Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Proposal: I’m drivin’ here!

Withdrawn and therefore failed -SingularByte

Adminned at 13 Jul 2022 05:55:04 UTC

In the rule BotScript, replace “A Bot can only move into an empty space: if an individual move step would take the Bot into an occupied space, or if no space exists to move to, the Bot remains in its position instead.” with

A Bot can only move into an empty space: if an individual move step would take the Bot into an occupied space, the Bot remains in its position instead and takes Scratch Damage. If the occupied space was occupied by a Bot, that Bot also takes Scratch Damage. If a Bot ever starts its turn in a space that is not In Bounds, they are said to have Fallen Out of Bounds and take Scratch Damage, then the bout then immediately ends.

In the rule “The Arena”, Replace the text “Bouts take place in the Arena, which is mapped as a row of thirteen spaces from left to right. Each Bot in the Arena may face either left or right. When a Bout begins, the two Bots taking part are placed in the two spaces at either end of the Arena (assigning these at secretly random), facing one another. All of this is tracked privately by the Announcer.”
with

Bouts take place in the Arena, which is mapped as an infinite row of spaces from left (i.e. from minus infinity) to right (i.e. to infinity). The spaces 1 to 13 are considered In Bounds. Each Bot in the Arena may face either left or right. When a Bout begins, the bots are randomly assigned to one of two starting locations: one bot is placed in space 1 and the other bot in space 13, both facing each other. All of this is tracked privately by the Announcer.

Create a subrule of Bouts called Scratch Damage:

When rules state that a Bot takes Scratch Damage, this is interpreted as losing DICE3 condition percentage points from a random part of the bot, either Chassis, Engine, or a randomly selected System. (The chances of either the Chassis or Engine being picked are 1/3 each with a random system making up the remaining 1/3, unless no systems exist on the bot in which case it is a 1/2 chance each for Chassis and Engine.)

If the proposal Big Flipper passed, append the Following to Systems:

A system with less than 100% Condition has a chance of failing to have any effect, with the chance of failure calculated as (100 - That System’s Condition)%

If the proposal Big Flipper passed, replace the effect of Flipper with

If the Actor is Flipped, it ceases to be Flipped. Otherwise, the Opponent becomes Flipped and takes Scratch Damage.

If the proposal Halt and Catch Fire passed, append the following to the final paragraph of Bot Loadout:

A Bot with a Chassis that has a Condition value of 0% is also considered to be Defunct.

For the first instance of the words Scratch Damage in each rule outside of the rule Scratch Damage, add a wiki link to those words to link to the rule Scratch Damage.

Note for anyone that saw earlier versions of this: I’ve gone back and forth with adding Shoving, but I’ve decided to remove it for good and put it in a future proposal - it might take more refinement and the rest of the proposal can stand alone without it.

Comments

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

12-07-2022 05:05:37 UTC

I like this. This is more me than you, but the wording for where the bots start each match seems a little off to me. Maybe “Randomly assign one bot to space 1 and the other bot to space 13.”? I’m just throwing this out there since your proposal is changing that anyways.

SingularByte: he/him

12-07-2022 05:09:09 UTC

Will do.

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

12-07-2022 05:31:52 UTC

Thanks!

Kevan: he/him

12-07-2022 07:58:57 UTC

The magic words “secretly randomly” were in there so that Josh doesn’t have to use the dice roller and can build a Master Control Spreadsheet or however they want to do it. The same would go for all the Scratch Damage and System Failure die rolls here.

I like the Scratch Damage idea here, but am not a fan of all the dice rolling. BlogNomic games are generally stretched out so much that you aren’t rolling that many dice per game, and one very unlucky roll can (as happened recently to Josh in the Atlantean City dynasty) pretty much knock you out of the running, without having made any tactical mistakes.

SingularByte: he/him

12-07-2022 10:09:01 UTC

Scratch damage could be either turned into a secretly randomly type roll or it could just be turned to a flat damage amount without harming it so I wouldn’t object to making that change if I do more proposals around this.

As for random failures, I do acknowledge that they can randomly take you out of the running but at the same time, I feel it’s true to the source material. Sometimes the robots will just randomly have a part start failing after a bad hit, or even just the moment they start up in the arena. Plus it gives a decent reason not to just buy a few parts at 1% at a massive discount.

Josh: Observer he/they

12-07-2022 12:43:18 UTC

imperial  but I’m going to make some amendment proposals around this, I think

Kevan: he/him

12-07-2022 13:47:01 UTC

To discourage overpowered 1% parts, we could use the Effective keyword to have Systems scale down the numbers on whatever it is they do, as their Condition drops. (Front Towards Enemy is proposing an extreme version of that by having them just switch off at 0%.)

I really don’t like the idea of a close match (perhaps the grand final itself) potentially being won not by the player who designed the best robot or outguessed how their opponent was going to act, but who rolled the luckiest dice.

against for the “A system with less than 100% Condition has a chance of failing to have any effect” clause.

Darknight: he/him

12-07-2022 17:46:12 UTC

imperial for the moment

Brendan: he/him

12-07-2022 18:40:48 UTC

against I’d prefer fewer dice myself.

Lulu: she/her

12-07-2022 23:14:32 UTC

against

SingularByte: he/him

13-07-2022 05:54:29 UTC

Withdrawing with the intent to re-propose the good parts. against