Richer Strategic and Tactical Depth

Board games often struggle with a tradeoff between realism, which adds rich tactical depth, and playability. 

Using a smartphone app allows Rift Zone: Contact to deliver a deeper experience without slowing down play, or requiring every player to do mental math every battle. Measuring distance, remembering lots of data, and quickly solving complex equations? That’s what smartphones do very well.

It starts with movement. 

Each unit in Rift Zone: Contact has a movement type: walking, rolling, hovering, etc. Terrain will impact those movement types while the unit travels within that terrain. This means that, depending on the path, your unit can move different distances. Moving through Mycelium Fields is smooth. Climbing Basalt Formations? Not so much.

Take the Scry’Ox Reaper, for example:

It can move 32cm across the flat Mycelium Fields. Climbing over the Basalt Formations cuts that movement in half. Weaving through the large growths in the Fungal Forest slows it by only 20%. Since the app knows exactly where the Reaper is and where all the terrain features are, it can quickly calculate the maximum distance along any path by measuring the distance traveled across each terrain. 

And thanks to the AR, you’re in control.

The app shows you exactly where you can move at any time based on what terrain you’re crossing and how much movement you have left for that turn. That means you can string together multiple moves in a single turn, using the lay of the land to your advantage. 

The yellow circle shows the Space Ranger’s usual maximum move. The shaded area shows how far it can actually move into the Basalt Formations and the Fungal Forests. The allowed distance is a function of the distance travelled on that terrain.

The fun continues with the different attacks. 

Sure, we are playing in a Sci-Fi future, but that’s no excuse not to aim for realism (pun fully intended). The UEDF Stormbringer’s Ballistic Missiles fire high into the sky before raining down on the enemy, causing a large area explosion centered at the impact point. Its targeting is extremely accurate, but the time of flight means that enemies may have moved slightly by the time the missiles land. 

In contrast, the Scry’Ox Stalker’s Plasma Cannon fires a superheated ball of ionized gas in a straight line at its target. Its firing mechanism makes it difficult to aim up close. However, the gas ball begins to cool and dissipate over distance. 

Simulating these variables in Rift Zone: Contact is easy. Both accuracy and damage are calculated using quadratic equations with different inputs. The resulting curves represent the different attributes of the attacks. 

Here’s the Ballistic Missiles in graph format:

Due to their flight path, the Ballistic Missile targeting is not affected by terrain. They are equally as accurate firing over buildings and forests as they are firing over open ground. Also, the damage is calculated based on the point of impact, not the distance the missiles travel.

And here’s the Plasma Cannon:

The straight line firing of the Plasma Cannon is fast and efficient, but things like buildings and forests can get in the way and block the shot or reduce the accuracy based on how much of the forest the projectile needs to avoid. 

All of this mathematical magic is done for you in the Rift Zone: Contact app. 

The more you play, the more you’ll start to spot those sweet spots on the battlefield. Take the high ground with your Stalker. Basalt Formations give a 10% accuracy boost due to elevation. Watch out for the Ballistic Missiles when hiding behind buildings. And whatever you do…don’t bunch up. 

Seriously. Don’t!