an inability to maneuver out of harms way or a crash/reentry, and deciding which units they are willing to put at such risk in order to gain a tactical or strategic advantage. That's all most players really want to do (some will like more head work involved, but I would not be one of them!). So it's not a simulation of what actually physically happens in reality, it's an attempt to capture the tactical and strategic decisions of the situation.

I'm with emckinney on this -- come up with some great play aids and the under-the-hood mechanics won't be an impediment to people playing the game.

I'd be happy to help you come up with an Excel spreadsheet to automate the calculations, but people would have to own Excel in order to run it. Maybe someone with a good grasp of Java and web programming could help you come up with something web-based.

So this sort of thing would *definitely* be of interest to me.* I'd echo the comments about burying as much of the math 'under the hood' as you can via good play aids and having someone help give you a pass with the mechanics.

Or, since it sounds like you already have things boiled down into allowed vs. forbidden moves, maybe just list the moves, and have a 'if you want to know WHY' section in the back of the rules?

Parzival's orbital track concept is definitely worth looking at; Orbit War did something similar and while it's very abstract it does a good of capturing the main decisions (ie, do I want to spend energy/fuel/delta-v on changing my orbit or not) without requiring any major math. The main issue with it IIRC is that doesn't handle elliptical orbits.

-Will

*But then I play Kerbal Space Program and find it fascinating, so maybe I'm not typical.

These are all good suggestions…I'm trying, as y'all recommended, to 'bury' as much math as possible using relative movement speeds and by mapping delta-v requirements rather than physical distance. I flat-out state in the rules that eccentricity and inclination will be ignored for simplicity's sake.

TheBeast, High Frontier has been a bit of an inspiration for this game in all but its very first iterations.

What, no giant-robot space-fighters with laser-swords?

I'm with those who say 'black box it' – if attack% x Defence% for target x chance of BOOM is 16% just roll a d6 – 6 kills. Do all the maths, then calculate the chances, and publish just those. Add a appendix(or website etc) explaining it all if you want, but keep the game simple.

Honestly, I'd like to play the rules as you have them now. As for black boxing-- I think it isn't really doable without making things even harder for the player to remember in cases where the inputs lead to super different outputs and you're not telling them why.

I can say, having developed Orbital Mechanics rules for AV:T, that once you can do about one gee of sustained thrust around Earth orbit, you more or less get to ignore OM as a tactical constraint.

It's a strategic constraint for a bit, and the solution I've got will do complete orbits…but when a complete orbit is about 45-50 game turns of tactical combat, and a typical scenario is done in seven turns? Less important than the "A-ha!" moment of accelerating prograde to gain a force-push going 'up' or timing a kinetic weapons launch to coincide when your opponent's inclination change starts dragging him towards your firing solution.

I am amazed that the AV:T OM rules work as well as they do. They build seamlessly out of the thrust tracking mechanic, require one lookup table per planet that's about the size of a poker card, and just play.

(I was expecting them to be something that a dedicated group would try once, just to say that they did – like SFB's starbase assault scenario.)

If nothing else, you should take a look at the rules – you can buy the PDF of the rulebook on my website for $10 USD, or get the complete PDF bundle for $15. USD There's an extensive "Math beneath the rules" section for nearly every mechanic in AV:T.