Ok, this is a bit weird. I am trying to work on a mechanic that could be used in heavy tactical style of games like battle tech and starfleet battles.
This idea is to simplify the game system so that all the character sheets and bookeeping is contained in a simple deck of cards.
At the beginning, I was thinking that each player has a deck of card representing his ship/Mech/tank/other vehicle capabilities (exclude weaponry). Each card would have a series of values for different category like : Armor, Energy, Maneuver, etc. Then player would play card from their hands instead of rolling dices.
I did not like it much since in fact I am just replacing dices with cards. Instead of having a number on your sheet indicating the number of dice you roll you just play a card from your hand.
So my new idea is to make the player draw and place cards in front of him so that it create some sort of dash board of the mech/ship he is currently in. The location where he places the card is determined by the player according to what he thinks he is going to need for this round.
For example, you could have a track for "Energy". Each time a player place a card there, it add up to the energy he can use for his actions. If let say the player want to use a shield device, he discard energy cards to use energy for his actions.
Now each card could have a value on each side of the card. If you place a card in energy, you only show one side of the card which will only expose the energy value. So theorically, each card can have up to 4 value.
So the idea of moving cards on the table like this gives the feeling of actuallity piloting a vehicle by making adjustments to your machine. Even if the information is face up, the status of an enemy mech/ship does not dictate what his is going to do. It anly tells you things it cannot do.
For the equipement, I tough of having cards what can overlap each other where you place or remove tokens everytime you use a piece of equipment (ex: A missile box has 4 tokens, each time you shoot, you lose tokens). Some equipment will not have ammo but rather use energy cards for example.
What Do you think?
Do you think there could be a more elegant way to place the cards on the table?
I reminds me of a card game called "glory to rome" where you had at least 6 different ways to use the cards.
