Gerall’s Blog

One of the hardest parts of game design would appear to be the interface between characters’ skills and the capabilities of vehicles and other interesting hardware. Whether you’re a mecha pilot, a net-running decker, or a rigger piloting drones into a fight, the question remains “How does my character’s Pilot skill affect its performance?”

Here’s my take on the problem that I’m writing up for Stacks.

When I work on getting “fun” game mechanics written up, I try and imagine how they would work in one of the most gamer-friendly settings I can imagine; Star Wars. So, to give a little perspective on things, I’m imagining I’ve got Wedge Antilles stated up in Stacks, standing on the flight deck next to a Green Rebel Pilot. Let’s keep the concept simple and assume that we’re not using very deep specializations. Wedge’s skill is Pilot 165%, Green’s skill is Pilot 65%. (I’m assuming that anyone with a Pilot skill lower than this wouldn’t be allowed to endanger a hard-to-find vehicle in the field for the Rebellion!)

From the perspective of Stacks, Wedge is granted 4 free successes due to his huge skill, then he rolls against the remaining 100% to generate from 0 - 5 further successes. So, his Hit range is 0 (a complete botch) or 4 - 9 Hits.

Green’s got no free successes, but can generate from 0 - 4 Hits with each die roll.

Now, from watching the movies, I can see that the A-Wing fighter is quite fast and maneuverable. It has acceptable armament, but cannot withstand direct fire very well. Compare this to the venerable Y-Wing fighter, and the later is much slower and less agile. It can, however, haul quite a bit of firepower and has built-in shields and armor.

To put statistics on them, A-Wing fighters look like this:

• Armor: 5
• Blasters: 3/2 (forward 180 facing only) / Missiles: by ammo
• Accel: 1 / Decel: 1
• Slip: 1 / Facing: 2

Y-Wing fighters look more like this:

• Armor: 9 / Shields 4 (60 facing, variable)
• Blasters: 3/3 (360 facing) / Torpedoes: by ammo
• Accel: 2 / Decel: 3
• Slip: 3 / Facing: 3

Armor is like regular armor from Stacks; it negates incoming damage up to its rating. Shields are “variable armor” based on the amount of power invested in them per round. Blasters are the laser-like weapons that don’t need ammunition reloaded into them between flights (they draw power from the vessel’s power plant). They deal damage in a given arc, and in the Stacks method of base and step.

Accel and Decel modify the vehicle’s current speed (these are in the nebulous units of “hexes”). Slip is a sort of maneuver where the vehicle moves from its current hex to another in its forward arc without changing the direction the ship is pointing. Facing is another maneuver where the direction of the vehicle’s front face is changed. In vectored systems (not in the Star Wars universe, naturally), a change in Facing doesn’t change the ship’s current speed and direction by itself. If non-vectored systems (we’re back in the Star Wars milieu here), this is much like turning the steering wheel on a car; the course is changed to the new Facing and the speed goes with it to this new vector.

With all this gamescience to digest, you can easily see that, with both Wedge and Green in an A-Wing fighter, Wedge can fly the vehicle in circles around the other pilot by virtue of his “free” Hits to allocate to Accel, Decel, Slip, and Facing. Put both pilots in the Y-Wing, and Wedge still retains the advantage of his huge skill. He can make the vehicle behave much more flexibly because of his surplus of available Hits, while Green will be struggling to make this beast move about the battlefield at all…

Put Green in an A-Wing, and Wedge in a Y-Wing. The pilots are now much more evenly matched, although I’d still give odds to Wedge. His phenomenal skill allows him to maneuver the Y-Wing almost as well as Green can get the A-Wing around the battlefield.

Combat with the weapons do their damage according to the pilots’ Gunnery, Evasion, and other specialty skills. Each point of damage that penetrates the vehicle’s defenses does damage to the ship, and some systems that are damaged can damage the Pilot and any occupants as well.

Now, having typed all this, imagine using this “Hits to fuel movement and combat” system into other arenas: What are the stats of the Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7 compared to the Cyberspace 5? How do the cowboy’s skills make a difference when they are “riding” different decks on given runs in the Matrix?

What affects do you see a skilled character creating with things like this? How do you want to describe the environment they’re moving through? How does “weather” in that environment affect the use of these skills?

There’s plenty of room for writing these Hard Parts(tm) into modern gamescience. It’s a matter of creating the hooks in the environment for the characters to use their skills on. I’m now in the process of writing the rules for starship design and construction, so your character’s Design: Aerospace Fighter skill affects what the final stats are for given vehicles…

Game on!

Tags: Gaming, Writing //