Saturday, November 18, 2017

Battleyacht - mechanical brainstorming, part 1

Well, it's about time I get some real ideas down in digital ink if I'm going to make any progress on this NaGaDeMon thing...!

As I noted in my last post, I'm taking a crack during National Game Design Month at putting together some rules for naval battles based on the mechanics of the public domain dice game Yacht.

Now, I'm neither a seaman nor an experienced player of naval battle games, but it seems to me that I can probably break down the basic actions of a boat in such a game into very few categories...I'm thinking moving, firing, and (maybe) doing other stuff.

Looking at a score card for the game of Yahtzee that I found online, it's clear that there's a nice breakdown at work there, too:


That upper section is all about getting multiples of specific numbers (and earning a bonus for getting what amounts to three of each).  While the traditional Yacht game doesn't make the division quite so explicit (and doesn't have the bonus), scoring does still come down to getting lots of each number OR putting the numbers together in some sort of poker-style grouping (as we see in the bottom section).

So there's how it's gonna break down...movement will be based on getting multiples of a number in order to move that number of [whatever unit of movement I end up using].

The firing and the doing other stuff...that can be where the bottom section comes in.

At first, I figured a simple need for three matching dice in order to move might be good...and maybe additional dice could increase the movement by a unit.  So a roll of...


...would allow for 8 units of movement (6 plus a bonus of 2).

It's occurred to me, though, that a nice way of differentiating crafts in the game might be to give each of them a sort of Control score which is the minimum number of matching dice needed to make a movement happen.  Those that would take a while to get started might require four of a kind, while something like a jet ski might just be able to take the highest die you roll.  (Plus, the Yacht game itself doesn't make that three-of rule of thumb an integral part of the game, so I wouldn't be unhappy to not adhere to that...)

Additionally, crafts may be differentiated by a max speed and/or a bonus that can be applied to a move result.

More details to come on this as I work it out in my head, but I'm liking the "Upper Section" = movement line of thought.  And next time, I'll try to tackle what it means to fire and do other stuff...


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