Perks & the Card Phase
The card phase
During every Break state, the run switches to the card scene and each player is offered 3 procedurally suggested cards. Cards are the run’s only build lever — weapons, perks and upgrades all arrive through them.
The suggestion system weighs rarity, price, the player’s Zingthons, unlock state and stack limits.
🚧 TBD — document the exact suggestion weighting (luck influence, tag synergy bias, duplicate protection) once tuned.
Perk design space
The perk pool (160+, full list on the perks index) spans three shapes:
- Stat trades — most perks: plus one stat, minus another (e.g. Quick Feet: +Speed, −Damage). Pure stat modifiers.
- Custom behaviours — event-driven effects that stats can’t express (e.g. Vampiric Touch: heal on kill), authored as custom effect definitions.
- Economy / meta perks — shop discounts via Allegiance (e.g. Police Badge), XP gain, pickup radius.
Perk metadata: rarity (Tier 1–5 color language), base price, stack limit, tags (Armor, Speed, LifeSteal… — used for filtering and future synergies), and optional unlock conditions.
Design rules
- Every perk must read in one line on a card. If it needs a paragraph, it’s a trait or an ability, not a perk.
- Trades beat pure buffs: the interesting choice is what you give up.
- Stack limits protect the sim (and the balance) from degenerate stacking.
🚧 TBD — rarity distribution targets per wave band; reroll/banish mechanics (do they exist?); duplicate-pick rules in co-op (can two players take the same card?).