I'm currently doing work on a game where it'll be important to conserve resources, with ammo being particularly important. I want to try to come up with a good system for determining how much ammo, food, water, weapons, medical supplies and other tools characters can carry, how much all of this encumbers them, and how much of it they consume through combat, normal travel, etc...
I want to avoid bullet counting, and other excessive amounts of paperwork and am looking for some advise.
Here's some of the things I want the ammo/inventory system to take into account.
*Character strength / size should affect carrying capacity
*Special backpacks, vehicles and other crazy stuff should boost storage space
*There should be a limit on the number of big bulky things (Greatswords, Rocket launchers, etc...) that can be carried.
*Different items are bigger and/or heavier than others
*Some weapons are more or less ammo effecient (5 shots per energy pack for big gun, 20 for small)
*Different weapons have differrent firing modes (Burst fire, fully auto spray fire, etc...)
*Skilled marksmen waste less ammo
Does anybody know of any systems that they like that handle this kind of stuff well? Anybody have any ideas for a homebrew system? Anybody think of any constraints that I missed?
I think the type of setting itself will really influence what kind of system and feel you are going for here. Is it some kind of post-apocalyptic? quasi-futuristic?
Personally, I think that unless ammo is extremely rare and valuable, it really takes away from the game when you have to take X game days to walk back to a town just to get bullets. Now, if ammo is really scarce, I wholeheartedly agree with keeping a track on individual bullets. There is a scene from Mad Max (I think that's the right film) when he comes upon a corpse and scavenges a single shot-gun shell, which gives him two total for his sawed-off. Knowing Max only had 2 shotgun shells created an awesome sense of drama throughout the film. If you do decide to go the sparse route, I would make guns REALLY powerful, like almost being one-shot kill weapons.
but like I said earlier, knowing the setting and tone would help alot.
The setting is post apocalyptic sci-fi. There will be hubs of human society, large military installations that have turned into fortress-cities, where supplies are fairly readily available. However once you get out into the wilderness you only have as much as you take with you and it has to last until you get back to civilization.
In the wilderness are many demons and other unpleasents that are much stronger than humans. Military grade weaponry (or magic...) is required to have a chance at killing these things, so scavenging won't help much.
That help?
Quote from: PellanorThe setting is post apocalyptic sci-fi. There will be hubs of human society, large military installations that have turned into fortress-cities, where supplies are fairly readily available. However once you get out into the wilderness you only have as much as you take with you and it has to last until you get back to civilization.
In the wilderness are many demons and other unpleasents that are much stronger than humans. Military grade weaponry (or magic...) is required to have a chance at killing these things, so scavenging won't help much.
That help?
haha, kinda. That's quite an ambitious setting. But if these military fortress are so well supplied - and most likely militarily strong - what's to keep them from marching out into the wastes and making everything nice? Vice versa for the monsters, if they are so strong why don't they march into the cities and lay waste to them? What I'm getting at here is that it's usually pretty hard to explain severely uneven distribution of materials, especially in a post-apocalyptic setting, where, granted, the world teeters on extinction.
If survival is an important and key aspect of this setting, than I would say yes, keep track of important things like water, food, and ammo. But make sure they are rare throughout the setting.
If the post-apocalyptic part of the setting is more for flavor and aesthetic, than I would not fuss with keeping track of everything in the inventory, and just go with a set weight limit and having "Ammo Boxes" that would, more or less, have infinite ammo.
[edit] Would I be far off seeing your setting as the love child between Warhammer 40k and Fallout?
Quote from: PellanorI'm currently doing work on a game where it'll be important to conserve resources, with ammo being particularly important. I want to try to come up with a good system for determining how much ammo, food, water, weapons, medical supplies and other tools characters can carry, how much all of this encumbers them, and how much of it they consume through combat, normal travel, etc...
I want to avoid bullet counting, and other excessive amounts of paperwork and am looking for some advise.
Here's some of the things I want the ammo/inventory system to take into account.
*Character strength / size should affect carrying capacity
*Special backpacks, vehicles and other crazy stuff should boost storage space
*There should be a limit on the number of big bulky things (Greatswords, Rocket launchers, etc...) that can be carried.
*Different items are bigger and/or heavier than others
*Some weapons are more or less ammo effecient (5 shots per energy pack for big gun, 20 for small)
*Different weapons have differrent firing modes (Burst fire, fully auto spray fire, etc...)
*Skilled marksmen waste less ammo
Does anybody know of any systems that they like that handle this kind of stuff well? Anybody have any ideas for a homebrew system? Anybody think of any constraints that I missed?
Well, it doesn't go into special backpacks or limits on bulky things, but the One Roll Engine (with games like Godlike, Wild Talents, and Nemesis) deals with most of the rest. The Body stat determines how fast you can run, how much you can lift, etc. Different weapons have different ammo-capacities, and some have a spray setting.
[spoiler=Spray setting explanation]Understanding spray requires knowledge of the basic mechanic: When you use a skill like shooting you roll a pool of d10. If you get any matches, you hit something. The number displayed on the matching dice show where you hit, and the number of dice that match determines how quickly you get off your shots and how much damage the shot inflicts. Now say you're shooting an assault rifle on the spray setting. You have Coordination 3 and 3 points in Firearms (Assault Rifle). Normally, to determine whether you hit, you would roll six dice (3+3), but the Assault Rifle has a 4d spray setting which you add to your dice pool, so that you roll a total of 10 dice. Each set of matches counts as a separate hit, and on spray, the number of dice in the pool is presumed to be the number of bullets fired.[/spoiler]
Nemesis also has rules for aiming and called shots, which help you to get just the shot you want, and with only one bullet.
I'd look at how games like diablo and legend of arrana did it for sizes. Items are so large and carrying them took up a certain chunk of blocks in your inventory. A rocket launcher might be 5 squares long so the player has to check off 5 boxes in a line to fit it in their inventory.
I'm going to second the notion that the moment something becomes extensively limited, it needs to be far more powerful than other things. In D&D, for instance, melee weapons and bows do comparable amounts of damage, since carrying spare arrows and quivers is not much of an issue. If a bullet suddenly costs as much as a sword, it needs to be far more powerful.
If you are using energy weapons, though, I think I have a good solution to your resource problem. Batteries aren't rare; its the electricity that is. The army bases have power plants (solar probably, maybe some even have nuclear), and they sell the energy for resources that they need. They can't just steamroll the wilds because batteries only store so much energy, so they sponsor small scale incursions into the wilderness to take out key targets.
Quote from: XeviatIf you are using energy weapons, though, I think I have a good solution to your resource problem. Batteries aren't rare; its the electricity that is. The army bases have power plants (solar probably, maybe some even have nuclear), and they sell the energy for resources that they need. They can't just steamroll the wilds because batteries only store so much energy, so they sponsor small scale incursions into the wilderness to take out key targets.
Exactly what I was thinking. Still have to track ammo, but now in "battery charge" rather than bullets. though if there's both lasers and gauss rifles, then I'll still need to track both.
Speaking of futuristic power, anybody have any good resources / ideas on the miniaturized "nuclear power plants" (like for powering vehicles and stuff) or other sci-fi energy power sources, that aren't too soft science?
I don't think a mini nuclear power plant would be feasable; they work by using the heat from the nuclear fuel to boil water and turn turbines. There is a tremendous amount of heat that needs to be dissipated, and you'd probably need a constant flow of water (or else you'd have even more heat to dissipate).
As for ideas that aren't soft-science, I'm not sure. I've always liked fuel cells, but you need to constantly add some sort of fuel to them. You could go to Fusion, but then you're still having to change heat to electricity. Probably will need to go with something fairly soft science, like Iron Man's power source from the movies, for something like that.
Quote from: PellanorSpeaking of futuristic power, anybody have any good resources / ideas on the miniaturized "nuclear power plants" (like for powering vehicles and stuff) or other sci-fi energy power sources, that aren't too soft science?
If micro fusion/fission plants make it into your setting, I'm pretty sure those would last for a long time, rendering the ammo point moot.
I'd go with fuel cells, solar, and so forth. More robust than fancy stuff like nuclear reactors (a plus out on the wastes). And like leetz said, nuclear causes a problem with not running out of ammo. With solar you probably can "regain" ammo but it will be real slow. Fuel cells might be the best since they run out and can only be recharged in the cities.
Quote from: NomadicI'd go with fuel cells, solar, and so forth. More robust than fancy stuff like nuclear reactors (a plus out on the wastes). And like leetz said, nuclear causes a problem with not running out of ammo. With solar you probably can "regain" ammo but it will be real slow. Fuel cells might be the best since they run out and can only be recharged in the cities.
If this is a hostile environment, I can see Solar as presenting the challenge that in order to effectively charge the weapons, you might have to be out in the open, which puts you at risk.
Quote from: Seraphine_HarmoniumQuote from: NomadicI'd go with fuel cells, solar, and so forth. More robust than fancy stuff like nuclear reactors (a plus out on the wastes). And like leetz said, nuclear causes a problem with not running out of ammo. With solar you probably can "regain" ammo but it will be real slow. Fuel cells might be the best since they run out and can only be recharged in the cities.
If this is a hostile environment, I can see Solar as presenting the challenge that in order to effectively charge the weapons, you might have to be out in the open, which puts you at risk.
Actually that could be a good way to make energy ammo harder to get.
Personally, I think part of a post-apocalyptic setting is the scarcity of resources, which is pretty hard to explain and make believable with super high tech. Maybe pick and choose your "high techs?" Maybe lasers and beam stuff aren't possible at all, so that only bullets, missiles, etc exist? dunno, just a thought.