Before we move on to other fun aspects of Hardcourt Balls like players, coaches, tournaments and so on, I want to make sure to touch on another important basic game mechanic real quick. As usual, we'll do another, deeper, dive into this topic later on when we get to discuss some of the more nuanced tactics, but for now I'll just explain the basic idea behind scatter dice, what they do and how they work.
But first! Do not forget to Wishlist to stay on top of more news and updates!
So what are scatter dice? Quite simple. Whenever you miss your target roll, for each number you missed, you have to roll one scatter die. So, if your target roll is 7, and you roll a 5, you will have to roll two scatter dice.
What are scatter dice? Like all the other dice rolls in the game, it's a 10 sided die where each number indicates the direction that the ball "scatters" to from your intended target tile. (Quick side note: while I call it scatter - a term I stole from another great dice sports game - Blood Bowl ;-) - you can think of it as the ball drifting off-target.)
To understand how this works, consider this following image:
So what does this mean? It means that when you roll a scatter die and get a 1, the ball scatters/drifts up and to the left from your intended target. If you roll a 6, it scatters/drifts one tile to the right. And so on.
Notice that on a roll of 0 AND 5, the ball does NOT drift and remains where it is. This is exactly what happend in this moment in the game above - the player rolled a "Weak Shot -3", which simply means he has to roll three scatter dice. And the result of those three rolls were a 0 (no movement), a 5 (no movement), and a 1 (up and left). You can see the three resulting dice on the court after each stroke AND in addition to that, little blue target marks placed on the tiles that the ball scattered from and to (in the top left).
Scatter dice are rolled in sequence. What that means is that if you roll three dice, you roll the first one and apply the result. Then when you roll the second dice, the new position of the ball is used as the "target" to scatter from. (side note: the computer rolls all of them for you at once to speed up game play, but they are still applied in sequence)
Take a look at this example. Yes, it's a bit extreme, but it does happen!
The player had to roll a 9 but got a 1, resulting in a "Weak Shot -8" or in other words, 8 scatter rolls. Oof. The scatter rolls in succession were 3, 9, 8, 3, 0, 2, 9, and 8 and I marked up the path of the scatter/drift in orange. You'll notice that the little blue targets fade out the older they are, so you can get a quick visual glimpse of how the ball drifted (in this case, it drifted out of bounds and resulted in a fault and point win for Player 2 James).
All of this is handled automatically by the game, of course, and quickly, so there is no downtime after each shot.
And that's all there is to it. Well, on the surface anyway. There are some interesting tactical considerations buried in this game mechanic, which are important to understand and master in order to play well. And as with all mechanics in Hardcourt Balls, they are inspired by the real game of tennis.
We'll dive into deeper tactics at another time, but here is a quick brain teaser. Consider this situation:
Martin is at the net and has a pretty decent shot lined up. He's targeting the far-left corner which, if he doesn't miss, will likely mean a very tough or even impossible return from his opponent. And with his strong forehand skills (that accounts for the -2 modifier you see in the top left corner), he has a decent chance to score a winner, he just needs a 5. On a 10-sided die, that's a 50% chance to hit.
But what if he doesn't? If he misses by just 1 and rolls a 4, there is a 50% chance (on a roll of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 7) that the ball will scatter/drift out of bounds! 50% to miss and 50% to then fault, that's suddenly a pretty risky play. Especially if you compare to some of the alternatives. For example:
If, instead of targeting the corner of the court, Martin would target one tile down, the risk to fault on a scatter roll is down to 30%! And not only that, notice that the target roll is now a 4 instead of a 5, so the chance to miss in the first place is down to 40%.
And what if Martin would play it safe and not target near the line at all?
Roll target is 3 (70% chance of success!) and even if he would roll a 2, there is zero chance to fault!
And don't forget to Wishlist for more updates!