Witwat.net

It's a dirty, shameful secret. Promise not to tell anyone. The horrible truth is, I really like phase-based turn systems. Just a week ago, I was laughing with Maureen over at Pandemonium about how unplayable StarFleet Battles is and here I am advocating one of their worst-implemented ideas.

I'm not actually sure if my term is correct. By "phase-based" I'm really just referring to turns consisting of a variable number of sub-turns. In the aforementioned StarFleet Battles, your ship moves every single tick but your crew acts on specific phases - which, when badly implemented, means that you wind up with ships roaring past each other, unable to react or turn around and engage the enemy like a good Klingon should.

Dark Future - while a bit of a mess itself in many ways, had a much simpler but similar mechanic in place with the Speed Factors running from 1 through 6. For every 20 MPH, you move on another speed factor. While more playable (up until you get to the spinning and rolling rules, which are somewhat nightmarish), it's a little too simplified. Similarly, in the RPG world, the Hero System's turn structure allows players to define their characters with a set number of actions per turn - which are distributed evenly across 12 phases. Someone who's got an 6 speed will go on phases 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12, while someone with only 3 speed can just act on 4, 8 and 12. It's a bit of a headache for some, but I actually like the flow it creates. The idea of the overlapping phases (hence the terminology) for control while the physical results of those decisions are relatively continuous and seamless.

Behold the glory of automation. Since "The Show" is going to be run off a webserver, I can get the appropriate amount of realism without the accounting headache induced by trying to do so in a tabletop game. It's my headache once and then the players can either learn the details to use it to their advantage or just wait until the message says that it's their chance to take their action.

The current plan is to use a non-repeating sequence of ticks on which each vehicle moves in descending order of speed. There is no set end limit or reset point. Ticks just keep going onwards until the race has been completed. Players take their actions based upon their driver's adjusted Reaction score. Based upon the driver's inherent skill and the handling of the vehicle he's piloting, the Reaction score ends up being the number of ticks that have to pass before you can take your next action - so lower is preferable, giving you more control.

In the meantime, while the ticks are passing, outside of anyone's particular control, the game is just playing itself out, using the last settings of the players. So, if you're going to start turning right, remember that it's not just going to nudge you to the right and then go straight... it's going to keep turning to the right until your next action - when you can reallocate power.

I've also got a plan in place to "hold your action." Sometimes you don't want to change your power at the moment, but you will want to shortly. Let's say you're coming up on a curve and it is too close to wait until your next action, but not quite close enough to begin turning now. A player will be able to elect to keep their current settings until any single upcoming tick they want. I'm thinking that, for maximum flexibility, I'll give the option to hold for a specific, user-defined number of phases and then ask again. If you're not sure when you'll want to make that break to the left, then set it to one and it will ask you again on the next tick. If you can clearly see that you're in the open on a straightaway, then you can set it to 7 and it won't bog the game down waiting for your response each turn. Once you do finally take your action, you have to wait for your next one, as determined by the current tick and your Reaction score.

Hopefully, once everything is properly modeled and there's a working prototype, I'll see how the combination of turn order and constants used in movement work out. I don't want to bog things down too much - taking an inordinate number of ticks and actions to the point where play stalls out into micro-management - but I still want a certain level of detail in order to allow players to make definitive movements. I want people to be able to pull off sliding turns and sideswipe each other. I want people to be able to jockey for position on a curve. I want the turn structure to work with the movement scale in order to create the right balance of control around the curves and still avoid excessive tedium on the straights.

All that means is that I have to make a more fully-featured prototype to get some testing in. Updates to follow.