Yeah, okay, I seem to like Bombard! a little too much. What can I say, I'm nostalgic for the ol' Battleship days. But that said, my like for Bombard! spawned this little idea I had for an arena game that can be considered the equivalent of BattleChess, i.e. a board game turned into an arena game where players fight each other. And better yet, my idea requires no aetherships!

Let me explain what ideas I had for the rules:

The object of the game in this case would be the same as regular Bombard!: annihilate the enemy fleet. But in this case, the "fleets" would be represented by individual players. There would be five players per team; one commander, and one player to represent each of the four pieces in the fleet (i.e. one player representing the two-space ship, one to represent the three-space ship, and so on).

These players would be distributed along a Bombard! board just like the original game, and whichever player is assigned to whichever type of ship would take up that many spaces in the Bombard! board. I.e. if Player1 decided Player2 would be the two-space ship, Player2 would occupy two spaces on the board, and so on.

Now, play is conducted just like regular Bombard! - you call out shots on the opposing grid, and record if it hits or misses a ship. But, here's a twist - you first have to decide which ship on your team is going to be "shooting."

Now, when a ship on your team hits a ship on the other team with the shot, here's what happens: the players from each ship go into a room where they fight each other like normal PvP sparring. They fight each other, and depending on who wins, one of two things can happen:

• If the attacking player wins, then the opposing ship gets a hit against it, just like normal Bombard!
• If the defending ship wins, it would represent a counter-attack and the attacking ship takes a hit instead, though it is not revealed where it is to the opposing player.

So, each player in this sense can be defeated however many times their ship can be hit - i.e. if a player is chosen to represent a five-space ship, s/he can be defeated five times before being eliminated, a player representing a two-space ship can be defeated two times, etc.

Whoever manages to defeat all the ships on the opposing team first, wins!

This is still an idea in the skeleton stages - I came up with this during my lunch hour at work. But I'd love some feedback on this idea. Let me know what you think!

Don't we kind of already have that with actual Aethership combat?

At the very least I like the idea of a turn-based strategy with sessions of live "action player-killing". The large problem I see however, is that the game would be dominated y upper-tier combatants and almost never played by anyone who didn't buy credits and purchase.code a system. Some folks are difficult enough to defeat that it takes a crew. Combatants would dominate the game to the point where only combatants could/did want to play, and it would be like the FFAs.

What if instead of playing themselves, each player controlled one of several NPC classes that had a handful of skills to dish out in basic strategies with a good dose of luck?

Well, this sort of game would be for those who don't have aetherships to call their own. Aetherships, to my understanding, are few and far between, and it takes a while to scrounge up the crew and/or resources for an aethership voyage. (At least, that's how I understand it.) It'd be an arena-based game, like BattleChess, so those who don't have aetherships can duke it out in, as Vhaas said, turn-based strategy with a real-time live combat PvP aspect. So it'd be a variant of BattleChess.

Speaking of Vhaas...


That is a problem, but that sort of dovetails into another idea that's probably been suggested before, but I'm going to suggest it here anyway - arena matches restricted based on the player's level, determined by the organizers. Actually, I think we have that now, but I'm saying it could be liberally applied to an arena-based game like this so only players between X and Y levels could play in a particular match.

Aethership Arenas already exist. It's just that no one ever uses it.

Ever.

Oh really? can you enter it by yourself, or do you need a dueling ship? Do you need your own ship to enter it?

Yes, you need a ship.

Dunno if I'm making myself clear, but what I'm suggesting here doesn't need aetherships. All it needs is two teams of five players each. I'm not suggesting we use actual aetherships for this game. All I'm saying is that each player represents an aethership, like how the pieces of Bombard! represent aetherships. No aetherships are literally used in Bombard!, and they wouldn't be in this game either.

This game isn't literally aethership combat - it's PvP arena combat played by Bombard! (i.e. Battleship) rules. It's a replication of the board game in PvP form, like BattleChess is a replica of chess in PvP form.

Hopefully this clears things up a bit. I'm sorry if I confused anyone.

I don't think this would be a practical addition.

That said, we're always on the lookout for new unique world or arena games!

How about.... Battlechess, but with figurines? And possibly the figurines can have attacks based upon the creature. I realize this would be REALLY hard to code but.... perhaps a figurine of an orc archer could shoot arrows for an attack, or one of a taint wyrm would breathe poison gas ( No real elemental or difference in power, just in appearance. )

Hi!

Thank you.

For clarification:

This is a continuation of a discussion I was recently having with one of Lusternia's admin. I'm just thanking her for being here, not for the content.

Carry on!