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Starship Bridge Battles
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<blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 6532503" data-attributes="member: 57112"><p>I'm not sure it's impossible to make this work. After all, isn't most RPG combat spent waiting around for your turn? There's two real concerns to keep in mind. The first, and most obvious, is keeping players engaged in what's happening even when it's not their turn. The second, which speaks to Morrus's concern, is to give everyone enough to do (enough distinct decision points) to make their turns feel important.</p><p></p><p>I'd go obscenely crunchy with it.</p><p></p><p>First, combat is synchronous; unlike the traditional turn structure in tabletop RPGs, everything is happening all at once. Space generally lacks inertia, so each "tick" every ship moves simultaneously based on its current speed and trajectory. </p><p></p><p>The second, more important point, is to ensure players have enough decision points that they feel have to do to contribute to combat. Treating a single ship as a single character with the usual set of decisions and splitting those up is not the way to go. This is where things get crunchy, and complex. Each "tick" every player can perform one action based on the position (engineering could adjust speed or shield positioning; gunner can adjust the angle of a gun, enter a targeting algorithm for a missile, or fire); helm can adjust trajectory, attempt to hail another ship, etc.)</p><p></p><p>The main work in building such a system lies in defining the roles and making sure their available actions are well balanced so everyone feels like they are carrying their weight.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Gradine, post: 6532503, member: 57112"] I'm not sure it's impossible to make this work. After all, isn't most RPG combat spent waiting around for your turn? There's two real concerns to keep in mind. The first, and most obvious, is keeping players engaged in what's happening even when it's not their turn. The second, which speaks to Morrus's concern, is to give everyone enough to do (enough distinct decision points) to make their turns feel important. I'd go obscenely crunchy with it. First, combat is synchronous; unlike the traditional turn structure in tabletop RPGs, everything is happening all at once. Space generally lacks inertia, so each "tick" every ship moves simultaneously based on its current speed and trajectory. The second, more important point, is to ensure players have enough decision points that they feel have to do to contribute to combat. Treating a single ship as a single character with the usual set of decisions and splitting those up is not the way to go. This is where things get crunchy, and complex. Each "tick" every player can perform one action based on the position (engineering could adjust speed or shield positioning; gunner can adjust the angle of a gun, enter a targeting algorithm for a missile, or fire); helm can adjust trajectory, attempt to hail another ship, etc.) The main work in building such a system lies in defining the roles and making sure their available actions are well balanced so everyone feels like they are carrying their weight. [/QUOTE]
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