deck building screen

[jack1974]

There are the Flying units that can attack any enemy
I made some great cards in past days:
- Demolition Squad: Battlecry - destroy a Wall unit (mouhaha)
- Artillery - every turn deal 1 dmg to two random enemies
- and I have units that deal double damage against other specific units. Like the Laser turret that does x2 damage against robotic unit, or the Flamethrower turret that does x2 to organic units, etc.

I'm still tweaking it as I play of course, but seems already fun to play!

[Franka]

Just a thought:

If you want to further simplify the Hearthstone formula, do away with attack and life and have a single stat, like Banner Saga, let's call it Strength (STR). STR is both life and damage, so if a 3 STR fights a 5 STR, the first will be defeated and the second will now be 2 STR, dealing only 2 damage in the next battle and having only 2 life left.

You could then have Armor that reduces damage, Ambush/First Strike (maybe only when attacking?), healing, etc. Walls could have higher STR but not deal damage (unless a card says they do).

[jack1974]

Ah no, I already designed half cards to have attack/HP. I think that's simple enough and also works well, intuitive. Besides doing any other changes now would require also more changes to the framework (like the walls that can't do damage even if have high strength).
I think my main concern will be to make a good computer opponent for those who want higher difficulties and make the various missions varied enough with specific missions conditions (starting or winning). For rules they should be already fun, I played a few matches and was interesting, even if it's all still work in progress.

[Franka]

Well, you wanted simple, it would give different strategies from HS, and maybe mean a better chance to not be called up by Blizzard's lawyer team. Maybe something to consider for making Undead Lily different from this?

Anyway, another suggestion. You don't have to worry too much about balancing, since this isn't a PvP game, so you can definitely buff the AI. Now, you can of course have cards that only the AI can use, and I'd expect to see some, but ultimately it's better to give more options to the players than to take cards away from them, and you have a limited card pool restricted by the amount of artwork.

One way to buff the AI could be to boost existing cards, let's call it the "Medal" system. Say a medal gives a card +1/+1 attack/life. Now the AI can have the same cards as players, but some/all of them are buffed with medals, raising their stats and maybe even giving new abilities the card didn't have before. This would also be a simple way to have a difficulty system, the amount of medals on cards increase with higher difficulties.

A nice developer would allow players to earn medals too (feature creep, I know, but doesn't seem excessively hard to do), which we could assign to cards of our choice. So, if we wanted we could buff a cheap unit for early advantage, a huge unit for extra beatdown, a flyer for more unavoidable damage, etc.

To make this a really interesting addition, medals could be earned through optional objectives, such as winning a fight with more base life than you started with, dealing 15 damage to the enemy base in a turn, or whatever.

I'm just putting ideas out there.

[jack1974]

Haha I'm not worried about Blizzard The game is still quite different (there's no PvP just to say the most obvious thing, different resources, and so on).
The card the AI has are mostly different, since in this case is human Empire vs Aliens. There are some alien "mercenaries" that the player can use too though. For UL instead the cards will be the same for both player and AI.

The AI will cheat and I'll also have different starting conditions for the various missions to keep the challenge up (especially on harder difficulty).

An experience system was already in my mind indeed, I was thinking to have 3 levels: bronze, silver, gold, each one adding +1/+1 which in gold would make even an infantry card quite powerful.
Of course I need to talk with Anima about this, but I don't think should be particularly difficult.

[Anima_]

Just so you know: I hate both of you!

[jack1974]

thanks! haha

[jack1974]

Today hit a big milestone: finished coding ALL the Empire/heroes cards (120 in total!!). Many are untested and based on Murphy's Law will break during testing Of course, I still have all the enemies to do, but I'm going to take a break now and write a bit of the QoT robbery missions while I wait for the GUI to be finished!