thread: 2006-03-14 : Board Setup in Mechaton
On 2006-03-14, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
Ok, I see the "deep defense with scattered forces" vs. "shallow defense with concentrated forces" that the perimeter rules give you, and I like it. You do need to enforce that the perimeter is really a perimeter and not just a line, though—otherwise, the defender just draws the shortest possible line across the entire battlefield as far as possible from what he's defending, and then gets to concentrate his forces and have maximum fallback depth.
I'm not sure how this covers "finding" so much, though, except by assuming that it's already happened—which I know was Ralph's idea, but I think he was suggesting making variable outcomes of the "finding" phase affect the set-up options: "If I devote X more effort than you to recon, then I get to set up X of my force after seeing what you do," that kind of thing. Your set-up rules simply seem to impose a fixed balancing factor, namely that the bigger force always has the disadvantage of setting up its "extra" units first.
Yes, I know limited intelligence is a bitch and a half to implement in a tactical face-to-face game—and approximately 3.24 bitches if you're using miniatures. No, I don't have any brilliant ideas right now.
