Board 8 > Another topic in which I make a silly Mercs spinoff game concept

(+) Yeah! (+)

sometimes I get The Itch and it won't go away until I put some stuff down in writing and do some light playtesting and decide not to make and run a full game. (because that's not as fun for me as designing one) usually it's Mercs-related because I'm better at remixing things than coming up with new ones.

you can follow along and chime in, or not

This time the idea is stolen from the Golden Voyage rougelike-like event in Langrisser Mobile. tldr:
-Still the Mercs "base" of a forum game where voters decide the matches. One of these days I'll have an idea that can actually work as a physical tabletop game, but this ain't it.
-You'll fight against randomized NPC teams for goodies (think Customizations and Abilities from regular Mercs)
-Mercs will start off extremely stripped down, but you can mix and match said goodies to come up with weird combinations (ex. Mario probably doesn't get a fire flower but you might be able to give him The Plan and a machinegun later)
-There's no economy (for now at least)- everybody gets new Mercs and other upgrades at a steady rate, but generally winning will help you get better options. There will be a steady powercreep for all fights and rewards.
-Every X days, all the players have matches against each other instead. Lose two of those and you're out.

The rules are a bit more fleshed out in my head but that'll have to wait.

---

I realized my initial thought on elimination was a product of bad math, so that's not entirely worked out. A lot of the numbers and such aren't carved in stone yet anyway.

-Eight players.
-Pre-game, 24 "1 upkeep" mercs will be sorted into "packs" of 3 for each player. Each player picks a Merc out of the pack, and the others go into the pool for NPC use.
-On a normal "day," you will have a choice of going to an Ability Node or a Loadout Node. (maybe I'll add some options later)
-Either way, you will need to fight a randomized opponent squad. Everybody gets the same nodes, with the same teams guarding them. They'll be roughly scaled to the appropriate level, but since they're randomized, I expect players to beat them more often than not.
-On either Node, if you win, you get your choice of three prizes of the corresponding type. If you lose, you just get a completely random one. They'll scale with how far you are in the game.
-Abilities are....abilities, like Mercs. When you get them, you assign them permanently to one of your Mercs.
-Loadouts are equipment, skills, and other buffs and boosts for your Mercs in battle. You assign them during the roster phase.
-After three Days of this loop, there will be an elimination Day.
-Right now I'm leaning towards formatting that as a mini-tournament, except the losers "advance" in the bracket.
-Whoever loses in the finals is eliminated. Everybody else gets a new Merc from the next power level up (so after the first one, you'd get a "2 upkeep") but the ones who did have a better shot at the Mercs they want. Mercs who don't get picked go into the NPC pool.
-Process repeats as Mercs, Loadouts, and Abilities all slowly scale up, until the last team standing wins.
-A Merc may or may not come with an Innate Ability. (if they do, it'll probably be weak and/or a passive) Beyond that, they may learn up to three more. Both individual Mercs and your team as a whole will be limited on how many Abilities you can use in a match.
-I'm going to try to design Abilities so that cooldown is not a thing. Theoretically, the scaling should help balance, in a sense.
-You can shuffle Loadouts freely during the roster phase, but a Merc can only carry three at a time.
-Still sorting out how individual battles will work for terrains and abilities and all that stuff.
-NPC teams will have Loadouts, but not Abilities. The goal is to minimize their "decision making."

So executive summary is you collect prizes, but by winning against weird NPC teams, you can raise your odds of getting ones that you want. Playoffs eliminate one person every four days. The fun will (hopefully) come from finding weird synergies with what you have, and seeing what weird random teams get pulled out of a hat to face you. There will also be a bigger power curve than normal Mercs, which I remember some people like more than others. In the beginning, it'll be 1 on 1 fights between (buffed) 1 Upkeep equivalents, but by the very end, it might be even more high level than a High Tier endgame Mercs fight.

---

Seems interesting, especially with the potential of having similar characters, barring the gear you throw out on them.

it's kinda hard to come up with 24 1-upkeep combat mercs that are distinct in origin and fighting style, while also sticking to stuff I kinda know!

---