First Game Design Concepts
So I knew what type of game we wanted and we had rough concepts down for how to track damage on ships, so now I needed to put fingers to keyboard and generate rules.
One of the very first decisions to make was whether this would be a true table-top miniatures game (using rulers and such to measure movement) or whether I’d use some type of grid system. After doing a lot of research and looking at a host of games on the market (along with erring on the side of the type of game I was trying to produce) I decided against the gridless system.
So if I’m going with a grid, what type of grid should it be? Plenty of popular games use square grids, but that didn’t feel right, especially in a game where all miniatures are going to fill more than one space. The thought of these warships moving forward and then turning 90 degrees instantly for a turn made me laugh out loud.
The answer, of course, was sitting in front of me the whole time…I just tried ignoring it because I didn’t want my own many years of development of that game to bleed over into Leviathans. But after several fits and starts it became very apparent that a hex grid simply worked too well. What’s more, due the rough scale of the miniatures we wanted to produce (1:1200), the BattleTech hex-size simply worked perfectly (i.e. 1.5″ corner to corner). [As an added bonusit made playtesting easier as I could just tell people "go get a BT map."]
With the style of board defined it was time to dive into the game design full on. As I’ve previously mentioned, I wanted to be very sure to keep the game on the simple end of the spectrum. And that meant keeping the number of modifiers to a minimum. Now you can’t dump them all, of course, or there’s no possibility for tactics in game play, which makes the game not very fun to play, which kills off re-playability. So as my fingers began banging out initial rules for playtesting I had a rough figure of no more than 8 total situational modifiers for the core of the game (enhanced scenario play rules don’t count… 
. As it turned out, the first draft left me with 7.
To be continued….
See ya next duty shift!
Randall
*hmms* I can guess some of them:
Angle of Attack(i.e. Are you firing on the narrow profile of the bow or aft, are you firing into the broadside)
Difference in speed of targets(since, if they have matched speeds, and are firing broadside it is easier to hit)
Damage(a listing ship is going to havea harder time hitting, after all)
Crew Discipline/Morale(a well disciplined crew with high morale are going to perform better)
Captain’s leadership
Range
I wonder how close my guesses were?
Totally unrelated to this post, I saw something on your timeline that made me curious:
“1847Hungarian, Ignaz Semmelweis invents antisceptics.”
What is an antisceptic? Is this supposed to be “antiseptics” or is Fox Mulder going to appear as Captain of a Leviathan?
Oh, and the artwork looks SWEET!
And using a BattleTech map has another advantage: Players can borrow the mapsheets and flip them over to make huge play fields.
@StCptMara: I’m surprised that you didn’t list Altitude as a modifier. Unless Leviathans is going to assume every airship is on the same plane, which wouldn’t reflect “real” air combat tactics.
OK. Three comments in one day is enough.
Sounds like coming on great.
I would prefer to use of smaller hex-based maps like the ones used by Heavy Gear. With more hexs per map, it would give alot more room to manuver. I’ve noticed from the AT2 games that limited map space caused less flexiablity in doing fancy manuvers. I know its economic to use BT maps, but i rather have more room with single map than a typical BT map.
Keep good work up!
>Unless Leviathans is going to assume every airship is on the same plane, which wouldn’t reflect “real” air combat tactics.
Actually, it is. It was confirmed a few posts ago that attitute most likely won’t be included in the basic rules.
The artwork looks amazing, I saw the book they had at Origins and I cannot wait to get a look at the boxed set.
My father even wants to get his hands on this. Hope the game is as good as the art. If it is, you will have a hit on your hands.
As a playtester all I can tell you guys is this. It’ll be worth the wait. The artwork and background really do grab you. I find my self pulling up the pictures and just staring at them. I havent’ done that since I was a kid. Really great stuff.
Air Combat Tactics with multi-thousand ton floating ships. I think of it as naval warfare without water, everybody on the same relative plane and moving at rather slow speeds (maxing at 30 knots or so, somewhere done the timeline)
Ooops that first should have been, “Air Combat Tactics with multi-thousand ton floating ships?”
How does one become a playtester or is it too late?