Page: Guide.ModelingDesign42 - Last Modified : Sun, 19 Oct 14 - 1649 Visits

Bases

Ok, this will be once of the most complex object to manage. There will be 36 bases, because I want them selectable with 2D6 a bit like in Wizard Quest baord game. The problem with base is that there could be a lot of variable information with little place to record them. The persistance of information is another problem, a base could be damaged but remain damaged for a certain time.

There a few solution that has been found so far, first restrict the nb of bases that record information. For example, the 5 last visited base keep track of damages and other things, but when a 6th one is visited, the first one is completely resupplied. This can be very interesing, since it`s a compromise between both worlds of keeping track of everything or nothing. Maybe certain variables will be recorded like this but not all of them. The problem is that if you play with 2 players, you need 2 diferent trails, or a larger trail than the 5 last bases.

Else for combat variables, they could remain for the duration of the battle. Players will be able to stay in battle for multiple days, so there should be no situation where a battle ends, then reiniating a battle resupply the base. So if the battle ends, it`s because one side won, or decided to retreat, which can justify the resupply.

So for bases I will also keep track of where the information is recorded to know when it is re-initialized to it`s default values. Permanent variables will be in little quantity since there is not enough space to keep track of 36 of them.

Bases (PTO 1)	Bases (PTO 2)	My Data
Friendship	Airforce Duty	Good Market
Transports	Scout	Fleet at Port
Freighters	Plane Squads	Other Defenses (Torpedo Boat)
Iron	Airfield	Black Market
Oil	Fuel	Planes
Repair and Resupply	Command Points	Troops
Population	Yield
Industry	Transport/Truck
Endurance	Nation
Arms	Ore
Planes	Oil
Soldiers	Terrain Type (post only)
Material	Port/Land Base
Fuel	Army/Navy Control
Mines	Supply Lines
Enemy	Base Connections
Note
Days
Fighter
Bomber
Scout
Jet Fighter
Rocket
Long Range Bomber

Control, Nation: Define who own the base. In my game, a base can be controlled by the Japanese or be free. But a free base can be attacked until it is finally independent. The independent process might take a long time like 3 or 6 month. Now if a base get free 2 days before the independence check is made, a base will be independent too fast. So I was thinking in having a 2 step of 3 month. So in the example above, the base will change state, then after the next 3 month, the base become independent. It's basically adds a period where the players might need to defend the base from beign recaptured by the japanse. That period would vary between 3 months and 6 months.

There are multiple ways to record this. First by using dice, a base without dice, is under japanse control, a base with a die is free. It start with value 6. Each month, it is reduced by 1. When it reaches 0, the base is independent which now require a token. That makes 36 dice and 36 tokens. But the base liberation time is more accurate.

Or I could use 2 tokens per base, for a total of 72 tokens. One token will mark a base as free. Another will mark liberation "In Process" or finally "Independent". With 2 tokens I can record 4 states, But only 3 are used so far, So I could add a 4th state to make liberation a 3 phase process.

Or another idea from fire in the sky, rotating tokens. Allowing to make base liberation an up to 4 step and then flip the token once the base is independent. That seems much more interesting (only 36 tokens). Lot of talking to get an answer.

Repairs and Ressuply, Docks: Indicate if the base can allow repairing ships or not. I am thinking to have 1 bases for each of the 6 map areas that could handle repairs. The idea would be to make those base more imporant in the group. It could make AI design easier. In PTO 2 the number of docks limit the number of fleet you can repair, I just removed that since players control only 1 fleet. As for Resupply, all bases can resupply. Since all bases will have a port, there is no need to keep track of that information.

Harbors: They were removed, again because there is 1 fleet to manage so no need to keep track of how many fleets you can dock.

Ore, Oil, Iron, Population, Industry, Yield: This is basically the resources given by the base. It could be useful to know where you could get certain commodity. Now I am thinking on keeping this simple, so I would probably assign only 1 ressource per base, the most important one. Capturing those bases must have an impact on the game, especially the AI. There is a couple of ideas so far:

Resource	Effect when captured
Oil	Capturing an oil producing base will reduce the threat level of one of the 6 map areas.
Industry	It will reduce the strength of the air strike, subs and maybe fleet sent at you.
Ore/Iron	To Be defined It will reduce the ship production speed. Could also use industry for that
Population	To be defined Maybe reduce economy of Japanese, increasing or reducing price. Or affecting trading somewhow. OR slow down base regeneration (Interesting!)

Maybe new resources could be designed. Maybe certain resources are usable when the base is under japanse control. For example, you could get a better price for selling commodity in an high population base. There is still some exploration that could be done. For now, oil and industry will be used.

Fuel and Material: Originally used to resupply ships and repair bases. Here there is no need to manage this, you pay to resupply your fleet and that is all. We assume that the base has the necessary fuel to do so.

Airforce Duty, command Points: Used in PTO 2 for delegating airforce duty normally set to pattrol by default, or command points make the bae AF do actions. This is useless for my game.

Air Port,Plane Squad, Fighter, Bomber, Scout, Jet Fighter, Rocket, Long Range Bombers: Each base will have individual tokens for planes, but they will basically only be used during battle since I cannot keep track of many tokens on multiple bases. One thing that is cool is the way the battle will work is that multiple days of battle can occur without redeploying the units. This mean that once the battle is over, either you lost and ran way, or you won and get the city. In both case, it makes case that the base get resupplied immediately.

So the only important thing to record is the strength of the airport. In PTO 2, you could have 1 or 2 airport that changed the plane capacity. Even in the fire of the sky board game, bases as a air and ship capacity to reflect this. So maybe keeping an airforce strenght level would be enought. It would basically indicate how many units the base will have.

Now for the air composition, either I use a random card drawn that shows air compsition, or either I use a fixed formula like 1 fighter for 2 bomber for 3 torpedo bomber and simply use a chart like: If there is 4 units, use that composition.

As for Rockets, they are irrelavant for bases, they can be equiped on ship and I won't keep track of quantity. As for long range bombers. No need to keep track of this either since it's base vs base bombing, will be rarely used in my game. Else I could say base with Air Capacity greater than X can do long range bombing. As for scouts, I won't keep track of quantities, I am not even sure they were used in 1945 with the arrival of the radar.

Supply Lines: They will not be used in this game, since japan is not at war, surrounding countried will not cut the supply lines. But transport convoy could be attacked by the player maybe destabilising japan's resources temporarily.

Transport, Freighter, Truck, Days: This was the number of ships available to ressuply a base. In certain games, you could take ships from that pool if you were lacking transports or tanker for example. There will be no need to keep track of this. Players will be able to buy transport from the "home bases" or from certain market. As explained above, it could be interesting to keep track of which base got it's supply line cut by placing a token on the top of the base's resources to indicate it will not collect anything this turn. It would give the player another way to influence the game. Days was only a delay before the next resupply, this is simply ignored as it is done each month.

Endurance, Arms, Mines, Other Defenses: In PTo 1 bases seem to have and endurance level (like HP) that needed to be dropped to 0 before soldiers could capture. It was removed in PTO 2. I quite like the idea. As for other defense, It woul be impossible to keep track of all those units, so as planes they will be deployed for the battle only.

Now I assume that bases defense are built up proportionally. Which mean a low defended bases, will have a low amount of mines, torpedo boat, Anti-Aircraft gun, Anti-Sea gun, etc. While a hight defended base will all have those value high too, they will not ignore a cetain defense type. So I am thinking to use a Defense strength that will regroup them all.

Soldiers, Troops, Enemy: Soldiers could also not be tracked on board. Recorded by a fixed Soldier strength, and regenerate itself once the battle is over. But I find the regeneration especially of soldier to be really quickly. So I am thinking of using a "damage" token on a base to indicate if it is full strength or half strength. If I use double sided token, I could have 1/3 and 2/3 strength, but that will be just too hard to record. Now, I'll have to define an end battle condition to consider the base half strength. Maybe if 2/3rd of bases defenses (Planes, Mines, Guns, Troops, Endurance) are reduced by more than half, the whole base is dropped by half. At the end of the month, the bases closer to japan would regenerate in priority.

OK, I have been thinking about it again. Land troops is probably the last things taht get kills after plane, defenses and other things. Second, in PTO 2 the AA gun and Anti-sea gun were operated by land troops, so the less troops there are, the lower strength those weapon are. So I am thinking of using strictly the nb of land forces to determine if the base if haff strength. The fact is does no auto regenerate is interesting because capturing some bases could reduce the regeneration level. Increasing the impact of the player on the game.

Army/navy Control: There is no army/navy separation in my game for the player. There is probably one for the Japanse, but it has no impact on the game, so I removed it. Beign all coastal bases, should make them all navy bases. Else one thing that could have impact is the planes available on the base since all army planes cannot be mounted on carrier, so a player could not steal and use them. But japanese navy also had a few land planes. I don't think it is worth it to make a distinction.

Port/land Bases: Since my game is focused on fleet control, there is no inland bases, but only port bases. So there is no need to keep track of that variable.

Base Connections: I am not sure about this, some bases can be connected by land. Maybe it could have an impact on the game. If for example, Port Moresby is free or independent, you could get support from this base when attacking Wewak. Or you could simply land your force there and make them march to wewak preventing you to lose them duriong a naval landing. It could create interesting opportunities so I think I will keep it.

Terrain Type: It was not used for bases themselves but rather for post in between bases. So if I use land connections as explained above, I could give each road a different type of terrain having some impact on the rules somehow. to be defined

Friendship: This determines how well does the local population like the japanese. If they don't like them, they are more likely to rebel against them allowing you to use this to your advantage. It could also affect the results of conquering a base. For example, conquering a friendly base will turn unfriendly when you capture it.

Now you might say that all bases should be unfriendly to Japan except those on japanese territory. It is somewhat true, But maybe with time some things will have chaned, and now there could be special policies or events that could change that variable. Else, instead of a positive/negative token, it will be an unrest token.

Goods and Black market: Market would simply be draw X cards or token and that is the goods available to buy. There will be a section of the board where the goods will be placed and they will be replaced by new good, when the player leave the base to enter a new base. I don't think there is any need to keep track of multiple bases at once. Probably black market will have to be discovered through contacts or gosips before beign able to purchase from them.

Fleets at Port: OK, this is a bit touchy. There are 3 main fleet hidden somewhere on the map. Either it's docked at a base in a certain area or it is active in a certain area. There are 6 areas, so I will probably need 3 empty tokens and threen token labled 1st, 2nd, and 3rd fleet. After probably each 5 days, an area will activate itself revealing a fleet or not. A reveal fleet will attack liberated bases in the area and increase the threath level. Any fleet encounter will be one of the main fleet while the fleet remains active. (probably 5-10 days).

Now it will be possible for the player to discover through scouting, spies, contacts or surprise that a fleet is docked at a base. There will probably be 1 fleet docked in each area of the map where 3 of them are the main fleet and 3 are only random fleets. If a fleet is discovered in an area, we flip the fleet token in the area to see which fleet it is.

But that would probably require another 36 tokens to hide which base in an area has the fleet. I could determine it randomly, as in theory fleet moves. So a player could explore the same base multiple times and finally stumble on it. Not very convenient and logical. I want to have some sort of mini investigation game and allow player try to discover the location of the main fleet to sink their flag ships (Yamato, Musashi and Ra) which gives victory points and dismantle the fleet. It might be some trouble to reshuffle the tokens at the end of each month, but game play will tell. Maybe this is done each 2 or 3 months, if player does not have enough time to discover anything.

Maybe other things could be hidden there for the players to discover which would basically by japanase activities. Events that the player could try to take advantage of. For example, there could be docked subs available for stealing. There is some exploration possibilities there.

Planes, Troops and other defenses

There are rater small objects. They will only be individual tokens use to keep track of planes available in the fleet or during battle. It will basically hold combat stats. PTO 1 only have 5 categories of planes, there is no individual plane stats for each model.

Planes

Planes (PTO 2)	My Variables
Type	Torpedo Strength
Power	Bomb Strength
Range	Gun Strength
Arms (Gun/Bomb/Torpedo)	Price
Nation

Type, Range: This is basically the kind of aircraft like Fleet Bomber, Land Fighter. It basically describe if it's a base aircraft or a fleet aircraft. Fleet aircraft are smaller and can take off from carrier. Then the type indicate what kind of weaponry it can have Bombs, Torpedoes, etc. So the type itself say much about the plane. For example, probably land planes could attack from a greater range. So you could get long range air strike which would be weaker than close range air strike. This why I don't really need a range stat. Land planes will also not be stealable for being used on carriers.

Arms, Power, torpedo, bomb, gun strength.: This is a very ambiguous stats in the video game, I think it was only used for gun strength. Bomb and torpedoes seem to have fixed strength. Arms was used to keep track which weapon a plane could carry. So instead I will use 3 different value for each weapon, the equipped weapon will be kept track by flipping tokens or placing the planes in a certain place on the combat board. If the value is 0, then it means it cannot equip that kind of weapon. I discovered that fighter could also have bombs, but I don't think they can do dive bombing (which means attacking ships), to they might be used only for base bombing. I might need to specify this on the token. Not sure if torpedo bomber can do dive bombing. If not, it could create an interesting twist. I also learned that in the late war, figthers had rocket launchers. So I'll add a rocket weapon strength to the list. Since aircraft cannot have all weapons, probably I'll list type and strength of weapon A or B.

Price: This is something I added as planes can be bought and each model will probably have a different price. I will include production cost in the same value in case some option later (like a lair) allow you to build planes.

Nation: Indicates where the planes can be bought.

Land Forces

Then we have land forces, there is not much information to keep track for those. They are mostly used for land invasions. I created a special force object for special jobs like infiltration and stealing. Here is the data of the original game.

Troop (PTO 2)	My Variables
Position	Supplies
Duty
Type
Power
Command Points
Nation

Position: This is where the troop is located. Troops in my game will be placed in various location my simply moving the token there. besides battle, it will be placed on ships of the fleet and maybe on the map for infiltrated forces.

Duty: This is simply ignored, was used for delegated orders.

Type: It was used to determine if a unit was a tank infantry unit or a regular infantry unit. Considering tank could be bought and stolen, they will be kept on separate tokens.

Power: This is basically the attack power of the unit, but also it's HP. In my case, I want to use a fixed value, so it will only define the strength of the unit.

Command point: Will also be removed, it was action points for the unit.

Nation: Will be kept for informative or sorting purpose. For example, land units from US, Australia and Great Britain will be different. Chinese and Russian forces might also be available.

Supplies: This is something I am not sure if I am going to use. It is only for infiltrated forces. To prevent infiltrating a land force and leaving it there for an eternity, they will have supplies and will be able to stay there until supplies expires. Maybe this will be recorded by flipping the token or using a supply token. I want token flipping to be standard for all token types which in most war game means a damaged unit.

Tanks

Tanks will be operated by land forces. They will simply add to the strength of the unit and it might be a way to add additional HP to a unit.

Tank (PTO 2)
Barrel
Armor

Rules

• Need a good reason for not making them useful all the time. Probably the monsoon will prevent the use of tanks. Probably sea landing will prevent the use of tank, or only for the first round of battle. Else tanks will be used for ground connection invasion or for defending bases.

Special Forces

To be defined To keep things simple I could include special forces in the land force. Use the flip side of the troop token to indicate that the unit contains special forces. And if they get cought/kill, it returns as a regular land force. This will prevent the need to have 2 type of tokens, but will require a transport. They won't be carry-able on other type of ships like submarine for example.

Special Force (my vars)
Strength
Nation
Sneak

Map

Under Construction

Results

Bases

Edge of Map Board: This information will be located on the edge of the map board. At most 1 or 2 status token could be placed on the map. It could be the player's discretion to determine which token will go on the map

Field	Type	Constant	View
Control	Boolean	Variable	Use a token to keep track of bases japanese lost.
Independence Delay	Number	Variable	Combine with control token by rotating it to count delay required for base to become independent with negotiation.
Repair Docks	Boolean	Fixed	Indicate if the base can repair ship. Not sure if bases could have a repair capacity (ex: nb of ships) to be defined
Resource	Enumeration	Fixed	Special resource controled by the base.
Air Capacity	Number	Fixed	Indicated the number of air units
Defense Strength	Number	Fixed	Determine the HP, Defense cannon, mines and boat strength of the base.
Soldier Strength	Number	Fixed	Determine the nb of soldier holding the base.
Damaged	Boolean	Variable	Determine if the base is at half strength.
Land Route	Connections	Fixed	Land connection between bases to move from a base to another. Maybe they have a terrain type
Friendship	Positive/Negative	Variable	Either a 2 sided token with an happy and sad face. Neutral is no token at all. Or either a simple unrest token.
Convoy Sunk	Boolean	Variable	A token placed over the base resource to indicate it will not produce it's resource this month.
Japanse Activity	Enumeration	Variable	Describe if a fleet is docked or if other special japanese activity is present.

Note

• Sinking convoy could reduce randomly a resource in the same area for the next month only.

Market Sideboard: Contains some information about the base currently docked at. Probobly a loose sheet with 2 copies for 2 player games.

Field	Type	Constant	View
Goods	List	Variable	A list of good tokens available for purchase
Black Market	List	Variable	Another list of goods available on certain conditions
Forces	List	Variable	A list of planes, troops, and other forces available to defend the base. Normally displayed in battle, but could be used for friendly land docking in japanese territory (allow stealing planes for example)

Planes

Plane Token: Contains information about the plane model and combat stats.

Field	Type	Constant	View
Name	Text	Fixed	The name of the plane model
Type	Enumeration	Fixed	2 letter code that indicate the type of plane
Torpedo Strength	Number	Fixed	Strength of the torpedo attack
Bomb Strength	Number	Fixed	Strength of the bomb attack
Gun Strength	Number	Fixed	Strength of the gun attack
Rocket Strength	Number	Fixed	Attack strength when using rockets
Price	Number	Fixed	Cost to buy or build the unit
Dive Bombing	Boolean	Fixed	Indicate if the unit can do dive bombing. Mostly a reminder as only fleet bombers (type) can do that.
Long Range	Boolean	Fixed	Indicated if the unit can attack from long range. A reminder since only land planes can do that. Not sure if long range will be used.
Nation	Enumeration	Fixed	Determine the country where they can be bought

note

• Most planes seems to have guns and 2 weapon options. Maybe I'll make the tokens double sided, each side beign a weapon with a stat of it's own instead of displaying all possible weapons on the token.

Airforce Token: Number with value 1 to X to identify the location of an airforce on the ships of the fleet. Strictly used by the player.

Field	Type	Constant	View
ID	Number	Fixed	Number identifying the airforce.

Note

• The fleet layout board will have a location on the side to place planes. Instead of placing theme over or under the ship token, only an airforce marker will be placed, and the planes will be placed on the side in a rectangle identified from 1 to X. Mostly used to know which planes are lost of a ship sinks and the planes did not take off.

Troops

Troop Token: A land force unit.

Field	Type	Constant	View
Position	Location	Variable	Move the token around the game to mark the location of the land force.
Strength	Number	Fixed	Combat strength of the unit.
Nation	Enumeration	Fixed	Identify where the land force can be drafted. Use if they are different.
Supplies	Number	Variable	Use an additional token or flip the unit to indicate how much turn it can remain hidden at and enemy base

Rules:

• After a battle where land forces are involved, the player will be allowed to roll 1D per unit and if they are lucky, they could get special forces born from the land forces.
• If I want planes and tank to weaken infantry but not destroy them without the use of infantry, I might need to have them flip and damaged. Else tank and planes would be used to destroy on base defenses and weaponry leaving infantry vulnerable to other infantry.

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