big space

When gunner "loads a gun" he draws a few cards from his ammo deck and puts one in the gun he's loading.
When the gun is full he shuffles the ammo in it and draws one, hands that + the gun to the commander, when commander fires the gun he puts the ammo in the other ship's inbound queue and returns the gun to the gunner so it can begin loading again.

Hmm, problem: I want to share ammo cards between all the guns, even if they're different types, ie. the ammo card shows only the properties of the ammo, the actual type is determined by the gun+ammo combination, but then I need a way to preserve that information as it hits another ship.

@Zergling_man

Context

Is this for writing a program

For playing a game with physical cards

For playing a card game on computers

For playing a computer game

For the military

@shortstories It is a card game I am designing.
(I categorise it as a board game though, when I say "card game" I mean either "using a standard playing card deck - for some particular well-known standard" or "trading card game", and this is neither.)

@Zergling_man

OK I can not help you but that added detail might help other people who can help you understand the context so that they can help you

@shortstories I don't expect anybody to actually read it tbh
They don't even play swat with me

@Zergling_man
It is common to use tokens in magic the gathering

So if there is something symbolicly erepresented with a card but you can not transfer the physical card to more than one place you could use tokens

But the problem is knowing which token goes with which card if there are more than one card & more than one token

Maybe you could have a colored card for the original and make photocopies that are black and white to represent duplicates

More over you could write notes on photocopies

@shortstories Tokens in Magic are meant to be represented with corresponding token cards, it's just that most people don't tend to have the tokens their deck requires, because they don't always come in the same pack.
Given that this is not a trading card game, I can just put all necessary cards in the box.

I am considering having a slimmed-down version of the gun card that the commander holds, when he fires he attaches that card to the ammo and returns the original (the only reason he has to hold the original in the first place is so the gunner cannot possibly begin loading it when it's already full).
But assuming the gunner can fully load the gun every turn (which, given how early I am in design, I have to assume), I'd need one slim card for every turn that the projectile can live; if it's something that can be fired at 10 spaces or whatever, thus potentially lasting 10 turns, I'd need 10 slim cards for that gun. That might actually be acceptable, but I don't want to plan around it.
I could potentially give guns a cooldown between firing and loading, particularly a 1-turn cooldown would just be "when the card is returned, it comes face-down, flip it face-up at the end of your turn", and that halves the number of slims needed; and it makes sense that longer-range guns would have such a cooldown vs little short-range dakka things, so it naturally balances. (Also I can just force bigger guns to not be loadable in 1 turn somehow. Like just have written on the gun "requires 10 ammo to fully load, can only add 3 ammo to the gun per turn".)

(And yeah, I'm wondering if I need to include sleeves. My current plan for tracking incoming shots is just one pile for each distance, every turn you reveal the 1-distance pile, resolve everything in it, then move the rest across*, if a shot is to be represented with multiple cards I might need to group them better than just "place the ammo type first then the gun info, and when resolving, separate the cards by their pairs first".

*Although I'm hoping that I can do it more like a ring where you just update the pointer, but that tends to imply either a maximum size or eventually running out of table space. It occurs to me that I could just set a maximum size for the "regular" max range, and then if I want to have a sniper-type weapon I can have it insert a card that says "when revealed, swap it with the actual hit card and return it face-down so it resolves 10 turns later" or whatever.)

Ah, I should probably clarify that every player is playing their turn simultaneously, doing their internal ship work, then when that ends, the ship captains all go to the middle with whatever actions their crew have prepared, and play stuff against each other, when that ends they return to their ships for the next internal turn. And this is about as much detail as I currently have for the game.

@shortstories I just realised a huge problem with my shooting system: If you shoot a 3-range gun at 6-range, how do you know it fizzles after 3 turns? (I would prefer to allow this than not allow it, and have some resolution system for, eg. firing a 5-range gun at 6-range and the enemy moves towards you in the next turn, then it gets to hit. But even if I don't allow it, you still have to have some way to prove the range is valid without revealing too much about what it is. Maybe I need to attach information about the turn it was fired on, then when you resolve it the first thing you check is whether it has already fizzled.)

@Zergling_man

The way to dodge a bullet in real life is to not be where the gun is pointing when the trigger is pulled

That is you have to dodge before the shot is fired not after

If someone waits until the trigger is pulled they do not have enough time to dodge

When the gun is fired the hit should be instantaneous and not delayed, so you should not worry about where the bullet will be or where the target will move in future rounds but only where the target is when the triiger is pulled

@shortstories That would be simpler.
But that's not true of missiles and such, which is a more accurate model of what's going on with spaceships shooting at each other.