C.A.R.D.s

Cyber Assisted Response Directives (C.A.R.D.s) are the primary battle mechanic at the heart of Neon District with millions of possible combinations to make your team unique from any other team. Card Decks, also called Card Pools, are made up of 10 character C.A.R.D.s and 10 weapon C.A.R.D.s. Each equipped character always has a starting deck of 20 cards (characters without a weapon equipped will be given 10 basic attack cards), which can be changed throughout the course of a battle. Some card effects can remove or add cards to a deck, and others can increase or decrease the likelihood of drawing a card.

At the start of each character’s turn, a selection of three cards are chosen from the full pool of cards and made available for a player to choose from. Some of these cards will automatically take effect and don’t need to be selected — these are Effect cards. All cards have a specific Tick Cost that are incurred when using them.

When a character’s turn is over, the available cards are shuffled back into that character’s pool, and the next time the character is up, another three cards are chosen at random from the full pool. There is no discard pile, though cards can be removed from a pool through other effects.

C.A.R.D. Features
Each C.A.R.D. is made up of 8 components:

Name
This is the name of the card to identify it

Class
This identifies what class of character or weapon the card is for. There are currently six character class cards: Demon, Doc, Genius, Ghost, Heavy, and Jack and nine weapon class cards: Blade, Console, Drone, Dual, Energy, Pistol, Returning, Rifle, and Thrusting.

Type
There are 4 card types: Attack, Ability, Effect, and Interact. More details about these can be found below.

Tags
Some cards also have tags, which are optional identifiers for special kind of cards that can be individually targeted through effects and keywords, such as Purge, Focus, and Ignore. The current card tags are Maneuver, Hostile, Friendly, Heal, Sacrifice, and Nuke.

Level
A cards level will range from 0-10 and is loosely related to to possible strength of the card. Cards with a lower level are useable in most all situations and generally have lower Exploit requirements. Cards with a higher level have the potential to be more powerful when combined with the corrects character skills or other cards and generally have higher Exploit requirements.

Tick Cost
This is similar to a mana pool. The value shown on a card is how many units of time (ticks) it will be until your character gets another turn after playing that card. A characters current ticks also has the possibility to be increased or lowered through effects played by other character cards.

Action
This is what action will be taken by playing this card in battle. A detailed breakdown of the different action keywords can be found below.

Exploit
There are four levels of exploits possible: Easy, Medium, Hard and Epic and are a secondary effect of a card that has the possibility of also occurring in addition to the primary action. A detailed explanation of exploits can be found below and how their chance of success is determined.

C.A.R.D. Types
There are four card types to choose from: Attack, Ability, Effect, and Interact.

Attack
Provide alternate attacks to the player’s basic attack button. They most often come from the decks of a character’s weapon.

Ability
Ability cards can modify one or more characters, either by buffing or debuffing character stats, applying a status effect such as taunt, shield, or poison, healing or damaging a character, adding or removing cards from a deck, and more. They predominantly come from a character’s card pool.

Effect
Automatically played whenever they’re drawn to a character’s hand. Effects, like abilities, can do damage, heal, or alter characters in other ways, including modifying a character’s deck. They usually do not incur a tick cost unless the card text specifies it.

Interact
Not yet enabled in battles. Interact cards function in a very parallel way to Attack cards, but for a special kind of unit in battle called Environmental Objects. Environmental Objects will be introduced later in Season One.

C.A.R.D. Actions
Each card uses one or more keywords that determine what action a card performs. Many of the keywords have levels and decays — meaning that when an effect is applied, it is applied with a level between 1 to 5, which reduces by 1 at the end of the character’s turn, until it reaches 0 and the effect is no longer active.

[Stat] Boost (N)

 * Stat Boosts provide a buff on a given stat. Each level of Boost provides a temporary +20% bonus to the relevant stat.
 * There is a max level of 5 Boosts that can be applied per stat to a character. At the end of each turn, the Boost / Break level decays by 1 until it reaches 0, resetting to the character’s current stat value.

[Stat] Break (N)

 * Stat Breaks provide a debuff on a given stat. Each level of Break provides a -20% deficiency to the relevant stat.
 * The max level is 5, and the current level decays by 1 at the end of the character’s turn.

Counter-Attack (N)

 * Counter-Attack provides the possibility that, when attacked, a character may attack back at the active character. The chance of attacking back is 20% per level.
 * The max level is 5, and the current level decays by 1 at the end of the character’s turn.

Focus [Card Type / Tag] (N)

 * Focusing on a Card Type or Tag increases the chance that a specific card type will be drawn by 20% per level.
 * The max level is 5, and the current level decays by 1 at the end of the character’s turn.

Ignore [Card Type / Tag] (N)

 * Ignoring a Card Type or Tag decreases the chance that a specific card type will be drawn by 20% per level.
 * The max level is 5, and the current level decays by 1 at the end of the character’s turn.

Strip (N)

 * Strip removes N levels of current Boosts on a character, and it affects all active Boosts.

Cleanse (N)

 * Cleanse removes N levels of current Breaks on a character, and it affects all active Breaks.

Immediate

 * Immediate is played before a character’s action choice is performed.

Temporary (N)

 * The current level decays by 1 at the end of the character’s turn. When the level reaches 0, this card is removed from the character’s pool.

Piercing

 * Attack ignores Defense when calculating Damage.

Purge [Card Type / Tag] (N)

 * Remove N cards within a character’s Pool of a certain Card Type or Tag.

Add [Specific Card] (N)

 * Add N of a specific card to a character’s Pool.

Shield

 * Negates a single hit, no matter how strong or weak, then vanishes. If not attacked, lasts until the end of the character’s next turn.

Taunt

 * Forces the taunted character to only attack the taunter. The taunted character can only use Attack cards or the Base Attack. The effect lasts one turn, and if the taunter is knocked out before the taunted character’s turn, the taunt is no longer in effect.

Upgrade

 * Upgrade adds an additional effect to a card for the length of the battle.

Regenerate (N)

 * Restores 5% of character’s max health per Regeneration level at the end of the character’s turn.
 * The max level is 5, and the current level decays by 1 at the end of the character’s turn.

Poison (N)

 * Damages a character by 5% of character’s max health per Poison level at the end of the character’s turn.
 * The max level is 5, and the current level decays by 1 at the end of the character’s turn.

Replace [Cost]

 * Replace a card in the pool for another card in the deck. Replacements usually incur a cost and may have an effect when replaced.
 * Note: Replace option is not yet visible in the UI. This will be added shortly.

C.A.R.D. Exploits
Exploits are additional effects that can provide more power to a card. Examples include doing more damage, healing a character, or improving a character’s stats.

An exploit does not always work — the success of an exploit depends on the result of a comparison between the active character and its target, and a random roll.

There are four Exploit Difficulty levels, which make it easier or harder for an exploit to succeed. These four levels will add or subtract from the Defender’s Skill Stat to affect the chance for a successful exploit:

The Four Exploit Difficulty Levels are:

Easy
(-25 to Defender)

Medium
(+25 to Defender)

Hard
(+75 to Defender)

Epic
(+150 to Defender)

The calculation for an exploit is:

Chance = Attacker Skill Stat — (½ Defender Skill Stat + Difficulty)

Where skill stat is one of Nano, Mech, Tactics, Hacking, and Stealth, and chance is the probability that the exploit will be successful. The lowest chance is 1%, and the highest chance is 99%, so every exploit has at least a remote chance of succeeding or failing.