Hey guys, sorry about the lack of communication the last 2 weeks, been a bit consumed with RL changes. I explained it
on my blog.
Anyway, onto more interesting things.
@almondblight
- Some more backgrounds for the card battle screen.
- A more mission debrief-y and less arcade-y screen after you finish a battle.
Both good ideas.
Both thumbnails are now fine after a computer restart. Not that it was much of a problem in the first place, but thought I'd mention it.
Thanks. I've had someone else report something similar, I'll see if I can figure it out. Odd.
@MaximillionMiles :
I feel what makes hacking decks so strong is mostly smoke grenade. If hacking deck draws it, they gain a big advantage against any deck that does not have counter-hacking. A cost increase or having it affect hacking as well might be in order.
Yeah. It does feel like it makes too much of a difference. I'm considering dropping the duration to 1 round, halving its effectiveness.
Counter hacking cards, while more effective than before, still feel too weak as well. Artemis costs 4 and gives countermeasures 2 for 3 turns. While the countermeasures 2 part is nice, it feels too weak for such a situational card. Assassination costs 3 and completely removes a hacker, while also being effective against other kinds of decks. Same goes for nuke, which costs 4. And if you compare it to Hexag0n it's not even funny. both last 3 turns and cost the same, one gives 4 OP/turn (useful no matter what situation) while Artemis is much more situational (only used when there are hacking cards involved, and only worth its price when there many sources of low-level hacking). If I had to choose between putting Artemis or Hexag0n in my deck, hexag0n would win, every time.
Anti-hacking cards fall in the same weird category as, say... EMP grenade. They're very effective in certain situations and utterly useless most of the time. You keep them in your deck as a precaution. Unfortunately, this usually leads to either drawing EMP grenade when there's not a mech in sight or being brutalized by the enemy's spider tank while all you're drawing is Neonmongers. To compensate for this factor, EMP is really effective when it works, bringing down an expensive unit in a fairly cost-effective way. Currently, counter-hacking doesn't feel quite as powerful.
The best solution, I find, would be increasing the timer on counter-hacking cards. Make them REALLY effective against hacking, enough so that having to occasionally draw it when fighting against Resource Boost is still worthwhile, just for the "Oomph factor" when you draw it against an enemy hacker deck. Having them last 5 rounds instead of 3 should be plenty.
TL;DR- the more situational a card is, the better it should be in that situation. Otherwise it loses against the more generic solutions anytime. This goes for when you do not know what kind of deck your opponent will use, of course.
Yeah. It's a bit awkward, tactically. I agree, the more situational a card is, the more powerful it should be when it affects that sitaution. Hacking is less situational than counter-hacking, gaining OP is always useful.
But, at the same time, if I make counter-hacking stronger, I'm concerned that it becomes an auto-win against hacking. Which means it's the kind of thing where you generally don't use it, except when facing hacking decks, and then you use it and easily win. Neither situation being particularly desirable, for me as a designer.
I'm considering Kimari's suggestion. Change the counter-hacking cards to simply being a kind of general OP armor, but lowering their power a bit. That way, they support a general turtler strategy, not just a specific counter vs hackers.
I might then change hacker Agents to have a sort of "armor penetration" vs these cards, rather than gaining OP directly as they do now. So they are a counter to heavy turtler decks.
It's kind of abstract how Agents score OP. In my mind, when they aren't directly in combat they're busting into server rooms and rifling through fileservers. So security programs reducing their OP scoring effectiveness makes sense.
What do you guys think?
Agreed there. Back Street Doctor feels a little strong. Not sure about the Executive.
If Executive needs a nerf, it's a slight one, in my opinion. Reducing its attack from 3 to 2 should be plenty. I admit its extra credits ability is really useful, especially early game. One favorite tactic of mine is to combine him and transfer credits to get the drop on the enemy credit-wise AND agent-placement-wise.
Back street doc is VERY useful and resilient. Much more useful than he initially seems On his own, the doc lasts 3 attacks by a spider-Tankl! Either increasing the cost or decreasing the good doctor's health, attack and/or healing abilities might make him more balanced.
Yeah, the Doc has been nerfed. In the next beta version he'll be a 2/10 who heals for 2. Still useful, especially with 2 Docs out, but not overpowering. (I gave an AI a deck with a bunch of docs, machine guns and nano-regens in the previous version and it was a nightmare. So nerfed
)
@Dragatus :
From looking at the cards it seems like a special ability generally increases the cost of a unit by about 1C. For example Yakuza Soldier, Nem0, and CyberSec all cost 4C and have roughly the same fighting power as the 3C CorpSec. so by that logic Executive's fighting power should be a rough match with the Neonmonger. Droping his attack from 3 o 2 is exactly what I had in mind to achieve that.
Well...sure. But at the same time, I do want some variation in card power. They shouldn't all even out. Executive, I haven't found to be overpowered. He's certainly very useful, but he doesn't survive that long.
About the doc, see above.
Played a bit more and my fiance also played a bit. Surprisingly, she liked it. It's not her type of game and she doesn't know the first thing about cyberpunk, but still played about an hour and got up to the "lending a hand" missions with only minimal assistance from me. I explained her the rules and she won most of the games, although the security vault gave her some trouble (and was a tough battle for me as well, if I remember right).
She already had some previous experience with magic the gathering and other card games, but wasn't exactly following your game, waiting for its release or anything. To me that says you've got a pretty solid game. It's not only for the ITS forum people, or even for the cyberpunk audience alone. It even entertained my fiance, who is more into cosplaying and blowing bubbles in the park rather than hardcore gaming.
Take from that what you will.
That's awesome to hear, thanks!