Originally posted by deep_eyes
...being as how FS ships have a dozen or so weapons as primaries and secondaries and even beyond that for caps, how would i or could i balance it or limit the weaponry as to not overwhelm a player? also HP hits etc, any thoughts?
Keep your modelling simple. Don't try to track too much, and don't try to duplicate the computer combat too closely.
Don't try to model individual weapons on the ships. At most, I'd say to boil stats down to:
agility
armor
primary power
secondary power
secondary locktime
determining primary damage would be attacker agility vs defender agility (ties go to defender), with damage being attack power minus armor, applied to defender "hitpoints".
Secondary damage would be about the same, but use the secondary locktime as a penalty for the attacker. naturally secondary power would be higher to compensate. Damage is applied in the same way. Secondaries would be a group of counters that are depleted.
You could, of course, have primary and secondary cards, that the player might play WITH a fighter, that would basically say "this fighter has swarm missiles" and "this fighter is packing Maxims"
Throw in "manuever" and "obstacle" cards to affect agilty (good and bad). Also, '"support ship" cards could reload fighters.
Consider not having individual fighters. Instead, try fighter wings (this would really add something to personality style cards, like "alpha-one"). Capship cards could launch fighter wings or support ships, as well as having defenses of their own.
Capship cards could be things like beam malfunctions, or engine core breaches, or "rapid reinforcement cards" that make fresh capships show up in the middle of battle (maybe a search your deck for a capship kinda thing).
This is just a bunch of crazy ideas that popped off the top of my head. If i think of anything else, I'll let you know.
