Chris's Erfworld Game

[Chris Goodwin]

Nihila and I and a couple of other people have been discussing it on the General Erfworld Rules Discussion thread, but I've been feeling like I've been taking that thread over with discussion of my game so I'm starting a new one. The game currently exists as a Google Doc here.

Anyone who wants to can jump over there and catch up before continuing here.

I just realized that I inadvertently made Move a dump stat. (Maxi Troop Transport: C1, D10, M50, H30, Flying, Mount, Warlord, with a horde of C1, D1, M1, H1 Minis). I've switched the costs of Move and Hits as a result.

[Nihila]

So, how many units can use another unit as a mount? Is it like in the Battle for Gobwin Bump? Is there a max HP limit to units? A max move limit?

Actually, that unit sounds kinda cool. Maybe would work with a Communist-themed side. It can, after all, make large numbers of weak, defenseless units disappear and make them appear miles away with a high chance of instant death. Is this game going to be run on the forum, as post-by-post?

If so, I'm in.

[Chris Goodwin]

So, how many units can use another unit as a mount? Is it like in the Battle for Gobwin Bump? Is there a max HP limit to units? A max move limit?

I kinda like Gobwin Bump's way of handling it. We've seen siege towers that are about twice the height of a cloth golem (battle bear) and are crowded with little guys (Marbits?). It could be that those are 2-3 HP mini's, and the siege towers are 60+ HP monstrosities.

I wasn't planning on using max hit points.

Actually, that unit sounds kinda cool. Maybe would work with a Communist-themed side. It can, after all, make large numbers of weak, defenseless units disappear and make them appear miles away with a high chance of instant death.

Heehee.

Is this game going to be run on the forum, as post-by-post?

If so, I'm in.

I don't do too well with long term asynchronous (i.e. forum or email) games... I won't be running one, but if someone wants to pick up these rules and do so, I'm absolutely cool with that.

[Nihila]

No, those siege towers had Hobbittm units, human units in them. It looks like about 40, maybe 20 units on each platform of the tower, five levels to the tower, about 200, maybe 100 units at about 4 HP each... 800 HP? 400?

Siege Towers should not cost almost or over 1000 points to build.

Maybe there should just be a "Cargo" stat, as that would mesh nicely with Water Capable for ships (grants all units inside Water Capable). Maybe just costing 1 per unit carried, or 2?

Gah!! That leaves the same problem. Maybe Siege Towers are just uber-expensive, which is why only Hobbittm uses them.

[Crovius]

Or that their stats as a unit didn't matter because they were just a building on wheels that possibly provided defense bonus tot he units in them and a siege bonus when attacking the ctiy. They roasted quite well as I recall.

[Chris Goodwin]

We know ships come in levels. How do they level up? They're inanimate objects, right?

I'd imagine that siege towers also come in levels, and that they level similarly, however that is (do they get XP for battles they're involved in? does a side spend schmuckers to level them up?). And I imagine that for both ships and siege towers, their level indicates how many units (or total HP worth of units, or some other measure) can ride on them.

[Nihila]

I'd say, you have 4 levels of inanimate objects that you can build, and it takes a lot of Schmuckers to level it up. And, I think that Level affects Cargo, as it is implied in the ratios given in Text Update 18, Book 2. (Charlie teaches Sammy how blackmail is done.)

[Chris Goodwin]

I'd say, you have 4 levels of inanimate objects that you can build, and it takes a lot of Schmuckers to level it up. And, I think that Level affects Cargo, as it is implied in the ratios given in Text Update 18, Book 2. (Charlie teaches Sammy how blackmail is done.)

Say... with the Cargo Special, a unit can carry (Level * 100) hit points worth of units as passengers. Passengers are not the same thing as riders on a Mount; passengers can only fight units on the same vessel, or another vessel in the same hex, and some other stuff that I haven't thought of yet.

[Nihila]

Maybe just (Level*60) HP worth of passengers, as that fits pretty well with 10 medium units per level.

[BLANDCorporatio]

Hi, sorry for not being more active in this so far. Is there something like a rules doc? Chris Gowdin, the link you had in another thread, that Google Doc, is it up-to-date?

[Chris Goodwin]

Hi BLAND! Yes, that Google Doc is up to date. It is so up to date that it may change suddenly and without warning. I haven't done anything on it in a couple of days, though.

[Nihila]

I wasn't planning on using max hit points.

I think that this is a good idea, but, just to play devil's advocate (more), here's a(n obscenely expensive) unit that could exploit the lack of max HP.

Armageddon
Combat=400 ---- Combat Cost=1200
Defense=400 ---- Defense Cost=1200 (Is there a defense limit? I haven't seen one, so I assume it's the same as Combat, 2x HP)
Move=30 ----Move Cost=30
HP=200 ---- HP Cost=400
And, because it makes virtually no difference to the unit cost at such insane levels, I'll just add every special under the sun.
So, 23 Disciplines of Casting (120), Flight (10), Tunneling (10), Archery (5), Mountain Capable (5)(to deal with those pesky Level 3 Mountains), Dance-Fighting (10), Siege (5), and Fire (5).

Comes out to a nice, even 3000. But, while it may take 50 or more turns to produce, what will counter it? Another, more powerful super-unit? (Though, hopefully, people would be sane enough not to listen to nutjobs like me, which would stop them from even opening this Pandora's box.)

On the other hand, the problem with setting a max HP is that every side will make a unit with maxed-out stats. Just look at all the 30 (the maximum) Hits, 45 (the maximum) Attack, 5 (the maximum) Defense units in The Battle for Gobwin Bump. Is there a way to get out of this dilemma?

[WaterMonkey314]

You can avoid that scenario with the super-units: make the max attack and def limits a sliding scale dependent on hp. Bigunits mighthave a max attack of their hits while small ones might get two or three times.

PS: Do the rules allow overkill of units? If so, a superunit could be brought down by a swarm of munchkins.

[Nihila]

Or, HP could increase in cost as it increases, so 30 HP would cost 60, but 30 more HP would cost, say, 90, for a total cost of 150. Or, both the attack/defense limits and the increasing HP costs could be in place. Then, huge units would be horribly inefficient, and the munchkin swarms would kill them.

[Crovius]

So basically make HP costs increase at certain tiers. You could do the same with the combat stats. Sure if someone wants to shell out 20000 schmuckers and wait the 100 turns for it to pop, the other sides would need a veritable army to take down this unit and the one upshot is that for that 100 turns the capital would be unable to make new units.

Also the upkeek cost would be in the thousands for the one unit, probably causing the side to need to disband whole platoons of lesser units to make up for the cost.


And then the side plants a warlord on his Godzilla's head and everyone's really booped...

[BLANDCorporatio]

On the other hand, the problem with setting a max HP is that every side will make a unit with maxed-out stats. Just look at all the 30 (the maximum) Hits, 45 (the maximum) Attack, 5 (the maximum) Defense units in The Battle for Gobwin Bump. Is there a way to get out of this dilemma?

TBfGB is a pretty good system (of course, I had a hand in making it ) but it can be improved. I'll read the rules doc here, maybe come with some suggestions in the next few days.

Now, max-units aren't that bad in TBfGB and frankly I like them because they ease planning and keeping track of who's where. But that's not an argument, true.

What TBfGB aimed for, and I think to some degree achieved, was a three-way balance between three unit archetypes (slow infantry, (slow) ranged, (fast) ranged); such a thing we want in any game.

As for units, I for one am still holding hope for that Erf-themed RPG. Something, ya know, with few units involved at any one time. Keeping track of where all of the Mini-RCC units went, and where they should go, is a bit taxing

[Crovius]

And most sides have only like 10-20 units. Except gobwin bump which has a lot of units on it's side.

The RPG could be cool, but the thing is the world is a RTS, so really if we want it to be an RPG we have to more or less ignore the game mechanics and instead apply erfworld setting to another game like d20 or Dnd 3.5 or World of Darkness, those just being what I can think off the top of my head.

[Chris Goodwin]

I was actually considering using some RPG rules, namely the HERO System. The new and previous editions of the Fantasy Hero book included a reasonable-looking mass combat system, and I played around with tweaking it some to import some of the Erfworld rules. I think it still might work -- I've done several media conversions to Hero myself, and have seen many others -- but it was starting to get a bit complicated, and I was realizing that what I was wanting was the Erfworld game, not Erfworld Hero.

But if I was going to do a for-sure RPG, I would use Hero.

[LTDave]

Probably the biggest problem with the Gobwin Bump rules is the tendency to create a majority of maxed out units.

If (and it's a big if) I do it again, I'll try to change the values system, so that either:

1. Unit costs increase in a exponential fashion - so, the cost of a unit is to the power of 1.5 or 1.25 or something. So big units are still possible, but cost more than they otherwise might.

2. Large hit units take longer to create. So you can have a 30 HP unit in three turns, or make 10 3HP units every turn for 3 turns. Something like that.

WIth Bland, the number of units in GB is too big. I made some serious errors there. If someone can come up with a way to do a simple action based RPG, I'll play.

[Chris Goodwin]

Probably the biggest problem with the Gobwin Bump rules is the tendency to create a majority of maxed out units.

Actually that's been an experience with the HERO System as well. In that system, characters and powers are built with points, and for a long time the unofficial method was to limit amount of points spent on max attacks, defenses, and so forth, so you'd see a lot of characters maxed out. Hero generally requires a lot of GM oversight over character creation, because creative players can minmax in ways Lord Hamster can only dream about.

I think the best solution is going to end up being a GM, or else creating a large catalog of precreated unit types and Thou Shalt Not Use Units Not On This List.