Thoughts and ideas about abstract combat

[mark]

I still wanted a bit more detail in how many soldiers went down on either side

I'm going to expand my answer for the sake of others who may read this.

There is no right or wrong answer but here are some more thoughts.

When dealing with combat you basically choose on a sliding scale how detailed you want to be. The range can be very narrative to very technical.

Very narrative could be something like:

"My squad battles the orcs. Do we win?"

Yes.

Moving towards more detailed:

"Vladomizer shoots at the largest orc. Does he hit?"

Yes.

"What is the damage?"

Minor Injury: Largely superficial; painful and distracting, but not life threatening.

Now here are is an idea for even more detail:

Use the Notes section of the play screen as a quick and dirty battlemap. Below, the letters A-F represent the orcs and letters G-L represent my squad. The Xs above and below represent that they took hits of say 12 or above using the "Get Damage" button with Display Rolls turned on.

[code]-------------------
X
X X X X
A B C D E F



G H I J K L
X X
X
-------------------[/code]

Whenever someone either gets three Xs or a result of Killed from the "Get Damage" button then you can consider that unit dead.

Or, for even more detail, you can use the note section to track each unit's hit points.

[code]A 10
B 10
C 10
D 12
E 10
F 9

G 8
H 12
I 10
J 11
K 11
L 9[/code]

Then instead of using "Get Damage" use the "Roll Dice" button. Say, "this unit is now attacking this other unit." Calculate the opponent's cover, size, movement, armor and the attacker's skill, movement, weapon type, and range. Then, if there is a hit, calculate the damage and subtract it from the target's hit points.

With more detail also comes more record keeping and more time, which isn't a bad thing, it's just however you want to play.

And of course a more narrative style requires no, if very little, record keeping and time.

So basically if you want more detail then you need to be more precise in each action.