Orbital Battle Command - Single Layer Mechanics 'n Points

I was thinking about the mechanics of Epic and my new BC, specifically about two aspects;

a)  number of unit types available,

b)  vehicles in squadrons.

A while ago I did try playing One Page Rules with grouped vehicles and found the results unsatisfactory, specifically you could have a group of i.e. tanks throwing down literally 80 dice in an attack action.  Which is kinda crazy.

In contrast Epic works because there is only (generally) one (base) dice per unit/model and you have to hit a threshold value with it.

The difference is that Epic treats attacks in a multi-layered manner. Specifically you have Anti-Personnel (AP), Anti-Tank (AT) and Anti-Aircraft (AA)  as well as some (generally vehicle related) specialist weapons; Macro, Lance, Titan-Killer etc.

Now weapon profiles often (but not always) have a combined aspect, i.e.   AP5/AT4   so they can target either personnel or tanks (AV/Armoured Vehicles).  This provides variation in targeting and (unit) usage, where you have, in effect a three-layered structure all playing out simultaneously (with some cross over), which is quite clever.  But it can be a little confusing for new players and for remembering stats.

By contrast OPR uses a 'flat' system, where attacks can target any enemy unit on the board regardless of its 'type' (as there are no types).  In GF (full version/not skirmish) you still get one dice per model in a unit.  

This makes it harder to make specialised i.e. anti-tank or anti-personnel type weapons.  OPR makes a similar distinction using Deadly (multiple points of damage against a single model) or Blast (multiple points of damage spread across multiple models)  keywords which is a decent way of doing it too.

My game bases points of damage on the difference in card values, which is simpler still (...maybe).

Anyway, just some contemplations regarding various mechanics that I hadn't thought about in any detail.

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In other thoughts, this is my 'points calculator'.  Meant to be entirely transparent as to how things have their points. 

The example pic below is point-in-time, just for illustrative purposes, and has updated already.

The idea I use and like is that a unit's point value is based on things it can do (their potential) within the environment (kind of obvious, but this is a super simple approach).

Importantly, I don't weight certain values, as in weapons are worth more than armour or movement because I think entirely it's subjective and situationally conditional to consider one aspect more important than another.

So, if a unit has movement 6" then it adds +1 point.  It can move i.e. do something.  Another unit that can move 9"  can move 6" AND move 9"  so that's +2 points.  Or it could be recorded as (6") +1 & (9") +1  but easier to shorthand it.

A unit with ATTACK 2  means the unit pulls 2 cards to their attack hand. While there are no units (as yet) that can naturally draw 1 or 0 cards, I figured it best to reflect what they can do, rather than starting from 1PT for the 'baseline' potential.

That's the general gist of it.  The results are... initially unusual compared to the way that GW and other commercial games allocate points (who knows how they do that though... personally I think it's a largely subjective value)  but it seems to work, it's just unusual perhaps to see that a infantry group and a vehicle are more or less the same points... but they have more or less the same potential.

Until next time...