SibylLab/Program-Wars

Swap to replace redraw and help mitigate bad draws/deck balance

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Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Being able to redraw your whole hand in the game is not a great game play element. It can encourage players to redraw over an over to get the perfect cards rather than play good cards. However, having some game mechanism to help mitigate bad draws, which are an inevitable part of a card game, without being too powerful is needed. We have the discard card option which is sometimes useful, but feels like a wasted turn, and will not help when you have a lot of useless cards.

Describe the solution you'd like
I would like to replace the redraw button that will swap a selected card out for another card. This effect will take a turn to complete, so the card will not be available on your next turn. This could mean if you just don't want a card discard is a good option still as it will get you a card right away, just a random one.

This feature would give you a little choice about what you will get if you are willing to wait and can improve a bad hand by allowing you to know what card you will get next. It can also help with the fact that we need lots of instruction cards in the deck to make sure players have cards for their method stack, but that once the method stack is full there is something to do with these cards.

Possible replacement scheme

  • Instructions -> Repeat of the same value. ie) i1 -> Rx, i3 -> r3
  • repeat -> Variable of +1 value, ie) Rx -> v2, r3 -> v4
  • variable -> method
  • method -> i2, just in case you get a bunch of methods and no instructions
  • Safety, attack, and algorithm won't be able to be swapped

Describe alternatives you've considered

  • Swapping could require a cost of more cards than just one. This could either be cards of the same type can be used to construct a specific card, or just that you must refactor more than one card.
    • The main issue with this is that it makes the refactor more powerful by also redrawing cards. This may be desirable if swapping does not do enough to replace redraw, but it could easily make it to powerful.
    • The other issue is that it could be hard to get the right cards to swap if there is a specific card type needed.
    • However, if the only real need for swap is to find another use for instruction cards once the method is full, perhaps some kind of cost mechanic where enough points of instruction cards can 'buy' you a specific card could be useful, but may be a bit much. The swap method proposed is simple and should be effective at helping with the outlined issues, though it has not been tested yet.
  • Just put redraw on a cooldown. This is the approach that we will take for version 2.5. That way players can redraw a full hand but will not allow them to do it every turn. A hand full of instructions or a hand with all useless cards can be redrawn, but the player will have to wait 2-3 turns to do it again.