Infinite Loop

Was really curious to see how the video game handled Cyro-Bot being hit with Fixed point and Greezer in play... turns out the answer is Greezer and Cryo bot trigger each other's damage indefinitely.

Huh. You’re right. Really should have found that during playtesting…

Welp.

Yikes.  Well time to setup and submit an issue to Handelabra.  

Huh. o.O I can't think of a way around that, either...

The thing is, it’s not a bug. It’s playing correctly.

That was just a playtesting oversight

Still needs to be submitted to Handelabra to bring to Christopher's attention as this leaves you unable to complete a game.  

But what's the solution because then you have to fix it in the tabletop game

On the tabletop you can just choose to end it.  We will have to wait for the official response from Christopher.  

well let's see if this works:

Christopher, Christopher, Christopher 

Not likely to get a response, right now. I believe he's travelling...

Only one I've seen this work with on the forums  is saying Guise three times. 

My guess is that this will be fixed by changing the Pompadour to deal damage the first time each turn rather than whenever

This is my guess too but man you really shouldn't touch his stylish hair.  

Better yet, have Greazer only deal damage if the Pompadour has greater than 0 HP.

Well, "Guise three times" does tend to attract attention. 

As I should. 

And do you have any idea how stressful it is to have to fit me into so many of these collectors boxes? Seriously?! That's a lot of me! 

There is supposed to be at least one copy of you coming with each Collector's Box so I'm sure you might be stretched thin.   Hopefully you fit in a sleeve or there will be a lot of angry KS backers. 

That was my thought too, with the “hair hp > 0” thing.

I kind of hate to see any sort of change, because it's so much fun when you're able to get the villains to beat on his hair, and he hits back for you. Maybe if the hair takes more than X damage in a single turn, he stops retaliating? That could work to make sure he's still doing the retaliation damage...

Maybe you just reduce all targets that would reach 0 to 0 and then end the loop. Guise can give an explanation on how it technically is infinite, but the net result is X, Y, and Z die, so I'll just put them at 0 for you. OK, loop over!

Zero would change mechanics, as they would be able to heal back up from 0 that way, whereas it would be impossible without infinite healing.

Then -100 maybe?

I dislike magic numbers ( -100 is jist an arbitrary value to solve a single problem, and that seems messy to me)

The cleanest solution would probably be to make Cryo-bot’s ability a may ability. It’s not ideal, but it would work

Got this response from John from the bug report I submitted:

Thanks for the report. This is a case where the video game is working correctly, but there's a "bug" in the interaction between those cards. We will discuss it with Christopher and get a solution in place soon.

.... so yeah, as expected this is an issue Christopher will need to weigh in on and decide.

How about changing the definition of “target” from “any card with HP” to “any card with positive HP”? So once a target hits zero or fewer HP, they are no longer considered a target and cannot be affected by abilities that affect targets. I mean just how messed up can Greazer’s hair actually get?

(sings softly)

~/ CryoBot and Greezer, doin' damage to you

(CyroBot and Greezer, doin' damage to you) /~

You do not want to know, man. One day that was just a wild ride through the history of your kooky planet, it just got completely haywire. Nothing I did could get it back into place.

More seriously, this would be a bad idea as it would prevent redirecting Sonic Mine's damage to itself thus preventing further damage.

Not to mention exploiting Fixed Point with Absolute Zero, et. al. :B

I was indeed traveling! Sorry for not getting back to this sooner.

John contacted me about this, and my preferred solution is to make it so the hair only causes him to strike back when at over 0 HP. If his hair gets thoroughly toussled, he gives up on it until he has a chance to fix it, but as long as it's looking good, he gets mad when you touch it!

Checking with Handelabra to make sure this is easy to implement.

So did you pull off being a villain at this wedding?  That outift makes me think you did especially if you threw a few maniacal laughs in there.

My only comment on this would be that this would reduce Greazer's retaliation damage per round a fair bit under regular play.  Impeccable Pompadour is always indestructible (and could regularly go below 4 HP per round if there's lots of AOE damage), while Fixed Point + Cryo is a specific situation.

However, I don't particularly know what a good solution would be, so I'm not actually adverse to this solution, and there is thematic justification.  Just wanted to point out the effect.

Another possible solution would be for Greazer to “fix his hair” in response to damage when his hair is below 0 rather than at the beginning of the turn (something along the lines of "when the hair is damaged, if it is above 0 retaliate, otherwise fix his hair). This would interrupt the retaliation cycle between him and Cryo-bot, but would allow for more retaliation. It would mean that his self damage would trigger more often, though, so the amount of psychic damage he deals to himself might have to be reduced.

If that had happened in table top I would have run the loop until a steady state was reached and then force the game to proceed. It would have been a wonderful bomb to setup basically auto kills any villian without a shield of some sort. I am a little worried about the ‘fix’ because it severely nerfs the damage output from hair tousling.

All target damage is a real weakness of vengeance targets so it was particularly helpful to have a price to pay for indiscriminate damage. Greazer will be a bit easier after the nerf.

A simple fix would have set a max amount of damage instances per turn for the reaction. This would preserve most of the mechanic while allowing progression. How much can the guy possibly fuss anyways?

With the proposed fix there is not much reason to avoid hitting the hair because the more you hit it the sooner he stops hitting you.

That would not stop the infinite loop with Fixed Point.

Yes, it would. Example: hair is at 4. Gets hit by CB, retaliates. Gets hit again, retaliates again. Gets hit again, retaliates again. Gets hit a fourth time, is now at 0. Instead of retaliating, hair returns to 4 hp, Greaser takes psychic damage. CB didn’t get hit, so chain is over.

Of course, poking CB will stay the chain again, but it will stop again at 0.

Funnily enough, I had the same reaction as MigrantP, but I think you're right. Would definitely need to tone down the self-damage, though.

That's a rather dramatic solution to solve an edge-case, fundamentally changing how it works in normal gameplay (and tabletop gamers will usually get it wrong).  It would seem to me to make more sense to errata Cryo-Bot the same way, since it's very rarely indestructible.

The biggest problem with that is then if you get a 4+ hit onto the hair, which is pretty easy even with AoE damage, you don't get retaliated against and greaser takes extra damage

Practically speaking, that's probably the solution with the least impact.  But I dislike Obvious Rules Patches

Yeah, that is a bit of a problem.  What if it had a "reduce damage to 1" effect like Twisted Miscreation?  Irreducible AoE damage at high values is going to be pretty rare.

Another funny infinite loop I ran into has to do with (V) La Capitan's "A Good Time Span". 

All you need to implement this one is to have La Capitan at +1 damage (from an Obsidian field, for instance), and get her to hit herself for 3+ (with that card out).

A Good Time Span prevents that damage, then causes La Capitan to deal the source of that damage (herself) 2 damage... but since she is boosted by 1, A Good Time Span triggers, prevents that damage, and causes La Capitan to deal the source of that damage (herself) 2 (+1 from the boost).

This continues until the heat death of the universe, or until you close down the game.

The trick is that A Good Time Span only destroys itself AFTER the retaliation damage is successfully dealt... so if she is hitting herself for enough to trigger the prevention, it never triggers the destruction. Or so I think. 

That one also works with Cryo-bot and Fixed Point, provided that Cryo-bot is dealing damage at +2.

This one is at least easily fixed - errata A Good Time Span to read "The first time La Capitan would be dealt..." or words to that effect.

I like the Twisted Miscreation idea!  In conjunction with either the "don't do damage below 0 HP" or "restore to 4 HP after HP drops to 0" ideas would be ok.  If it's with "don't do damage below 0 HP", maybe have Impeccable Pompadour HP equal to H?  So that Greazer can do more retaliation damage when vs. more heroes?

I guess one option that hasn’t been brought up is the idea that time cataclysm can set up an infinite loop and that is just ok. Chess has stalemates and sentinels has a few alternate loss conditions that are more neutral than a straight loss. One is literally lost in time… Infinite loop end condition seems thematic to me given the environment that creates the possibility.

I like the mental image of enormous attacks that barely affect his hair but still get him angry. Then finally a single lock of hair springs out of place and Greaser panics and drops everything to fix it.

I like this. Maybe it's ok to simply leave the infinte loop in place.

Thematically amazing.
Mechanically not very fun. (IMO)

I like the Miscreation idea, but now we’re at the point of retconning a card because we didn’t playtest it well enough. Does that mean they’ll have to release a hard copy too? (Although if they did so alongside ObliVAeon, I wouldn’t mind, I guess. I’m just thinking of production costs here)

In that case, I would probably word it something like this:

"This card is indestructible.

When this card would be dealt damage, reduce that damage to 1. Then, if this card has 1 or more hp, Greazer deals the source of that damage 2 melee damage.

When this card is reduced to 0 or fewer hp, Greazer deals himself 3 psychic damage and restores this card to 4 hp."

Also, this? THIS is funny, right here.

This is the kind of mid-game, joke-centric storytelling I love getting into with my friends. We have some great ones, too.

Haka’s Spacetime-breaking, recursive pants party

Geb accidentally setting off Mars’ self-destruct sequence (twice!) making him the Ennead’s Setback

The universal catchphrase, “Goddammit Setback!” (Or Geb, in certain circumstances)

Characters being given voices utterly opposed to their personalities (Billy Mays as Omnitron-V, Gilbert Gottfried as Ambuscade)

Soos being employed as the FV’s janitor and handyman​.

… We have a lot of fun with this game.

I am SO on board with Soos being a background character in Freedom Five comics.

We also came up with some other, actually REASONABLE voices for characters, too.

JonTron voices Guise, Bill Cipher voices Wager Master, etc.

It may need to go in another thread, but I have got to know the story behind this.