Game Design #111: How to End a Game / Extraction Shooters / Losing the Least?

My game design musing at the moment as "how do you end a game" inspired by thinking about the different turns (6 vs 8 of Bloodbowl vs Bloodbowl 7s) and the 'hard limit' of sports games. An older 40K I recall (2nd ed?) had only 4 turns!?

This might be worth exploring as I have a few thoughts:

a) having a set length helps address the 'kill em all' problem where any cool objectives and missions can often just be ignored in favour of eliminating enemies. Indeed it is usually the best practice. If all enemies are dead... it's easy to succeed!  If one player is scurrying around the board trying to play the mission 'properly' he's often handicapping himself if the other player just ignores the mission goes for kills.

b) having a 'set length' where the game just ends "blam!" "time to pack up" works for a sports game like BB but is kinda lame for a wargame. 

I wonder what solutions there are? Perhaps an outside threat keeps ramping up i.e. maybe zombies spawn exponentially faster after x turn - so you can remain, but you'll probably get swarmed - be it a zombie, monster or drones (hello, ARC Raiders!) or maybe a radiation storm (Stalker) creates an attrition effect on your units.

c) having variable turn length can magnify a) - this is when you don't always get to move all your minis (boo) as something happens to hand the turn to your opponent. Perhaps you fail a test, like in Bloodbowl where you can fumble a ball or be knocked down or Song of Blades where you are trying for an extra move. Or maybe a card gets drawn (TFL) that just means its tea time and your guys down tools. Didn't the old DBA rules have you roll a d6 to see how many units you could activate? Variable activation is kinda the same thing.

....I prefer variable actions - I often use a 1+ action method in my homebrew rules; all minis get one guaranteed action - but may 'push it' and roll a dice to receive a 2nd action - better troops getting a better dice %.  That way I don't have lovely models I spent all that time painting standing around, having missed their go for half the game.

To summarise: 

If  a wargame turn length is indefinite, killing all enemies is guaranteed success. This invalidates most missions and scenarios and defaults them to "kill em first." 

The length of a wargame should also not be set at a predictable, fixed amount; 8 turns or whatever like Bloodbowl - it's not a sport - real battles don't have a shot clock. Otherwise you could perform a reckless play, leaving troops totally exposed, knowing "voila" you've seized the objective and the game ends - despite the fact your troops would be annihilated next turn, no commander would ever do this - only because you know there is no 'next turn' and the game magically ends - "freezing" everything in your (temporary) instant of success.

The "boom" game instantly ends freezing everything at a predictable time is also a bit lame, in a narrative sense. "OK it's turn 4 - pack up now boys!" I call this a "Christmas truce" or "Five o'clock Friday" - everyone suddenly stops firing and goes home. There's no uncertainty/tension of when the battle ends. It's like a footy game. 

The amount of turns before the game ends also should probably linked to movement speed and weapon range. E.g. you can't have a mission where the objective is "have more troops in the enemies half the map than they have in yours" if you have only 4 turns and your troops moving 4" can't even move to the 24" halfway in that time....

^Slightly connected to the above but I prefer games when the fight does not always occur straight from deployment, but the minis have a turn or so each to move into superior positions before firing cuts down their options. I.e. troops do not open fire and trade shots from their baselines on turn 1. Obviously terrain matters most here, but board size/effective combat range are also a factor.

So should game length be random? 

A quite common solution is for games to last a set length - say 4-5 turns, then each turn "dice" to see if the game continues. I.e. turn 5 you need 3+ on d6 to continue, on turn 6 you need 4+, on turn 7 you need 5+...

This adds some unpredictability to the mix to stop players trying to "game the buzzer."

However what if one player wants the game to last longer? Or perhaps one wants it to end now - while they hold their objectives.

...or (somewhat) controlled randomness? 

I like some predictability or control as to when a game ends. In my homebrew aerial wargames, there is a shared "munitions/ordinance pool" that all aircraft on a side share - usually marked on a 1m ruler. All aircraft contribute to the total pool; say 1pt each 2 missiles, or 600km of fuel. Jets with limited missiles (say only 2 AIM9s) use double the ordinance each time they fire to discourage them spamming them. So based on your rate of use you can predict/control when your whole force runs out of ordinance and needs to "bug out" based on who is using what weapons. While the resources are finite, you can choose to make the game last longer by not firing as many missiles or performing as many radical afterburner maneuvers. You could even fight on once you reach "bingo" fuel and ordinance, but with no missiles or way to recover radical maneuvers, you would be severely handicapped. Or you could burn through all your missiles early hoping to overwhelm your opponents, but risk crippling your options too early in the game. Risk vs reward.

There isn't necessarily a set game length, it's more resource allocation - when the resources are gone you may as well pack up and go home or unless you like fighting with a hand behind your back.

The time you start matters as much as the time you finish... 

How a game starts (for individual units) is obviously also linked to its length. If all troops don't all get plonked down on turn 1, but may trickle in  later.... ..this varies their game length, for that unit.

For example, in my homebrew 'Tankmunda' games, light vehicles start deployed on turn 1; scout vehicles can be deployed turn 1 AND be advanced an extra distance; but medium vehicles arrive later on turn 2 and heavies turn 3 (this can be modified by various rules/factors).

So heavy Tigers arriving turn 3 may find themselves facing medium Wolverines who have already deployed and set up in firing positions the previous turn; or much lighter Su-76s who have had 2 turns to maneuver to optimum position...

This means the amount of turns the individual units have on the field are also variable.  Depending on when they arrive, each individual unit can have a different "game length" - their time on the table. Again, you might be able control this - perhaps you could "Push It" with the Tiger and arrive on an earlier turn, but roll a dice and risk running out of fuel or having engine/track damage later in the game - aka risk vs reward. 

Extraction Shooters and... 

The concept of when the game ends and how you "win" in this time also links with my recent interest in the extraction shooter genre.

ARC Raiders seems to have pushed this into the mainstream but along with games like Hunt: Showdown (yay) and Tarkov (bleh) shares the concept of:

Explore the map.     Collect cool stuff(tm)    Leave with the stuff.    Don't die. 

Usually there is a time limit which is somewhat variable. In Hunt you have ~40min or so, or 5min once the bounty (the cool stuff) has been extracted by someone, to leave until your soul is sucked out. In ARC you have a varied time (depending on when matchmaker adds you to the game) to do your thing and leave before killer drones arrive and automatically end you.

In both you have to reach designated extraction zones (usually 3-5 or so) scattered about the map where you wait/perform an action, then extract.

The focus is performing the mission and avoiding dying at all. This is quite different to most shooters (and wargames) where losses are fine if you kill lots more enemy. A 30:10 KDR is good in a game Battlefield/CoD or a wargame - if a whole team did this you'll win 99% of the time. 

Any death in a extraction shooter, you 'lose.' (In Hunt your character is deleted!). "Winning" was not trading better with kills, it was getting the "cool thing" and not dying.

....extracting your minis

Most games you tend to retreat models off a (rear?) board edge. In LOTR, models who fail a morale roll (usually from having heavy losses) just evaporate.

Zone Raiders (along with BLKOUT I'd recommend for when "you have Infinity minis but don't want the vertical learning curve cliff of Infinity) already has an extraction mechanic:

A mini spends an action to place a grenade-like AoE "extraction" template on the ground which remains on the board until an enemy mini contacts it to remove it or a new template is placed.  This represents opening hatches, or using rope zip-lines to create an egress.

Further: Once 50% casualties are taken, models can also quickly "Bug Out" by simply removing any models further than 8" from opponents.

I thought this was to show how maze-like and vertical the planet-sized megacity (i.e. Blame) is; by zip-lines, rappelling off or disappearing into hatches or air vents. 

But it also allows forces to disengage quickly if the fight is not to their liking; you don't have to have your force slaughtered first (50% casualties - a common wargame breakpoint - counts as a slaughter when traditional military engagements average casualties closer to ~5%). 

It's worth considering: How do we remove our minis from the fight? What rules are in place?  How easy/difficult is this? When is it triggered/allowed?

....So should we have more/easier ways to extract minis?

Ultimately, we've come here to pew pew and push model soldiers around. Merely charging around collecting loot and extracting effortlessly and quickly with enemies that only casually threaten you sounds more like a racing game; like Mario Kart but with cool sci fi troopers. 

On the other hand, waiting til you've lost 50% of your force (painful if they are named skirmish characters with their own backstories) before you can march slowly out across your own baseline is a bit ridiculous.

A thought about violent sports games like Bloodbowl is killing your opponents is A way to win, but not THE way to win. Weirdly, it mirrors real battles more accurately then the average wargame - real battles usually end with a unit outmaneuvering/forcing back opponents/seizing key areas, NOT eradicating them with 50-100% losses. 

Incentives on winning vs killing...

ARC Raiders - at least  for the first 2 weeks or so - was interesting in that players could attack each other but often didn't. They realized they could "collect the cool thing", not fight, and leave. Or, they could choose to fight and hope the other person already had the cool thing... ...on their corpse. Mathematically, it made more sense to not fight, and collect the cool thing and extract. People being who they are, this pacifist math was soon put aside in favour of pew-pewing. 

Based on this, you could put pretty strong incentives into mission completing/extraction and people would still try to 'kill them all.'  Maybe as victory conditions you don't count kills, just cool things collected minus the units you lost. This would frame it more in "how many units will I risk to get that cool thing reward?" rather than "how can I trade kills most economically?"

Wargames need ways other than "kill them all" to be a viable strategy. Game turn length and the amount of turns is a vital tool in this. But players will default to 'kill em all/scrum in the middle' unless its explicitly made clear it is not optimal (and probably not always even then).

Collecting cool things from various locations (a la extraction shooters) can encourage units to spread out; and force tactical choices; but what if one player just focuses on killing his opponent and does his exploring and collecting when all his opponents are dead?  What can we do to prevent this?

I feel this topic is wandering all over the place (that's the problem with train of consciousness blog posts vs well-thought-out essays) but one final thought before the wife summons me to watch TV, on re-framing 'victory' by getting kills or objectives vs defeat via losses.

Victory is who loses the least?

There was this (PC) game called "Wargame; Airland Battle" where capturing bases (the cool thing) allowed you a stready stream of points to buy new toys aka tanks, troops, gunships (reward).  

However you didn't win the game by collecting points; you lost a game by losing points. 

Both sides had a set "loss point" (say 2000) after which they lost. So sides could be quite unbalanced; say NATO starts with 20 x powerful 100pt tanks, and Soviets have 40 x 50pt weaker tanks. In the course of the game, NATO pushes forward. They capture more bases, and get a bonus +2000pts. The Soviets only get a few bases and get a bonus +1000pts.

However, in the process NATO loses 20 x 100pt MBTs (-2000). Even though the Soviets lose more tanks - 30 x 50pt MBTs, the losses cost less (-1500).

Even though overall NATO ends with more points (2000 + 2000 - 2000 = 2000) vs Soviet (2000 + 1000 - 1500 = 1500) - and thus end with a stronger army - they lose.

Because only the losses (-2000 vs -1500) counted towards victory/defeat. Obviously, killing enemies is giving the enemies losses... but it's also the relative cost. 30 Soviet tanks are cheaper to lose than 20 NATO tanks. 

I found this very interesting for asymmetrical forces. You were always incentivized to push for more bases so you could get more points and thus cool units/toys to outgun/outflank - to better destroy (give losses to) your opponents aka "reward" but you also had an eye on your own "loss meter" - what you could afford to "risk" ....because that was what ultimately lost you the game.  

Capturing bases indirectly helped you win (bases -> points -> better weapons -> kill enemy better) but losing a unit directly made you lose (lose x units -> lose).  

Powerful tanks and toys cost more - and gave you more 'oomph' relative to your opponent - but using them also risked more - because losing a 200pt gunship was so much worse than a 10pt conscript squad.

It was interesting because of the mindset it created when I played: "What am I willing to lose to accomplish x" rather than my usual "how can I get this kill" like I do in most PC games... ...where leaderboards are by the most kills (heck deaths are usually disregarded).

While ultimately it was still "kill them, try not to die" it was how winning and losing was framed. Like an extraction shooter, the aim was "get the cool thing - if you can - and don't die." 

Eeek it's late. Off to watch Watchmen (Season 1)...  (I know I'm late to the party)