Witwat.net

This is still a work in progress, but below is the guidelines for creating adding elements to an online, turn-based, campaign-style racing league that I'm working on as a side project in my spare time. The following is written specifically towards a few people who might be interested in doing some writing and design of the particulars. As such, some of the following is addressed specifically to an author, rather than a reader. Please try to disregard that.

Here goes:

Components

Each sled is made up of 4 basic components. True to the idea of this being a sport, there's arbitrary rules and regulations behind what's allowed and approved, so each player will have one or more vehicles made up of whatever combination of components they prefer, but all using the same limited set of pieces to start with.

(Names are subject to change)
The components are:
1 Frame (the physical chassis - primarily determines the total weight and durability)
1 Foils (the external source of the anti-grav field that propels the vehicle, roughly analogous to wings on a plane or tires on a car - primarily determines maneuverability and aero)
1 Powerplant (pretty self-explanatory - primarily determines how much power is available and also a major source of weight)
1 Projector (the component behind all the fire control functions - primarily determines shielding and disruption*)
0-2 Options (extra components that are permissible, but not required - can provide a small boost to any trait, whether it's additional armor shielding, a turbocharger or space and weight devoted to aerodynamics)

The first 4 are mandatory. They really define the vehicle as a whole and it can't function without them. The options are a sort of a catch-all for any extras that people can come up with.

* - In addition to the racing aspect, players can shoot each other. Disruption is non-destructive "damage" that directly drains useable power from an opponent's powerplant on a given turn. The Projector was originally allowed into the league on a loophole (after projectiles were specifically prohibited!) and has become standard equipment. As a game mechanic, I was just worried about one person getting out in front and staying there because there's no way in which anyone can catch him. With the fire control aspect, a player can catch up by directly reducing the fore-runner's power (and possibly even more by causing them to redirect power to shielding), indirectly reducing the amount they have available to keep their speed up, allowing one to catch up and keep it interesting (in theory). The player who's behind has the choice of going for full-out speed or using some of their own power for targeting, which means that the front runner has to gamble on the actions of their opponents in order to stay in front.

Characteristics

Each component modifies one or more characteristics of the vehicle. The characteristics that can be changed are...

Weight - Simple enough. The Frame determines the maximum weight of a vehicle. With everything else being equal, lighter vehicles are faster and handle better, but things are rarely exactly equal because heavier vehicles can carry more powerful components and have a distinct advantage when ramming! Weight is a big factor in speed, acceleration, drifting, turning and just about everything. Barring rare exceptions, every component should have some weight.

Maximum weight - This is really for Frames only. If you get the superlightweight, ultracheap chassis, you probably shouldn't be able to squeeze in the equivalent of the V-12. The frame simply can't handle it without collapsing under the weight. This is intended to keep the different frames competitive, rather than just saying that whomever has the lightest frame always has an advantage. Perhaps an option could increase the maximum weight as well - increased structural integrity or something.

Aero (short for aerodynamic coefficient) - This is a pretty arbitrary number representing how much drag the vehicle creates. An Aero score of 1 just means that thrust is directly converted into speed, for example. While primarily important for Foils and possibly Frames, any other component can be particularly clunky or sleek and add/subtract from the overall total.

Rotate (short for rotational coefficient) - Just like Aero, except that this applies to determine how quickly you can change direction. Do your foils turn on a dime or like the QE2? I'd love to see some drag racing foils that have great aero and lousy rotate, for example. Same components as Aero.

Bank (short for banking coefficient) - Right now, in the basic formulas, this is a distinct characteristic. I'm pretty sure I'm going to combine this with Rotate to make a generic Handling score that applies equally to both. I'm only mentioning it now for completeness.

Power - This is simply how much raw power you get from the powerplant. You control your vehicle by assigning power (with a few sliders) between your Thrust, Bank, Rotate, Disruption and Shielding. Power is almost exclusively supplied by the powerplant, although a turbocharger option would certainly be in order.

Durability - While there are no components allowed to specifically damage other vehicles (with the possible addition of something like a ram prow option, perhaps), collisions with other vehicles or walls can cause physical damage. Additionally, the design of the vehicle itself can make it more or less resistant to disruption - redundant systems or some such. Frames have durability. Other components may have a bit, if they represent a particularly hardy or fragile component that significantly effects the overall toughness of the machine on average (it's all just abstracted into a single hit location, however).

Maneuverability - At the moment, this boils down, almost exclusively, to the ability to hold your track on a curve. If your move takes you in a direction that is not the same as your heading, you have to (behind the scenes, unseen by the player) make a Maneuverability check based upon the driver's skill and modified by your maneuverability. If you make it, you move as anticipated. If you fail, you slide outwards and end up somewhere other than your intended location. I'm thinking of (when I get around to collision detection) adding in additional checks for loss of control when you hit something, causing a portion of your power to be randomly allocated for you on your next turn to simulate inadvertent, panicked reactions. Foils and Frame are the primary sources, although other options could come up, like air dams or control surfaces as an option or a part of a frame.

Targeting - While I haven't worked it out yet, targeting is (will be!) your roll to hit an opponent with your Projector. I might change this to something like Fire Control and have it increase the effect of your shields as well, since they both work on the same principle (regulating the shape of the anti-grav field). This is all about the Projectors and possibly a targeting computer Option or something.

Disruption - This is a modifier for how much your shot hurts the target. Some Projectors are tuned to cause the maximum disruption amongst other's anti-grav fields, while others are tuned more defensively, in order to regulate and compensate for attacks on your own. While almost exclusive to projectors, I can see it coming into play with options and possibly even a powerplant or two.

Shielding - See disruption above. Same thing, in reverse. I'll probably combine these two into a single number, so a given Projector can be set at 80% offensive / 20% defensive, 60/40 or a nice, even 50/50. As with Disruption, it's mostly about the Projectors.

Cost - Here's the tough part. Everything costs cash, it's just a matter of how much. This will take some tweaking once we see what's actually effective and worthwhile. While I don't want to have money be the primary source of balance, it will most likely be the final one. Ideally, everything would be based upon having a few tiers, where all Tier 3 items work out to be roughly balanced, all Tier 2 items are roughly twice as good at roughly twice the cost, etc...

... As of right now, that's everything that's planned as possible traits of a vehicle. Every single sled will be a combination of everything above, with each one hopefully coming out remotely competitive.

Design Goals
Three words: Balance! Balance! Balance! (... and Background, in case you like both nice even numbers and alliteration!)

I don't want any particular combination to result in a machine that's superior in every way. Secondary to that, I don't want any particular combination to be superior in every way except for the cost (to help prevent one player running away with the season and winning more and more races just because of the winnings in the first few races). Everything should have a trade-off.

I also don't want to over define things. A powerplant consists mostly of Power, Weight and Price. Perhaps a few have an additional modifier to Durability (the Yugo powerplants, for example, are notoriously fragile...) or Disruption (Kill Krazy Korporation has managed to sneak integral Disruption capacitors into their engine designs in order to promote their own special brand of "karnage" into the league) but no engine should alter every single characteristic. When in doubt, assume that every piece is 100% average in every regard and just start listing the important bits that vary from there. To start with, perhaps if everything adds up to 100% (ie: +10% power means you need -10% durability or maneuverability or something) it will provide a decent base for tweaking.

Units are all completely arbitrary at this stage. You don't even have to worry about them, if you just want to say, "Mo' Bettah' Power, craptacular weight." Ideally, I'd like to start off with everything on a percentage scale and go from there. "This engine weighs 20% more than average," for example. Jut for consistency, the higher the percent, the better the stat (so "20% more weight" would actually get recorded as 80% of the average weight value, since it's worth 80% as much as average).

As a final note, I'd really love to see thematic suppliers and company names. Olympus Racing Corp makes high-end frames with a distinctive styling and all are named after Greek mythology. You can get the light-weight Icarus if you're feeling risky or work your way up to the heavily-armored Ares or the well-rounded but prohibitively expensive Zeus.

After components are worked out, I'll be making a library of images for each piece, so the icon for a sled made from an Icarus frame, Zephyr foils, Cheetah powerplant and a XL-DX projector will be made up of the images of separate components layered on top of each other - sort of like one of those old flip books (or even a rather odd variation on a paper doll) with the different pieces you could mix and match. As such, any distinctive visual notes would be appreciated as well.