Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

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Arioch
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

bunnyboy wrote:I was still wondering why the heck system based on 3x7?

Our measure of time and angles is based to 6 as 4x6 and 10x6, which can be divided many ways into practical numbers.
Then I though it does become 3x8 system by having douple crews with each first and finishing digel and 13-digel off-watch period.
I believe our base-60 system of measuring time is purely tradition derived from the Babylonian system that it originated from; I think there's very little that's "practical" about it. Dividing the day into three sections (duty, off-duty, sleep) makes sense biologically, but the counting system used for each of these three sections is totally irrelevant. Aboard an ultra-tech starship, it's not a problem if you have to show up for watch at 4:34; things don't have to be neat.

The Trade numeral system is base 8. A solon is roughly the length of an average heartbeat (as is our second), a bima is 64 solons, a digel is 64 bima, and 21 is the number of digel that fits into the Deinar day, which is shorter than Earth's. This divides evenly into three watches of 7, but if they have to divide it up some other way, they will.

The Loroi crewmembers come from a variety of different planets with different clocks, and most have been in space for a long time, so their internal clocks have to be a bit flexible. Some ships can and do run on a completely different schedule, as the concept of a "daily" cycle is totally irrelevant in space. Also, there's not really such a thing as "off-duty" for shipboard crew (unless they're actually on leave or incapacitated); even if you're asleep when battle stations sounds, you get your butt out of bed.

A "watch" aboard a ship is not quite the same thing as a normal work day. A watch is where you're standing a post doing something critical, like as a lookout, or watching a screen for enemy activity. You have to be alert and pay attention, and so naval watches on Earth were traditionally 4 hours on, followed by 8 hours off watch. Off-watch time is not necessarily free time; most chores and routine maintenance is done off-watch. Watch schedules vary a lot and have changed a lot over time to try to deal with crew fatigue, but most human crews lose effectiveness when they stand watches as long as 8 hours.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Cthulhu »

Regarding that whole biological clock thing, just how robust are the Loroi in this regard?
How quickly do they adapt to different day lengths, do they suffer from "jet-lag" and how resistant are they to sleep deprivation (like pulling a 24h 21 digel shift on a undermanned ship)?
I guess the Soia would optimize their "tools" for things like that, but how far did they go?

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Cthulhu wrote:Regarding that whole biological clock thing, just how robust are the Loroi in this regard?
How quickly do they adapt to different day lengths, do they suffer from "jet-lag" and how resistant are they to sleep deprivation (like pulling a 24h 21 digel shift on a undermanned ship)?
I guess the Soia would optimize their "tools" for things like that, but how far did they go?
Loroi are not especially remarkable in this respect, compared to humans.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by folti »

Arioch wrote:
bunnyboy wrote:I was still wondering why the heck system based on 3x7?

Our measure of time and angles is based to 6 as 4x6 and 10x6, which can be divided many ways into practical numbers.
Then I though it does become 3x8 system by having douple crews with each first and finishing digel and 13-digel off-watch period.
I believe our base-60 system of measuring time is purely tradition derived from the Babylonian system that it originated from; I think there's very little that's "practical" about it.
More precisely, the base-60 for hours, minutes, seconds is a kinda retrograde adaptation from the time of the modern mechanical clocks (late-16th century), as most people didn't exactly needed this accuracy before. It's mainly because the base-60 system has been used for a lot of math and geography since the Sumerian times.

The 24 hours a day on the other hand can be traced back to the Ancient Egyptians, though it should be noted, that hours were not always fixed length, as they, after a while, divided both day and night to 12 hours, regardless of the current day/night lenghts. At least in Europe, the fixed length hour has been introduced with the first mechanical clocks in the 14th century.

There are/were of course multiple other timing systems in use, like the Chinese decimal based system, which split each day to 100 units, or the Hindu units which used 60 ghati or 30 muhurta as units for a day. Or the decimal based time units of the French Revolution, which didn't caught up for example.

TL;DR: Our current time units are kinda arbitrary, resulting from traditions inherited from old civilizations.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by boldilocks »

Are loroi not used to seeing large amounts of blood? I'm thinking in terms of the prologue and then Spiral's later comment "It was all bleeding-like red and making gurgle gurgle sounds".
I wouldn't have expected him to look near-death, so is Spiral just not used to seeing that kind of damage since she'd bet that he would die, or were his injuries more severe than they appeared?

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by entity2636 »

I interpret that as Spiral being kind of bad with spoken language and what she was trying to say, was that "it" (the alien, Alex) was apparently severely injured, bleeding a lot and was about to drown in it's own red blood, thus she did not rate it's survival chances too high and bet against Talon.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by SVlad »

entity2636 wrote:I interpret that as Spiral being kind of bad with spoken language and what she was trying to say, was that "it" (the alien, Alex) was apparently severely injured, bleeding a lot and was about to drown in it's own red blood, thus she did not rate it's survival chances too high and bet against Talon.
In next sentence she used correct pronoun "he". I think she just tried to say "there was blood everywhere" but failed due lack of spoken practice.
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by dragoongfa »

Hmm...

Hey Arioch, can you by any chance give us the groundwork of Crossfire?

I need it for some, creative reasons :)

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

dragoongfa wrote:Hmm...

Hey Arioch, can you by any chance give us the groundwork of Crossfire?

I need it for some, creative reasons :)
The details are not yet finalized. How much do you need?

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by dragoongfa »

I gathered that it is much like chess in such a case I am mainly interested in how many tiles a board has, the number and type of pieces and how they move. Any special rules and moves like chess has I can make on the fly, even if I am not much of a chess player.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

dragoongfa wrote:I gathered that it is much like chess in such a case I am mainly interested in how many tiles a board has, the number and type of pieces and how they move.
Those details are not finalized, so if you plan to describe a game in detail, I can't really help you.

Here is what I can say about Crossfire:
  • The game has three sides: two armies and a fortified city on the hill surrounded by three towers. The city is neutral; the objective for each of the two players is to either capture the city or to wipe out the enemy force.
  • The board is hexagonal. I'm not sure whether it's 9 or 11 hexes across.
  • The three center rings are progressively elevated. Changing elevation ends the movement of moving piece.
  • Each player can move multiple pieces on his turn, according to the number of command units he has remaining.
  • Pieces are captured by surrounding them with a superior force. Each piece type has a different combat strength and movement allowance/rules.
  • The player that moves first has the two towers on the hill facing him.
A possible board setup for a 9-hex version:
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by dragoongfa »

Thanks, I can work with this. Not exactly how I pictured the game but I guess that Loroi like things to be complicated.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by dragoongfa »

After some mental playtesting here is how I picture it as a game, :

1) 11 hexes across with the same layout and number of pawns seem to be best in regards to versatility.

2) Taking into account Loroi social mores and etc, I wouldn't put in a promotion mechanism.

3) I guess that the naming scheme is: Pawn = Line infantry (LI), Horse = Elite infantry (EI), Bishop = Teidar (T), King = Imperial Guard/Diadem (IG), Queen = Emperor (E).

4) Movements: LI = 1 hex and only forward movement (the three hexes towards the enemy), EI = 2 hexes and all ranges of movement, T = 4 hexes, all range of movements and can jump over a single elevation, IG = 4 hexes, all ranges of movement, fully affected by elevation, E = 1 hex, all ranges of movement.

5) Pawn power: LI = 1, EI = 2, T= 3, IG = 6, E= 4, City Tower = 8, City holds no power.

6) To capture the city one must control all the towers and move the active Emperor to the city. To destroy the army one needs to capture the Imperial Guard and the Emperor.

7) Command mechanics: The Emperor and the Imperial Guard each give a single order, for a total of three seperate movement orders.

8) Emperor and Imperial guard special mechanics:

a) Should the Emperor be killed one of the Imperial Guard takes her place.
b) Imperial escort/assault: The Emperor and a single Imperial guard can stick together as a 'single' pawn (still taking over two hexes), requiring one move for movement and combining the pawn strength for a total of 10 but only having 2 hexes of movement to the direction that the Emperor is facing.
c) Imperial coup: If the emperor is surrounded by pawns whose combined strength is more than 4 then the player may elect to stage a coup, killing the current Emperor and having an IG take her place as if the Emperor was killed in battle. The IG can not be part of the coup force.

EDIT: Thinking about it some more, some balancing in power is warranted to be able to capture the towers if they are enveloped by pawns (ladder and sacrifice rule?)

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by SVlad »

Some thoughts about current draft rules.

The obvious consequence of command units rule:
If all your command units captured, you automatically defeated.

The most interesting is lacking part of rules about figure capture.
Does capture phase follow each figure move or at the end of players turn?
What is order of capture by side?
For example, we have 4 figures in one line:

Code: Select all

w1 b2 w2 b1
(w - white, b - black, 1 and 2 - figure force)
In current situation there are two possible outcomes:
if white capture first, they take b2 and b1
if black capture first, they take w2 and w1.
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by SVlad »

Does going down elevation also ends figure move? The ability to freely move figures downhill makes control of center more important. On other side, it can heavily break balance.
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by dragoongfa »

Yes downhill should end the figure's move, to keep the game balanced.

On figure capture I would say that the capture happens on the player's turn with using a command point but one needs to have superior force applied againt the combined total of the enemy's pawns. If an elite and regular infantry are side by side then to capture any one of them you would need 4 points of strength leveled against the target hex.

Towers cannot move and attack but their power total should apply on adjustent tiles for defensive/offensive reasons. The city can only be moved on by the Emperor.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by GabrielGABFonseca »

What is that I hear? Did someone say forum-wide Crossfire play-testing...? :P
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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Werra »

Hm...
3) I guess that the naming scheme is: Pawn = Line infantry (LI), Horse = Elite infantry (EI), Bishop = Teidar (T), King = Imperial Guard/Diadem (IG), Queen = Emperor (E).
I'd suggest Pawn = Soroin, Horse = Mizol, Bishop = Teidar, King = Torrai, Queen = Emperor. Or the land based equivalents and Telepath/Telekin...something for Mizol/Teidar
Seems more intuitive and easier to remember for the reader if we use caste titles.
4) Movements: LI = 1 hex and only forward movement (the three hexes towards the enemy), EI = 2 hexes and all ranges of movement, T = 4 hexes, all range of movements and can jump over a single elevation, IG = 4 hexes, all ranges of movement, fully affected by elevation, E = 1 hex, all ranges of movement.

5) Pawn power: LI = 1, EI = 2, T= 3, IG = 6, E= 4, City Tower = 8, City holds no power.
While that would work to create superior and inferior forces, it makes the game very complicated, unintuitive and prone for abuse. It would also make it super hard to come back from an early setback.

How about this? Numerical superiority combined with positioning is used to capture a unit. This way two Pawns can take down a King if they're positioned right.

My thinking is this. A unit that is in crossfire -flanked- is taken. Flanking is defined as two units of the same side being in base contact with one unit of the other side while not being in base contact with each other.

Image

This makes the game very focused on positioning but it means every piece is useful and potentially deadly. We can then give each piece a different movement value. Say Soroin (P), Teidar (B) and Torrai (K) have 2, Mizol (H) and Emperor (Q) have 3.

A normal unit picks a direction and moves its movement value in that direction, Mizol, Torrai and Emperor can switch directions. Teidar can push units they meet into the direction they move in.

Let's say there is also a zone of control (ZOC) in a radius of one tile around each unit. Any unit entering this ZOC has their movement stopped. Mizol ignore this zone. Perhabs they nullify the enemy Mizols special rule too. (Teidar cancel each other then as well and or have a ZOC of 2)

This way the game would be about controlling area with Soroin and using special pieces for flanking and breakthroughs. Of course Mizol and Teidar would still be useful for their ZOC as would Soroin be useful for flanking.

Apart from movement no point values that need to be balanced and relatively few special rules.

Problems I still have with this:
- A row of Soroin could be rolled up from the flank with very few units. (maybe good as that was common in Phalanx warfare)
- Mizol could be too good at flanking
- no idea how to handle the towers
- maybe add a way for units to assist each other defending if they're next to each other

Edit:
Another way to handle different combat strengths would be to use a rock-paper-scissors system.

Mizol beats Teidar, Teidar beats Torrai, Torrai beats Mizol, each of those beats a Soroin, unless the Soroin has another Soroin in base contact, then Soroin wins - nullified by friendly Soroin in base as well. Emperor always wins unless faced with unit + Soroin or fighting two Soroin.

Towers require unit + Soroin. City can only be taken once all three towers are down and requires a command unit to take posession of it. Opponent has then one more turn to mount a counterattack on the city.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by Zorg56 »

Any chances for human cloaking devices after technological exchange?
As i can see most of loroi weapons and tools is based on artifacts they obtained during space travels, not their own research.
They can just do not notice the possibility of creating thing like this.

P.s. sorry for my terrible english.

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Re: Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

Post by dragoongfa »

I wanted to avoid giving most of the pawns caste names, especially the Mizol, because from what I gathered the game originated from Deinar. There were no Mizol on Deinar but there were Soroin, Teidar, Torrai and the Emperor. The Infantry are bound to be Soroin but the special pawns are bound to be something different. One has to be a Teidar and showcase the aptitudes but the other special (other than the Emperor and the Guard/Diadem) has to be something else. Hence Line infantry (phalanx) and elite infantry (highly mobile foot soldiers) since the Loroi didn't have mounts.

Also the Emperor has to have a role in securing the town, the prestige of showing that they are the boss and all that. From a gameplay perceptive it puts an incentive in protecting a slow and valuable unit while it marches to the city.

Personally I consider the 'strength' rule to be the more limiting factor. If a game is to represent tactical warfare then any unit should be able to capture/kill any other unit; a King's belly doesn't care who wields the sword that tries to cut through it, it wants no sword to run through it at all. Personally I would only use the strength values against the towers and for special rules like the 'coup' rule. Normal combat would be resolved via positioning and pawn exchanges alone, while also taking elevation into account; hence the need to have an elevation jumper like the Teidar.

To maintain some sanity with the movement and capturing in such a case then I would split the orders thusly: The Emperor can issue one order and that can be either movement or an attack. The Guards/Torrai can each give one order but it can only be movement. If the Emperor is captured then the one who lost it cannot attack for a single turn until an other Torrai is crowned. This should give further incentive in keeping the Emperor safe since you cannot attack without it and you need it to capture the city.

Adding in the 'Imperial Assault' special move (parallel to the castling move but since Loroi don't like using defenses it had to be an assault formation) would bring further incentive in using the Emperor aggressively but putting the whole game in a dire position if the Emperor is lost, limiting the player to a single movement.

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