City States of Aquaria

A new project underway at Gaming with Chuck Headquarters - moving slow, and sure to carry into the new year - is a wargame design. It will be a tactical wargame, set in a science fiction setting. The setting is this -

The planet Coralon-VI is a water world, that was settled by a colony ship from Earth, about 600 years ago, during the first wave of Colonial expansion. As there is not much in the way of free standing land on the surface of Coralon-VI, named Aquaria by the original settlers, a sequence of genetic modifications to the frozen embryos on the colony ship was made, so that starting wih the first batched of locally born colonists, all of the long term inhabitants of Aquaria would be able to breathe and live underwater, in the shallow seas.

Thus began the original settlement of the planet. Underwater cities, as well as modified local plant and animal life, gave rise to the City States of Aquaria. Now, however, 600 years after first planetfall, the Philosopher-Princes of the various city states have begun to run out of settlement and development space in the choice areas of the shallow seas. As always in Human history, this has led to a state of war between the city states.

The game will be a tactical game between the armed forces of the various city states of Aquaria. Those forces include not only human warriors, but also undersea craft, surface craft, and cyber-enhanced lifeforms native to the world. I have worked up basic movement and combat sequences, and am in development of the various units, but here is a preview...

• Sea Infantry - basic human warriors, adapted to underwater living and combat.
• Sea Crawlers - armored vehicles, designed to operate on the bottom of the sea, capable of carrying heavy weapons.
• Warrior Fish - various sized fish, enhanced with weapons and armor, trained to respond to commands and operate in combat.
• Sub-Craft - underwater attack craft, small and with crews of usually only 1 or 2 humans.
• Surface-Craft - attack craft that operate on the surface.
• Destroyers, Cruisers, Leviathans - undersea craft, with large crews, and multiple weapon systems.
• Terrors and Krakens - modified sea lifeforms that are not fish, but still have been modified to carry a variety of weapons, etc.

The game will feature simple rules for movement and combat, as well as close-in combat (melee?). I have already worked up the basics for these (moving, fighting, shooting), as well as some basic terrain, for the basic units. I am playing around with turn sequencing, and different C2 structures for the game, either cards or dice or something else.