Sunday, October 30, 2016

Further Basic Ideas

More ideas from my fevered brain:

1.   Forts
     Every colony will start with a fort, it is capable of housing 24points of troops. The walls will support 12 figures fighting in each direction (subject to the points limitation). if a cannon or Gatling gun is mounted it displaces as many figures as it has crew plus one. If the field piece is mounted at a corner it displaces figures from both of the walls that make up the corner.
     The model of the fort will be no larger than 12" square. In game terms it counts as hard cover (divide hits by two, rounded down) and higher ground.
    We will discuss the price of forts, I want them to be relatively expensive to force the colonial forces to keep moving around to enforce the Sovereign's will.
     I will build a standard fort, if you have a desire for a different design, and can draw it coherently, and it interests me, I will build a special one for you.

2. Supply Wagons 
     Supply wagons cost one point each, they will support 24 points worth of troops each week on campaign. Effectively a 24 point force will "consume" a wagon a week while on campaign. The supply column will be present on the table with every Imperial Power's force. Wagons can be destroyed by inflicting six hits on them either in melee or by shooting. Once a wagon has been consumed it is removed from the supply column. Loss of supply wagons will either foreshorten your campaign or lead to attrition among your troops.

3. Heavy Guns 
     As the game is designed the guns are small field pieces. Fortresses and siege trains may have need for heavier hardware. Heavy Guns cost 8 points each, shoot 48", have five crew figures and ignore two levels of cover.  They move 2" a turn without limbers, 4" with limbers. There are no heavy Gatling Guns, but I am open to discussion.

1 comment:

  1. 1. Forts
    - John, you can actually just simplify it down to "1 Unit per Wall Face", since units are now uniform in size. If you have a cannon or something on the wall, then whatever, extra space to ammo or something. Let's keep it simple.
    - Just as well, I would also put the Fort Limit to Unit Size rather than points. 4-5 units would be enough and much simpler to keep track of. 1 guy is one 1 guy, whether he be the shittiest Askarki or the toughest Colour Sergeant. Again, yet another wonderful feature of the new ruleset.
    - Hardcover is divide by 3 down (The rule states that you add 2 to the number of hits needed to cause a casualty).
    - I'm going to again advocate for having troops automaticaly bought with a fort. Just feels like a fort should always have a garrison. I would price a fort at +6 per the unit guarding it, maybe +8. That's basically the cost of an entire unit (or two) for a defensible position in one area. But it's up to you. Also going to depend on how upkeep will work.

    2. Supply Wagons
    - If you are going to do this, I like the idea of tying it to campaign time. Just simplify it a bit: you get 1 wagon per campaign week for your army. You can purchase 1 extra per 4 wagons you have at a cost of 2 points. Once you run out of wagons, your army has to return to base. Dirt simple.
    - I might also set a force maximum, like 30 points, when it comes to bringing them to the battlefield. That way we don't have a bunch of huge-ass armies crushing the smaller colonials.

    3. Heavy Guns
    - We need to playtest this. First off, what's the short range, and how much more for well-drilled? Plus, more guys and less cover easily makes up for slow speed in my opinion. Needs more price, probably needs a "Set-up/Limber-up" action, which would slow it down enough. But honestly, this is where I'd want to see tabletop testing instead of theoryhammering it.

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