Okay. I am working on a co-op steampunk game where players are working together to gain resources (like aetheric energy, wood, and cogs) in order to repair components of their flying city.
I have come up with a mechanic that I would like feedback on as it would be the central part of the game and how much of impact this will have.
As well as the main board, there is a central gear rondel. Fairly large. Around the outside are spaces for smaller player gear rondels to slot into the gear system.
The current player rotates their gear to reveal an action. Player gear rotations are limited based on their role. For instance an Engineer may be able to rotate their gear up to 4 cogs, while the Aristocrat can only rotate up to one cog. “Let the riff-raff do all the work” and all that.
As the player does this, all the gears in the rondel are going to rotate. Once done, the active player takes their action, then checks the central gear to see what enemies do. Now, my other option is that the active player takes their action, then all the players take their revealed actions, if able, then resolve enemy actions.
I have yet to actually prototype this as I still need to work out what the player rondel action distributions will be (as I want them to be different as well as what the enemy actions will be as well. Prototyping will probably answer my question whether single player activation, then enemies, or all players, then enemies. It could lead to some interesting player strategizing, especially, if player gears are quite different from each other.
But thoughts would be nice.
That's my one concern about this is that lack of control that players may have. Prototyping will see how much of an issue this is going to be in a competitive game, but I do have a couple of thoughts on it, if it is a big issue for people.