Re: (TFT) Car Wars notes

["gem6868" <gem6868@verizon.net>]

it's a game.  Merge the TFT hexes into the CW squares and be done with it.

-----Original Message----- 
From: Jay Carlisle
Sent: Friday, October 07, 2011 3:03 PM
To: tft@brainiac.com
Subject: (TFT) Car Wars notes

Oy!
I'll try and catch up on my mail tonight sometime... anyway, here's this.

Some quick notes for a Friday.

Launched a TFT / Car Wars campaign this week.
I must have done something right because Ive gotton call ups and drop bys
from both groups.
Good for me.
Someone even gave me a set of electronic dice used to play Yatzee.
Not that I don't appreciate the gesture, I collect all manner of games.
However, you may as well put my library on a Kindle as have me switch to
electronic dice.
A book is bets digested with a sheaf of tiny paper-scrap bookmarks and
penciled notes in the margins and a 42d6 roll is best made with 42 dice (I
prefer my 1 by 1 by 1 sixers) not a button click.
Of note, this run is somewhat on the fly for me although I do have quite a
bit of material for this one, just not well organized, and Ive hung a
fail timer on the whole affair so as not to frame myself into an open game
indefinitely.
Not having to plot adventures helps loads too.

Anyway, Ive run up against some issues of scale.

TFT uses Melee-hexes that are 1.3m, or roughly 4 foot 4 inches (4.3 feet)
across.

Car Wars says;

The road seclions are marked wich a gnd to amlrol movement. The
heavy lines are I" (IS feet) apan. The lighllines are 1/4" (3.7S feet)
apan. Each tum is divided into ten "pha5es" of 1/10 second each.
A vehicle's speed determines how many limes it will move in atum.
A vehicle muse move I" for every 10 mph of ils speed, moving once
per phase unlil il hiS move<! itS full movemenl. For example, acar moving
30 mph would move In phases 1.2. and 3. and would be immobile
for the rest of that lUrn. Cars move in order_ wilh the car going fastest
moving lirsl. Vehicles moVing al lhe same speed roll randomly to see
who mo\'es first.

Bloody OCR I guess Ill end up having to plain-text all this too,
although the paste outta Word improved things quite a bit...
So, Car Wars says;

The road sections are marked with a grid to control movement. The heavy
lines are 1" (15 feet) apart. The light lines are 1/4" (3.75 feet) apart.
Each turn is divided into ten "phases" of 1/10 second each. A vehicle's
speed determines how many times it will move in a turn. A vehicle must move
1" for every 10 mph of its speed, moving once per phase until it has moved
its full movement. For example, a car moving 30 mph would move in phases 1,
2, and 3, and would be immobile for the rest of that turn. Cars move in
order, with the car going fastest moving first. Vehicles moving al the same
speed roll randomly to see who moves first.

So one of the things I like about square-hexes is that they have the same
area as a square with sides equal to the distance across the hex from side
to side (n/s anyway but the geo and trig get a little ugly here and is its
own subject).
Ideally in a situation like this Id like to consider each square in Car
Wars a hex in Melee but theres six and a half inches difference twixt 3.75
feet (CW) and 4.3 feet (TFT).
That is literally half a quarter inch squares difference on the Melee-hex
scale, is that 12% plus for Melee over Car Wars gonna muck me all up?
Probably not on closer look.
I know what SJ was doing with a simple movement system here and as I use
this for anything moving at speed, like horses, it behoves me not to muck up
the simplicity.
Its just TOO CLOSE to a nifty little match with the Melee scale not to take
a look at though.
So I notice that SJ has already fudged a bit with the 1 inch per 10 mph
scale as 10 mph works out to about 14.666ish fps but 2.75 feet times 4 is 15
feet per inch.
Its more like 10.25 mph to get to 15 fps.
However, four 1.3m Melee hexes per inch on the Car Wars scale works out to
about 17.2 feet per inch which works out to about 11.76 mph.
So Im bumping that to 12 mph per inch meaning a vehicle moving 3 mph (a
brisk walking pace) covers 1 quarter inch square per second.
The system is still pretty simple this way, 2 inches are about 25 mph and 8
inches is almost 100 mph (100 mph travels one 8 x 10 page e/w in 1 second).
Some adjustments for weapon ranges, damage, and whatnot but that had to be
done for a workable scale system anyway, cannons and etc., and getting to
the whole fuelcell tec is also a pretty big concern as Ogres follow from it.
Just where IS the tech at by the time Traveler starts kicking off?
Right now Im using real-world data on vehicles and weapons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2011_season)#Spy_Car:_The_Revenge
Also see the stuff they did with phonebooks.
Makes a trip to the library worth a stop.
Ive also mucked around with the mechanic Talent and vehicles, adding a
maintenance check along Job Table lines for downtime travel, and
jury-rigging along Item Creation concepts.
Still havent worked-up the Civ scale yet but neither has either group made
it out of downtown Portland yet soooo, but still cant put that off to long,
I guess this afternoon.

That brings me to my other issue with scale.
I go with a 1 mile across hex (ergo 1 square mile in area) for movement and
mapping at scales that encompass a very large local area that may take a
number of days of normal travel to cross.
To get a more detailed overview I use the scale-hex which draws out the
square-mile-hex 4 times larger on the quarter inch graph paper making it 4
inches from side to side (n/s) or 16 quarter inch squares across each of
which are 330 feet across or just less than a u.s. football field endzone to
endzone, or a tad more than one and a half acres per quarter inch square.
I have a 100 foot tape marked out in 4 foot 4 inch hexes that can layout 330
feet down most streets if a player is having trouble with the visual here.
So I have this Thomas Guide (west coast thing?) mapbook the Portland Metro
Area Street Guide.
It makes a rolling-road layout so easy.
Except. . ., the tricky buggers kept away from the inch scale.
Not by much, but its there.
For example, the detailed scale (by far the most common map-scale in the
book) 0.5 miles = 1.1 inches.
Im pretty sure I know why they did so with the scaling but all the fudging
hurts my artistic pride abit, especially when I cant fudge back the other
way so to speak.
Anyway, Ive gotta go nuke all the major cities on my Civ map of north
America. . . Im not quite sure what thats gonna do to the population but I
gotta have some idea of whats going on as theyll likely manage to get
outta town this weekend sometime and players arent very good at staying on
the path.
I know where they should go but need to also know where they can go.
So many design engagements... so little time.
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