Poll: Fiddly vs. Abstract Game Mechanics

[Trenacker]

Based on early responses to the draft production mechanics, I took a deep dive back into the original 2014 edition of the mega-game rules and recovered the West End Games-inspired "pip" system write-up.

As I conceived it, this version of the mega-game was going to rely heavily on spreadsheet calculations to create an experience very much like the original game--right down to base-building, assigning populations to work specific hexes within base production radii, and hex-to-hex combat. The upside to this approach is that it gives us the chance to literally "import" familiar mechanics like Specialists, the Unit Design Workshop, Base Facilities, and Tile Improvements. Combat is also more predictable.

But there's another option, which is to abstract virtually all aspects of a faction's characteristics onto a radar chart across, say, fifteen or fewer dimensions. Each dimension has a score, say from 1 to 6, that is analogous to an unmodified ability score in Dungeons & Dragons. You roll that number of dice each time you want to take a contested action. If the result is higher or lower than a target number determined by a difficulty matrix, you get the desired result. The upside is simplicity. There's a lower barrier to entry, and a much lower demand on the game staff, but the consequence is that some players will become overwhelmed in a different way than if they had to make decisions about whether to farm a given hex. It's also a bit harder to settle serious disputes since a lot boils down to opinion on the part of the staff.

I'm curious how much interest there is in the game, so please vote!

[ComradeCrimson]

I think a hybridization would work best, have some stats for regions and similar tracked but simplifying it to where you don't have several hundred different hex's laced with specific resource allocations.

Another thing you could do to reflect if a region is being settled by multiple people, is perhaps tracking a "TERRITORIAL CONTROL" statistic, which can improve yields, raise POLICE score and similar, and settling into a region has much more narrative development and weight.