Hey,
I loved the old forum, sadly its gone. Lets do our best to fill the new boards with inspiring CCG design material. So, here is "yet another SciFi CCG idea". Feedback highly appreciated! I do my best to keep this short, but as there are no rules and no card templates yet - it is a bit difficult to explain the game idea just by words.
STORY
"In the far future, mankind is divided into different CorpoNations: Companies of galactic size and with so much impact on technology, politics, civilian-live and warfare that they form nations on their own. After the discovery of faster-than-light travel, the CorpoNations send highly specialised Spacecrafts to distant galaxies in order to tame and prepare uninhabitated planets for the human population. the CorpoNation spracecrafts are equipped with everything necessary to build a outpost on the planet - to mark the beginning of their sovereignty. sadly, the other CorpoNations pursuit exactly the same goal."
GOAL
Every player takes the role of one CorpoNation (the base set will include three different ones, with the option to add more in future expansions), the goal is to prepare a single wild planet for the civilian population. this is done either by eliminating the enemy player, or when the own outpost reaches a certain size/technology level.
DECK-BUILDING
Resources, Micro-Management & Economy are reduced to a minimum - this game is about two rivaling CorpoNations fighting over a distant planet. Its not about building libraries and schools for your people - that is the job of those who come after you. so, both players build a deck of 60 cards wich contains a good mixture of the available card types:
Structures (buildings, defensive turrets, power plants, research facilities...), Units (infantry, tanks, airplanes, combat robots...), Sectors (jungle, seashore, vulcano...), Tactics, Events and Agendas
Then, each player also builds a small side-deck of exactly 7 cards - wich is called the "landing pod" or "capsule". the player can choose any cards in the side-deck from his collection as long as their total MJ value does not exceed 21 points (more on MJ later on). The main reason of the side deck is to prevent mulligan and to give the player some cards to start the game with, without being too dependent on card draws. During the game, the player can decide to draw cards from his regular deck - or from the side-deck.
RESOURCE-MANAGEMENT
there is only one single resource in the game - wich is called Metajoules (MJ). everything in the game is paid using MJ, we just assume technology is so advanced that - given enough energy - literaly everything can be produced/made happen.
although there is only one resource in the game - there are many different ways to generate MJ. most common are power plant like buildings wich grant you a certain amoutn of MJ every turn. but there are also special units, events or agendas wich produce MJ.
One very important aspect of the game is, that all MJ producing cards are highly depending on their surroundings. for example a "hydroelectric powerplant" is only efficient when placed next to a location containing water. A "solar panel" is a very simple power plant, only able to produce MJ while the sun shines.
THE ENVIROMENT
the above being said, the enviroment is one of the key features of the game. there are several enviromental factors wich influence structures and units in the game like day/night, summer/winter, rain/wind/storm. some structures are only active while its day and others suffer from winter or rain. storm makes it more difficult for airplanes to maneuver and so on.
I can imagine by placing enough "sectors" (locations or lands are placed by the players by sending some units on exploration missions, more on that later on) - the weather changes for example.
Event cards could turn the enviroment from day to night and agendas (permanent events) could gather tokens for every unit killed or structure built - triggering special planetary effects when a certain treshhold is hit.
SAMPLE CARDS (Powerplant like Structures)
Solar Panel (Structure)
*Staple - You can include any number of this card in your deck.
*Solar Power - During your energy phase if it is "day" and the weather is "clear", rotate to generate 1 MJ.
Wind Turbine (Structure)
*Staple - You can include any number of this card in your deck.
*Wind Power - During your energy phase, rotate to generate 1 MJ per "wind level".
Hydroelectric Powerplant (Structure)
*Naval - Can only be built on a "Naval" Sector.
*Water Power - During your energy phase, rotate to generate 3 MJ.
Necromass Powerplant (Structure)
*Necrodegrade - Rotate and Sacrifice any card you own local to Necromass Powerplant: Generate X MJ, where x is the cards printed MJ cost.
CONCLUSION
before i go too much into detail, i would like to stop the introduction of my game here (leaving the combat system, card placement and many other things up to your fantasy). Please keep in mind that besides the rivaling CorpoNations, i wanted the planet itself to be some kind of a "passive third faction" in the game. the planet reacts to the actions of the players and players can manipulate whats going on by interacting with the planet too.
Hopefully this introduction gives you enough information to post some feedback on the game idea, i love to hear your comments!
One more thing: although I can imagine having a "space war" expansion, this game is not about space ships! Its about planetary combat on the surface, about a harsh enviroment, a small outpost, megatechnology and short resources!
Going to reply piece meal since your post was long.
First thought: Why Metajoules when there are perfectly good metric prefixes?
If you had 6 Exajoules you could create matter weighing 150 pounds. If you had 2 Yottajoules you could create matter weighing as much as a large US Navy Carrier. Hmm... Seems like a bad idea for unit costs to be based purely on weight. I can see putting a lot of complexity into a system where you had a matter cost based on weight, a training cost based on person time required to train the units, and an upkeep cost based on how much energy the unit will use while it's active. That being said, I think it is a bad idea to use joules. Just use 'energy' straight up and you don't have to be bound by science.
But then again, it's about faster-than-light traveling Coperations inhabitingother worlds, al-la AVATAR. Real science becomes merely a stepping stone in Sci-Fi. Joules would work, in my opinion.
I'm going to wait for the rest of the info before posting my final opinion, but in concept it soulds like something I'd not only like to play, but also be involved in.
As for day and night, I would suggest round shift
Round 1 - Day
Round 2 - Night
Round 3 - Day
etc.
Use sectr cards! At the start, each player should put some of them in the game, these sectors each have some abilities and traits. (wind level, water, etc.)
On further pondering the mechanic that really stands out to me is the Necromass Powerplant. I might recommend calling it a Reprocessing Plant (especially if you might consider that one probably would only reprocess the tanks, not the drivers of them as well, unless they can also create organic soldiers from whole cloth).
The reason this mechanic is interesting to me is you then get tactical choices where you sell everything you have to buy something else and try to win with this new card/combo (I have one sliver deck that has an Ashnod's Altar which I find I often sacrifice previously important slivers during my 2nd to last turn).
If the necromass plant is cheap enough, you'd expect to see heavy use of these as a tactical tool to pull expensive combos to bear very quickly (potentially destroying your military to put your technologically ascendent base into play). In this case how would the base win you the game? Is it opening a gate to a homeworld? Reaching a singularity threshold in terms of automation? Activating an orbital gun that can destroy opposing ground forces?
If the necromass plant costs a bit more you expect to see it only in specialty decks built to exploit above strategies, instead of seeing everyone do it.
Another thought on this: You might want to return cost-1 on the reprocess to reduce the incentive to build flexible swarms that collapse into huge monstrosities on later turns. Perhaps you like the easy come easy go though, in which case cool. It'll play differently either way.
Like I said before, the whole conquest idea really brings out some fun ideas. What were you thinking as far as the board dimensions? Maybe a series of Hexes to represent Sectors to be explored and areas to be fought over would be coo, then you can even include a bit of range, ability, and even more strategy.
As I said before, hit me up and I will defiantly want to talk more about this game with you.
Also, for Day/Night. I do like the 1/1, but allow for some flexibility. Maybe let the players play on a desert planet with a 2/1 day to night ratio or a quickly rotating planet where each player would get stuck with a different shift. Would lead to diverse gameplay.
Question:
Can you draw your starting hand from the landing pod? Can you choose between the deck and the landing pod for each card in the starting hand? Draw 3, decide I need at least one from the landing pod, then decide to draw 2 more from the deck and then decide to draw the last two from the pod?
Thank you for the replies - located in good old europe I just returned home from work (its 21:00 over here). So, i try to do my best answering your thoughts and questions and maybe give an insight or two about the other game mechanics. expect some templates soon!
@Tokomi @Legend Zero Oh come on guys! This IS science fiction, and metajoules just sounds cool. If I knew that, I would have thought about a different name for "mana" alltogether. Very interesting though, you may continue.
@Dragoon First I also thought about a round shift between day and night. right now the game starts at day and it can only be turned into night by special abilities. its a bit strange i know - seems like the game runs at slow speed and once a special card is played, time advances fast forward. but speaking about the solar panels for example, your idea would make more sense. i am evaluating it, do not want things to get too complex.
@Tokimo The cards posted above are just mockups. The Necromass powerplant is planned for the first expansion wich will introduce a few alien races the players can also play. nothing about the cards is balanced, just first sparks of thought. the basic idea of the plant was to feed it with objects you built earlier in the game and wich you dont need anymore later in the game.
@Tokimo The Main goal is to elimiate your opponent, how this is done is still in experimental state. another thought is working with victory points, or by depleting opponents deck - right now nothing is for sure. the second victory condition is much more clear: there is a "homebase" like building wich can be expanded over the course of the game - later on it turns into some kind of gigantic tower that reaches space, turning it effectively into some kind of space station. once your homebase reaches this state of development you are able to call your CorpoNation main fleet and win the game.
@Tokimo Right now the answer is NO. you draw from your deck and after that you decide from wich deck to draw. another rule was introduced to let a player sort the cards in his side-deck, so you know what you will be drawing next time.
@Legend Zero Wrote you a message
PS: this is in very early stages of development, "baby shoes" at best. if you like, help me to flesh this idea out - as i like it very much and think that it would be perfectly suited for a lackeyCCG plugin to be distributed freely via the internet
I am preparing another post about the game right after this one - depends if I finish it today.
Slightly disappointed to hear that the necroplant won't be a mainstay of the game, it sounded like a pretty stelar mechanic to always be burning your old stuff (if it's a basic function of the home base there's no fear of balance even).
I really like this idea for a game. It sounds really awesome, lots of fun for sure. My only concern at this point is the landing pod. Although its a great way to prevent mana-screw and other sorts of bad hand things commonly found in other games, it seems like it may allow combo decks (or swarm decks) to get quickly out of control if built right, especially if you allow it to be stacked in whatever order the player chooses.
Either way I could still see down the line decks that just set up for 3-4 turns, then play some sort of card(s) that allow them to draw a big portion from their landing pod, and then clean-up the board with it. Maybe not though, just something to think about in design.
Also I'd vote for just a linear board made up of the location cards that you and your opponent play. Maybe limit it to 6 locations, so the beginning of the game can have a slight race to set up the planet, unless the layout isn't that important to your deck, then you can just start setting up your forces and not worrying about the layout. Sort of adds an element of something that is simple to understand, but hard to master.
Regardless keep up the good work, I'm pretty excited about this
@Cyrus the landing pod really needs work - i realize just by now. for the rest of your reply: read this post!
THE GAMEBOARD
before going more into the details of the game, let me explain how the board actually looks like. I have included a picture to show you how the different zones of play are distributed over the board. first of all: there are no squares or hexes, its all CCG typical kept simple and cards aligned to zones. most cards have to be attached to zones and there is limited movement between zones, thats all.
(http://www.zockergilde.net/demo/corponations.jpg)
1. So you can see each player has his own deck, landing pod and discard pile.
2. The sectors form a line where both players align their units and structures. the example picture shows 4 sectors, but theoretically the players can bring as many sectors into play as they want - expanding the "battle line" horizontally. the first two sectors are chosen by the players from their card hand - the rest has to be explored by sending units on a "explore mission", wich is time and energy consuming - and dangerous. the first player to sucessfully explore a sector may bring another sector card from his hand into play - the bounty for facing the dangers of a strange planet.
Its late over here and I am really tired. Please keep on posting as you help me flesh out the rules bit by bit. This process is interesting and helps me very much. I try to shorten my posts from now on, so more to read in a few days.
Malagar over and out!
"Slave for the MegaCorps, hail the CorpoNation! One for all and all for Hedoth and the planetary conquest!"
Players should get an advantage for exploring a sector, otherwise it makes focusing on military and just taking each sector by force an appealing strategy.
Inherent advantages of exploration:
-Sectors come into play on your turn, you can set up a power plant in a sector and have it defended before your opponent can act against it.
-You can choose which sectors come into play. You pick nothing but naval sectors and your hydro electric plants are going to be rocking. If you try to sector surf with hydro though, you might be disappointed to find you're playing against a desert deck.
Potential advantages to add:
-Give a discount to structures played to a newly discovered sector to represent being able to bring in construction crews with lighter defense than normal.
-Allow an empty sector to be occupied by units who 'bunker down' making it harder to defeat them.
Another thought on sectors: Instead of playing sectors from your deck, what would happen if exploring for a sector could garner a draw and play from a standardized sector deck (only one deck per game, same X cards in it every game).
@Tokimo Again, thank you. But please slow down. This is very complex and I dont write fast enough to take all the notes. Good ideas though - what about simplifying it? You explore, you play a sector card and in addition to that you may draw another card from your deck? the idea of a universal sector deck is somehow against my deck-building strategy thought.
I am heading to bed right now - to give you a clue about the game - here are three card template samples. All very simple mockups without any text and all share the same background pattern (wich will change later on).
As I told Legend_Zero earlier: some may be shocked by the pixelated artwork - but as the game will be distributed via lackeyCCG (means: via internet) alone - no one will ever care about image resoultion and such. in fact: pixelated retro-oldschool-artwork just rocks (as long as it stays on screen and is not printed). it should just work - if you ask me, and i have a library of age-old games to rip for graphics at my hand. as the game will stay free/open-source I can't imagine any company complaining about copyrights.
So, this is just to wet your tastebuds. Not now - not soon, but later on - there WILL be spaceships (AND gigantic robots)
(http://www.zockergilde.net/demo/cargo.jpg)
(http://www.zockergilde.net/demo/tobikage.jpg)
(http://www.zockergilde.net/demo/castle.jpg)
THe white fonts on the light BG is eye killing. Maybe the text dark for some contrast. Other than that it's a bit busy (We obviously don't know all the card parts yet) so I can't judge on it until I see some semblance of what belongs on a card first.
I think a card draw would also be an appealing advantage to give for playing sectors. Doing such would allow people to effectively thin their decks by putting sectors in. Seems like a very appealing system. That being said, it's not obvious to me that you need to provide additional advantages beyond the two inherent ones, but it's something to keep in mind.
Posted my thoughts on art in the art forum.
I'm actually getting more and more into this game. Hopefully you can work quickly to get a beta ready for playtesting.
I'm not free all the time, do have a real life too lol, but if you need specific help with rules or card ideas I'm down to help out as much as I can.
@Cyrus Thank you for the positive feedback!
I spent lunchtime working on a few things for this game. First of all Legend_Zero invited me to get my project somewhat "hosted" on their site - thanks for that. But right now the game is in so early stages that I would prefer to wait a bit longer.
Before I post the new things, there are a few tasks I have to give away - if anyone is interested in participating in this project:
1. A lackey plugin has to be created and filled with all the basic information, i need some sort of empty set framework to integrate the cards into. a nice playmat is also necessary.
2. If someone is really good at slicing sprites and pixel artwork and would like to build the images for the first 100 cards of the premier set - i could need help on this subject. I can provide a massive amount of graphics.
3. I would like to setup a account on www.cardgameforge.com to keep all rules, cards, files and discussion stuff of the game in one single place. this is much easier than creating a website for the game. also multiply editors can work on the different rules/card-text/balancing using www.cardgameforge.com - its in my oppinion the best tool out there to manage a large amount of CCG related data online.
4. this pet project still has no name - ideas anyone?
NUMBERS
The alpha premier set will contain only Neutral cards wich are CorpoNation unrelated. This set will be released only to a small group of alpha testers. I want to get everything waterproof and tested until moving to the beta premier set (350+ cards). once the alpha set is ready, i could also need help in designing the CorpoNations and their cards.
Right now the set contains:
25 Neutral Structures
15 Neutral Sectors
30 Neutral Tactics
30 Neutral Units
THE COMBAT SYSTEM
All the units located at one sector form a group called a squad. You can attack once with every one of your squads. Only the ready (untapped) units within your squads can participate in the attack. attacks are processed one after another, sector by sector.
unlike magic the gathering, where creatures only have 2 attributes - this game features 4 attributes: SPEED, POWER, ARMOR and INTEGRITY.
squads can only attack enemies located at the same sector. in order to attack enemies in other sectors, you have to move your squad or single units (more on moving later on). attacking always targets the opponents squad, structures can never be attacked directly.
All cards have a SPEED attribute, both players sum the speed attribute of their units and the player with the higher speed total may assign attackers and blockers. every attacker has to be blocked by one or more defender.
now all attackers and defenders deal their POWER attribute in damage to each other. It is important to know that the unit with higher SPEED strikes first, units with same SPEED attributes strike simultanously.
the damage is first soaked up by the ARMOR attribute of a unit, any excess damage causes INTEGRITY damage on that unit. For every point of INTEGRITY a unit
lost, place one counter on the card.
after combat, the ARMOR attribute of all units returns back to its printed value. But any INTEGRITY damage is permanent and must be marked using counters.
STRUCTURE DAMAGE
If there are more attackers than blockers, the excess attackers may be assigned to attack any structures in the same sector.
CORPO NATION DAMAGE
if there are more attackers than blockers and there are no structures in the sector left, the excess attackers may deal damage directly to the corpo nation.
the attacking player can decide how to distribute the unblocked POWER:
A. each point of unblocked power removes one card from the enemies graveyard from the game.
B. two points of unblocked power put the top card from the enemies deck into his discard pile
C. three points of unblocked power move the top card from the enemies landing-pod into his discard pile
D. four points of unblocked power force the enemy to discard one card from his hand into his discard pile
Badly written I know - but it should be enough for today. This game is going to be brutally complex...
Name Suggestion: Colony.
Suggestion: If you overkill units in a sector, it's probably sufficient to have your reward be a tactically weakened opponent.
Offers: I'm interested in alpha testing. I might be able to set up an initial plug in for you, but someone else might be able to get it done faster. (It's actually not very hard to write plugins, read the tutorial on the main site if you're curious).
Hmmm.. I see a big balance problem here:
Player A plays cards to that it becomes dark and wind level becoms 0.
Player B only has a solar plant and a wind turbine in play.
Player A laughs, because he only has nuclear power plants, who do not need sun nor wind.
Player A not only shuts down player B with no resources, he also is the only player getting resources, thus allowing him to keep it that way (e.g. playing better and powerful cards than player B).
Player B looks at his hand, and cries because his "meldown" card that shuts down nuclear powerplants cost 2MJ, which he will never get...
Resources should not come from a single source that both players can influence, unless both players will get the same (Lord of the rings tcg)
@xchokeholdx Thanks for pointing this one out. As said before this game is still in the "baby shoes" phase. I am already thinking about switching to a fixed day/night cycle.
So, all in all I got the combat rules fleshed out and working. thats pretty easy and i could leave the game how it its. but the real spice comes from the powerplant structures, the structures in general and the sector cards.
exactly those cards make up the economical system of the game - and it completely freaks me out. I just want this "outpost building" aspect in the game or it would be just another wargame. the metajoule generation and unit production buildings give it some aspects you find in realtime strategy games like command and conquer or warcraft. but translating this into CCG rules creates so many loopholes and balancing issues, that it makes balancing really hard.
so - I'll stop whining and say: Back to the drawing board! *sigh*
I also support a fixed day night cycle. Day, Day, Night, Night, Day, Day, etc is my preference. Giving one player graveyard shift when you've got two solar decks would be harsh.
If you're trying to get an RTS feel you might try population caps that can only be raised by supply depots as well. On the other hand, then you'll have energy, population, and good cards to all worry about drawing.
@Tokimo (and the others)
Well the base thought was this: In magic the gathering you have 5 different kinds of mana - but you dont need cards to bring other cards in play.
I wanted to turn it around: there is only 1 type of mana (metajoules) - but you need cards to bring other cards in play.
Those card requirements could be: You need BARRACKS to play any kind of INFANTRY cards. instead of islands or forests there would be BARRACKS, VEHICLE FACTORIES and AIRPORTS for example.
I dunno about that last idea unless you want to make deck searching a huuuuge part of the game. I tried to design out an RTS feeling CCG and it came down to basically having to have every different card type have its own mini-deck along with your Main deck that would mostly be events, otherwise it seems like the right card combos would never come together.
Trying to add complexity (while shunned as being the evil to end all evils by a few members of this forum) is not always a bad thing though, you just have to make sure it isn't complexity for complexity's sake, you know? Especially since, like me, you are pretty much only making this game for online play over Lackey, or maybe its own program sometime down the road (for me at least I've always thought that would be cool). Targeting more specialized audiences is something you can most definitely afford when making online-only games because, well, you don't really need to spend any money to make it (just time, which yes does sort of equal money, but we won't go into that :D), and you can assume anyone that finds your game will probably already be a ccg player, or at very least you'll probably have a forum set up with some dudes willing to teach the game to new players.
Me and Wisp (another member of this forum and super cool dude) are always bouncing ideas off of each other for making war-games, maybe we should all meet up in a chat sometime and have a brainstorming session with the possibility to work together to make the greatest war-game of all time? Sounds like fun to me, lol. I'm pretty sure http://thinkature.com/ (http://thinkature.com/) has private rooms and its like a visual brainstorming thing, might be fun to try out regardless.
Anyways keep up the good work, you've inspired me to get off of my ass and finish my war based ccg also, lol
Hey,
Its taking shape! A friend of mine suggested to release the core rules of the game under a different name. i think that idea is good, as it would be possible to create games with different background worlds based on the same rules (but, this is just a thought).
all in all its like i am releasing the "generic rulebook" first, before the actual game will be released. this should give interested players already some insights in how the game is supposed to work.
read more about it here:
http://www.cardgameforge.com/games/siegeengine
stay tuned, more to come
* General Information is online: http://www.cardgameforge.com/game.php?id=153&mode=rules&rid=323
* Card Anatomy: http://www.cardgameforge.com/game.php?id=153&mode=rules&rid=324
* Final Playmat Layout: http://www.cardgameforge.com/game.php?id=153&mode=rules&rid=325
Name spam: Raising the flag, Flag, Flagpost, Outpost, Greed, Drop pod, Landing Zone, Beacon, Gold Rush, Planet Rush, Star Rush, Expansion, Corporate Acquisition, Conquest.
Hey guys, I am still alive - and there are quite a few updates, most of them are secret - but I have some news to share:
(http://www.zockergilde.net/demo/starsiege.jpg)
* First of all, our baby has a name, simple: STARSIEGE
* Second, the template changed quite a bit, just see for yourselves and checkout my art thread. Im moving away from the pixelated artwork, just when its about the artwork of a card. I got my hands on a source of high-quality pictures and maybe I will be able to maintain a mix of both pixelated and artistic artwork. time will tell (as i wrote in my other thread its really difficult for a single hobby developer to get nice pictures)
There are many changes under the hood and on the rules system too: friends over here talked into me for hours, being not too excited about the pixel art and the planet conquest gameplay style. in addition to that it has turned out that developing a background world for this game is just too much of work for a single person.
but, things are progessing - except more news over the next few weeks. we found a solution, a nice set of graphics and a very exciting background world to base the game on. building upon already excisting background makes it much easier for me to concentrate on the cards and rules.
looks like i am changing my mind all the time: but every game developer knows how difficult it is to "walk the line" once you start transferring your "in-brain" ideas into something realistic.
it might change its face a bit - but its there, and its working
...and epic...
I like the name.
I liked the planet acquisition story line, not sure what I'll think about the new one.
Not sure what I'll think about basing it off of whichever universe you've chosen. Can you tell us which universe you've picked?
I like the card layout and the template so far. Can't wait to see more and some rules too!
remember, KISS rules!
Soon my friends, soon! Give an old man a bit more time :-)
I realize the card release frenzy of hawkeye and xchokeholdx on cardgameforge.com - sooner or later, i join the party - promised!
I'm going to be spamming some artless cards soon too (probably use free clipart to start x_x). Yay! Card party!
Quote from: Malagar on November 30, 2009, 01:43:20 PM
Soon my friends, soon! Give an old man a bit more time :-)
I realize the card release frenzy of hawkeye and xchokeholdx on cardgameforge.com - sooner or later, i join the party - promised!
shakes hands.. Old man here as well. you just got to PRIORITISE!
step 1: come home. kiss wife, kiss kid.
step 2: wash the dishes in 10 seconds flat.
step 3: bring kid to bed, pray he falls asleep immidiately. if not, squeeze him!
step 4: massage feet of wife, put on a Friends dvd for her.
step 5: slip away when she falls asleep on the sofa
Presto!: 25 minutes free to work on your game!
and I spend also a great deal while at work working on card wording, finding new stuff and refining the rules.
I think I've been averaging an hour or two a night working on Mahoujo in one way or another.
I average about 5-6 hours a week on mine. Work 2 full time jobs, 7 kids and a wife to take care of too! My ideal job is working on games and getting paid to play them...oh, well that's life. Keep up the good work and you'll get there! I have created 1436 cards with me working on 12th set. And been at this 7 years now....
Quote from: Hawkeye on December 01, 2009, 09:56:39 AM
I average about 5-6 hours a week on mine. Work 2 full time jobs, 7 kids and a wife to take care of too! My ideal job is working on games and getting paid to play them...oh, well that's life. Keep up the good work and you'll get there! I have created 1436 cards with me working on 12th set. And been at this 7 years now....
Hot damn, 7 years and 1.5K thousand cards? Have you tried to get your game published?
Quote from: Hawkeye on December 01, 2009, 09:56:39 AM
I average about 5-6 hours a week on mine. Work 2 full time jobs, 7 kids and a wife to take care of too! My ideal job is working on games and getting paid to play them...oh, well that's life. Keep up the good work and you'll get there! I have created 1436 cards with me working on 12th set. And been at this 7 years now....
what the hell game do you make? pokemon?
Don't want to be nitpicking - but can we keep this thread on topic please?
Quote from: Malagar on December 01, 2009, 02:24:27 PM
Don't want to be nitpicking - but can we keep this thread on topic please?
my bad, based on the 4-5 replies before mine I had sort of forgotten what we were talking about... and then that one dude busted in talking about his insane amount of ccg work and children... I got distracted :D
anyways, I'm glad you're still working on this as much as you can, I don't know what my free time will look like when you get around to releasing a playtestable plugin, but if I can make time to help you playtest it I will.
@Cyrus
Haha, no problem - i should have added <sinister voice> tags to my previous post. But well, this is about CCGs isnt it?
Talking about testing, rules and cards I just have to put you off until next year.
BUT, talking about spare time to spend on game development and xchokeholdx's comment - i have a suggestion:
try to increase the overall time challenge level with a second child...
I guess the cat is out of the bag!
Sorry for all the confusion and changing my mind all the time. All I can say is that it grows, i spend each evening and lunchtime as many minutes as possible to get this behemoth going.
Eherm...its changed its face a little bit compared to the original concept, but who cares? its "hella lotta flak turrent ion plasma beam torpedo battery battling fun"!
(http://www.cardgameforge.com/images/properties/2091/ab7fc5300a78ed2af68bbb536abcd4cd.jpg)
Interesting. Not familiar with Homeworld. ???
Quote from: Tokimo on December 02, 2009, 04:31:32 PM
Interesting. Not familiar with Homeworld. ???
Thats the name of the game he is working on.
Or did I miss what you meant?
I think he means he is not familiar with the Homeworld computer, which I suspect this game is build upon...
Quote from: xchokeholdx on December 03, 2009, 07:36:35 AM
I think he means he is not familiar with the Homeworld computer, which I suspect this game is build upon...
Homeworld is an RTS made by Relic. As I've never played Homeworld I find my interest in the card game to have diminished (actually, for that matter I have never gotten myself excited about a licensed CCG besides Sailor Moon).
Edit: I lie, I get excited about super heros and Pokemon.
Yes, the game is actually based on the Homeworld Computer Games Series
(that is Homeworld, Cataclysm and Homeworld 2 + some fan based expansions wich enrich the background world).
The game plays a bit after homeworld 2 - where it seems that the vaygr threat is defeated.
sorry for the people who waited for the corponation game, i just had to put this one on the backburner - my friends over here are very interested in the homeworld game. the game system is basically excactly the same - although the planet conquerin concept is now obsolete. they want strategic laser wargame - they get a strategic laser wargame
but hey, it will be cool.
base set about 100 cards, only 2 factions compromised of units (ships), subsystems (ship enhancements) and technologies.
later on ill introduce pilots, tactics, agendas and of course planets...
PS: xchokeholdx inspired me: he is able to pump out cards to fast using the star wars background world with everything provided: images, story - people. that is one of the main reasons why i switched to a already existing theme.
I started to release the premier set and some rules of my game on www.cardgameforge.com
see them at
http://www.cardgameforge.com/games/homeworld_age_of_starsiege
consider this thread closed until further notice
Quote from: Malagar on November 17, 2009, 02:24:21 AM
Hey,
I loved the old forum, sadly its gone. Lets do our best to fill the new boards with inspiring CCG design material. So, here is "yet another SciFi CCG idea". Feedback highly appreciated! I do my best to keep this short, but as there are no rules and no card templates yet - it is a bit difficult to explain the game idea just by words.
STORY
"In the far future, mankind is divided into different CorpoNations: Companies of galactic size and with so much impact on technology, politics, civilian-live and warfare that they form nations on their own. After the discovery of faster-than-light travel, the CorpoNations send highly specialised Spacecrafts to distant galaxies in order to tame and prepare uninhabitated planets for the human population. the CorpoNation spracecrafts are equipped with everything necessary to build a outpost on the planet - to mark the beginning of their sovereignty. sadly, the other CorpoNations pursuit exactly the same goal."
GOAL
Every player takes the role of one CorpoNation (the base set will include three different ones, with the option to add more in future expansions), the goal is to prepare a single wild planet for the civilian population. this is done either by eliminating the enemy player, or when the own outpost reaches a certain size/technology level.
DECK-BUILDING
Resources, Micro-Management & Economy are reduced to a minimum - this game is about two rivaling CorpoNations fighting over a distant planet. Its not about building libraries and schools for your people - that is the job of those who come after you. so, both players build a deck of 60 cards wich contains a good mixture of the available card types:
Structures (buildings, defensive turrets, power plants, research facilities...), Units (infantry, tanks, airplanes, combat robots...), Sectors (jungle, seashore, vulcano...), Tactics, Events and Agendas
Then, each player also builds a small side-deck of exactly 7 cards - wich is called the "landing pod" or "capsule". the player can choose any cards in the side-deck from his collection as long as their total MJ value does not exceed 21 points (more on MJ later on). The main reason of the side deck is to prevent mulligan and to give the player some cards to start the game with, without being too dependent on card draws. During the game, the player can decide to draw cards from his regular deck - or from the side-deck.
RESOURCE-MANAGEMENT
there is only one single resource in the game - wich is called Metajoules (MJ). everything in the game is paid using MJ, we just assume technology is so advanced that - given enough energy - literaly everything can be produced/made happen.
although there is only one resource in the game - there are many different ways to generate MJ. most common are power plant like buildings wich grant you a certain amoutn of MJ every turn. but there are also special units, events or agendas wich produce MJ.
One very important aspect of the game is, that all MJ producing cards are highly depending on their surroundings. for example a "hydroelectric powerplant" is only efficient when placed next to a location containing water. A "solar kits (http://www.shinesolar.net)" is a very simple power plant, only able to produce MJ while the sun shines.
THE ENVIROMENT
the above being said, the enviroment is one of the key features of the game. there are several enviromental factors wich influence structures and units in the game like day/night, summer/winter, rain/wind/storm. some structures are only active while its day and others suffer from winter or rain. storm makes it more difficult for airplanes to maneuver and so on.
I can imagine by placing enough "sectors" (locations or lands are placed by the players by sending some units on exploration missions, more on that later on) - the weather changes for example.
Event cards could turn the enviroment from day to night and agendas (permanent events) could gather tokens for every unit killed or structure built - triggering special planetary effects when a certain treshhold is hit.
SAMPLE CARDS (Powerplant like Structures)
Solar Panel (Structure)
*Staple - You can include any number of this card in your deck.
*Solar Power - During your energy phase if it is "day" and the weather is "clear", rotate to generate 1 MJ.
Wind Turbine (Structure)
*Staple - You can include any number of this card in your deck.
*Wind Power - During your energy phase, rotate to generate 1 MJ per "wind level".
Hydroelectric Powerplant (Structure)
*Naval - Can only be built on a "Naval" Sector.
*Water Power - During your energy phase, rotate to generate 3 MJ.
Necromass Powerplant (Structure)
*Necrodegrade - Rotate and Sacrifice any card you own local to Necromass Powerplant: Generate X MJ, where x is the cards printed MJ cost.
CONCLUSION
before i go too much into detail, i would like to stop the introduction of my game here (leaving the combat system, card placement and many other things up to your fantasy). Please keep in mind that besides the rivaling CorpoNations, i wanted the planet itself to be some kind of a "passive third faction" in the game. the planet reacts to the actions of the players and players can manipulate whats going on by interacting with the planet too.
Hopefully this introduction gives you enough information to post some feedback on the game idea, i love to hear your comments!
One more thing: although I can imagine having a "space war" expansion, this game is not about space ships! Its about planetary combat on the surface, about a harsh enviroment, a small outpost, megatechnology and short resources!
Very very nice thoughts indeed..SO which things have you achieved till now.. Can you share out your vital experience with us? Waiting for reply thanks in advance:)