CCW/Compendium Rules Question - Incoming damage?

[HeatDeath]

That seems like the correct read, but it's very subtle. "A destroyed weapon is still a weapon and thus is still rolled for to see if it is the lucky recipient." is one heck of a central concept to leave that implicit.

The whole section is, frankly, a bit of a mess. Major nouns are left only implicitly defined, picked up, put back again, used apparently interchangeably, and crop up again paragraphs later in subtly different contexts. And yet the whole section is almost unchanged from the Pocket Box through Compendium 2.5.

How on earth was this never FAQ'd and rewritten for clarity?

[swordtart]

Originally Posted by HeatDeath

That seems like the correct read, but it's very subtle. "A destroyed weapon is still a weapon and thus is still rolled for to see if it is the lucky recipient." is one heck of a central concept to leave that implicit.

The whole section is, frankly, a bit of a mess. Major nouns are left only implicitly defined, picked up, put back again, used apparently interchangeably, and crop up again paragraphs later in subtly different contexts. And yet the whole section is almost unchanged from the Pocket Box through Compendium 2.5.

How on earth was this never FAQ'd and rewritten for clarity?

....er Car Wars :)

The game is one of SJGs earliest. It evolved over a decade under different editors, some who were involved in the original game and who perhaps had a holistic understanding, others who brought a particular bias or mandate, others who I suspect looked at it purely as a product. Supplements were developed by different authors in parallel who introduced the same or similar components with different rules. ADQ was the usual route to rules questions, but unfortunately there was an editorial swing door and previous "decisions" could be overturned in an instant and reverted a few issues later. With no coherent version control between supplements it became too big a mess. New supplements bring new revenue, revising existing ones not so much so (especially if that requires a new print run).

There is also the Pareto principle that nailing the last few bugs always takes far longer than getting the bulk of the work done. In a commercial product you have to draw the line somewhere. The longer you take the greater the likely hood of another product introducing further inconsistency.

Also every player identifies something everyone else thought was obvious until they re-read the rules from that perspective.

There have been FAQs and rules clarifications (generally as a result of controversy at tournaments) but these often come with their own baggage, contradict rulings from the official editor or have been interpreted outside their initial scope to the detriment of the game. Many will have been on the spot decisions from a harassed official/editor working to a deadline concerning a possibly one-off emergent issue and have become enshrined as canon.

This brings up another issue, if you have always played it one way and everyone you play with agrees on that interpretation, for your group, that is the RIGHT interpretation. When some official ruling comes out that challenges that interpretation you may be adamant it is wrong. With the tiny CW community it is possible that you one day became the editor and got to overturn it creating everlasting confusion.

As a caveat. If you disagree with any official ruling (or interpretation offered by a well meaning fan) you are not obliged to abide by it. Shout "Heresy" and do your own thing.

It's your game, you paid for it :)

[adm]

I play a game called Starfleet Battles, a vaguely Trek based wargame, that started a few years before Car Wars, and uses a similar game design. It has been in continuous production, and now has a nearly 468 page rule book, with another 301 pages of annexes. This is just for the original Trek show area, and does not include ships, or ship descriptions. The rule book got so big, largely to cover things like this, every possible option is addressed that the designer can think of, or has been asked about. The Car Wars Compendium is 147 pages. Nailing everything down does not appeal to everyone, and, at a certain point, good enough is the break point on profitability. All of that said, critical concepts can still be missed.

[HeatDeath]

Yeah. I don't mean to be harsh. I mean, the game stayed in print for a /very/ long time and sold an awful lot of copies. So the rulebook was empirically at least vaguely functional.

It does go to a larger impression I've been forming, that reinforces my experience with Car Wars back in the day: with the exception of Car Wars Mini, the game is extremely difficult to learn how to play unassisted from published materials, /unless/ you already have a pretty fair idea how it works. Very much like the case with SFB, and most likely for similar reasons, it's designed to be taught to new players by experienced players, and the rulebooks came to be much better set up as references than as standalone teaching materials. An oral culture, to put it in anthropology terms.

I suspect this is an artifact of the game's evolution being profoundly shaped by an all-pervasive tournament scene. Small groups or individuals learning and playing the game in isolation were very much not the target audience, at least subconsciously.

I guess I was feeling a little bit spoiled last night, having encountered this issue immediately after completing a re-read of the Backerkit 6e rulebook. That document is /beautifully/ written. It builds its concepts up from literally nothing, taking new gamers through the gameflow step by step, in gameplay order. It's so tight, it would literally compile. I /thought/ I found a hole in it, but no, there the answer was, right at the end of the appropriate section. Sam and Randy and the editorial team did /spectacular/ work there.

I would pay good money to see Sam and Randy do a complete rewrite of the CCW rulebook with the goal of optimizing it for new players coming in cold, though I suspect that ship has sadly sailed.

[43Supporter]

Originally Posted by HeatDeath

I would pay good money to see Sam and Randy do a complete rewrite of the CCW rulebook with the goal of optimizing it for new players coming in cold, though I suspect that ship has sadly sailed.

Ten steps ahead of you.... ;)

[swordtart]

I think also back in the day games were "family" experiences. Traditional games like chess, cards and even board games often didn't come with much in the way of rules, you were expected to be playing with someone you knew.

The "new" games like RPGs, and the independent niche games were often the products of a single brain who obviously understood the game and wasn't necessarily well equipped to explain it to a complete newcomer (consider the random grab bag that was D&D for years). Without access to word processors or even type setters (many were clearly hand typed and Xeroxed) it is understandable. The thrill of being paid for output may have encouraged quantity over quality.

As a result "those sort of games" as my mother disparagingly referred to them appealed to a more "nerdy" group of people who could handle the maths (specifically probability) and syntax unscrambling. Knowing the rules made you the Alpha of your nerd cohort and so was to be aspired to. I don't think the games designers needed to adjust their editorial stance as arcane rules were tolerated and even treasured. CW was about as maths heavy as it got.

The market now is far less niche and more consumer oriented. Trad games have become more complex (because after 18 months of lockdown Monopoly pales) and RPGs and the like have become more streamlined to appeal to a wider audience. Games companies that have a more corporate structure (i.e. the successful ones) or those that leverage new marketing avenues (like kickstarter etc.) have resources to build in editing and layout without having to rush out the next supplement to an uncertain market. You can take more time when you have a more defined payout at the end of it.

I'll stop here as I have drifted into Phil Reed's territory :)

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by HeatDeath

Very much like the case with SFB, and most likely for similar reasons, it's designed to be taught to new players by experienced players, and the rulebooks came to be much better set up as references than as standalone teaching materials.

Well, there's another reason for that: you learn to play the game once, you refer to the rules lots of times.

(These days you could have a separate learn-to-play PDF, of course.)

[kjamma4]

Yeah, I seem to recall some questions about this either in ADQ&A or a FAQ. I always thought that having a layout similar to Battlecars (https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/3739026/battlecars) would make this much clearer.

You would have to divide the front/back into subsections based on weaponry and then roll randomly each time. As noted, if you rolled a subsection where a weapon previously existed, just keep going inward.

Continuing the quotes from page 41, "When a weapon penetrates from the
side, roll randomly to see which of the three locations is hit. Re-roll for any nonexistent location."

I guess I don't follow the RAW but if I only have two locations, I roll randomly for the two I have.

I'm a rebel that way. :)

[juris]

I agree with this - I also agree with Sword that the current rules do seem to let you hit a destroyed component again - but the 'current rules' for CW 2.5e is joke - the game is 20+ years old

I remember the AADA banned people from dueling with an empty space in their car for this reason.

I'd just house rule that a destroyed component or empty cargo location is not a valid hit location.

Otherwise a car with 6 MGs facing front gets a little absurd when it's basically impossible to destroy each gun with weapons fire

Originally Posted by kjamma4

Continuing the quotes from page 41, "When a weapon penetrates from the
side, roll randomly to see which of the three locations is hit. Re-roll for any nonexistent location."

I guess I don't follow the RAW but if I only have two locations, I roll randomly for the two I have.

I'm a rebel that way. :)

[svawter]

Originally Posted by swordtart

....er Car Wars :)
The game is one of SJGs earliest. It evolved over a decade under different editors, some who were involved in the original game and who perhaps had a holistic understanding, others who brought a particular bias or mandate, others who I suspect looked at it purely as a product. Supplements were developed by different authors in parallel who introduced the same or similar components with different rules. ADQ was the usual route to rules questions, but unfortunately there was an editorial swing door and previous "decisions" could be overturned in an instant and reverted a few issues later. With no coherent version control between supplements it became too big a mess. New supplements bring new revenue, revising existing ones not so much so (especially if that requires a new print run).

As a prime example, the ruling for how much/many DP steel belting adds to tires went through a flip-flop for how many issues of ADQ after the rules showed 1/4 bonus and the example showed 1/3... each time they wrote the rules it stated 1/4 (SSB == 15dp) vs AD Q&A and examples of SSB 16dp...