+ inload: Engine War – Gargants for Adeptus Titanicus II: Fires +

+ Burna boyz: fires in Adeptus Titanicus +

+ Building on yesterday's theoretical inload [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], I roughed out a Command Terminal for the Great Gargant. Working like this is a good way to spot if anything's not going to work, and bring together your ideas in a single place. The result, v0.1, is below:

Great Gargant Command Terminal v0.1

+ Immediately, I've got a few reservations about it. Firstly, it just looks like a more complicated version of the Imperial Command Terminal. That's not necessarily a bad thing (no need to chuck the neonate out with the hygienofluid, after all), but it really should feel a bit more orky, to me. +

+ I've already had some excellent feedback and ideas – here, from the PCRC, on the Adeptus Titanicus subforum of Bolter and Chainsword, and on the Adeptus Titanicus 2018 Facebook group – on what players want from orks, and there are some common threads; which is encouraging. +

+ To recap:

+ General design principles +

1. Being orky, Gargants should be tough, and kick out a lot of firepower. 
2. Unsubtle but entertaining, they should be generally less reliable than their Imperial equivalent, but have the potential – with luck and good planning – to outshine their opponents' equivalent War Engines.
3. Playing a mob of Gargants should feel like you are an ork Kaptin managing his krew, and reward aggressive play.
4. Playing a mob of Gargants should not be a frustrating experience.
5. Using Gargants must abide to the core rules as seamlessly as possible while maintaining character.

+++

+ Pending changes: Fires +

+ One common request was for fires – it seems lots of players have fond memories of Gargants blazing from stem to stern – so I included a fire tally on the right, just to have it roughed in. However, it feels a bit abstract; and misses the feel of fires spreading through the Gargant. Almost immediately, I thought of a much better way to represent this – through damage counters on the Structure Points charts (i.e. the 'pips' of the head, body and feet). This is integrated into the existing system, simplifies the terminal and (hopefully) feels like the fire can spread better. +

+ How do fires work? +

+ My idea is as follows: Rather than starting from the left and working right, as normal damage accumulates, Fires would start on the right and spread left. These fiery regions then become ineligible to take damage; instead, further damage goes straight onto the Critical Damage area. Here's an example in play:

+ In turn one, the Great Gargant's body has taken a bit of a pounding, losing three Structural Points, and three fires having started. The damage accumulates on the left, and the fires are placed on the right. +

Turn one

+ The End Phase goes badly, and the fire spreads, adding a further token from the right-hand side. 

+ In Turn two, the Gargant is hit for four Structural Points. The first three are lost normally, accumulating on the left (the bright red ones are new). However, the fourth is unable to be placed, as the regions are ablaze. The excess damage immediately jumps to the first Critical Damage region. +

Turn two

+ Realising he'd better do something, the Kaptin bellows down the shoutin' tube to put the fires out, and in the end phase two are extinguished, being removed from the left, revealing two charred but functional regions. Turn three rolls around and the Great Gargant receives a single point of damage. This is placed as normal. +

Turn three 

+ I hope that makes things clear. It'll require some working out and tweaking to find the right balance of Structure points, but I think the principle is sound. +

+ How do fires start? +

+ Only you can prevent forest fires I think a nice way to model this is to have Devastating hits causing one point of Damage and starting a fire, rather than causing two points of Damage. Background-wise, Ork Gargants have fewer critical systems and more redundant/empty regions than an Imperial or Eldar Titan, and it helps fulfil design principles 1 and 5 (see above). Importantly, it also means that ork Gargants are mechanically a bit tougher than comparable Titans, because while they take the same gross amount of damage, orks can repair it, while Imperial and Eldar Titans cannot. +

+ This approach also means that you can potentially access the Critical Damage area more quickly (though since fires can be extinguished, you might go back to normal damage), making it harder to predict when something special will happen – this unpredictability helps fulfil design principle 2. +

+ Given that note above, when it comes to writing the Critical damage chart, I'll have to be careful to make sure that the results are relatively less heinous than the Imperial equivalent – from a mechanical and historical point of view, we want Gargants to degrade gradually, rather than from lucky one-hit kills (though the potential for that should be there, even if less rare than for an Imperial) and as design principle 4 states, we want the game to be entertaining, not frustrating. +

+++

+ Spreading and extinguishing fires +

+ Seeing whether Fires spread is an obvious End Phase addition; and a great opportunity to reflect the nature of fire – the more there is, the harder it is to extinguish. My current thoughts:

Fires: In the end phase, roll a D6 for each region of the Gargant that contains at least one Fire marker. If the total is greater than the number of Fire markers in that region (or the result is a 6 regardless of the number of fires) the fire does not spread, and nothing happens. If the total is equal to or lower that the number of Fire markers, the fire spreads. Add another Fire marker to the region.

+ Fires will need to have the potential to be extinguished; but we don't want to make it too easy – they should be a fun management mechanic. If you ignore them, they get harder to extinguish (see above), but if you send your crew to fight them, you'll have less to fire the guns etc. +

+++

+ In a later inload, we'll look at Krew in more detail, but for now, what do you reckon to the Fire mechanics – do they fulfil the design principles? DO they fit the background? Most importantly, do they look fun? +