Deconstructing a Bloodbath

In my last post, I talked about how the first mech playtest was a complete bloodbath. It’s worth digging into that a bit more, in an effort to understand how it turned out that way, so here’s how it went down.

In Close Encounters, the currency the players use is actions. Each player gets a certain number of actions each turn, and those actions are what they use to have an effect on the game and the other players. The troopers use their actions to move or shoot, and sometimes interact with objectives and so on. The bugs use their actions to move and fight, and also to bring more bugs onto the map. The more actions you have, the more you can do, and the more often you can try your luck in a fight.

I have a strong suspicion that this is the root cause of the bloodbath. You see, to do something nasty, the bugs usually have to get right up to the troopers – this means they spend most of their actions spawning bugs and moving them, and only occasionally are they in position to fight. But as soon as the enemies have ranged weapons, they need to spend far fewer actions to get into a position to attack the troopers. All they need to do is get into a spot where they can see the troopers, and then they can start spending actions on attacking.

There’s another thing which makes this situation even worse, though. In a close combat – which is the bugs only way of attacking the troopers – any survivors from the losing side are forced to retreat. This immediately takes them out of close combat range, so the winner can’t attack them again straight away. That isn’t true for ranged attacks. The implication is that not only can more actions be spend on attacking, they can be spent on attacking continuously until you run out of either targets or actions and have to end your turn.

To put the cherry on the top, the positioning of troopers can make a big difference to their chances in close combat. A canny player can use their actions to prepare for close combat and improve their chances if it happens. But there’s nothing like that to deal with ranged attacks, so if they get targeted the troopers have to just sit there and take the incoming fire. Being attacked and not being able to do anything about it isn’t much fun!

To sum up:

• The enemies could spend significantly more actions attacking
• Those attacks could occur continuously
• The troopers couldn’t use their actions to mitigate this, except by running or hiding

Putting it like this, I can see that the situation has to change. It might be acceptable for rare encounters with especially dangerous enemies, or missions where this threat alone is all the troopers have to deal with, but as a normal condition it’s not acceptable. It’s no fun for anyone involved, and it absolutely breaks the balance of the game.

The question then becomes “what do you do about it?” Some of the balancing options I had been considering won’t really work if the issue with actions is at the heart of this. On the other hand, thinking of the issue in terms of actions rather than combat results does allow a few new possibilities for addressing it.

I don’t want this issue to dominate my development time at this stage. The mechs (and their related expansion content) were always planned for development further down the track, so diving into this now would be counterproductive. I have plenty of other things to get on with, and I’ll think this over while I make progress elsewhere. Still, it’s an interesting illustration of how the surface display of a problem – a bloodbath in combat – may be caused by something mechanically unrelated (what actions get used on). Another point to keep in mind as I move forward!