BUniwar (Board Game Uniwar)

Recent

Hottest

Forum Index » General Discussion

Author

Message

Jan 31, 2015 12:12

Subject: BUniwar (Board Game Uniwar)

mistercreepy

Messages: 207,
Joined: May 15, 2012,
Location: Hong Kong
Offline

This is definitely a draft, and right now like most paper prototypes of games it’s not actually “fun” to play. Just putting it out here to see if anyone can suggest improvements!

Damage Calculations
This was the hardest part of the board game version to figure out. Right now it’s much more random than the app, but I really like the way that I’ve got it down to one table and one d20 per hit point. It’s fun to roll lots of dice, and consulting a table before every move and attack gets tiresome. So I tried to get it down to something manageable.

Here’s the whole thing:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dohl5qq17uB6E96qWbV_65nI81zdDvtYkyEPbtNtS0E/edit?usp=sharing

I’m not really much of a math guy but I do like patterns and figuring things out so I spent an afternoon looking at the expected damage of each matchup and was able to reverse engineer what I feel is an acceptable approximation of the damage formula. I checked my work using an android damage calculator app. This gets you close but again much more variation than in the app. The target number (T) is out of 20 and you roll one d20 for every hit point you have. If your roll is equal or less than the target number, it’s a hit.

T = 9 + attack strength - defence strength +- terrain and gangup modifiers.

So for example a Marine attacking a Marine, the typical result will be five damage given when at full strength. Attack strength is 6 and the defence is 5. Put that into the formula and the target number is 10, that is, a fifty percent chance of dealing damage for every hit point, or a predicted 5 hit points of damage when rolling 10 d20s.

I have another version in which I built a much more simplified table of target numbers based on the unit type, but this one still requires many adjustments depending on the individual unit.

Simplified Table
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EuoBcjketh57z87kX2GUEQ6wrqy2fKUucRUS2dCIbYo/edit?usp=sharing

Continued in forum...

Jan 31, 2015 12:13

Subject: Re:BUniwar (Board Game Uniwar)

mistercreepy

Messages: 207,
Joined: May 15, 2012,
Location: Hong Kong
Offline

Fog of War:
I had to get rid of this. I can’t think of a way to even recreate this; I’m sure that there are some board games that have an element that serves a similar function but I couldn’t see this being worth the hassle. You could I suppose have three different versions of the map, one that is “public” and one for each player that is hidden, but that’s a bit much.

Buried Underlings
This is the one necessary element of the game that I can’t think of a solution. Unless you go with three maps, two of which are hidden, how can you possibly have hidden pieces? Also, buried ant minesweeper is one of the things about the game I hate the most. So frustrating!

My friend (username, Attorney but he hasn’t played in years) came up with the idea to tweak the buried ants a bit. Basically the ant is present on the board but the piece is flipped to represent that it’s buried. And a buried ant is allowed to move only one space per turn and may resurface and attack. Obviously this is a completely different mechanic than exists currently and it’s hard to say how this would play out. Is it too strong, or too weak? Hard to say, but I think it could work quite well!

Playing Pieces and Board:
I went with a few of the simplest two player maps I could find. Just a screencap and then print, onto at an A3 (aka 11 x 17) paper.

For credits, I have a core set of Android Netrunner and the credit chips from that game work quite nicely and really fit the theme well.

For units right now I’m just using circular paper cutouts from a screencap, annoying to move but until I have a good working model I don’t think it’s worth the hassle of spending more time on it. And in order to represent damage I place a d12 next to each unit on the board. That’s a clunky and inelegant solution, and I’m really not sure of a way around it. Maybe there could be a rotating wheel on each unit that would display the hit points? But that’s tough to make.

To make the pieces actually nice:
1) mounted on foil so they stick to the board (idea from Osram III)
2) use the plastic pieces from Starcraft board game
3) design and print out units using the 3D printer at work, or maybe buy a 3Doodler and make pieces myself (my top choice but would take a long time)

To represent base capture, I think that a cool and simple solution is to have the reverse side of the light infantry unit represent the base. So after capturing a base, you flip the unit and there you go, the base is present.

One more on this item...

Jan 31, 2015 12:13

Subject: Re:BUniwar (Board Game Uniwar)

mistercreepy

Messages: 207,
Joined: May 15, 2012,
Location: Hong Kong
Offline

Why Bother?
As I mentioned in the online chat, this will let me create and test out any variants I want. I also learned an awful lot about the game through this process.

This also makes it easy to produce variants. Want to let the engineer terraform? Sure thing. Could the infector merge with any other Khralean unit creating a super-bug with increased attack? Why not, let’s see what happens! Should the bases themselves actually have powers, like the Titan bases can deal damage to adjacent enemies with a defensive pulse? Cool!

Next Steps
To be totally honest I think that a FUN board game of Uniwar would have to be significantly different than the app. Without the computer making the damage and movement calculations there are too many numbers to deal with. I have a rough draft started but as I had to make major simplifications (adjusting number of HP per unit and simplifying the damage table even more) it’ll take a lot of playtesting to regain the balance.

Thanks for reading and thanks for improving on this design!

Feb 01, 2015 04:01

Subject: Re:BUniwar (Board Game Uniwar)

mistercreepy

Messages: 207,
Joined: May 15, 2012,
Location: Hong Kong
Offline

PS shout out to jahardman for brainstorming and giving feedback on this project. And congrats to SpaceChip for defeating rebeccah in the inaugural BUniwar match! And tons of love to all YourTurn2.0 uniwarriors.

Forum Index » General Discussion