This is a continued discussion from this http://www.staredit.net/topic/6673/ hijacked topic.
High Concept
Design Goals:
1) To have the game feel in some way like a game of StarCraft
2) For luck to play less of a role than it does in other TCG's
3) Skill and deck construction should be 2 equal factors of success
4) Predicting your opponent's move should have a higher value than it does in other card games
5) As easy as Yugioh or Magic to learn
6) Each game should not feel like a repeat of the last game
7) Use what WORKS from other TCGs

Principles: Things to follow, and check with when adding a new mechanic or card.
1) Keep it a Card game - It is all too easy to start tacking on extra mechanics like adding a play mat that acts as a unique 'map'.
2) Keeping track of 1 number(resources) - Making a player have to keep track of more than 1 number on a piece of paper is a turn-off.
3) One turn win - don't let it happen.
4) Infinite Loops - There shouldn't be a card combo that enables an infinite self-recycled loop.
5) Forced combos - cards should not have obvious pre-constructed combos
6) Necessities - A person wanting to play shouldn't need more than a pen and paper to keep track of 1 number, their cards, and MAYBE a FEW counters/dice.

Future Design Goals: (Ambitions)
1) Greater than 2 player battles
2) Gas Resource
3) Emergent Gameplay
4) 'Unglued' type cards
5) A new 'Terrain' card type
6) SC2 units
7) Replace MTG-ish attack/defense

Features: unique or adapted
1) Mineral Cost System
2) Food System
3) Face down cards yugioh
----Incubation
4) MTG inspired battle step
5) Micro cards MTG instants

Sacrifices:
1) No Gas
2) No Armor
3) inaccurate Damage/HP
4) No Build Times
5) No Energy
6) No Terrain
7) No Larva

Specifics
Card-Type Class Chart:
UNITS
-basic
----worker
----army
-hero
BUILDINGS
-basic
----tech
--------add-on
----production
-special
----*no subtypes come to mind, suggestions welcome. examples would be overmind, temple, etc.
MICRO
-instant
-permanent

Unit Attributes:
Name
Air/Ground
Armored/Light (might be removed to keep things simple)
Normal/Explosive/Concussive (might be removed to keep things simple)
Range/Air-Only/Ground-Only (melee is default/unmarked. Air+Ground defualt/unmarked)
Organic/Metal
Food
Cloak
Speed?(maybe)
At the bottom right the unit will have it's attack/defense value(MTG)
Requirements(techs)

Worker Abilities:
Drone - 5 minerals: shuffle into deck to put a basic building into play tapped. You must meet the building's tech requirement and pay it's cost.
---------- tap: you gain 5 minerals
SCV - 5 minerals, tap: search deck for a basic building and put it into play tapped. You must meet the building's tech requirement and pay it's cost.
---------- tap: you gain 5 minerals
Probe - 5 minerals: search deck for a basic building and put it into play tapped. You must meet the building's tech requirement and pay it's cost.
---------- tap: you gain 5 minerals
Workers have a recycle ability where you can pay 5 minerals to discard it and draw a card.

Building Abilities:
Nexus - tap, 10 minerals: search deck for 1 probe and put it into play tapped.
Command Center - tap, 10 minerals: search deck for 1 scv and put it into play tapped.
------tap, 10 minerals, discard 2 cards: search deck for Comsat Station.*requirements from hereon will be implied*
------tap, 20 minerals, discard 3 cards: search deck for Nuclear Silo.
Hatchery - tap: search deck for up to 2 basic units, put them in play tapped paying their cost.Discard a card

Game Play

You start with your HQ, 4 workers, and 50 minerals.You start off with an HQ, 1 matching worker, and 5 cards from the top of your shuffled deck. There are 3 phases (Reloading,Structure Step, Skirmish Step), the first being the upkeep which is called the Reloading phase. In the upkeep you refreshreload(untap) your units, and add Time Counters on appropriate units, reset damage(mtg's end of turn regeneration), and after all of that you draw your card. Only Triggered Events can be played during the upkeep(like something that automatically happens when you have 7 or more cards in your hand). Talents (activated abilities) and Micro cards can not be used.

The next phase is the Structure Step. In the very beginning of this step you or your opponent may use Talents or Micro cards. In this case the priority would start with your opponent. After this, the player whose turn it is places his unit from back to front rows or vice versa (this is all done at once without interruption). After this, the player(whose turn it is) can use Construction and play cards from their hands. Construction is like a type of talent that buildings and workers have. Construction can only be done during the Structure step. Research (a tech building ability) is also done during this phase. Research will either search your deck for a specific Global(permanent and applying to all your units) Micro card, or it will be a global effect already printed on the tech building. Another important thing done during this phase is the setting of cards face down. Now these cards can easily be any kind of card in the game(Unit/Building/Micro), but mostly micro (more on this later, much later). T/M cards can also be played in response to any research or construction. The last thing performed during the Structure Step is formation. When a player starts re-arranging their units from back to front lines it tells the other player they are ending their Structure Step. Units that were Constructed or played from the hand this turn can not be sent to the front line. (or maybe I should just make the formation part only on the beginning before any construction, so that this wouldn't even have to be a rule.)

Skirmish Step, this is the last phase of your turn(no 'second main' deal). In the beginning of this phase Talents and Micro cards may be played (priority to the attacker). After this the player sending announces which front line units he is attacking with. After this T/M(Talets/Micro) can be played(defenders priority). Then, of those units attacking, the defender matches the units with his own in anyway. The only illegal match is a single defender unit matching with more than 1 attacking unit. After this T/M can be played. Note: no damage has been calculated yet. Then the attacker matches his unmatched attacking units with any unit or building regardless of which line they are on. This means if a player with 3 zerglings attacks a player with 1 zealot, the zealot will most likely block 1 ling, leaving the remaining 2 lings to either gang up on the zealot, or target the workers/buildings. Then T/M's may be played again with priority to the attacker. NOW battle damage is assigned and calculated. T/M's (Talent/Micro) may be played after this with priority to the attacker, after this the player's turn is over.(I'm still a little conflicted with how I want defensive buildings to play through this.)

It should be also noted that this game also has the Golden Rule - that regardless of what the game rules are, a card's instructions will always be the exception(if the rules say you can't, but the card says you can, the card wins).

Post has been edited 17 time(s), last time on Dec 12 2010, 5:07 am by ClansAreForGays.

Make every unit special, like give the Zergling a "rush" abillity, like stimpacks or Zealot's Charge.

EDIT: Here's what I think the card types should be

Card-Type Class Chart:
UNITS
Basic
- Worker
- Army
- Hero

BUILDINGS
Basic
- Production
- Tech
Special
- Alter (Hero Productions, maybe?)
- Wonder (Rule Bending, like draw 2 cards instead of 1 or something?)

MICRO
No idea. CAFG, explain plz?

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 18 2009, 1:20 am by l)ark_ssj9kevin.

He said that "micro" cards were basically "spells". One example that I thought of is a card called "Focus Fire" that gives all units of one type an attack bonus for one turn but forces them all to attack the same target. Another idea for a "micro" card I had was called "Depot Wall" and makes all your units, except for one Supply Depot, invulnerable to ground attacks until said Supply Depot is destroyed.

Anyway. If you want to limit the luck factor, you might want to implement a mechanic that lets players recycle cards. One such mechanic that I thought might be cool would be that production buildings can move destroyed units back into your hand/deck (whichever one you want). Eg. if a Marine card dies, but you have a Barracks, then you can put that Marine card back into your hand/deck. Of course, if you did this, you'd need to make there be a cost for playing a card, but you'd probably already have that. Also, if you implemented this mechanic, it might be interesting to make it so that hero cards couldn't be recycled. (So if Duke dies, I can't get him back, even if I have a Factory.)

Also, I'd like to help with card design. Not artwork, but ideas for new cards.

Also also, is this going to be released on the Internet (using Apprentice or something) or as actual physical cards?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 18 2009, 12:48 am by TassadarZeratul. Reason: lol depot wall shouldnt block air lol

I don't think we'll have problem finding most graphics

@dark: air and ground are unit attributes, not subtypes. I hate redundancy. Organic/Metal is another unit attribute. So is Large/Medium/Small.
I also agree and will added your 2 Special subtypes. Just come of with something better than Alter because that's too WC3.

@TZ: You know I like that as a special effect of some cards, but I'm shaky on that being a general game mechanic. Although I haven't put too much thought into the graveyard so keep think about how the discard pile could be used. I've only thought of specific possibly cool cards, like a dragoon that comes out easier when you have X amount of zealots in the graveyard.

This needs to be answered before any more ideas are submitted, or else their will be no point.

How about "Command Post"? Or "Artifact"?

Also, did you like the "micro" cards I thought up? (Focus Fire and Depot Wall)

@above: Agreed.

Reading your response to my micro ideas I fell like you know exactly what I mean by them, sorry I didn't respond.

Explain why.
I have friends (the same ones that play yugioh) that print up their own cards, so I was actually banking on this 'hardware' approach. If I wanted a computer card game I would be programming a computer game in XNA, and not be worrying about the difficulties of a pure card game. Still, I don't see why this decision is required to continue this.

Or we can play this on SEN

It doesn't need to be, but we should figure it out soon or it'll get forgotten about until the last minute. There are free Internet TCG engines that are very easy to use, btw. Although a game with physical cards would be epic. But expensive.

Anyway. I'd like to get started on card creation soon (if you want me to), but there don't seem to be enough details yet...

Why? Because tbh what would be the point of submitting ideas for a game that will never be played.

If you can find a good TCG engine to port it to, cool. Personally I'm working on getting actual blank cards to print on.

Have you seen the Map Production thread? Almost none of those maps get finished, but everyone talks like they will and gives suggestions anyways. I'd rather figure out if a card game rationally works before I spend any effort on production.


Seriously I'm just brooding over how I want unit toughness/hp to work. I'm afraid I might just have to steal exactly what MTG does. I'm also seriously considering using Versus' exhaust system.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 18 2009, 2:06 am by ClansAreForGays.

Apparently LackeyCCG is good. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LackeyCCG

But if we wanted to print more than a few of each card, wouldn't that get incredibly expensive?

MICRO category should be merged with MACRO.

E.G.
Organized Labour: Your next mineral income set is increased by [integer OR percent, round to next highest whole one].

Cool idea. I might track this.

Yeah, although micro and macro are 2 different things in SC, I'm just going to have macro-type things be classified as micro, possibly a micro subtype

Also, Sc2.

Use it.

How is mining going to work? Amount of workers on field x 8 per turn?

Yeah, borrow some units from SC2, like add Stalkers and Vikingz

added to future goals

As much as it pains me, for the sake of just getting this going, I'm going to be using MTG's power/toughness system for now.

Are you also going to use the blocking system from MtG?