[Consim-l] Damage models

[Dave Kohr]

On Dec 22, 2007 10:53 AM, Mircea Pauca <mircea.pauca at gmail.com> wrote:
>     It seems a simple, cumulative Hit Point system
> is very widespread in games to represent "life" and
> "damages" to entities from individuals (in RPG's), ships,
> small and large military units. Either with full firepower
> until "sudden death", or with proportional reduction.
> Restoration coming from "potions", rest, "supply" etc.
>     Are there not too complicated models clearly
> more relevant for the physiology, system resilience
> and sociology of targeted humans / ships / units ?
>     What are the best examples used in current games ?

I think detailed "design for cause" mechanisms for representing the
effects of damage and losses are generally *not* relevant to wargames.
They simply bog games down. The design effort would be better spent on
representing things like command-control and limited intelligence that
are usually both more important to understanding the history and less
well represented in most systems.

That said, sometimes the details of what happens as you take losses or
damage is relevant. Here's a very nice replay of the Victory solo game
Carrier, recently posted on the Geek:

    http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1838428

The effects of damage on carriers (can't launch planes, can't move as
fast, damage can get worse as fires spread), and the fact that field
repairs can sometimes be effected, are crucial to represent at this
scale, and it sounds like Carrier does a decent job of this. (I own it
but haven't played it myself.)

Some older games that I think do a reasonable job of representing
damage are Wooden Ships & Iron Men and Star Fleet Battles (sci-fi-, I
know, but fixing the sihp was a big part of many episodes in all the
different versions of the show :-) ).

For tactical land combat, I think the design-for-effect system that
first appeared in Squad Leader is quite reasonable and has been
carried forward in recent games. Units can become broken by enemy fire
(and are basically useless in this state), and can be rallied back to
good order. If they take losses, they get reduced (like a step loss)
or outright eliminated. I can't recall offhand if the original Squad
Leader had step losses for squads, but definitely the recent
Lock'n'Load system does.

Dave