Horizon Wars: Midnight Dark P#002 - Weapon Types & Damage

We picked up a new patron, recently, on the back of an email chat I had with them about Horizon Wars and my plans for Midnight Dark, which kind of sent me back to the drawing board to push this project along a little.

Now, a lot of people - myself included - have described Horizon Wars as "abstract" in the past. But, with due consideration, I think it's probably more like "impressionistic". The object of the rules was to convey a sense of kinetic, tactical sci-fi warfare without letting the players get too bogged down in the detail. But looking at a lot of the feedback I've had, my impression is that people would genuinely like to see at least a little more detail.

So, to stick with an artistic theme, I'd like to get away from Van Gogh and more towards Caillebotte:

We need to firm up the edges and clarify the lines of the game a bit, whilst still leaving plenty of room for the imagination to fill in the gaps. And there are a number of ways I'd like to do that, the first one being to expand the options players have for customizing their elements.

The core fundamentals of building your elements is going to stay pretty much in place. Mechs will have maximal flexibility. Conventional elements will have less. But broadly, each element will be a bit more adaptable in the new rules, so one tank isn't necessarily exactly the same as another. The bones of the idea is that an element will have a number of "free" upgrades - that is, choices they can make from a set of possible upgrades. Then you will also be able to add a limited number of extra upgrades at some form of cost.

Tanks (heavy cavalry) will have a relatively small number of options.

Light infantry, meanwhile, will have a relatively large number.

And the big, key thing I'm looking at for upgrades is weapons and damage types.

Now I'm not about to start dictating specific weapon systems. You know that's not my bag. But in Zero Dark, it was all about the weapon systems and less about damage types. When you're an infantry-scale unit, damage is damage. It all hurts. But when you're weorking at the company level, with mixed-arm battle groups, suddenly you become a lot more interested in whether incoming fire is heat-based, or armour piercing, or explosive etc.

So I've got a little shortlist of weapon types and damage types. But feel free to throw in your own ideas. In some cases, whether something should be a weapon type or a damage type is very option to change.

Weapon Types (typically one or two per element)

Indirect - Can lay fire down without a line of sight. More accurate if using the support of a Guide Fire element, but able to shoot "blind" as well.

Rocket - Able to carry a devastating payload, but vulnerable to enemy counter-measures.

Spray - Can hit multiple nearby elements at once or clear out an entire building, but very short ranged and near-useless against anything with a modicum of armour.

Laser - A weapon designed to attack other weapons and command/control systems by "killing" sight units and delicate optics.

Plaser - An adaptation of the venerable laser that accelerates a charged plasma packet along a laser's ion path. Almost rocket-levels of devastation, but highly visible.

Damage Types (typically a max of one per weapon system)

Explosive - Big bangs will stun elements, even if they aren't damaged. Can be devastating on buidlings.

Thermal - Heat-projecting weapons are particularly nasty when used against light-armoured targets.

Armour penetrating - These weapons are designed to break through the heavy armour of tanks and mechs.

Twin - This weapon is able to fire two shots (of the same weapon) at a single target in one go, dramatically increasing the odds of a devastating hit.

Smoke (might end up being a different kind of upgrade entirely) - A non-lethal device that can place concealment on the firing element or nearby.

So, for example, you may equip a mech - which will typically have between one and three weapon systems - with a Rocket system and a Plaser system, then give the rockets the "armour penetrating" damage type, and the plaser the "thermal" damage type. The weapon systems would be "free" upgrades, added as a normal part of mustering, whilst the damage types would incur some additional cost.