Talk:RTS CCG card set

My ideas

I want this to be have some way to take distance into account, i.e. Infantry moving slower than Ground Vehicles.

Check out the Zones from the Castles deck. -Bucky 06:59, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Any tips you have

Some basic tips based on my experiences making Chronogeddon and playing other CCGs:

• Keep pacing in mind when you generate the rules. If you keep the default rules, you'll only be able to use one Action ability per turn, which means only your best Thing acts each turn, which in turn makes Action-based combat really slow. Chronogeddon manages anyways by a)being really defensive and b)having some cards which let you take extra actions. If you want a fast-paced game, either have cards for extra Actions or use things with Action abilities sparingly.
• Choose you combat mechanics carefully. As is, it looks like combat will devolve either to "Card type rock-paper-scissors" or "First attack always wins". Neither are particularly interesting from a tactical standpoint.
• Not really relevant, but I have a set of RTS-themed cards in the Infinite Dvorak Deck. Feel free to reuse their main mechanic. (They're about halfway down the page.)
• Try to build two different decks as soon as you have a deep enough cardpool, and bash them against each other a few times. It'll help you get a handle on the set. Also, building two viable decks more or less forces you to make a diverse card set where deck-building is more interesting than simply grabbing the 40-60 best individual cards.

-Bucky 23:42, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Moved from User talk:Bucky

Thanks for your advice. I definitely want it to be rock-paper-scissors style as, like I said, this is going to be similar to Command & Conquer, which uses that style. I want it to be so that you can choose your strategy in the same way, i.e., Rusher, Turtle, Steamroller, etc. rock-paper-scissors always seems interesting to me, tactically. I might use a similar combat sequence to my Halo: Starside deck, that is, put your attacking units into play and use an Action to start combat with all units in play.--Xahn Borealis 13:38, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Rock-Paper-Scissors stuff works in an RTS game because you can't see what your opponent has deployed in the spot you're attacking until one of your units gets close to them (at which point it may be too late to switch production.) One way to simulate that would be to deploy unit cards face-down and only turn them face-up when both players have Things in the same area.

Be careful, though, that the R-P-S action is in playing the game, not in building the deck. A good Rock-based deck might be strong, but it isn't fun at all vs. a Scissors deck (you both know who's going to win after the first few revealed units) and even less fun vs. a Paper deck (same reason, except you lose.) You need to make sure a well-constructed mixed deck can go even or better vs. any of the three pure strategies.-Bucky 07:10, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. Like in C&C, you might attack an enemy base with Mammoth Tanks, only for them to use some Raider Buggys with EMP Coils to disable your tanks, and destroy them with fanatics. Also, not all my units will be exclusively Rock. Some might be good all-rounders, but expensive.--Xahn Borealis 11:23, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm thinking of having some sort of way to be able to change the deck while in play. Maybe if all your units are destroyed(i.e. you hope to dominate the skies, only to come up against a wall of anti-air), you can get reinforcements from the card set. Or maybe you can use reserve decks. What do you think?--Xahn Borealis 11:16, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, one of the inherent weaknesses of a tech-based deck is that it's highly dependent on drawing the correct cards for your tech level. Changing the deck by keeping your high-tech cards separate until you play the appropriate building would help. So the rule for that may be "Whenever you play a building, you may move the top X cards of your draw pile to your reserve area and shuffle X cards from the reserve area into your draw pile." and have each deck start off with 40 cards in their deck and 30 in the reserve pile.-Bucky 16:10, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Cards

Why would anyone ever want to use Heavy Tanks when they can use a Mounted Wave Cannon instead?-Bucky 03:38, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Because you can't, at first. That PXC in the cornervalue is the tech tree requirements, which haven't been made yet.--Xahn Borealis 09:07, 20 November 2008 (UTC)