MtG "Cube" Design in an EVx Context

 tl;dr: Some concepts from Magic: the Gathering to be used in Orion Skies.

What Is This About?

   Over the past several months, my focus has been on building the Tech Generator. The initial impetus for that was a desire to adapt design concepts from Magic: the Gathering "cubes" to an Escape Velocity context– I've built a few cubes, and was hoping to use some of my familiar systems & methods in Orion Skies. Building the Tech Generator has forced me to deeply explore the weapon and outfit mechanics, and their balance considerations, in the EV series, which has helped me think about the ways Magic concepts might translate. Additionally, "cubes" in Magic have hundreds of unique cards, and if I am to make that many distinct technologies in Orion Skies, a procedural generator will facilitate that process greatly.

   At this point, I think I have a paradigm pretty well worked out for how to design a lot of gameplay elements in Orion Skies using my "cube design" framework. Very exciting! :)

   I wanted to use this blog post to talk a bit about these ideas. Please be aware that cube design is quite complex, so this post will by no means be comprehensive – but it will go into a lot of ideas that I think have a lot of potential for Total Conversion plug-ins, that I haven't seen much discussion of before.

The current work-in-progress version of the Tech Generator. These are the configurations I have set up to generate Nova-style weapons.

What is a Cube?

   There are a few different popular ways to play Magic: the Gathering. One of my favorite ways is called "drafting".

   In a draft, several players sit in a circle, and each player opens a pack of 15 random cards. You look at your pack, choose one card to keep, then pass the rest of the cards to the next player. You receive another pack (minus the card the previous player picked), from which you choose one card to keep and pass the rest on again. The packs keep going around the circle, with cards being picked until there are no cards left. Then, you repeat the process with two more packs, and by the end everyone has picked 45 cards.

   Once the packs are done, each player takes their 45 chosen cards and uses ~23 of them, plus ~17 free "basic land" cards, to build a 40-card deck. Finally, everyone plays a mini tournament using these improvised decks they just built.

   I quite enjoy drafting because of the challenge of designing a deck on the fly, using limited resources and being unsure of what will come my way next. It's not about always picking the "best" cards, but trying to gather a collection of cards that will work together synergistically to support a coherent strategy– and making that happen in an improvised manner can be quite tricky!

   Most of the time when people draft, they use official sets of Magic cards produced by the company that makes Magic. However, some Magic players like to make their own sets of cards for drafting; these sets are called "cubes", and there is a lot of design work that goes into making a cube as interesting, fun, and balanced as possible.

   Finally, one more element I love about drafting is how the randomized availability of cards naturally leads your deck design in an unexpected direction each time you draft, and you end up with an endless variety of unique decks– even when you draft from the exact same card set each time!

One of my cubes, with the cards taken out of their packs so I can go through them and make some adjustments. (For any Magic players reading: this is a "Phyrexian Apocalypse" themed cube inspired by Invasion Block's lore.)

"Cube" Dynamics in Orion Skies

   With Orion Skies, I would like to try to recreate this improvising-a-strategy experience, except instead of picking cards that will work together synergistically to support a coherent strategy for your Magic deck, you are instead trying to pick weapons and outfits that work together synergistically to support a coherent strategy for your ship– improvising as you go based on random availability/unavailability of hundreds of different possible items.

Mass Production of Outfits

   The obvious challenge with this idea is the feasibility of creating hundreds of outfits!

    The Tech Generator covers the design side of that challenge: once I configure it to create stats for the sorts of outfits that would make for an interesting "drafting environment", I'll be able to let it create a near-endless variety of them.

    The other side of this challenge is graphics. I'll have to explore the possibilities for producing graphics efficiently for a large quantity of outfits. One idea I have is to re-use a smaller subset of graphics on a larger number of related weapon systems – for example, many fantasy RPGs have one graphic for "longswords", but each longsword you find in the game has unique stats and magical properties. Another possible option would be procedural graphics: Blender seems to have some powerful procedural capabilities, which I will continue to explore.

Strategic Depth

    Another challenge with this "drafting in EV" concept is designing weapons and outfits that have rich strategic interactions with each other, so that equipping your ship isn't just about finding the "best" and "most powerful" weapons, but instead is about looking for ones that, when put together, become greater than the sum of their parts.

   There are a number of "design preview" articles online about how the company that makes Magic designs their official card sets; there are also many player-written articles about the art of cube design. I've read a number of those, and, with those ideas as a starting point, I've come up with an approach I like for my own cubes. I'll talk a little about that below.

 Imagine spending an Override playthrough roaming the galaxy in your Freight-Courier, encountering dozens of unique outfits and weapons along the way, exploring different loadouts & trying to devise the most strategically perfect combination to use on your ship– and then doing that again with several new pilots, ending up with a completely different Freight-Courier loadout each time!

MSCTT

   "MSCTT" is an acronym I use to remember 5 concepts that help to create interesting strategic dynamics between the cards in a Magic cube – Mechanics, Synergies, Counters, Tradeoffs, Tension.

   (These 5 concepts are not, in and of themselves, a comprehensive framework for cube design, but they make a significant contribution.)

   When I build a cube, one of the early steps is to create a diagram of different gameplay elements within the cube and how they interact with each other in terms of these different concepts. I typically start with a few core elements that fit the theme of the cube, and then try to find ones to add that have these 5 types of interactions with that core.

   Below are short discussions of each of these 5 concepts, followed by an "MSCTT diagram" for Orion Skies.

Mechanics

   This ultimately is a bit of an abstract term, referencing the types of abilities or ways-of-working a Magic card might have. It's the foundation of the whole "MSCTT" concept.

   In EVx, a "mechanic" would really be a unique capability or unique feature of an outfit or weapon. For example, I would consider some examples of "Mechanics" from the EV series to be:

• Basic Weapon Category (e.g. Cannon vs Turret vs Beam vs Missile)
  
• Fuel-Using Weapons
• Impact / Knockback
• Ionization
• Long vs Short Range Weapons
  

   For Orion Skies, I've identified a few core Mechanics to use as a starting point for a design:

1. High-Damage Forward-Firing Weapons
2. Fuel Capacity & Regen
3. Stealth / Hiding in the nebula fog

   (Please bear in mind that all of this is subject to change at this point!)

Synergies

   In Magic, some Mechanics work together in a way where they become greater than the sum of their parts. Often (though not always) it's helpful to design your deck to leverage these mechanical Synergies to boost your power and capabilities.

   There are, I think, some Synergies in the existing EV series games, though they tend not to be as strong as Synergies often are in Magic. Here are a couple that I can think of:

• Fuel Scoop + Afterburner – once you get both of these, you can use your Afterburner over an extended time & without worrying about running out of fuel; and your Fuel Scoop actively helps you even when you're not going on long-distance journeys
• Armor Bonuses + Cloaking Devices – the downside of most Cloaks is they drop your shields; by adding more Armor, you can use the Cloak more safely, while the Cloak gives you more options (hiding, running, repositioning) to manage your health during a fight
  

   Here are some Synergies I've thought about that involve the Mechanical concepts noted above for Orion Skies:

1. Tractor Beams + Ionization to temporarily immobilize a target while you use your high-damage weaponry
   
2. Fuel-reducing outfits and fuel-using weapons, fed by boosters of your fuel capacity & fuel regeneration
3. Keeping in line with the existing EV games, armor boosters helping protect you when you drop your shields to use stealth

   (Again, please note that these ideas are not set in stone.)

Counters

   This is the idea that some Mechanics readily defeat others, in the style of Rock-Paper-Scissors.

   The EV series definitely has some Counters already; here are some examples:

• EVO's whole interaction of Shields & anti-Shield weapons, vs Armor and anti-Armor weapons
• In EVO, Dispersal Rockets are perfect for taking out Azdaras before they can regenerate their shields
• In EVC and Nova, flares and point-defense weapons are Counters for missiles
  

    Here are some Counters I'm thinking of for Orion Skies, involving those same core Mechanics mentioned previously:

1. Some of the high-damage weaponry will be missiles, which will be dodgeable (not outrunnable!) by ships with high maneuverability
   
2. Small ships with afterburners can have those advantages negated when attacked by tractor beams
   
3. Detection technologies and "depth charge" style mines will be usable to counteract stealth/hiding tactics
   

   (Once again, these ideas are tentative at this point; I'll have to try them & finalize them on the CFO engine.)

Tradeoffs

   In a cube, there are hundreds of cards. Inevitably, there will be some niches that need to be filled by multiple cards. In such cases, it's generally best to have several different cards that are similar in power level, but where each has specialized capabilities that make it better than the others in some circumstances, and worse in others – Tradeoffs. This generally leads to more interesting deck design and cardpicking decisions than, say, having multiple copies of the same card, or having several similar-but-different cards where some are strictly better than others.

   One thing the EV series has consistently done well in terms of Tradeoffs is the different types of primary weapons – Laser vs Proton in EVC; Phase vs Neutron in EVO; Blasters vs FPCs vs Chainguns in Nova. There is also often a good set of tradeoffs for missile weapons – some that are smaller and more accurate but deal less damage, vs others that deal more damage but struggle to hit smaller faster ships.

   In Orion Skies, I'll aim to take a similar approach with different weapon categories, where for example different cannons will have unique properties that give them Tradeoffs in comparison to each other. I'd also like to do similar for Outfits – for example, perhaps there are multiple different Afterburners, with some being more fuel-efficient but others taking up less room on your ship.

   This is one area that can't be fully planned out in advance; I'll have to experiment with different options while building & playtesting Orion Skies to ensure there are tradeoffs throughout.

Tension

   This is pretty abstract. It's the idea of having certain elements of the game that can be pushed in two directions, with there being reasons why a player would want/need them to be at one extreme or the other. If there are conflicting incentives, that creates Tension along the scale.

   Tension can be purely internal, as a sort of tradeoff between different cards / strategies, so that you choose one way to focus your efforts. It can also be interactional, if you want things at a certain end of the spectrum but your opponent wants them at the other end, so you end up in a tug-of-war to decide the state of the game and thereby who has an advantage in that field.

   Probably the clearest example of Tension I can think of from the EV series is Nova's focus on weapons with different ranges– do you build your ship with Railguns and try to fight from long range, or do you get Thunderhead Lances and try to fight up close? This not only determines what other weapons and outfits you want to get, but also it's interactional: if your enemy has a different range preference than you, you have to use maneuvering and push/pull/ion weapons to fight over the range to fight at!

   EVO's focus on shields vs armor is also a form of tension. Do you form your ship's hitpoints primarily out of shields, or primarily out of armor, or from a mix of both? For your weapons' damage output, do you configure them to do mostly shield damage, mostly armor damage, or a mix of both? In this case, the Tension is mostly internal to your own ship loadout, but as noted above there is also a Counters situation happening that is more interactional.

    For Orion Skies, I would want to keep and enhance the different types of Tension we see throughout the EV series. One thought I'm working on is the idea of having Push weapons with heavy impact/knockback effects, vs Pull weapons such as (but not limited to) tractor beams.

Diagram

   With all of that explanation out of the way, I wanted to share an "MSCTT diagram" for Orion Skies.

   (It too is very much subject to change!)

   Here's a key to the diagram:

• Boxes = Mechanics
• Black Lines = Synergies
• Gray Arrows = Counters
• (Tradeoffs will simply mean creating outfits with similar overall power, but different Mechanical strengths & weaknesses based on the diagram.)
• Red Dashed Lines = Tension

   And here's the diagram itself:

A tentative "MSCTT diagram" for Orion Skies, mapping out the sorts of strategic interactions I'm hoping to build into its technology options.

   As always, thanks for reading this far. It's still a long road ahead, but I'm very excited to try out these concepts once Cosmic Frontier is available! Have a great day, all. :)