FG: Battleships

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Dauphin
The bigger bug feature is, of course, you'd have to be really stupid not to co-ordinate with your team and tell them where your ship is so that no-one targets you. (Unless your teammates are gits and deliberately target you anway).

Of course you have to co-ordinate with your team-mates, but I was talking about the shipplacement (you don't know where the other team has placed their ships)

Originally posted by snoopy369
(...)

I like both ideas, but I'll let the players make the choice (as said 1000 times before)

[alva]

Originally posted by Dauphin
The bigger bug feature is, of course, you'd have to be really stupid not to co-ordinate with your team and tell them where your ship is so that no-one targets you. (Unless your teammates are gits and deliberately target you anway).

But I repeat my earlier post.

I was thinking more along the lines of throwing a 'dice' to see if your shot would actualy hit at what you aimed at. If the dice goes against you, it would land in a tile next to it and thus be able to hit one of your own.
Something like anyway.

[Adagio]

I'd say throwing dices doesn't really belong to a battleship game

[alva]

I like snoopy's ideas very much, except for different ships having different abilities, too confusing I think, certainly at first. We could always expand later on when everyone is used to to the basics.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Snoopy,

Option 1 is a gm nightmare. Maybe I did not read it correctly, but it would involve sending maps to each player since they cannot see others ships on the main map.

Option 2 would take longer than my proposal. At an average of say 50 square to win, would take fifty turns.

We could play my game on a smaller grid, say 3x3, and disable moving.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Spaced Cowboy
Option 1 is a gm nightmare. Maybe I did not read it correctly, but it would involve sending maps to each player since they cannot see others ships on the main map.

Hmmm... I read* it as all players of one team knows of all other players (of the same team) ships so the gm will only have to make two maps, one for each team


* Or more like "I assumed"

[Jonny]

I'd play.

But, IMHO, you shouldn't have the capability of moving in the game. That makes it a lot more luck-dependent (and perhaps a longer game) than the traditional rules. You have to keep it simple, lest it go the way of Society. Just make it like regular battleship, but with everyone on one big board. There's one map, showing where shots have been fired, and if they were hits or misses. Each player has five ships and gets (number of ships left/2, rounded up) shots per turn. Any extra shots hitting a square on the same turn have no effect. Last one standing wins.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Spaced Cowboy
Snoopy,

Option 1 is a gm nightmare. Maybe I did not read it correctly, but it would involve sending maps to each player since they cannot see others ships on the main map.

It's individual maps of course - but you can easily work that in a spreadsheet, i could make that easily. I don't deny it would be complex, but it's not that hard, either. I suggest it because it might be more *fun*.

Option 2 would take longer than my proposal. At an average of say 50 square to win, would take fifty turns.

With each player, 10 or more, firing once each? It would take a week at most. 100 squares, 10 updates at most most? Perhaps you don't understand what I mean?

We could play my game on a smaller grid, say 3x3, and disable moving.

I think i have a problem with the individual grids, is why i don't like your idea; it is too weird having to choose who to shoot at, and lends itself to the problems of NW, where it matters none what you do, but only who chooses to pick on you, but with less options defensively...

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Jonny
I'd play.

But, IMHO, you shouldn't have the capability of moving in the game. That makes it a lot more luck-dependent (and perhaps a longer game) than the traditional rules. You have to keep it simple, lest it go the way of Society. Just make it like regular battleship, but with everyone on one big board. There's one map, showing where shots have been fired, and if they were hits or misses. Each player has five ships and gets (number of ships left/2, rounded up) shots per turn. Any extra shots hitting a square on the same turn have no effect. Last one standing wins.

That could work, except the board would end up being huge ... and I strongly dislike the shot calculation; normal battleship rules generally allow you a constant 5 shots per turn, because otherwise luck (who sinks the first ship) matters too much, as the rich get richer so to speak. Typically salvos of 5 or 3 or 1 are allowed to each player regardless of ship counts (at least in my neck of the woods).

[Sparrowhawk]

Sounds like a number of different ideas about how this could work.

I had envisioned a grid whose size depended on how many players were playing.

Each player is an individual with only one ship against all others and gets to choose their size ship (and I think some incentive for the larger ships, perhaps more shots as suggested to prevent everyone from taking size 2 ships).

To start the game each player sends a list of perhaps 5 locations for their ship to be (not in order of preference, just 5 different spots in case others have conflicting spots). The GM would then select from the lists spots for each of the ships and begin the game notifying the players of the final location of their ships.

Every round each player would fire their shot (or shots) in the form of a PM to the GM and the GM would reveal the map updated with Hits and Misses visible for all to see (and an update of who was sunk). No one would know who fired which shot.

Game continues until only one ship is still afloat.

Is this too simple? It seems the other options have much more strategy and a much higher level of difficulty. Not sure if we are looking for a simple adaptation or a complicated one however

/me

[Dauphin]

/me wanted to bump this, then thought of a really bad pun to do it with, and then decided to leave it at a bump.

[DrSpike]

What was the pun?

Hopefully not something along an 'I see no ships' line.

[Adagio]

Here's my idea how the game should work:

- Each player has the normal number and size of ships (1 5-tile, 1 4-tile, 2 3-tile and 1 2-tile*)
- Each player can fire 3 shots per turn
- Shots are sent via pm
- For each hit a player makes he/she gets 1 point**
- If two or more players shoots the same tile (the same turn) they will all be credited if the tile contains a ship
- Moving is not possible
- All players will be on the same map
- The width and height of the map will be: 10 + number of players



** Scoring is just for stats... the winner is of course the player who survives
* I don't remember the name of the ships



Is this agreeable?

[snoopy369]

The size should be somewhat smaller; 9+(players/2) would probably be better. That is in line with original battleship (9+2/2) and doesn't grow too rapidly - remember the size will be increasing by an increasing amount

Other than that, it's fine by me ...

[snoopy369]

Standard ship names btw (from what I recall):
Carrier : 5
Battleship : 4
Cruiser : 3
Submarine : 3
Destroyer : 2