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Brainstorm for Space themed coop game (remembering FTL, PC/iOS)

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Thu, 10/22/2015 - 19:13
lerufino
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Joined: 10/21/2015

I had some ideas for a game inspired on FTL, the computer game. The lore would be something like, your explorer spaceship has to return to earth because there is a huge alien vessel is coming aggressively. So you give up the explore/research travel and starts FTL jumping towards home. In the way, you flip event cards, fights aliens, buy and upgrade stuff to your ship.

Reading around here I saw one game that seems close to what I thought, "The Captain is Dead". So I imagined it a little longer.

I have ideas for ship layout, board layout, but few ideas for the mechanics.

I want tips for the following:

-How could I make to simulate the possibility of beaming my crew to enemy ships? I would have to make rooms and layouts for every enemy? I think it may be too much for variety. (I am willing to give up on that if needed)

-How can I make the enemies get increasingly harder to beat? A different color deck like on "The Captain is Dead" seems to simple for me...

Thanks in advance!

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Thu, 10/22/2015 - 19:26
#1
questccg
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Joined: 04/16/2011
One of my playtesters...

In Boston, one of the playtesters said he felt my "card game" reminded me of FTL (Faster Than Light).

His response was: "It has a very video-gamey feel to it, which I'm surprised the designer could pull off given that there are just cards here. Clearly a lot of thought went into these mechanics and the various roles."

Although "The Captain is Dead" is closer to FTL with the rooms and the systems, etc. We think that this playtester just meant to say that the card game was well put together and that the Sci-Fi content is sufficiently interesting to keep him engaged in the game.

Cheers!

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Fri, 10/23/2015 - 06:08
#2
Jarec
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Joined: 12/27/2013
Room layouts are pretty

Room layouts are pretty easily abstracted. Even in FTL there's not much gained from having a tiled board, the only player action is to select a dude and click it to another room.
One possible solution is to make a station deck, and color the cards to show different types of rooms. Whenever you need to randomize a ship you'll draw as many cards as the alien vessel needs different colors, and maybe have a static board that has spots for the cards, and lines showing how much time it takes to move from one room to next.

How can you make enemies harder? Or how can you make the mechanic that makes the enemies harder?
I mean making enemies harder is pretty easy, add more damages, add more defenses, add more enemies, give them more abilities...
Balancing of the mechanic governing that comes mostly from play testing.
I'd like doing my base line balancing by sorta backwards engineering: Break down how much player has power at certain times of the play; play some mock fights with those different power levels; make the enemies as hard or easy to beat at those points and that's your base line to go on from.
If you have linear power curve and a turn limit that don't change that much, this system is pretty spot on.

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Sat, 10/31/2015 - 11:35
#3
lerufino
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Joined: 10/21/2015
Thanks, questccg

I see, card games can be very deep and awesome. I would be happy to ever see this card game of yours!
I really hope that my game could ever get so much engagement and balance.

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Sat, 10/31/2015 - 11:34
#4
lerufino
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Joined: 10/21/2015
Jarec wrote: [...]One

Jarec wrote:

[...]One possible solution is to make a station deck, and color the cards to show different types of rooms. Whenever you need to randomize a ship you'll draw as many cards as the alien vessel needs different colors, and maybe have a static board that has spots for the cards, and lines showing how much time it takes to move from one room to next.
[..]

Thanks for the ideas. Actually, I will take some time to make some sketches of such static board. Visually may not be that amazing, but I can spice up the card art, right?

And about making enemies harder, after I saw you saying it is really not as complicated than I though!

Thanks guys!

More ideas are also welcome.

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