# TGC Full Gameplay Rework
This rework is entirely for the gameplay side of things. Stuff like persistency, card packs, collection aspects and etc are fully outside of my range of interest; this doc is just for the actual gameplay considerations.

Current TGC's gameplay has a number of issues.
1. It's extremely derivative, being almost 1-to-1 a Heartstone clone
2. It does not scale. Every card released can be in the same deck as any other card released. This means that as the game grows as new PRs get added more and more unwanted and accidental gamebreaking synergies pop up.
3. It will run out of steam fast - we only have so many antagonists, jobs and factions. We can't have every deck have 10+ unique creature cards without running out of them eventually.
4. It does not do anything to mechanically convey SS13's main themes of paranoia, social deduction, jobs and antagonists. A new design (rather than just copying Heartstone's) would allow us to integrate these elements into the gameplay.

# Goals

1. The game should work fine with 100 or 10.000 cards. It should be able to scale well, with built in ways to deliminate playstyles and insulate cardpools.
2. This should also apply to the themes; the game can't run out of stuff to adapt into cards. By scaling back the game into a 1 character vs 1 character fight individual items, actions and mechanics can be translated into cards, expanding the pool of cards we can make.
3. The game should keep the vibe of SS13 in mind, with social deduction and the big complexity of even the most basic jobs being core thematic principles to stick to.

# Gameplay

## Job Card & Basics

Each deck has a Job card. The Job card acts like this game's equivalent to your commander or character card. It sets your starting HP, your max hand size and what cards you can have in your deck, alongside most having an special effect on them.

At the start of your turn you draw a card. You also draw to max handsize at the end of your turn. How many this is depends on your Job card - if your card supply stat size is 4 you draw until you have 4 cards in hand, if it's 7 you draw until you have 7 cards in hand.

The job card also has a list of card pools accesible. Every card has what card pool(s) it belongs to listed on the card and you can only add a card to your deck if at least one of its card pools are one that your character has access to.

### Card Pools

Card pools are divided into three categories: Departments, Specials and Uniques.

There are 5 departmental card pools - Engineering, Service, Science, Medical and Cargo. (Security and Command are not one of the main 5 here). They are this game's colors or classes; they're the biggest card pools and most job cards has at least one of them. They're the generic cards of the game.

The special card pools are card pools shared by only a restricted few job cards - for example, "Traitor", "Tizirian" or "Security". They are stronger than departmental cards and often have more pronounced themes in their effects.

The unique card pools are card pools only used by one job card - "Space Ninja", "Bubblegum" or "Tiding Chemist" are examples of card pools that are only used by one job card - which frequently share the name of the card pool with the job card. They have by far the strongest and most unique cards and their existence directly impact their associated job's viability. They are frequently must-includes.

### The Why of Card Pools
If this game catches on, people will want to add more cards.
Which means, a lot more cards. And that could lead to power creep, unintended gamebreaking combos, all sort of problems.

Card pools solve this issue - whenever anyone wants to add something to the game, instead of adding to the generic cards they can instead create a new job card with its own unique card pool. That way it doesnt have unintended consequences on other strategies, it's insulated from other cards being added or changed in the future and it has its own sandbox to create the gameplay that the creator wanted.

This does mean we'd have to be cautious adding and balancing the generic departmental cardpools, but since their power is intentionally lower than the special or unique cards this shouldn't be a major issue.

## Card Basics

### Card Stats

Job cards have:
* Starting HP (you lose if it goes to 0!)
* Card Supply
* Card pools
* Optionally but frequently, a special effect

Normal playing cards have:
* A card type (Harm, Help, Disarm or Grab)
* A plasma cost (the cost to play them)
* An ore value (used to pay for plasma costs)
* A defense value (used for blocking)
* The special on-play effects

### Playing a card
In order to play a card, you must pay its Plasma cost.
To do so you must discard other cards from your hand whose total Ore value is equal or greater than your card's Plasma cost. So to play a 3 plasma card, you must discard a 3 Ore card, a 2 Ore and a 1 Ore card or three 1 Ore cards.

### Ending the turn

After you play a card or active an effect on the field, your turn immediately ends. There are many exceptions to this, but the biggest one is the "then Continue" keyword, which lets you continue the turn after doing an action. This means most turns are quick, with only a few cards played.

You can also choose to pass the turn without doing anything.

At the end of the turn you can **setup** a card. You do this by placing it face-down in front of you. A setup card can be used as if it was in your hand, however it cannot be discarded for ore or for defense, only played for its effect.

You also can only have one face-down setup card at once, needing to play your setup card before setting another one. Setting cards is important for strategy as they let you more easily sculpt your hand for powerful combos and strategies!

After you setup, you draw until the number of cards in your hand is equal to your job cards's card supply. Then you pass the turn and your opponent draws for turn.

### Blocking

Whenever you would take damage, you can **block**. You block by discarding cards from your hand whenever you would take damage. You reduce the damage by the total Defense value of the cards discarded - if you are to take 6 damage and discard a 3 defense and a 2 defense card, for example, you reduce the damage by 5 and only take 1 damage!

Something notable is that you refill your hand at the end of your turn and only draw 1 at the start of your turn. That means that if you discard many cards to block during the opponent's turn, you will be severely reduced in options. This, alongside also needing to discard to pay the costs to play your cards, can lead to very tricky situations where you have to seriously consider every discard.

## The card types

### Harm cards
These are the bread and butter of the game.
They inflict damage to your opponent, can have their attack boosted and in general are what you want to be doing in the game. Use them to attack your opponent and win the game!

The amount of damage inflicted depends on the card - some attack for a lot, others for little. Some have special effects, others are raw damage.

### Help cards

Help cards are the second most common card in the game.
They do any sort of non-attacking effect: Drawing cards, buffing your damage, setting extra cards, etc. They function identically to Harm cards, except they dont damage your opponent and more commonly have Then Continue to let you keep playing.

### Disarm cards

During either player's turn, after a player has blocked then the players may play Disarm cards from their hand or setup. These are surprises that - due to happening after the blocking phase - cannot be blocked! They may increase or reduce the damage of the attack, give it bonus effects or even redirect it entirely!

There are two main ways to play around Disarm cards - you can have your own Disarm cards to play in response to their Disarm cards or, more commonly, you can fully block an attack. If your blocks reduce an attack to 0 damage, then the attack is fully cancelled and neither player will get an oportunity to play Disarm cards that turn.

Letting a small 1 damage attack go through may be tempting, but it can be hiding a deadly Disarm combo. If you're willing to play it safe - or is getting baited into wasting resources - fully blocking small attacks to prevent Disarm cards can be a very powerful strategy.

### Grab cards

The last card type is the most different of them all - Grab cards.

Grab cards, after playing, stay on the table indefinitely, unlike all other card types so far. They provide bonuses for the rest of the game, either directly improving your stats such as bonus damage or better card draw or by giving you activated abilities you can activate with plasma.

However, there is a catch - time. Grab cards almost never have the Continue keyword, ending your turn on a setup play rather than attacking or defending. Even worse, they usually have large plasma costs, requiring you to discard two or three cards to set them up.

This means that whil they'll give you a big bonus for the rest of the game, you are wide open for receiving a beating on the turn you play them. It's the classic short term vs long term payoff; do you have the HP and blocking to get away with it, or would you get mega punished?
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** [EVERYTHING BELOW THIS HEADER IS OUTDATED, A WIP OR FROM AN EARLIER DRAFT OF THIS GAME FROM 4 MONTHS AGO. ACTUAL.]**

-# Turn Structure

-> Turn Starts
--> Turn player gains plasma equal to their plasma supply
-> Main Phase; you play attacks, set secrets, activate setups, etc.
-> Declare Strike (end of Main Phase)
-> Secrets phase begin
--> Defending player may activate secrets
--> Attacking player may activate secrets
--> Defending player may discard to block
-> End Step
--> Damage from Strike is calculated and damage is inflicted
--> Turn player may set new secrets
--> Turn player draws up to their card supply
-> Turn passes to other player

This section is outdated in terms of numbers
I only figured out the numbers for costs, HP, damage and etc after making these cards. I considered deleting them but they're salvageable and they do exemplify and illustrate many of the game's mechanics for if you need some example cards to see how it all fits together. They also don't fit the game's departmental identities, either.

-# Card Design

-## RNG, skill and Skillul RNG

"RNG that biases to the better player" is the motto.

The theory is that the more RNG there is in a game, the more fun it will be. It forces players to adapt and be on their toes all game, provides comeback potential, creates unique situations every game and creates hype once-in-a-billion moments that *are* bullshit but they're so rare and cool you can't even be mad.

What sours RNG is how it makes undeserved wins, it makes people get sacced and so that sometimes the less skilled player wins over the better player. To stop this the idea is adding "skillfull RNG".

Compare the following 3 cards: "Draw 1 card", "Add 1 card from your deck to your hand" and "Excavate 5, then pick 1".

* "Draw 1 card" is pure RNG. It makes every game unique and unpredictable but sometimes the better player just draws worse and loses.
* "Add 1 card" is pure skill. The player has a massive suite of choices and the better player will do better choices than the worst one, winning every time. However, it homogenizes games - you always get the card you want when you want it, always doing the same optimal line.
* "Excavate 5 pick 1" still rewards the better player - they'll evaluate what card out of the 5 better than a worse player - but still grants the benefits of varying the game, presenting unique situations and forcing the players to adapt to win.

The excavate here is an example of Skillful RNG and what we should strive for.

Do note that TGC is meant to be playable in-person, both in-game and irl. This means no effets that create random cards out of thin air or that draw for a random card of a specific tribe in your deck, for example.

-## Attack Cards & Damage

For attack, expected damage per plasma is 3.33, rounded down. So 3 for 1, 6 for 2, 10 for 3 and 13 for 4.

The damage per plasma goes up the more expensive it is because single expensive cards are more vulnerable to removal and make you cycle less compared to playing many smaller cards.

Special effects on cards reduce the base attack, but can conditionally increase it above curve. So a 1 cost attack with a good effect would deal 1 or 2 damage rather than 3, for example.

These numbers apply to generic departmental cards; cards restricted to only a few or just one job can be above curve in damage. This would need to be compensated somewhere on the job's design, be it by lower plasma or card supply, low HP, no special effect or another drawback somewhere else on its kit.

Offense play should are 3 in 4 times be better than defense; this keeps the game flowing, prevents stalemates and makes games shorter. Games need to be short, from 5 to 15 minutes. Since TGS is played in SS13 a long game could get interupted, be it by roundend, a bomb or an antag murdering the players.

Short games also allow for best-of-3 or best-of-5 games rather than best-of-1, biasing the RNG towards the better player and ensuring that even if the players are disrupted mid match they're likely to have finished at least one game and thus had a full experience of TGC.

-## Job cards

The following numbers assume the job has an ability. Jobs with no effects would get their numbers tuned up to compensate, and jobs with really good abilities would get them tuned down. This is for baseline, middle-of-the-road abilities.

The average plasma supply of job cards is 6. It's enough to let you play lots of small (1, 2 or 3 cost) cards in one turn, to play a medium card (4 or 5 cost) and a small card in one turn or to play one really big card (6+ cost) in a turn.

On average 1 plasma deals 3.33 damage, and the average job gets 6 plasma per turn, which means 20 HP of damage per turn. If we want games to last a minimun of 4 turns then ~80 HP is the minimum recommended. However, the damage per turn is likely much higher due to synergies and thus 100 HP is probably the minimun for jobs that don't have low HP as an intentional drawback.

This means that, for average jobs, 100 is the lower HP threshold, 125 is the average and 150 is the higher HP threshold. Jobs below 100 HP need to be compensated somewhere else, and Jobs above 150 HP need to be nerfed somewhere else.

Card supply is, on most cards, 4. Some cards may be 3 or 5 but need to be compensated somewhere else. 0, 1 or 2 card supply is a massive problem which needs addresing somewhere else on the job's kit - either their ability lets them refill their hand on another way or their card pool has tons of draw cards.

Higher than 5 card supply is just really really strong. It means they'll almost always have full secrets and be able to spend all their plasma if need be, with tons of options of how to play a particular turn. A downside somewhere is needed for these kinds of jobs.

The jobs' cardpool usually have 1-3 department (average 2), with 1 or 2 special card pools and 0 or 1 unique card pools. (if 2 special then 0 unique, if 1 special 1 unique, with 1 special 1 unique preferred).

Overall the average job is 150 HP, 6 plasma supply, 4 card supply, 2 departments, 1 special card pool, 1 unique card pool and a minor but good effect.