thread: 2005-09-14 : Pencil and Paper Vector Car Race Game
On 2005-09-14, Ninja Monkey J wrote:
Well, V., there's no reason this has to be racing. And even if it is, it doesn't have to be around a track.
But! Dig the asymmetrical goal possibilities! Offense vs. defense! Football! Capture the flag! Elimination! Ha ha! Soccer: you have to get your car in the goal!
Christian, I played a looot of Car Wars as a kid and early teen. It has some neat stuff, but all the fun stuff is in building your car. It's a really hard game to pick up.
Also, the vector thing vis-a-vis race cars vs. space ships: you add friction! Every turn, take off x squares of movement. Every blown off bit adds another x/2 of friction, or whatever.
The vector of movement is the same as for spacecraft or whatever; you can just only turn so much: at the end of a turn, you have to "steer" the car to your new heading. Not changing heading before executing the turn is a skid, which costs 3x friction, and if you accelerate too fast, you roll vs. wipeout! Any acceleration will have the same effect.
I think this would be best on a hex map (for facing purposes) so you don't have to make up some sort of Car Warsy "Turning Key". Which was great, don't get me wrong, but that's one place to take out complexity.
As for racing-around-a-track rules, it's easy: the only guns allowed on the front will slow down the leader, but the ones on the back and sides are smashy smashy. The ones on the sides are particularly so (though that may have a Penguin Effect).
This makes XP go "Yeah, ok..."
I agree. Most of the fun was piecing your own ride together. But we had some cool crashes as well. Pushing off the wheels, spinning around, crashing into buildings sort of things.
This makes NInJ go "Awesomeness came at too high a price."
There shouldn't be one exciting thing for every four hours of play, though. There should always be explosions and awesome cars. It should be rules-clad guaranteed!
