Frank Branham: Mechanics that need to Die #2 - Race Order

While this game mechanic doesn't necessarily need to die, it has implications that cause....problems.

I also bring it up because people have pretty much stopped doing racing games, and the genre could really use some fresh ideas.

Race Order is a simple concept: Players move their cars in order from the front of the pack to the back. As best as I know, Speed Circuit from 3M is the first game to use it. Speed Circuit is interesting because it is a very close adaptation of the Formula-1 game from Parker Brothers. It adds Race Order for turn order and simultaneous selection of speeds, as well as the perfect line concept.

And I like Formula-1 better. Race Order makes so very much sense for simulation reasons. Without it, a car that is way behind can potentially weave its way through a pack and block a leader. Players would constantly have to weave around cars that should never have passed them in a real race. Race Order guarantees that when a car passes another car, it makes sense within the context of the game.

But this situation can get kind of boring. These games have fewer passes, and they kind of lend themselves to the classic three-hour Formula De race game where nothing actually happens except for the interesting bits surrounding the pit stops, when the lead car has to drop back. Nice simulation, pretty boring game.

Ausgebremst is much more to my taste: Simple, and with psychotic potential for screwage.

That's not to say that Race Order is a terrible rule, but you need some balance to promote passing. Drafting rules are common, although most simply allow a rear car to move along with the leader. Much more interesting is MotorChamp's system, which gives extra movement to a car that comes up right behind another car, thus promoting passing—which is how MotorChamp gets around the problems with Race Order.

In much worse shape is Lunatix Loop. It is a very clever Speed Circuit descendent which adds car combat as well as a unique "intent" system for speed planning; you draw in the broad brush strokes of your planned movement and fill in the details as you take your turn. The weapons choices are unfortunate. The rear-firing weapons are much more plentiful and useful than the forward firing ones, which means that the leader has race order and better weapons on his side. The expansion (even I can't find one) adds a lot more forward firing weapons, which seems to fix the Race Order issue.

Of course, dropping Race Order has pitfalls. You can see this by comparing Bolide and Tacara side by side. Both are based around the same 2D vector movement system, but Bolide uses Race Order while Tacara does not.

Tacara has this maze of twisty little rules to get around the problems involved when a car moves RIGHT in front of you. These rules involve randomizing turn order, letting you know the turn order for the following turn ahead of time, and giving you a very limited supply of emergency action counters to get around the inescapable situations. Tacara can be brutal and is trickier to play—but there is a LOT more passing and reckless driving than Bolide.
© 2007 Frank Branham

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Comments:

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Completely agree. This is one reason why I much prefer Detroit-Cleveland, Datoyna 500, Ausgebremst, etc. to Formula de and the like. Posted by Curt Carpenter on Aug 23, 2007 at 02:34 AM | #

I’m a fan of race games, playing them often.  Race order is my preferred method of sequencing.  As you point out, Formula 1 - which uses seating order - creates arbitrary passing situations that break theme.  I would be interested to see other ideas about how to sequence tactical race positioning games.  I do vaguely recall playing the original Car Wars game where each turn was segmented into 10 sub-phases.  So a car going at top speed would move each phase, while a car going half speed would move every other phase, etc.  My hazy recollection was that this meant you took far too long to take a single turn. For me, race order sequencing makes a lot of sense, allowing the game to flow in a thematic way.  What hopefully creates interest are other game issues, such as track conditions, fuel and tires depletion, weather conditions, traffic, fatigue, player-time restrictions, and so forth. Posted by Kevin_Whitmore on Aug 29, 2007 at 01:46 AM | #