Formula D Race 1 - Singapore Complete

[Isgrimnur]

[Isgrimnur]

Racing game, can support up to 10 players in two teams of 5. Game will be advanced rules. Races will be two laps.

The first board I have scanned:



More detailed image is here.

You have 6 categories for wear points for your car.

• Tires
• Brakes
• Gearbox
• Body
• Engine
• Shocks

You can use a stock setup or build your own setup with a 20 point limit. Stock setup is 6/3/3/3/3/2.

Each round, you select a gear. That gear is represented by the die that you will be rolling. They are polyhedral from the d4 up to d30.

1. d4: two 1s, two 2s
2. d6: one 2, two 3s, three 4s
3. d8: one 4, one 5, two 6s, two 7s, two 8s
4. d12: two each of 7-12
5. d20: two each of 11-20
6. d30: three each of 21-30

Turn order is determined every round based on position. Players roll in order from first to last. Every turn, you will pick your gear, and I will administer your roll. You will then be allowed to move that number of spaces. You may only shift up one gear each turn. You may shift down one gear without wear. If you need to downshift dramatically, you can do so with the following penalties in the event that you have the points to spend:

• Down 2 gears: 1 Gearbox WP
• Down 3 gears: 1 Gearbox WP, 1 Brake WP
• Down 4 gears: 1 Gearbox WP, 1 Brake WP, 1 Engine WP

You may change lanes, but unless you are overtaking another car, you may not swerve back into your existing lane. You may go from left to right and vice versa in one move, but you can not go right-center right unless it is to avoid the driver in front of you.

As much fun as it might be to just put the hammer down, this isn't drag racing. Note the turns highlighted in red. To avoid trashing your car, you must end a die roll's movement a number of times equal to the large yellow number. The green number represents the longest path through the turn, the red represents the shortest. Easily proven by looking at City Hall in the upper left. The inner line has one rectangle, the outer line has five. You must follow the arrows in a corner. Once you enter a space with an arrow, you must follow the directions in terms of movement options.

If for some reason you fail to make your stop before coming out, you will lose one Tire WP for every space past the end that you move. For multiple stop turns, this only goes for the last stop. If you come out of Carlton Millenia after only making two stops, you'll lose the Tire WP as described. If you come out after only making one stop, you've just gone hard into the wall. They'll be sweeping your car into dustbins.

If you lose your last (and no more) Tires WP, your car spins out. You end your movement as normal, but facing the wrong direction. You spend the next turn righting your car so that you can get back underway. If you overshoot a turn afterwards by one (and only one) space, you will spin out again. If you ever drop below zero Tire WP, you've blown a tire. Have fun waiting for the tow truck.

If you wish to use your brakes, you may, at any time, reduce your forward movement by one Brake WP spent for every space removed up to three spaces. You may use up to three Tire WP to slow an additional three spaces. You may not exceed a maximum of six spaces in this braking maneuver. You may reduce your Brakes WP to zero. Since this is always a voluntary action, there is no penalty.

If you ain't rubbin', you ain't racin'! In the event that you end your movement behind or adjacent to (but not in front of) another racer, there's a slight chance that you clipped him and damaged your body. The odds of this are 1 on a standard d20. You will lose a Body WP in this event. If you lose your last Body WP, car, sweepers, dustbins.

If you max out the speed in 5th of 6th gear, (20 or 30), you have the possibility of damaging your engine with the strain. On a roll of 1-4 on a standard d20, you have damaged your engine and will lose an Engine WP. If you lose your last Engine WP, they'll be sending out the tow truck. Your day is finished.

Each time a car loses a Body or Engine WP (downshifting 4 gears, collision, engine strain), a damage marker is placed on the board in that car's location. It is now debris on the track. If you drive over them at any point, you're risking your suspension. You will roll a d20, losing a Shocks WP on a 1-4. If you lose your last Shocks WP, car, sweepers, dustbins.

As alluded to earlier about the zig-zag comment, you may slipstream an opponent. If you finish a movement directly behind an opponent, you may be eligible for fabulous prizes! If you are: (a) in 4th gear or higher; and, (b)in the same or higher gear as the car in front of you, you get an additional three squares of movement. You may change lanes, overtake, and move in front of the car, or change lanes 1-2 times and use the remaining movement to equal the three total spaces. You may daisy-chain multiple slipstreams. Braking rules will also apply. Slipstreaming is optional.

A few things to be aware of. You may not brake to put yourself into a slipstreaming position. If you slipstream and enter a corner, you will lose one Brake WP. There is no effect if you have already entered the corner previously. If you do so in a corner, you must adhere to the arrow movement as normal.

At the end of the first lap, you may enter the pits. There is no speed limit on pit row. Stopping in the pits will allow you to change tires, fully regaining all Tire WP. Once you reach your pit, you will roll a d20. A 1-10 means your pit crew has been hopped up on your sponsor's energy drink and pulled off a quick pit. You will immediately move (if possible) 1/2 (rounding up) the roll's number of spaces. A 11-20 means that your crew was caught napping. Your turn ends, and you will exit the pit next turn. Once you have pitted, you will be exiting the pit in 4th gear.

On pit row, the rules of gearing down, collision, braking, and engine damage are suspended. There is no passing.

Winner is first across the line on Lap 2.

[Isgrimnur]

Signups

1. Isgrimnur
2. coopasonic
3. LordMortis
4. bb2112
5. El Guapo
6. hentzau
7. NickAragua
8. Tommy20

[coopasonic]

I'm curious to see how the actual play will be handled (and how many months a single race will take), but obviously I am in.

[LordMortis]

Unless you fill up, I'd be interested. I'll have to learn the game but I've watched it being played once. I've been debating buying this but I'm not sure it would go over well with any of my local circles and I keep telling myself that I'm not buying games that no one but me will play.

Did I miss how you will be taking care of dice rolling?

Go ahead and sign me up unless the interest is so great that there is line. I wouldn't want to begrudge others, especially as my time is on again off again, but I'll be happy to watch if you fill up. If you don't generate enough interest then I'd suggest making Hentzau aware of this thread as I think he's a fan and could probably convince others to play as well.

[bb2112]

Not really sure about the game mechanics, but it looks interesting. I guess you can count me in.

I guess I want to understand the cornering better in particular.

[El Guapo]

Sure, I'm in. I have the need....for pretend, simulated speed, while I actually remain comfortable and sedentary in my chair.

[LordMortis]

I have the need to see how 10 people try to navigate the turns all at the same time and to see what happens when all lanes are blocked and some has to pass.

[coopasonic]

I have the need to see how 10 people try to navigate the turns all at the same time and to see what happens when all lanes are blocked and some has to pass.

This is why, in each round, the order of movement is based on track position. Front cars move first. There should really only be a problem if someone further back in the pack is in a higher gear and gets a good roll. That's one of the things you have to consider in gear selection.

[Isgrimnur]

Did I miss how you will be taking care of dice rolling?

I've been batting around some ideas on the dice rolling. Since the results tables aren't standard for the dice, I need something to represent the non-random rolls.

Excel has a function, RANDBETWEEN, that lets you set endpoints for random integers. For 1st, and 4th-6th, I can use that, since the dice results are symmetrical. My thoughts on 2nd and 3rd are to seed it with the number of faces, then use a lookup table to determine the result.

For instance, 4th gear would be =RANDBETWEEN(7,12). 3rd Gear would be =RANDBETWEEN(1-8). I would use the result to either look up or calculate values so that a return of 1 would be 4, 2 would be 5, 3-4 would be 6, etc.

I would set a field array of dimensions 6 * players, load the spreadsheet, and hit the calculate button. I would then pick out the appropriate gear result for that player for that turn.

I guess I want to understand the cornering better in particular.

For turning, I'll give an example. Your starting location for the turn is the first square outside of Crossroads (left middle) in the lane closest to the outside of the track. You have three spaces in front of you before entering the next turn on a direct line, and are set up to travel straight to the longest line of five through the outside of the turn. You ended the last turn 3rd gear, so you decide to take this turn in 4th.

If you roll a 4: Your best move would be straight ahead, ending in the first turn space in the outside lane. You have credit for the stop and do not need to end any more movements in the turn this lap.
If you roll a 5: You could change lanes to the middle lane, move forward 4, and end in first turn space in the middle lane. Again, you have credit for stopping in the turn, no more stops there are necessary
If you roll a 6: You could dive in two lanes on the straightaway, move forward your four, and be in the single spot of the turn on the innermost lane and receive credit.
If you roll a 7: You can basically extend the 4 and 5 roll movements to be further along in the turn. If you were to extend the 5 movement, you could be in the last space in the middle lane. Alternatively, if you have Tire WP to spare, you could extend the 6 movement, end the turn in the first space outside the turn in the inside lane, and deliberately blow through the turn.

There are plenty of options in turns and risks that you can take to voluntarily spend the resources that are your car.

One other note. If you START your movement in a turn, if you END your movement in the NEXT turn, that stop DOES NOT COUNT toward the stop limit. Looking at our above example, if you started at any of the red turn spaces in Crossroads and rolled, say, 4th gear, and came to a stop in City Hall, you do not receive credit for a City Hall stop. You must either make another movement that stops in the turn or take the penalties for blowing through the turn.

[Isgrimnur]

One thing to notice that's sorta visible on the larger map. The straightaways are numbered in the whitespace on both the inside and outside of the lanes. Coming out of City Hall, those blurs to the left and right of the lanes are 1s. The next blurs down the markers are 5s, and markers continue every five spaces until the straight ends.

So for the inside straight going City Hall to Concert Hall is numbered 1, 5, 10, 13. The outside straight is numbered 1, 5, 10, 11.

The images are hand-stitched together. If there's any confusion as to how the spaces are put together, I have the originals to refer to and will provide any detailed information that you'd like.

[coopasonic]

One other note. If you START your movement in a turn, if you END your movement in the NEXT turn, that stop DOES NOT COUNT toward the stop limit. Looking at our above example, if you started at any of the red turn spaces in Crossroads and rolled, say, 4th gear, and came to a stop in City Hall, you do not receive credit for a City Hall stop. You must either make another movement that stops in the turn or take the penalties for blowing through the turn.

There's a post on this at BGG that the turn to turn rule only applies if you missed a stop in the turn you are exiting. I need to check my rules at home, but apparently that statement is under the overshooting header.

[Isgrimnur]

Page 5, Advanced Rules:

When coming out of a corner the car may not change lanes, but must stay in the same lane. If the move ends in another corner, this stop does not count for the new corner. If the car is blocked by another car, he cannot drive round it and has to brake.

Yeah, it is under the Overshooting rules. It's an interesting interpretation, and actually I'm inclined to agree with it. That if you make all your stops in each turn, it doesn't matter where you started, but that you can't overshoot from one corner into another and have that stop count for the second turn.

We'll go with that one. It also has the added benefit of making administration easier.

[coopasonic]

Page 5, Advanced Rules:

When coming out of a corner the car may not change lanes, but must stay in the same lane. If the move ends in another corner, this stop does not count for the new corner. If the car is blocked by another car, he cannot drive round it and has to brake.

Yeah, it is under the Overshooting rules. It's an interesting interpretation, and actually I'm inclined to agree with it. That if you make all your stops in each turn, it doesn't matter where you started, but that you can't overshoot from one corner into another and have that stop count for the second turn.

We'll go with that one. It also has the added benefit of making administration easier.

Note the part I highlighted in red. That also only applies to overshooting (otherwise follow the arrows), so it makes sense. Now I wonder why I screwed it up.

[Isgrimnur]

Oh, for rolls, since there's no real secretiveness to it, I figured I would just post the rolls to the open forum, and you can make your move selections there as well. Each player gets to see what everyone in front does before making their gear selection. So if there's all of a sudden a traffic jam in front of you, you can cater your next roll to avoid a Freejack situation.

[Isgrimnur]

Page 5, Advanced Rules:

When coming out of a corner the car may not change lanes, but must stay in the same lane. If the move ends in another corner, this stop does not count for the new corner. If the car is blocked by another car, he cannot drive round it and has to brake.

Yeah, it is under the Overshooting rules. It's an interesting interpretation, and actually I'm inclined to agree with it. That if you make all your stops in each turn, it doesn't matter where you started, but that you can't overshoot from one corner into another and have that stop count for the second turn.

We'll go with that one. It also has the added benefit of making administration easier.

Note the part I highlighted in red. That also only applies to overshooting (otherwise follow the arrows), so it makes sense. Now I wonder why I screwed it up.

Agreed. Also makes sense. If you're overshooting, you're not under the best control of your car. In a house rule kinda way, I could see actually forcing a car out a lane for every two overshoot along with the WP loss, but that's for later discussion.

[Isgrimnur]

Back a ways ago, a ZIP file of the rulebooks was available through the Asmodee site. I acquired it at that time, and am now glad that I did, as it appears to have been removed.

I have uploaded them to DropBox in a shared folder. If you guys have an account, I can share the folder with you and you can view the full rulebooks. They have free online storage, and I have received very few communications from them.

[hentzau]

Back from a week at summer camp, and I'm in.

[Isgrimnur]

Excellent. I have one more maybe that I'm waiting on to take us to seven, and of course, three wide open spots if there's someone else you want to pull in.

[Isgrimnur]

Current plan is to get this under way starting next weekend. I need to try and get the car graphics ready, still have a maybe lurking out there, and figure that waiting until after the holiday would be best for timing for everyone.

I plan on having a private Google spreadsheet that will contain the die rolls in advance (except for mine) that will allow me to respond quickly to gear selections from everyone. Board updates will be once per round, so be text-based until a full round has progressed. Something along the lines of: coop is in the outside lane in the third space before Concert Hall (space 9 of 11).

[coopasonic]

Communicating moves and position is going to be the most challenging part of this. I propose you number each space on each of the tracks.

[Isgrimnur]

Perhaps I'll just host the ginormous source files and let you pick them out yourselves. I'll number the panels and you can have fun looking at 1:1 reproductions of them in isolation like an alien watching through a microscope.

[NickAragua]

I'll jump in. Expect me to crash into somebody.

[LordMortis]

Communicating moves and position is going to be the most challenging part of this. I propose you number each space on each of the tracks.

Realistically, you should just label the lanes. "I move 4 spaces in the middle lane and the move two spaces on the outside lane. Unless you were just joking, in which case [Sheldon Laugh]

[coopasonic]

Communicating moves and position is going to be the most challenging part of this. I propose you number each space on each of the tracks.

Realistically, you should just label the lanes. "I move 4 spaces in the middle lane and the move two spaces on the outside lane. Unless you were just joking, in which case [Sheldon Laugh]

Bazinga!

Now I propose that we communicate each of our moves as if this were a book of some sort.

"Seeing the mass of cars crowding the next corner, Coop decides to push his luck. He keeps it in fourth gear with his foot to the floor, sliding to the outside, leaving just a whisper of paint on the wall. A moment too late he realizes there's not enough room to get through on the outside, and dives to the middle slicing through the pack and overshooting the turn by 3 car lengths. The resulting damage to his tires and drivetrain isn't enough to slow him yet and now he's in front of the pack. With his eyes on the straightaway ahead he pushes the gear lever, snapping it into fifth gear and burying the pedal."

[Isgrimnur]

A Formula D AAR would be awesome.

[Isgrimnur]

One other element. As you may have notices, there are only five colors of pits. So there will be "teams", which you may or may not feel the need to play out. If this works out (I hope, I hope, I hope, I'd love to run a full race circuit. I'm cool with either random team assignments or if you guys want to partner up voluntarily.

[El Guapo]

I suspect that NickAragua and I would partner up.

[LordMortis]

No idea what any of it means. You'll just have to point me to the rules when we start. If we are on teams of some sort, it'd be nice to have my team mate have a bit of experience, but not necessary I suppose. I'm sure I could happily drive into a wall and blow right away and watch the race from out the window of an ambulance from a stretcher.

[bb2112]

No idea what any of it means. You'll just have to point me to the rules when we start. If we are on teams of some sort, it'd be nice to have my team mate have a bit of experience, but not necessary I suppose. I'm sure I could happily drive into a wall and blow right away and watch the race from out the window of an ambulance from a stretcher.

+1 I would prefer someone with a little experience. Either that, or at least someone to tell me who to crash my car into.

[Isgrimnur]

Coop and I have both played before. I have played some of the experienced rules, and I know he has significant time with the basic rules and mechanics.

As things get closer to launch, I will try to draw up some scenarios and post the details, which will also get me situated back in with basic graphics manipulation to get back up to speed.

[hentzau]

I've played about a dozen games. But by no means an expert.

[Isgrimnur]

One car graphic down, 9 to go.

Team colors are (primary, secondary):

• White, orange
• Yellow, purple
• Blue, white
• Red, yellow
• Green, orange

Team drivers are distinguished by front/rear wing colors. One driver's are primary color, the others are black.

[bb2112]

Unless there is a reason not to, I will take a standard build.

[El Guapo]

I'll tentative pick blue/white for NickAragua and I's team, pending confirmation by him. I guess Blue will be my primary color.

[LordMortis]

I guess this means I should probably read the rules this weekend and let you know if I want a custom car, which I likely will.

It looks like we still need another driver unless gets to run two cars for a team.

[coopasonic]

It looks like we still need another driver unless gets to run two cars for a team.

I say let Isgrimnur run two cars, but I roll for him. Oh look you overshot AGAIN! So sad.

[El Guapo]

Unless there is a reason not to, I will take a standard build.

Yeah, same here. Since this is my first time playing, I'm assuming that it makes sense to use the standard build for now.

[bb2112]

Oh, and whoever is "lucky" enought to be on my team, we choose red. I figure it is a nice symbolic color of the fireball my car will look like in about turn 3.

[LordMortis]

Unless there is a reason not to, I will take a standard build.

Yeah, same here. Since this is my first time playing, I'm assuming that it makes sense to use the standard build for now.

When I watched Henzau play for a bit last spring, it looked like some of the standard build was strategically off form the likely wear and tear of the game. But it might have appeared that way to me because I didn't actually understand the game (or pit stops I'd guess most).

Assuming we want to start soon, I'll see if I can get a working understanding of the game this weekend.

Playing as a miniature league sounds like a lot of fun.