Midnight Dark #004 - Abilities & Ratings

A feature of my design philosophy has always been to make simple things work as hard as possible. Hence why, for example, Presence in Horizon Wars was a tool for army building, and a CQB stat. It's why, in Horizon Wars: Zero Dark the target for CQB is achieved by adding together F and D. You'll see examples throughout my work.

So, taking a fresh look at Horizon Wars as I develop Midnight Dark, I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can squeeze more interesting gameplay choices out of limited information without needing to add too much to the rules.

One thing I don't think I made enough of in the original game was abilities. There weren't enough of them and they weren't sufficiently interesting in themselves. Now, it's easy to go way too far in the other direction. Warhammer 40,000 is bloated with abilities (it's not bad design, it's deliberate marketing). Infinity the Game has taken the wise step of rationalizing their abilities between third and fourth editions, although it's still moderately bloated (fire team rules, OMFG!). So I'm trying to strike a reasonable balance in Horizon Wars: Midnight Dark by adding a handful of new abilities - for which there is definitely room - but also injecting some nuance into the rules that are already there.

To give an example of a new rule - because I know you'll want to know - artillery is getting the "pounding" ability. I wrote last time about fatigue (an existing mechanic with a new, clearer name). Well, a pounding element will get to impose more fatigue upon its targets.

But existing abilities - like Dig In and Rapid - are getting some nuance. Abilities are going to be given "ratings" that tell you just how good they are. So Pounding +1 will impose +1 fatigue in addition to other effects, whilst Pounding +2 will impose +2 (obviously).

Rapid, meanwhile, has been scaled back from 3x M to a more nuanced option of a normal move, plus the Rapid rating. So a Rapid +1 element can move up to twice its M +1" in a rapid move. A Rapid +3 can... well, you get the idea.

Other abilities will have similar nuances. Dig In, for example, is rated from +1 to +3, showing how well elements make use of cover, gaining that much on their A stat to combat enemy shooting when dug in. Meanwhile Guide Fire gets negative and positive values, now. Command elements get Guide Fire -1 (so they can guide fire for artillery but imposing a -1 modifier to the artillery's F), whilst Recon elements get Guide Fire 0 and SF get's Guide Fire +1. 

I hope you can see how, with the simple addition of a rating to existing abilities, we are extracting a good deal more for players to think about when adding elements to their armies and deciding who to activate (and which elements to prioritize for fire solutions!). I am still toying with the options for ratings.

The mustering system for Midnight Dark is still a work in progress, but there may be options to not only add extra abilities to elements but also to upgrade existing abilities with higher ratings. I am also looking at some outline factions, with the possibility of a faction gaining blanket ability modifiers as a passive constraint on army building (i.e. if you know that element X is better in your faction, you'll add more of it; and if element Y is less good, you'll add fewer of them; but you aren't actively prevented from adding either).

We'll talk more about points systems when I've made a bit more progress.