CCW/Compendium Rules Question - Incoming damage?

[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.