Game Development Continued…
So I no longer can keep all the various ship stats in my head as I’ve generated too many of them. So as I started working on another James’ Fighting Leviathans, I realized it was high time to generate a spreadsheet that would contain all of the ships in a single location for easy comparison.
As I built that sheet I continued to flesh out the gun batteries that’ll be used in the game. As I mentioned many moons ago, by moving all of the stats directly onto each Gun Battery slot it really allowed me to fuse the universe flavor directly into each gun, while also ensuring I could tweak numbers left, right and center as needed.
So, with the type of historians I’ve got working with me to develop the universe, we’ve determined all the various guns that were in use by which nations during this time period.
So first I plug all those in. Next I match up various gun sizes, so even though they’re using different terminology, it’s all effectively the same gun for game play purposes. For example let’s take the 3 IN Gun Battery, which has appeared on several published ships. The various factions field the following similar guns:
British: 3 IN
French: 75mm
German: NA
Italian: 76mm
Russian: 75mm
Japanese: NA
American: 3 IN
Austro-Hungarian: 7.5cm
First, if you’re checking your Ship Cards, you’ll know that a 3 IN Gun Battery is a 4 DBlue / 8 DGreen. Since all the other gun batteries are almost spot on size wise, all those weapons, when they eventually appear on a published Ship Card, will have the same game stats.
Next you’ll notice that there’s no German or Japanese entries. That’s because both nations simply didn’t field a weapon equivalent at this size. The closest German Gun Battery is 8.8cm, while the closest Japanese Gun Battery is a 6cm. Since both of those fall too far outside of the norm for this column of stats as established by the 3 IN Gun Battery, I needed to play a little bit with the stats. For example, the 8.8cm German Gun Battery (which is basically 3.5 inches) gets a slight tweak up to 5 DBlue / 8 DGreen, while the Japanese gets a slight tweak down on its 6cm Gun Battery to 4 DBlue / 6 DGreen.
For those really paying close attention they’ll note that the Pontbriand mounts 65mm Gun Batteries with the same game stats as that 6cm Gun Battery. Taking into account weapons both above and below these, I felt 5mm was a small enough difference to allow the guns to have the same game stats.
Now some of you may be asking “one hex change, is that really enough to make a difference in the game?” And that’s a good question. A few things to keep in mind.
First and for most, none of the above includes firing types, such as bracketing, saturation and so on (found in the Commander’s Manual), which can and will be used to add some differentiation here and there as appropriate.
Second, you have to look at a ship as a whole and see where tucking in subtle changes here and there on weapons (not to mention Breach Numbers and other equipment tweaks) changes the entire vessel into its own unique ship with its own playing profile.
Finally, future releases beyond the Core Box will begin to delve into Crew Abilities and Ship Quirks, all of which will not only provide some great additional game play, but will play off of various faction’s weaponry, accentuating those differences further.
Now to pass this giant spreadsheet to the playtesters to bang on and see if they find any errors or strange dice progression issues.
See ya next duty shift!
Randall
Thanks for the update, Randall.
I love reading this stuff.
Ditto, love reading this stuff. I can sort of envisage the various battles. I love the idea about Ship Quirks and Crew abilities which will lift the game to a different level. I can’t wait to read some of the ideas about that. Will the rules allow enough information for players to develop their own ships, etc?
Looking forward to a great game, can’t wait to see the boxed game and then reading about future releases.
ElectroJoe: Most welcome!
Mathew Jones: There are “Customization” rules in the Captain’s Manual that will allow players to tweak their ships before a battle. However, the Core Box Set will not contain a full blown ship construction system.
Randall, great article, though, I must say that whoever would think that “One Hex”
would not have much of an impact in the game is severely underestimating the power
of a cunning opponent to maneuvre to take advantage of that disadvantage. It would
have a tremendous effect for a couple of reasons. First, of course, is the biggie: when your guns are shorter range, you have to get closer. Which means that you will have to be more aggressive using it. Even one hex shorter range requires one to be more aggressive. In my experience, many people just are NOT aggressive in board games like Battletech or Leviathans. Second is the fact that the people who do not fight in close are going to use the fact that their gun has that one hex greater range to their advantage. Expect them to hang around just outside your firing range if you cannot just rush in and turn it into an aerial street-fight.
We really do need a forum so we can discuss this game and swap ideas, etc. Any idea on when you might have one set up. I know that wordpress isn’t necessarily the easiest program to integrate with forum software but I suspect we would like just about anything.
Agree completely Matthew…and we are working on the forums, literally right now. So no guarantees of when they’ll go live…but hopefully in the very near future.
Some off-topic stuff.
How are the new forums coming along?
Any progress on the figures?
Any more pics?
How do you go from your CAD drawings to a finished mold? I assume with this stuff you don’t even need to make ‘green’ models anymore.
Ok, back on topic.
Forums are up and active, we’re in the process of skinning them. No no promises of a launch date…but getting close.
Still working on finalizing production of the entire product, but just got in some more CADs of the ships…will ask them if it’s okay with them if we post up some sneak peaks of that.
And yes, the company we’re trying to finalize the deal with has a fully digital process…the ‘greens’ are a thing of the past for them…and as that technology continues to mature and the price drop, it’ll spread further and further.
Randall
I just came from your gallery, man, and it was awesome! I’m sure this would become a very wicked game. I’d really love to see this game on the shelves soon. I hope the development would go well for you.
I really enjoyed what you had to say. Keep going because you definitely bring a new voice to this subject. Not many people would say what you’ve said and still make it interesting. Well, at least I’m interested. Can’t wait to see more of this from you.
Its been a week since I found this game, and it sounds very interesting. I´ve read many of your articles and testplaying the game. I appreciate your historical search, but as a German with interest in the history of the German Navy´s and the K. u. K. Kriegsmarine (Austro-Hungarian Navy) I have to submit that they mostly field 7cm guns, also many 4,7cm guns. I think I´ve read an article in wich they say the 7cm guns were actually only 6,6cm calibre but were only named 7cm guns. So I think for game purpouse you should treat them like the 65mm guns from the Pondbriand in the Lieutenant´s Manual.
greetings from Germany, keep up the good work
Alderbot