Army Building (2)

Maths and maths-related stuff follows.

What I need to achieve, here, is a conversion system that changes the very basic original points values of elements (1, 2 or 3) into something more granular that fits the loose vision I outlined in the first article. So I'm expecting to see a points value more like 17 or 32 or 126 or something along those lines.

The components of an element are its stats and its abilities. In Horizon Wars, I worked hard to balance all four elements to make sure that each one was as useful to the player as every other. That gave me confidence that it was OK to move a point from one stat to another without really worrying about affecting the "value" of the element. However, that was fine when the distinction between an element was 1 or 2 points at most. When the distinction is going to be tens of points, now it really matters whether the stats are perfectly balanced against each other and... I don't believe that the stats are so well balanced against each other that they can stand up to that level of scrutiny!

Now, I'd welcome the thoughts of anyone who's played the game a few times, but by my estimate, Firepower is the most important stat, followed by Mobility. Generally, I'd put Agility/Armour above Defence, but I've already tweaked how these two stats work in Midnight Dark so now I'm pretty happy that they're a bit more even in importance.

But this is an evolving rules-set. For example, as things stand, I've removed the condition that A0 = destroyed... but I haven't yet decided what conditions will result in an element being destroyed (probably either a certain minimum amount of damage in a single attack OR a certain combination of damage and Lucky 12s - we'll look at the maths of that decision in a future post).

So what I need isn't necessarily to decide how much each stat is "worth", but a method of adjusting the value of each stat in a way that immediately translates into points values.

Oh, hello Microsoft Excel.

Look, I know there are other tools and spreadsheets that can do this just as well, if not better, but I've been using MS Excel at pro level for well over 20 years. Excel and me are buddies. Hell, we're practically family.

So currently I have the starting point of a spreadsheet that lists units, stats, abilities, ability ratings (it's a new thing in these rules*) on one sheet. On another sheet, it lists how these things are valued, proportionately (so, for example, if M is valued at 1.0, F might be valued at 1.2 if I thought it was 20% more valuable than M).

I then have a bunch of formulae working that translate those values into a points scheme.

None of this is final (so, no, I'm not going to show it to you). It's barely even a starting point. But it is a starting point. It's a tool that lets me tweak the points values of not just one element but every possible element at once just by changing one value. So if I decide that D is "worth" 70% of M, I can set D to 0.7 and every element immediately changes its value.

If a particular upgrade makes use of D, I can then tie its value back to the basic D value as well, so an element with that upgrade immediately alters its points value for that upgrade at the same time.

Right now, of course, there are a lot to decimal points. We've got element worth things like 5.9735 points, which is no good to anyone. And multiplying every value by 10000, whilst it will make those numbers nice and whole, will create a level of granularity far beyond what I need. Who wants a tank to cost 59735 points?

But it means I can toy with what kind of granularity feels right. Should a tank be 6 points? Or 60 points? Or 597 point? (That value, by the way, is made up - that is not the current cost of a tank in the system)

But right now I'm feeling that two-digit values for elements are about right, whilst one-digit values for upgrades is probably correct. But, again, I can tweak the multiplier in the spreadsheet so that I get points values that feel right. It doesn't have to be a decimal at all. It can be 7.5 of 9.21 or 3.

All of that, though, leads me to mechs.

Mechs will continue to be the most flexible and customizable of elements in the game, with very little likely to change from the original in that respect. But they then present a more challenging calculation if we assume that certain stats, especially, are worth more than others. So if I were to base the cost value of, say, a P2 medium mech on the assumption of an even distribution of stats, it would naturally render a "better" mech to invest its stat points into the most "valuable" of the stats. Meanwhile, if I base the points cost on the most optimally-built version of the P2 mech, any non-optimal mech will be, well... sub-optimal.

The ideal solution would be a custom mech-building app that would allow each mech to be individually costed based on how it is built and I'm not saying I wouldn't like to make that happen eventually. But I think the core rules need a bit more certainty than that. I'm not 100% sure how I'll be resolving that puzzle, yet, but I already have the tool I need to easily wargame the options and see which ones look best.

Finally, we get to heroes.

I've touched upon heroes in previous posts about Midnight Dark, so you can look back at those if you missed them. The question I will have to resolve, when I get to heroes, is whether they count as units or upgrades, and there's an argument for them either way. On the one hand, they have no model of their own on the table - they are attached to an element and can, at least theoretically, move between elements (between battles). They provide elements with modifier to their stats. All of that makes them sound like an upgrade.

But they also have stats of their own, albeit on a different framework to elements. And they can have their own upgrades. You can't upgrade an upgrade... can you? Well, thanks to ratings*, you kind of can. So there's a precedent.

At this stage, I'm pretty sure I'll handle heroes as elements in their own right. But I reserve the right to totally change my mind.

By the way, my plan for August is that, while managing the Kickstarter, I'll be working on finishing the manuscript for Operation Kurgan and using Midnight Dark as one of several "palette cleansing" projects when OpK gets too much. Once the KS is done, obviously fulfillment will be the number one priority, but I'll also be moving on to doing the layout and graphic design for OpK. Objective is a release of OpK by the end of the year if I don't have a proper job, or by Easter 2023 if I do. Midnight Dark will be the next project to pick up after OpK.

Once the trilogy is finished, I'll be looking at adding supplements to Infinite Dark and Midnight Dark until they all have three supplements and, at that point, the cycle will begin again, with Zero Dark v2.0.

*Oh, well, since you ask... Ratings are a way of representing that two units can have the same ability but be measurable better or worse than each other at that thing. For example, indirect fire. In the original rules, an element with indirect fire would always shoot at -1 F if it didn't have LOS to its target. In MD, meanwhile, indirect fire has a rating from -2 to (theoretically) +2. So whilst a dedicated artillery unit might have indirect fire 0 (shoots unseen targets with no modifiers to F), an infantry element might be upgraded with a mortar to gain the indirect fire -2 ability to shoot at unseen elements but with -2 F.