App-based tabletop gaming
More shooting skills
I was coding up the weapon firing routines on my app when a thought struck like a wet fish to the head; the game has always leaned heavily on the ZX Spectrum classic Laser Squad – spending action points to move, fire etc. and using a real-time line-of-sight to determine what you can and cannot see – and it suddenly struck my why my move-and-shoot game felt a little flat in comparison.
One of the key elements of Laser Squad is knowing when to spend and when to conserve your action points, to be able to interrupt your opponent during their turn.
Overwatch wasn’t just a concept invented for Space Hulk you know!
Firing a weapon in Laser Squad always involved a weighing-up of options for maximum impact – whether to use a deadly “aimed shot” with a high chance of success – but higher AP cost – or a less-accurate (but equally as deadly if it actually hit the target) “snap shot”, conserving those valuable APs for other actions.
It struck me that my game, with its single firing action was missing this element of strategic decision making. So this morning, I’m going to spend a few hours hacking in a multiple-shot-type system for
- aimed shots
- snap shots
- applying overwatch
Let’s see how this goes…..
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