LogFAQs > #908671429

I've got a couple of ideas I want to write down while motivated. The first I briefly touched on. The second I haven't really. Feel free to use these and/or refine these.

1. Fatigue. I think this is a good catch-all mechanic to replace recharge. It would do nothing in fights, but abilities and perhaps other mechanics would interact with it. My thinking would be that if a mercenary is fatigued, they can't do things that cause them to be fatigued. Most abilities would cause them to become fatigued. I think paydowns causing a merc to become fatigued would be nice too. You could also reference the status in ability texts, like a KO that only works if the target merc is fatigued. You could make an ability cost 2 ability points, and also fatigue the merc who used it for 3 weeks or something. You could also do things like say, maybe make an ability able to be used with less ability points if you fatigue the merc more weeks.

2. Upkeep specific generic traits. Right now the game has the problem of a 1/week merc fundamentally being less useful than a 3/week merc, since they can all be rostered in all types of fights, but the 3/week is just stronger. I think you can balance this out by giving generic abilities to upkeeps that are assumed to exist on every merc of that upkeep. I'm just spitballing some ideas here but...

1/week - Whenever their abilities are used, you may roster them without using a roster slot for the week.
2/week - You may link them as permanent assists to 3/week mercenaries in peacetime. While not an assist their abilities have -1 AP and -2 fatigue cost. (you'd generally overcost these abilities relative to their utility)
3/week - No abilities.
4/week - Can be rostered in a low tier match for 2 roster slots by fatiguing them for 2 weeks (starting with this one) and spending 4 GP during peacetime.
5/week - No abilities.
6/week - Can be rostered in a mid tier match for 2 roster slots by fatiguing them for 4 weeks and spending 12 GP during peacetime.
7/week - No abilities.

These are just some basic ideas but give the gist of sweeping function you can give to upkeeps to make the lower upkeeps of tiers better. Technically 3/5/7 could have abilities too but I don't think they really need one as being the strongest of their tier helps them and keeping it more simple probably helps there.
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No problem!
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