I need help in deciding what kind of battle system to use in my card game.
The theme is that the players are warring scientists that have both figured out how to breed any two creatures to make a new one and are trying to deplete the opponents energy and get them out of the running. Playing and breeding creatures costs energy and you get energy back by defeating the opponents creatures and stealing their life energy. You win when your opponents energy is 0.There may or may not be item/effect/special cards, I haven't decided yet. But I can't figure out how to make the battles work, any help is apreciated.
Help with battle system for CCG
Sat, 03/11/2006 - 21:44
Sun, 03/12/2006 - 07:42
#1
Help with battle system for CCG
For start you can check the rules of the CCG that in the market today, such as Magic:the gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Duel masters, Pokemon and Hecatomb. (the first three are highly recomanded for reserch).
Apart from that, you didn't write which attributes your creatures has...do they have defense or just an attack value, (armor?), special attack value, speed value...?
When you decide which attributes your creatures has then you can create a combat system.
Also in your case I guess that the creatures attributes will change, or will be the result of two or three creatures (hybrid), this is also a matter that need to be considered.
Sun, 03/12/2006 - 13:58
#3
Help with battle system for CCG
The simplest thing would be for each creature to have a Power attribute. Then, when a creature attacks, his power attribute is compared to his "victim"'s power attribute, and the higher power wins.
Perhaps the winning scientist could get the difference as energy to use to spend.
For example, Scientist X uses his Ice Dog (Power 350) to attack Scientist Y's Fire Cat (Power 250). The Dog wins (350 > 250) and the Fire Cat dies. Scientist X then gets 100 energy (350 - 250 = 100) to use for making new monstrosities.
Like I said, this is probably the simplest solution - not necessarily the best. You could have a mechanic based on the creature types which would give extra power or produce extra energy when one type attacks a specified other type.
For example, Fire and Ice are enemies, so a Fire critter attacking an Ice critter might get a bonus to its power (and vice versa). At the same time, Fire burns Plants, producing energy, so when a Fire critter attacks a Plant critter, it might get a bonus to the Energy produced when it wins.
Another idea - The scientists could enslave their own creatures to make them produce energy. The scientist plays a creature in "Energy Mode" or in "Combat Mode". Creatures in Energy Mode can't attack, and can only be attacked if their scientist has no creatures in Combat Mode. They produce a small amount of Energy (10% of Power?) each turn.
-AJF
Mon, 03/13/2006 - 00:24
#5
Help with battle system for CCG
Quote:
The creatures will have power, when you breed, the new creature gets a power equal to the average of the 2 creatures bred into it, plus a bonus specific to the bred creature. When 2 creatures battle, the one with higher power wins.( with weaknesses.) If the defeated creature is above level 1, the winning creature's owner gets energy points equalt to the defeated creature's energy bonus stat added to the winning creature's pride stat. If the defeated creature is a level 1, the winning creature's owner gets energy points equal to the winning creatures pride stat. When a creature is defeated, it is taken down a level. (i.e. if it is a level 3, remove the level 3 creature and one of the level 2 creatures underneath it, along with the level 2 creature's level 1 creatures.) If the defeated creature is level 1, it is not discarded. That way battles can be bigger. Also two or more creatures from either side can battle, (i.e. each team has 2 monsters batlling in one battle). The attacker divides his creatures into battling teams. Then the defender seperates his creatures into battling teams and assigns each one to a battling team of the opponent.(opposing battling teams do not have ot have the same number of creatures in them.) (Neither player has to make all of his creatures battle) Multi-creature battles workj the same way as one-on-one battles, except you compare each teams total power of all the creatures instead of individually, and the winner's points are figured for each individual creature. (when pride points are required to be added, the winner chooses which creature's pride stat to use.)
One thing: You might be careful about math. Players won't like constantly having to perform a multistep math problem to figure out the Power of the creatures. There are a couple of "fixes" for this problem. One, have you looked at Hecatomb? They use see-through cards that reveal information from several cards in a stack to create an easy-to-read composite creature. You could do something similar, or use notched cards that allow you to see stuff from cards below them to create a stacked critter. Two, you could just have multi-level creature cards. In order to play a level two creature card, you have to sacrifice two level one creatures with the correct traits. Three, you could include numeric counters with your packs to allow players to indicate the stats of the Combo Creatures. Put a card with the numbers 0 through 9 on perforated counters in each booster pack, and before long players will have plenty to mark each Combo Creature with whatever its figured power is.
-AJF
Mon, 03/13/2006 - 09:30
#6
Help with battle system for CCG
Yeah, the game you are proposing seems like a combination of M:tG and Hecatomb, really. Your 'energy' sounds pretty much like the mana system, and the creature combination concept is entirely what the Hecatomb game is about.
I'm not saying that your game doesn't sound interesting, I'm just warning you to make it distinct enough that WotC doesn't nail you for copyright infringement...
One way I could see to rememdy this is to have different types of "Energy" for use. For example you might need Power, Chemicals, and Raw Materials to create monsters. Of course the Power is electricity/magic or what ever the theme is for the game, but Chemicals and Raw Materials would make an interesting twist. Chemicals are needed to incubate the creatures, and you can have raiding parties instead of attack parties if you so choose. Raw Materials would essentially be different animals. While you can draw upon living, unharmed animals from your own stach, your monsters could drag back corpses from their various raids. Sure, you wouldn't have much left to work with, but I'm possitive you could find something to do with an extra set of gorilla arms!
Yeah, I know I didn't say much about the combat, did I? Ok, how about this: each piece of each creature has Combat and Power stats. The combat stat represents how good the creature is at attacking and defending itself. The creature's Power stat represents the amount of energy needed to fuse it with another creature and how much available energy it has if it were sacrificed or killed. The Raw Materials available for each creature would be half of the total number of entities used in the monster's creation. That way there wouldn't be an overwhelming amount acquired when raiding enemy monsters for parts, but enough that it may be worth the effort.
I have played Yu-gi-oh, Duel Masters, Digimon CCG, Pokemon CCG, Magic The Gathering, and many other CCGs. And with the breeding, there's 4 levels and the levels above 1 dont have any stats yet instead you keep the 2 creatures you bred to get it and use there stats except modified by the text on the bred creature. But any two creatures can breed to make a new one as long as one has the same type(fire, water, ice, etc.) and the other has the same species(dog, dragon, demon, etc.). There wil be weaknesses and resistances between types, so my stats have to be able to reflect that. I already know they will have Life, Breed Cost(how much energy it takes to breed into that creature), play cost(how much enrgy it takes to put them n the battle zone), and i guess the standard attac and defense, I just don't know if it would work well with more stats (i.e. Intellience, Agility, Speed, etc.) and i dont know which battle system would work best.