PIC-Guam Progress 6/26/09

I'm continuing to test out the rules for PIC-Guam. Chris showed me a recent draft of the map and updated rules. I've been doing map exercises on the landing beaches. I've also been writing up design notes on an AI for a computer version of PIC-Guam. This has helped to generate rules questions on the board game.

I've been trying to min-max the Japanese side towards victory (for various definitions of victory). Chris has already had to change the setup rules for the "Recapture of Guam" main scenario, restricting the number of fortfication counters on beach hexes and reducing the number of free setup units. Chris wrote a good set of rules for PIC-Guam, but I'm really trying to explore the boundaries from the point of view of a programmer. My most recent questions include (in no particular order).

• Can an Engineer company build forts on the same turn it reshuffles from 3 platoons?

• Can a suppressed friendly unit be used to take a casualty resulting fromm a friendly assault?

• Can a unit build up/break down in a ZOC? Does this provoke defensive first fire?

• Does a retreating unit with no place to move take step losses instead/?

• Can a retreat path look like a "J", or an "L"? Must the retreat path be in a straight line, or be directly away from the FEBA?

• Does Banzai charge exploitation stop at ZOC's?

• Can 3 Engineer platoons build a fort, or must they reorg into a company first?

• Can arty, air, and naval units make attacks on their own? How? What limits? Just wonder if there is anything aside from interdiction.

• Is it permitted to allow the US player to allocate all his naval support in one combat? If not, what limits are there?

• Does the Japanese player get defensive first fire against units moving into adjacent lagoon hexes? (i.e. during Amphibious phase)

• Does a US unit suffer any adverse effects from retreating into a lagoon hex from a land hex? Is this even permitted?

• Can a US unit withdraw from a lagoon hex to a sea hex?

• If the stacking limits are exceeded on the beach, in the lagoon, or in the sea hex for a landing zone, do follow on waves stack up and ultimately (possibly) delay later waves?

• Can the US player voluntarily hold back some or all units in a wave to a later turn?

• Do the Division and PMB HQs trace supply back to IIIMAC HQ? Do they trace supply back to the beach before IIIMAC HQ lands? If so, can it be any beach? (I'm guessing that it has to be through friendly controlled hexes, which argues against a unit cut off from the southern beach being able to trace supply to the northern beach before link-up.) If a regimental HQ from one beach fights its way through to the other beach, can it get supply there?

• Can Engineer units be replaced? Can other units also be replaced? (I guess all non-armor units can be replaced, using the replacement pool...just making sure.)

• 3.6 How many units, of what size, can be replaced for one point? (I guess one company, but I'm not sure.)

• 2.12.1.1 Typo: replace the word "beach" with "LD/Sea". Refers to placement of the next landing wave on the map.

• In the optional reinforcements rules, does the reference to 9th Tank Regiment refer to the HQ unit?

• Can naval units support amphibious fire and assault? (I'm guessing per 11.3 that CL/DD ships can.))

• 11.9 Does shore battery fire apply only to units on the beaches, or can shore batteries target lagoon and LD/sea hexes, too?

• Do the artillery/HQ rules apply to Japanese units? If so, what about the short range artillery units integral to battalions?

• Does Supply count after exploitation? If I exploit out of supply range, do I suffer the effects of out of supply?

I Beat Orbital Decay on "Hard"

I've been playing flash games on Kongregate to pass the time. One of my recent favorites is a game called Orbital Decay. It's a sidescroller in which you play the part of a lost battleship of some sort. The ship has a main gun under player control, 4 fighter bays, a dozen-odd hardpoints for laser/frag/rocket turrets, and a built in repair capability. All of these are upgradeable using resource units (RU) gained by destroying enemy ships. The game is episodic in nature. You start off with a damaged ship: only one fighter bay is working and all other hardpoints are empty. There are easy, medium and hard modes of play, and you can add unlimited RUs by typing in the cheat code "cash". Using cheat codes voids the game's high score on Kongregate for purposes of earning badges.

I just won the game on Hard without cheats. Not easy. I based the early levels on OSquared's upgrades reposted 27 Apr 09 by ddrumdrummer69. Sold the fighter bay and upgraded the main gun with the initial points, then alternated Main Gun damage and various repair drone upgrades per OSquared. Later I bought one laser turret midships and one frag turret 4th hardpoint back from front, and upgraded these to max, mixed in with more upgrades for repair drones. After that I filled all the other hardpoints with rocket turrets, and then upgraded those once I had filled all the hardpoints. On the final screen, I sold off everything but the frag turret and used the points to max drone repair (last, 500 increment was the only remaining upgrade at that point) and add 4 fighter bays with 10 fighters and first step dam/ROF upgrades. As I killed the first two ships and attendant fighers, I upgraded the bays to 12 fighters and then fighter HP as RU accumluated. After that it was a matter of killing the boss ship...the fighters are necessary in order to distract the boss ship and its fighters. There were a couple of places where it was necessary to re-run the level a few times in order to play with the weapons mix. I had to re-run the final level 5-6 times to fine tune the fighter upgrades, plus the boss ship would ignore my fighter respawns if it killed all my fighters.

One other bit of advice is to give priority of fire to mines on any level that includes them; they damage your ship too much if permitted to do so.

It's a good game. It's every bit as entertaining to me as the old coin-op games such as Choplifter or Defender. This is another great example of the proliferation of small(er) games on websites these days.