Mass Combat (And Recent Developments In My Game)

[SkyeFyre]

Ok, so I've been wanting to get some good rules for mass combat for some time now and I decided to write up some of my own. Now I can tell you right now, they suck, lol and I'd like some feedback on it and some help refining or if anyone's got some other mass combat rules, that would be great.

What I'm looking for is something that takes into account total MDC, total firepower, level and experience as well as psionic, magical, and other augmentation as well as class. I don't want a group of 20 level 6 Vagabonds to be able to take on a group of 20 level 6 headhunters easily. This is what I have so far:

For determining the fight treat each army or group as their own individual character.

MDC: Add up all MDC from all units

Damage: I have a few ideas for this. My first was just to make the damage 10% of the MDC of that team. Another idea was to just add up the average damage for all units (Glitterboys would have like a damage of 105...etc) and that's the damage for the team. The problem I run into with the second method though is that I need the damage to scale with the damage the army has taken. What I was thinking was just determine the percentage of the team's damage in relation to their MDC. So a group of 10 Glitterboys might have an MDC of 7700 and a total damage rating of 1050 which is about 13% of the team's MDC and just have the damage scale with that. So lets just say the team's MDC is reduced to 6800, then the damage would be 884.

Bonuses: As determining combat is like normal combat, bonuses are needed to represent which team may have an edge. My first idea was to just average up all of the bonuses for the team and use that. The second idea was to just look at the average level and other small determining factors to apply bonuses. What I've got for this so far is as follows:

+1 for every two levels for the average of the group
+1 for terrain advantage
+1 for morale
+1 for being a trained soldier (Men at arms classes)
+2 for being a higher trained soldier. (Commandos and Special Forces)
+3 for being a natural soldier, elite of the elite...etc.
+4 for being born to fight. No other purpose. (Combat robots, Spartans...etc)
+3 for being magic (magic is a major advantage)
+2 for being psionic (This may change, but it still provides an advantages)
+1-3 for augmentation (juicers, crazies...etc)
...etc.

Any suggestions?

Now based on this, as in my game the Mechanoids are having a second shot at earth, what do you think their bonuses would be?

[SkyeFyre]

It's fine for smaller confrontations, but I find once you hit larger conflicts (Like 100 vs 100+) it slows things right down. Especially if you have mixed units. I do like the idea though and I'll probably use it for the less... large battles.

I'm not looking for total realism, just something that works and is balanced.

[SkyeFyre]

Oh, it's cool. I appreciate the input and I can adapt some of it to my rules. The problem I have is that I do have a lot of mixed units. The Mechanoids use a variety of different units and the people that are going to be fighting them will be a mixed bag.

[asajosh]

I dig your ideas!
My players are always wanting to do large scale combat, like hiring merc companies and such and ambushing th CS, and your system seems a simple and feasible way of doing that. Now I've just gotta build some war game tables...

[SkyeFyre]

Oh yeah? Sweet. Thanks I'll check that out.

[Grell]

Well, I have a system that I use for that cinematic 1 vs. 100 type of action. Basically the enemy swarm (army, company, irregulars) is treated as a single entity. The swarm would have total attacks per melee equal to the highest number held by one of it's members. Next, it only has attack capabilities equal to those of the units its comprised of. But you seem like you're already on track with this idea.

Your problem is MDC and individual thresholds for mixed units, as I understand it. Simple solution. The mooks die first and adjust your individual MDC thresholds as your enemy layers are deteriorated (ie; mooks, specialists, leaders).

The next problem, I would think, is how to handle damage inflicted. I think you could do this in two ways. For the 1 vs. 100 scenario, each of the swarm's attacks would be equal in damage to 1 member (as it is not logical that they would all unify in one strike against one opponent; too chaotic). For army vs. army type of action; damage would be multiplied by the total units capable of the attack (ie; 10 out of a force of 25 can fire auto cannon bursts, so damage from one burst x10).

Now bear in mind that for my favored 1 vs. 100 scenario, I only allow PC's to go that route (I call it MCS: Multiple Combatant System) if they are using modern weapons as I don't feel that melee weapons lend themselve well to inflicting group level damage, but that's just me.

Wow, I really hope you can make sense of my jumbled thoughts! Thanks for letting me share!

Edit: Oh, and these rules are extremely derivative of the ship to ship combat rules from the original Zentraedi sourcebook for Robotech!