26 March 2010

GrogNews Wargaming - Revisiting Units / Factors

We're still looking for a name for this animal...





We're looking at redoing the counters along Brian's suggestions of front/back alternating between kinetic/non-k. Here are the drafts of the designs based on 2-sided.

Kinetic factors:
- Attack: ability to go kill stuff
- Defense: ability to not get killed
- Support: ability to help someone else kill stuff
- Reaction: How quickly can you project over your area of influence? Think of this + Area of Effects = movement + range, but not quite exactly.


Non-kinetic factors:
Need some sort of multi-faceted system that is more detailed that DIME, though that’s not a bad base to start with. For game purposes, I would like to simplify it to some form of “rock-paper-scissors” mechanic, with a rough cut perhaps being:

local influence/tolerance -> economic/security support -> information ops -> local influence/tolerance

This is a key mechanic and will take some time to get right, but needs to be addressed, so that units can be rated on (and operate along) both kinetic and non-kinetic axes.


Support factors
- Area: How much of a footprint can you influence when you're on the ground. This + reaction determines how quickly you can act, from how far away.
- Deployability: when talking about power projection from some home station or strategic mobility, there will need to be some rating of how quickly someone can move their Area of Effects.
- Logistical Support: at the strategic/operational level, what does it take to keep that unit in the field. One mechanic I do want to experiment with is potentially tying this to current news-tracking polls showing support for varying operations/policies so that as national support for something goes down, the ability to sustain long/large deployments also goes down, and can change scenarios from week to week.



By: Brant

No comments: