"Game Mechanic Preference" Topic

In many Sci-Fi, Modern, WWII games involving Tanks, Space Ships, Mecha, etc., I see two fundamental game mechanics for shooting.

The first method is a to hit roll followed by a kill roll. We see this classic mechanic in 40K, Flames of war, and Dropzone commander. It may have additional layers, like a save roll or a firepower test, but in the end it is a multi-step process to determine a kill. This system sees that certain weapons can only penetrate certain armor. In Flames of War a pistol cannot penetrate a Tiger II's armor.

The other mechanic is the damage tracker system. Units have a damage/Armor/Shield points. All weapons can do damage to the target regardless of size or power, of the weapon. We see this in games such as BattleTech, Full Thrust, and Federation Commander. Units roll to hit and do damage. There is generally not a penetration roll to get through an armor level. In this system a mass battery of machine guns may be as deadly as a giant cannon from sheer weight of damage.

I appreciate that the first system creates need for a big gun to counter big armor while the second system runs faster as it has less steps and all units may be able to help bring down that giant dreadnought.

My question is what system to players prefer and why.

Thanks

One consideration you have in making the decision on which mechanic to use, is the amount of different weapons you need to model. If you have to have different accuracy and damage for the weapon- you need a "to hit" roll and a "to kill" roll. If the weapons have similar accuracy OR damage, you can use the "Damage Tracker" mechanic.

This is fundamental the wrong way to do it. 'Cart before the horse' and all that. You need to think on the story you are trying to tell and then fit the rules to that story. Cumulative damage is not really appropriate to say a tank. There may be a few occasions when a tanks main weapon say may be non functional but it can still move but that is not really the thing. In many cases a single hit will kill a tank and hence however you do it should reflect that.

In some cases it could be possible to do everything in a single role but may take longer to calculate the single role value than roll two dice. In MG we did manage to do a single D20 roll for infantry but had to use two for AFV as we saw this as the fastest overall solution.

For horse and musket, I prefer the damage accumulation method with each weapon/arm inflicting a different amount of damage and each unit withstanding a variable amount of damage.

Massed small arms fire against a biological target is fine to bring it down.

eg Tommy guns against giant ants in the film Them. Or against Bugs in Starship Troopers.

Small arms fire against tanks, well no.There have to be penetration rules.

+10 to ioannis! Notice he said "damage" and not "casualties"! I take that to mean the effect of the fire on this particular unit….which is different than another unit…etc.

Another mechanic: one roll to hit. Usually one roll per RoF with weapons having a stat line with penetration and target stat line for armor. Hit usually is a kill or suppression.

This is the mechanic of rules like Command Decision and more "simulations" rules. Personally I do not like the Hit/Save mechanic

If your mechanics fit your situation I like them. I don't "prefer" mechanics in the abstract.

Most scifi games tend towards a two-roll system because infantry, aliens etc. may well have significant armour.

In a historical game, a single roll when firing at foot soldiers is preferable, unless its a skirmish game where we may want to know that the guy is just stunned or is still able to crawl around.

Yes, unless you're using percentile dice, it's difficult many times to get the granularity needed for both hits and damage/injury to the target(s).

It also varies with the level of detail and size of forces you want to command. Classic Battletech plays OK with up to 4 mechs per player, for example, while Flames of War can easily handle 20+ tanks per player.

Another point to consider is the mental effect on the target player. By giving them a saving roll, you give them some appearance of control over the fate of the target unit.

Though the flip side of the saving roll is the shooting player manages to have the luck of the dice on their side and then have it stolen away by the targets luck with a saving roll.

As has been mentioned its where we put the horse and the cart…
If the game boils down to rolling to, by the chance of the dice… this can lead to the target feeling like they are the victim of someone elses chance… so thats countered by adding a bit of your own appeal to the goods of chance…
I went to SALUTE a couple of weeks ago and was really struck by how for so many games, they aren't wargames but dice games. Whatever else happens it all boils down to rolling dice and how they fall or on some cases how a card turns…
As mentioned damage gauge doesn't reflect situations where it is an either or situation. Either or systems add dice rolls, to hit, to damage, and then a saving throw..
As mentioned what is the story you want to tell?
I think dice rolling is such a part of games rules because it gives the players something to do, rather than figuring out ways to model what the players should actually be doing

If you only have one or two tanks or some computerised system then tracking damage in bits n bobs is viable.
Otherwise you probably don't want such a fine grained mechanism.

Another mechanism is opposed rolls.
This offers a richer set of results such as this roll is double that and players usually find it more involving than a saving roll.

I agree with Lion. Scale and scope are key.

If 1 model represents multiple sub-units such as tanks then "hit points" make sense. Command Decision's use of quality based HP was brilliant. Better units could suffer more losses while staying in the fight. Poor quality units could be rendered ineffective with less damage.

Even at 1:1 HP can make sense, especially when combined with a critical hit system. The vehicle's HPs represent damage to the chassis and frame that isn't instantly fatal but will eventually render the vehicle combat ineffective. You see this repeatedly in combat memoirs. The vehicle is shot to pieces but remains mobile and lethal. Eventually cumulative damage to many small sub-systems, none of which would be fatal on its own, render the vehicle inoperable.

OTOH, at 1:1 critical hits add flavor to the tactical narrative. There's something compelling about an immobilized monster still posing a threat if the crew manages to stay in the fight.

But if you're running 14 or 15 tanks you don't have the human bandwidth to process detailed damage results such as "coax jammed on tank 3" or "oil leak on command tank". You need something more abstract.

And if you have just a couple of vehicles then "fully functional or fully dead" is probably a little too black and white. You need, and can sustain, a little more detail than that.

There are many shades of gray to this question and it starts with scale and scope.

I think Gamesman6 has made a point. Do players really just want to gamble which implies less control of the game and more the role of luck? Or do they just accept that there are some levels of uncertainty that necessitates some form of randomness for which the optimum is to resolve it as fast as possible and get on with the game? Personally there is nothing more irritating than the player who spends ages shaking a die as if it has some "miraculous effect", it wastes time for no good reason. To me a game is about moving the toys or thinking where to move them. There random is because it has to be there but that is all.

Another mechanism is opposed rolls.
This offers a richer set of results such as this roll is double that and players usually find it more involving than a saving roll.

I like that opposed rolls keep both players fully engaged in attack rolls. But you get aome weird effects when modeling differences between, for example, high ROF/low accuracy MGs and low ROF/high accuracy missiles.

Suddenly a target that should be easy to hit with a missile becomes impossible simply due to the die roll mechanic, at least in the absence of special rules.

A good example is the X-Wing miniatures game. It has some weird anomolies in which guided weapons don't actually work. They've been trying to mod their way out of the problem for years. With their latest releases things are getting better but it's clear that the raw system of opposed die rolls has serious limits that requires extreme measures to make it work. It's just too easy to make certain targets immune to fire that should be highly effective against them.

One strategy is to modify both number of dice and quality of dice (your target number).

There's also an effect on the damage system. If each die that hits causes damage then a highly accurate yet low damage weapon becomes difficult to model. X-Wing tries to handle this by giving a weapon lots of dice to roll but then saying if the weapon hits on one or more dice you score just 1 damage point and cancel all other dice. It works, but its clunky.

Since the damage a weapon can do is not always proportional to how well it can penetrate armor a separate to-hit and to-damage roll is needed. The alternative is to either nerf the armor or to nerf the weapons. (nerfing both at different points is what Battletech does – fun game but nothing near realistic in any sense of the word)

Sorry, but the moment I see the words "saving throw" the rules go in the bin.
Just me.

I quite like the idea of opposed die rolls, the difference being the level of damage inflicted…………using different types of die for skill/training levels etc, not everybody's cup of tea but keeps the players involved during the game turn…….quick resolution too ( normally!).

To handle Dynaman concerns about weapon types, another alternative would be to roll low ROF/high accuracy weapons with "advantage" (roll two dice, use best) and for weapons at the other end roll with "disadvantage" (roll two dice, use worst). Of course, that will likely make christot throw the rules into the bin . . . again. Grin.

I prefer simple mechanics and not ones that are over engineered. I don't much care what they are so long as they are very simple. 1 or 2 die rolls should be enough to deliver an unambiguous outcome.

I agree with Gamesman6, if I don't have decisions to make during the game, I do not consider it a wargame, but a dice rolling contest, which can be done with or without figures on the table. Too many "games" presented at conventions are of this type. I would rather roll the dice one time, at the start, than spend 4 hours rolling, without a single tactical decision.

No, I like that, Kelly.

> another alternative would be to roll low ROF/high accuracy weapons with "advantage"

Although better is still does not handle the high damage low penetration type weaponry well. Unless armor is a distinct you can/can't get through it.

As for saving throws – OK if not taken too far. One game was rolling gobs of dice over and over. Rolling dice is NOT my idea of involvement, my idea of involvement is needing to make decisions.

I'm not a fan of buckets of dice either…….the use of bigger or smaller dice can incorporate more variables without resorting to charts etc.

Yes i really like saving rolls. They are often given a more euphemistic title, but they are very popular. Saw them first in Featherstone and Grant rules back in the early seventies? I like to contribute something toward an outcome. It also allows modifiers to be applied to strike and defence. this allows the modifiers to be minimised as the defence ones may not come into effect unless the strike is successful. Having a second (saving roll) also normalises the results a bit more. Two dice opposed will normalise the outcome more than just a dice on it's own.(ie just like finding the difference of opposed die rolls but by opponents rather than the same person rolling both dice). Just a personal opinion, no offence intended if you do not like saving rolls.

martin

Much more interesting IMO than damage is the effect of a hit on the crew. In Normandy, most allied crews left their tanks 'like corks simultaneously withdrawn' at even the most glancing hit. They very rarely waited for any word of command; the few seconds between hit and incineration did not allow for thought.
German crews were presumably better placed so perhaps cumulative damage might be more relevant, although in the case of air attack more tanks were lost through abandonment than damage.

"Sorry, but the moment I see the words "saving throw" the rules go in the bin."

What if they are called 'effect roll' or similar as in e.g. WRG 1925-50 or Command Decision (or are the terminal step in a three step process of hit-location-penetrate as in Tobruk).

At the end of the day it is just another dice roll to break the process down.

I have recently discovered 5 core brigade rules and the only thing that is really taken into account is the differential between the shooter and the target. e.g: My tiger is far superior to your Sherman therefore I will use this dice roll or conversely, my Sherman is far superior to your sdkfz 232 therefore I will use the same attack dice roll as previously.

From memory, you only have superior, equivalent, inferior, desperate.

So you just eyeball the difference between the two vehicles and roll your attack (that will destroy the target / inflict disruption points.

Pretty simple and does without all the super precision of the more conventional game systems.

Roll to Hit; Roll to Damage. Simple and good model of tank v tank fighting.

Guided Weapons should be opposed Tech Die. My guidance system v. your counter measures. Best Science Wins.

In my Sci Fi versions of Combat Command armies get a Tech Die ranges from d6 to d12. So better tech tends to win. But notice high tech has greater range of possiblites. Basic tech is more consistent but has limits.

TomT

I like that opposed rolls keep both players fully engaged in attack rolls. But you get aome weird effects when modeling differences between, for example, high ROF/low accuracy MGs and low ROF/high accuracy missiles.

Yeah, you really see that problem play out in Infinity. Even with 15% modifier steps in play (d20 system with +-3 for the steps, max mod of +-12), you almost always see the side rolling more dice win. The side shooting a single shot usually needs a minimum of a +6 bonus just to equal the odds against two dice, all other modifiers equal.

I actually really like the Heavy Gear setup, where you make an opposed hit/dodge roll, with weapons having a damage multiplier to the margin of success that is then compared with a vehicles armor value. Say you're shooting a weapon with an x15 multiplier. You win the to-hit opposed roll with a margin of success of 3 (your total attack roll was 7, their defense roll was 4). Shooting a lightly armed ARM10 target, 3x15=45 is over 3x the armor so it's an overkill result, instant death. Target with ARM16 is seriously damaged because 45 is between 2x and 3x armor value. Against a heavy tank that's ARM25, that same attack roll only did Light Damage because 45 is between 1x and 2x the armor value. And against an ARM50 bunker, well, even with a solid hit you didn't do any damage. The various steps of armor are usually written down for you, so all the math you need to do is the damage multiplication.

Takes a bit of getting used to and being able to do math in your head, but plays really dang quick.