[Community Project] Implementing Field Manipulation series into Cygnia

[OldTrees]

But having a "Move one position" card still means that you can only move creatures six times per game, which might not be enough against decks with lots of FM-based CC. Having creatures/permanents with abilities that move other creatures would be an obvious solution, but FM-CC might necessitate adding movement cards into decks which have no defence against them, which could break that deck.

Having said that, it's very easy to poison and much harder to get rid of poison, and no one complains about that. So maybe it's not as much of a problem as I'm speculating.

Good explanation of the problem. While we could add "move one position" cards and add enough forced combos with it so that we don't feel like it is a forced combo problem, this only addresses the constructive/friendly/helpful side of cards. If we use this, or any similar "add these N cards" solution for creature movement then destructive/hostile/harmful position related effects would be too strong against decks that don't include these creature movement cards. So either we limit our choices to the constructive/friendly/helpful side of cards or we need a solution with stronger design potential.

(While it is hard to get rid of poison, several elements directly combat it. That makes it similar but still significantly different from the potential potential this project has in the way of destructive/hostile/harmful position related effects)

As for your 2:move 1 idea, I think that is too much movement(it is move T hexes) since it makes it too hard to add creatures that are specialized in movement. That is why I suggested upward movement(0-2 hexes) so we could have especially mobile creatures(new cards) that could move 1/turn(T hexes)

[EmeraldTiger]

I don't know if this is the kind of thing your looking for, but here it is. 
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/card-ideas-and-art/sinkhole-sinkhole/msg437726/#msg437726

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/card-ideas-and-art/freedom-liberty/msg438100/#msg438100

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/card-ideas-and-art/seeding-the-field-seeding-the-field/msg434866/#msg434866

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/level-1-crucible/unbound-unbound/msg1016538/#msg1016538

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/level-1-crucible/diversity-diversity/msg1019282/#msg1019282

[AD TienzuStorm]

I don't know if this is the kind of thing your looking for, but here it is. 
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/card-ideas-and-art/sinkhole-sinkhole/msg437726/#msg437726

I will post others here as I find them.

Your ideas are lovely (I really like the Sinkhole idea, although I'd say that an interesting spin on it would be to have it give 100% chance to burrow rather than instakill, but I digress), but right now we're defining and identifying "field manipulation", as shown in the yellow text in the OP (although the OP may change according to OT's observations). So these should probably be saved for a later "designing phase".

[AD TienzuStorm]

Sorry for double post, but I feel that this deserves a little bumpity bump.

Does anybody have an idea for a nice, concise wording for field manipulation?

At the most basic level, I think it can be cut down to something like "field manipulation is making use of the position of creatures on the field".

At the most basic level, Field Manipulation can be split into these groups:

A) Cards that alter slots on the field. (Flooding).
B) Cards that move creatures between slots. (none currently ingame)
C) Cards that change based on the current 'state' of a slot(s).

I believe this is the best description so far (probably also since it's one of the only posts describing field manipulation in this manner).

So that's that.


Also, I'd like to go back to something OT said earlier.. let me dig it up..

Spoiler for wise OT words:

(at work so I have to be brief)

While the goals listed in the OP are a great model for adding an independent series (like Nymphs/Shards/Weapons) into the game, I don't think step 1(looking at the past) is enough preparation for step 2(counting number of additions) for the kind of thing we are trying to add here.

I think we need to not only identify what field manipulation is(and related effects like creature movement that enable the addition of field manipulation) we also need to decide how far to go and when to stop.

For example: How can/will a vanilla photon move? Will it remain unable to move? Will it be allowed to move up a row(up left or up right)? Will it be allowed to move 1 tile any direction?


As for me field manipulation includes(but I am being brief so I might forget things):
Limited movement(up only seems best to me right now) for basic creatures which increased the design freedom for -> Mobile creatures

Effects with area-
Creatures with auras
Spells that hit areas(the smallest non trivial hexagon is good)
Terrain features(can be as small as a single hex or larger) which also imply things to mobile creatures
Formations(Probably by creatures with a guardian ability)

(at home)
Ok. Now I can go into more detail as to the reasoning.

Imagine we wanted to add cards that enabled creature movement and add cards that were balanced around creature movement. Not every deck would include the "move creature" cards. If we wanted to include hostile cards that were balanced around our opponent being able to move their creatures, then we need our opponent to be able to move their creatures. This means 1 of 3 things, either creature moving cards become a card tax, we can't use hostile cards that interact with creature movement, or we need creatures to have some form of movement already.

Basically this kind of project runs into an inverted form of the forced combo problem(the ___ tax problem) when trying to explore its possibility space. As a result we have to make decisions about how much to explore our possibility space(creating ___ tax problems to resolve) and how much of our possibility space to ignore(to avoid the kinds of resolutions necessary for those problems).

Might it be a good idea to change the OP with a goal or two in between one and two?

I dunno what I'm doing, I'm just bringing up points for discussion (and also since they sorta need to be taken care of, but shh).

Also...

One other point I'd like to bring up - CI&A usually gets slot-altering cards for creatures but never gets slot altering cards for permanents. We should explore this at some point.

[OldTrees]

Does anybody have an idea for a nice, concise wording for field manipulation?

At the most basic level, I think it can be cut down to something like "field manipulation is making use of/accounting for the position of creatures on the field".

Yes, that is a good description.

Also, I'd like to go back to something OT said earlier.. let me dig it up..

-snip-
 
Might it be a good idea to change the OP with a goal or two in between one and two?

Yes. Determining how far we are willing to go would fit nicely between 1 and 2.

As for permanents, I believe while we should focus on the creature zone(due to the potential for creature mobility) we can consider impact to the permanent zone.

[AD TienzuStorm]

Considering this will require moving and knowing creature slots and maybe permanent slots, is there an image anywhere that shows the exact ordering for where creatures/permanents come out?

[Espithel]

Considering this will require moving and knowing creature slots and maybe permanent slots, is there an image anywhere that shows the exact ordering for where creatures/permanents come out?

I will make one soontm.

[andretimpa]

Someone made one of these a long time ago. Someone with a better memory probably knows where it is.

EDIT:

found it in my PC

[OldTrees]

*Bump*

So
1) Are there any more thoughts on what field manipulation is about?
2) How far are we going and where are we stopping?

[OdinVanguard]

In case anyone is interested, there is already a small amount of headway in this area implemented in openEtG, the spell card "brawl" was put in recently. It causes the owner's creatures to "duel" creatures in opposing slots. E.g. each of the two dueling creatures attack the opposing duelist.
Any of the owner's creatures that do not have an opposing creature to duel end up attacking the opposing player instead.
Also, the implementation of the effect ends up re-readying the abilities of the attacking creatures.

I think something along that line could be very interesting to play with. While that may or may not fit rigorously into a field "manipulation" it would synnergise very well with field manipulation effects. Cards like that could be good as starting points to motivate players to start using field manipulation in decks.

(this also means that there would be some code base for implementing similar effects into cygnia when / if the cards make it that far)

Something else to think about is how to prevent flooding from being OP in combination with field effect manipulation. That seems to be a very common issue with cards that move creatures around the field.

[andretimpa]

Something else to think about is how to prevent flooding from being OP in combination with field effect manipulation. That seems to be a very common issue with cards that move creatures around the field.

Two solutions I can think of:
-No new field manipulation cards for , forcing a duo with upkeep to use flooding.
-Limit how much you can modify the opponent field (euther by cost or flexibility) and be more flexible with how you modify your own field.

[AD TienzuStorm]

For the Flooding issue, making the movement limited helps or the movement limitations limited. For example, instead of "move target creature to a new slot", it can be "target creature moves to a random adjacent slot" to prevent automatic movement into flooded slots. As for field limiters, I'd like to use my Meteorite card as an example. It's limited in how much it can impact the field.