What is says on the tin; If a fleet successfully uses a battle card in a fight they cannot use it again until the start of the next game turn. This would drastically increase the amount of strategy required when choosing cards; just spamming the same card is no longer an option, and you have to decide if a card is useful now or would be better later. It would also cut down on Repair abuse, and, by extension, allow other cards that would be too "overpowered" if you were able to use them as often as you liked.



This also drastically increases the value of researching additional battle cards, since if your fleet is attacked multiple times in one turn you run the risk of running out of cards before you run out of fights. Cards that are objectively "worse" than similar, better cards are now more useful, since only being able to play the "better" card once means you're not necessarily playing the "worse" card instead of the better one.



All this also opens the option for things like out-of-combat card use; Since you can only use each card once, you could choose to use the ubiquitous Repair card in a turn where you didn't fight anyone at all. The GUI for this already exists in a way, since you can view the Battle Cards available to your fleet so the only interface change needed would be being able to click them.



Corner-case section:[/u]

Certain exceptions would probably be made, like the base Retreat card. It's important to note that this would only apply to cards that have been used successfully, if a card is countered the countered player has still wasted a round, but they haven't wasted the card. If a ship is moved between one fleet and another then the receiving fleet loses access to any cards the donating fleet had already used, to prevent gaming the system with some kind of create new fleet -> get all cards back exploit. Ideally this would be robust enough that adding one used-up ship to a fleet wouldn't wipe out that fleet's options, but for practicality's sake that may not be doable. A simple warning message letting you know that your transfer will lead to card loss would probably be sufficient.

A whole game turn may be excessive, but certainly limiting cards to one use per battle (countered or not) would shake things up. I feel like all I do is get laser ships and repeatedly use "Target Locked" for all three phases.



Forcing players to use a unique card per phase may even encourage a greater module diversity as they'll use up their beneficial cards...

I find myself using all of the cards already, if i can only jam my enemy's missiles once, wont he just block me during the long-range?

Igncom1 wrote:
I find myself using all of the cards already, if i can only jam my enemy's missiles once, wont he just block me during the long-range?

Splicer wrote:
It's important to note that this would only apply to cards that have been used successfully, if a card is countered the countered player has still wasted a round, but they haven't wasted the card.

If he blocks you first round you can use it in the second or third round instead.



If you're worried that a high-missiles fleet will probably use a card that blocks the missile jammer card first turn, well, that's how the game works already.

I would prefer that there were only ever eight cards to choose from and the cards you researched either added one to get to that number or superseded an existing one.



As it is now...

Shivetya wrote:
I would prefer that there were only ever eight cards to choose from and the cards you researched either added one to get to that number or superseded an existing one.



As it is now...

Whaaaaa?



And it really isent hard to choose cards, i would prefer more of them.

One card use per turn seems a little harsh, especially when you realize that MP isn't quite running flawlessly yet and most people are playing against the AI, again who are not the best they can be. The fundamental idea is sound but I do not think it's feasible to implement in the foreseeable future when people will send in a fleet only to find there's 20 enemy stacks that will grind it into powder via attrition. This can often occur in one turn, before you can reap the benefits of repair modules or even retreat because you can locked into combat by the AI's perfect reflexes.