Health tracking on cards that go back into a deck

I just reminded myself (in a drunk haze). If i keep my health in a binary form somehow. I could have 4 or 6 dots on the side of a see through card.
And up side down, this card is anotyer value.

So, with 6 dots, there are only 3 variants needed of a see through card.

A is 1 and 32.
B is 2 and 16.
C is 4 and 8.

Well, maybe I go for more dots. And I can flip a card in 2 directions.
But while needing a decent ammount. They can be at least manufactured in a simple way.

The only down side is. For every doubling of a health, you need 1 more card
1024 health would need 10 cards....

Obviously, I need less cards.

I need to think about what is more efficient.

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Perhaps a ring of some sort. In a very flat form...??

A card could be turned in 3 directions. Thus making 8 possibilities with just 1 pip.

I could also design the card in 4 segments. So that where the pip ends up, it has a damage value.

NW is 1
NE is 2
SW is 4
SE is 8
Upside down, which would be a different colour:
NW is 16
NE is 32
SW is 64
SE is 128

This is optional. And perhaps too complicated for players.
I did some further testing with different health value's and of course different damage dice.

It starts to look like that I have to go from a lineair build up to a binairy build up. If I choose to do this.

Then again. Let's say I only need up to 4 cards, not turning them upside down. It is a lot of handling either way. And it will cost a lot. It is different than having pins in miniatures that move up one spot, or have a different colour.

I need to cut into the ammount of health that a card has. But I want to refrain from insta killing infantry cards.

1 damage can have a nice | drawn in an explosion of some sort.
And 4 of these could be stacked on top in 4 ways, to represent 4 damage.

I could add a || drawn in a bigger explosion of some sort. And once again, 4 of these could be stracked on top in 4 ways. But this time, at places on the card that is different than the | ones.

Up to 12 damage is possible this way. But it might look a bit bland and squared.

Another option is to have numbers written in the cards. And 2 variants of each damage.

The average health would be 5. But 6 would be common too.
1+1+2 and 1+2+2 would both be situations used in the game.
Suffice to say, I estimate that the 1 damage will be used a lot. Eventually, up to 3 see through cards could be used on 1 base card.

I think, I have to go with this one. But what about the costs? And how many am I going to need?

The simplest unit will be roughly 4 times more in the game than the simplest light tank.
Here I will be needing 9 proper hits to deal 1 damage to a tank. It is a bad RPS situation, but balanced.
4 proper hits from this tank can't kill an infantry just yet. This means, I can have 4 tanks, and I get 16 infantry as well.

I now determined roughly the number of unit cards in a simple game. This happens to be 60. Distributed over 6 forces. A force should be able to hold all 16 infantry cards though.

Either way, with 60 unit cards. And probably another 30 in the HQ deck. A total of 90 cards. And if everything would be damaged. A total of 2x 90 and another 90 for the damage cards... IF I want to have everything covered.

Practically speaking, this will not happen. But it is possible for players to do this.
So, if I make a game that is kinda like MtG in terms of booster packages etc. Then each package should at least have a 1 and a 2 damage card included.
I think a booster package would contain 3 damage cards. And then 9 or 12 other cards.

I am also pondering, should I have a "4" damage card?

I think I converged my idea into something similar like Gloom. But yeah, that looks much more like what I want to do. But I have purely damage effects at the moment. Maybe I should plan some other effects. But not healing, healing simply removes a damage-card.

Maybe something along the lines of mind control or hallucination. But that is for a later concern.

The damages certainly would be 1 and 2.
4 Can be added for exchanging multiple damage cards of 1 and 2.
3 Can be added as a special card later on, collecters item :)
But then again, 3 would be very handy as well for the infantry. Might as well add it as a standard. I never tested how much chance there is on a certain damage with various ammount of soldiers. But with big numbers, the chances are equal. 1+4 and 2+3 both kill 1 soldier.

A 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 does sound better than a 1, 2, 4 and 8.
I don't think I will reach 15. Maybe some very heavy units. But their must be a counter unit with just 1 health :)

I don't think you understood the threshold mechanic mixed in, though.

Remember my Ogame variant? I had those ships carry a shield and hull. And you needed sufficient damage to go through the shield. Then again sufficient damage to go through the hull. Overkill was lost.

I am planning something similar. But then, instead of 2 health, I am thinking about an average of 5 health, which is going to be tracked.

The balanced system doubles in value, but tripples in effect. What I mean is that infantry are 1, light vehicles 3, medium vehicles 9 and the heaviest are 27. If you do sufficient damage on a tank with 27 armor. Then it will take 1 damage.
Of course, a weapon that does 27 damage can easily deal 1 to 4 damage on such a tank.

Now, that 27 is so far the only double digit with the threshold system. But it is also a threshold, thus a player doesn't track on this. Only the 1 to 5 health points.

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@FrankM

I have been looking into that as well.

I don't mind the players knowing how damaged an unit is. It was like this a decade ago.

As for the strip. Well, I did estimate a total of 90 cards.
And I figured, what if the damaged cards are tracked per force. That means, I need 7 times a map of tracking damage that way.

But long story short. It requires a lot more handling and fairness than just tracking on the individual cards.

I can't find a better picture. But look here at the resource tracker.
https://gofatherhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/unbroken-solo-game-2...
I need that 7 times. And much bigger.

Also, I need to use multiple strips for units more than 5 health. Since I dislike unused parts of a game.

Unless I didn't understand what you meant by strip.

The math shows that less than 5 health makes an army more durable. But the damage in the long run becomes triangular.

What you are suggesting is a way to make any battle squared in effect. After all, each tank would be alive as long as possible.

I tend to have pointmen or other tanks. But also fodder.

Not sure how to explain the game mechanics without making an essay here. Perhaps one to discuss in Discord?

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The damage distribution rules are as following:

You have a projectile number:
This number indicates how many dice the unit can roll.
A die can hit only 1 target, regardless of the roll result.

You have a damage number:
This number indicates with how much damage the roll is multiplied.
A damage number can hit only 1 armor, meaning;
if the damage number is higher than the armor, the armor is used as damage number.

The roll result is treated as 1 projectile.
It can hit only 1 target.
But can hit this target multiple times, thus surpass the armor multiple times.

If you roll better than there is health left.
The remaining damage is lost.

To better differentiate. Perhaps I should have a name for the damage dealth for surpassing the armor. And the damage dealth on the target (which is 1 with every hit).

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As for group cards.
I know you would like to see cards like that. But honestly, it would remove the purpose of players compiling their decks by a big margine.

I did a lot of testing. And actually got a completed document on how to do this. Even in RTS games. But a group card kinda removes the point of having multiple cards.
Which is not the goal here, this time.

Still, I have this option open for the 1 health cards. These can be put in a group card, in order to reach the desired minimum cost of a card. Which is 1, not one-fifth.

The deck size will also not be solid.

Trust me on this one, this will be a hilarious deck building mechanic.
Cards that are defeated, go back to the main deck and can be rebuild at HQ.

There will be a limit on the number of cards in terms of cost and total cost.

A player is allowed to have 12x2, 8x3, 6x4, 5x5, 4x6 etc.
Some will be exceptions. But that will result in other being less. Either way, the total of a deck should be equal for both players. Then any variation is welcome to the cards used.

This fact should actually be in the other topic.

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No worries, I got the balance planned.

I am leaning more and more towards combining health and threshold. And thus using the mentioned damage cards.

Perhaps some other effects can be added later on. As an upgrade or weapon effect.

- Poison/Acid
- Auto Regeneration/Repairs
- etc.