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What Ranges for Values?

One of the problems that you encounter when defining a lot of interrelated units with lots of properties and tables is to decide where to start out with the numbers. There are a couple ways to get started.

First, you can start from real-world numbers. Let's say your game concept is based on turns that last about one day, and you want to use worlds with cells that are about 10 miles across. Now a person in good shape can walk about 2 miles per hour, or 20 miles in a day, which comes out to 2 cells/turn as acp-per-turn for units on foot. This allows a speed of 1 cell/turn for injured, tired, or overburdened persons, via the various speed modifiers. However, if this same game includes automobiles and airplanes, then using the same calculation, we get automobiles that can move 60 cells/turn and airplanes that can move 600 cells/turn! The massive disparity in speeds makes for poor playing; every turn each airplane will make 300 moves while the foot traveller makes 1. To make the game work, you'd have to make airplanes slower (they have to refuel a lot perhaps) or make people faster (nobody walks anywhere anymore). So the real-world numbers approach isn't foolproof.

Another way to go is to start with the smallest values and work up. For instance, in the monster game above, you could assume that the mob moves the slowest, and give it a speed of 1. Then you say that the national guard should be able to move twice as fast, and give it a speed of 2. Then the monster should be able to chase and catch mobs and guards that run away, so you give it a speed of 3 or more. This approach is more painstaking, particularly when lots of numbers are involved.

You can use both approaches together as well, working with real-world numbers until they get too weird, then adjust to make relative values sensible, then do some more real-world calculations. As always, only playtesting is the final arbiter. Once the numbers "feel" right in a game, only the obsessive-compulsives will care about their exact values.


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