Missiles, Sensors, and Sensor Deception

It may seam easy, but creating a simple opposed role system for a table top role playing game is not all that easy. The reason is once you start you also see all the things that it can apply to. This is what I have run into with the above three topics as they are essentially linked.

In this case I started with sensors. I wanted a system that would add a bonus to long range attacks to have combat that is beyond a set thresh hold. At the same this this led to the creation of sensor deception.

Sensor deception is an opposed roll to the use of sensor systems. For every success that the SD using targets gets. They reduce the number of successes the attacker with sensors receives. the culmination be that if the sensor tests successes are dropped to zero, the target can not accurately fire on the target.

But the applications of SD became very obvious against missiles also. So this has snow balled into multiple roles of missiles and SD. Because as a volley of missiles travels over rounds, they have a chance to reacquire a target. Thus making this entire thing VERY messy.

But in the end I will get it cleaned up some. I may just nuke the entire thought process...I am not sure yet though. In any case, that is what I am thinking at this moment. Interesting huh?

When a wall is in the way...

With kids in the background screaming and getting into things...I have hit a wall in writing the core elements of Manifest Destiny. SO, what I am going to do is take a little side trip into the Table Top rules I have in one of my many notebooks.

I will admit, I am a fan of some games...not because they are good mind you. But because they are different and have a perspective that breaks from the usual formula. Games like Navy Field, Naval Ops: Warship Gunner, and Warship Gunner 2. The idea of being able to build your own ship is something I like. I guess that is why I played Eve Online for two years.

Manifest Destiny: Star Blazers is based in the old world before the time of colonization. Taking place in the age of war that engulfed the player empires and nearly destroyed the universe it's self.

The idea behind this game is that the player can manage a single ship or a fleet of space fairing vessels in to combat. I have looked at different sources and have been talking with people in the field of table top strategy titles and have the basis of a simple system for the game. There are of coarse things to work out because the current system is just about 12 hand written pages. Any way, I think I am going to write a little bit and put what is in my notebook into a document.

Fortunately I am not planning this game to be a two hundred page core book. Probably something allot smaller that can plug into an old world campaign setting. But I must go where my brain takes me. :-)

Building the Habit...

Well, in an effort to keep things going and build up a steady habit of writing. I am going to discuss one of MD's side projects. This is kind of in the same line as the business, since it is the expanding of the game into other genre's.

As I may have said before, I have filled or almost filled three notebooks by this point. One day about a month ago, I started to play another MMO style game called Navy Field. Not really the best of games, but it is addictive and it is also a play for free title.

As I played, something in the back of my mind started rolling and out came a fourth notebook. If your interested, this one is a black covered wire bound. The others are blue, red, and one of the less expensive black and white string bound types. Any way I started writing in it and twenty three pages later, I have the ground work of a table top strategy game based in space.

I have been wondering what to do with it since it is based on and in the Manifest Destiny universe. It takes place with in the age of war where five of the player races are duking it out in an interstellar war. There is allot of possibility in it, and with some massaging and polish, it can become one of the MD product line.

But I would be very interested in hearing opinions about this idea. Space based table top strategy games are a little rare from my experience. And there really is allot of room for them in table top and computers. I am open to suggestions.