And I don't mean methamphetamines. What I've seen in a few threads though, is the notion that two 75n units with 6spd will always trump a 150n champ with 6spd, well, because they can do twice as much. And the gray area exists in efficiency vs nora cost vs spd. Champs that are sub-6 speed need to be insanely efficient to justify running, and champs above 75n need to be insanely powerful so that they're not trumped by pairs or triplets of lower cost units. You're rambling, get to the point; Yeah, that thing. I was wondering then, if it may not be an idea to look at how SPD and Nora might work together as opposed to as separate systems altogether. Maybe, Speed is renamed to a different stat. Ability Well, or AP Cap, or I dunno, something clever that simply means 'How many AP I can store.' And in addition, champs start acquiring AP based on how much they cost. As in, AP generated each turn equals something like Nora Cost / 10, rounded up. So a 30n champ...well, a 30 nora champ might have a 'speed' of 6, but it only generates 3 AP. 75 nora would still be the 'baseline' cost that we aim for, as that's enough AP generated (8 when rounded up) for two attacks, or moving and attacking. But, what's more, is now it doesn't hurt so bad when you invest in that heftier Nora cost champ. 110 nora now generates 11 AP, which is significantly more than those 75n champs, but now you don't feel like a fool when you invest in that 110n monster, to have your opponent respond with that 70 and 40 Nora pair that's going to eat his lunch and tell him his mother dresses him funny. Since, with this idea, the 70n and 40n units generate just as much AP, and given fair costing, between the two should have stats/abilities comparable to the 110n unit, as opposed to having comparable stats/abilities, and likely generating somewhere near twice as much AP, because, well, two units. Now we have true parity between the two most powerful resources in Pox, Nora and AP, so that people can feel that they're not screwing themselves over investing in the 'bigger badder' champions because they just can't keep up with the cheaper ones. But, I have no doubt that in my excitement, I've likely missed something that would make this the most terrible idea ever, but I have some hope that maybe it's possible that it's actually a really good one. Thoughts? (Other than the likely TLDR) Speaking of TLDR; Remove AP gen from the SPEED stat, rename the speed stat to something that just signifies AP storage, and have champs generate AP based on their Nora cost.
The two short term dangers I can see jumping out at me are that the removable to speed would cause a need for a large list of speed/ Ap denial runes that may or may not cause a whole new can of worms in itself. Especially when you consider global speed debuffs like elsari coven and speed trap. Secondly if they are getting their entire AP each turn 11 spaces is much to high for a first turn. 8 speed on my waroggs and abominations first turn can already be problematic on first turn draw. I can't imagine having titans and the like gain that kind of early mobility. I am an advocate for whatever makes a 100+ champion a big drop viable but I don't think game break ap gen is it. It's a start to a bigger discussion on big drops in general though. My personal opinion is a 100+ drop should be at the power level to take on around 1.5x their cost in resources before they are destroyed. The exception being hero hunters whose only job is to stop big drops. How we get to that power level and keep it balanced is anyone guess. It is one of my most favorite moments of any tcg I have ever played though getting a huge beast out and demanding proper resource investment take them out or lose. Yu-gi-oh did a great job of this for example in it's initial release. This games version of a 75 would be a 4 star card. Then as power progressed you'd get to the 5 star + which needed to kill a monster at the power level of hopefully a 90 nora champ Then if you went into all out 7 star + you'd have to sacrifice about 1/3 of your board presence in a 2-3 monster sacrifice to pull something like this : Tangible progression that you can't ignore. That's what I'm hoping for.
Solid points. But you're hanging up in part to that Nora Cost/ 10 portion of the idea. It doesn't have to be divided by 10, that was just a nice clean number to demonstrate with. Also, now that I've had time to ponder a bit more. It's likely that speed could be maintained exactly as it is now, and instead of being AP gen'd as it currently stands, it's simply a limit on just how far a unit can move in a turn. So that you can still have these beastly units generating huge chunks of AP in a turn, but are still limited on how far they can move. So that a 7spd, 120n Titan can only move 7 spaces, and would still have 4ap after in order to attack or activate abilities, as opposed to units that generate 8ap, and might have 7spd, but would have to decide between moving for full value, or less and getting an action in as well. This would also 'de-complex-ify' the game a bit. Speed would be clean and understandable, and no more messy (albeit not THAT messy) storage mathz, and the new players we hopefully get later on would have one less thing they have to understand. And yes, some AP denial pieces would likely need to be reworked, as I imagine a system like this would just dump leftover AP, but there aren't too many champ based abilities that care that much about AP, and given they haven't gotten into the non-champ rune set, I imagine there'd be ample time to give this idea some consideration.
So your basic premise is to have nora cost determine amount of actions per game while speed only determines number of squares? It seems fine until I think about what happens when a 120 nora champion meets 75 nora champ and they no longer move during combat. Both would only get 2 attacks off and then the advantage is lost. 8 vs 11 isn't much to compete against when you get full AP each turn.
That's more or less the gist of it. Speed is how far it can move, and AP, now being acquired from Nora Cost divided by whatever would be fair, determines how much 'stuff' that unit can do. So, the more it costs, the more AP it can generate, and as seems fair, the more things the unit can do. BUT, things quite literally can only be so fast, so speed could still be retained as how many squares of movement a unit can make in a turn. This would also make it more feasible for the very rarely seen...like never, ever seen....sub-5 speed units. DESIGN SPACE! Like, a future exploration of 'siege units' that actually work like siege units. They generate 6 or so AP, but are slow and bumbly as all get out, only moving 1 space a turn, but have great potential for blowing things up with huge damage or what have you.
Speed, ap, and ap caps being seperate could be very interesting but would be a radical change Would require alot of thought and planning
The main problem here is that a champ that costs 110 nora might cost that much because it hits like a truck (or, alternatively, Seventrucks). Giving such a champ enough AP to attack ~3 times per turn against the lesser champs that attack 1 or 2 times with much less power is just asking for trouble as it blows everything up in one turn while taking relatively little damage per champ itself.
True, there are definitely some champs that would likely need to be looked at yet again if something like this were to go in, but even a unit like Seventrucks would eventually get mowed down by a swarm of smaller units. The point is, as it is now, you drop a unit like Seventrucks, and you pray to the Pox Gods that he gets at least one kill in. At least in this idea, you have better odds of at least recouping some of the cost in molly-whopping at least one low cost unit. But, but, everything after is actually thought out and I think well-worded. I was just trying to prevent druggies from popping in with all of their weird, hyper drugginess
