Especially since canning speed spells seems like it would defeat the purpose of a turbo duel being anything other than a regular duel on wheels if memory serves me right.
Yeah, it never quite sat right with me how Arc-V had turbo duels without speed counters. Speed counters, outside of speed spell usage, served both as limiters to how fast you could go (in the first season) and as race points to gain in laps you complete while your opponent is in the pit-stop (WRGP).
However, I'm not too attached to them and am perfectly content with tossing them out. Grey and Charak both seem to not approve either.
I like the duel gang concept personally. Again, to me it seems to open up possibilities for character motivation. A duel gang doesn't just have to be full of delinquents. We can have a mechanic who can't get any other kind of work, a former sector security type who got kicked off the force for any number of reasons and wants to try and keep people safe in any way he can, or someone who just loves to ride fast and live hard. The duel gang also ensures that there's plenty of interaction potential, and that someone doesn't feel like they're kind of stuck off in a corner without the chance to interact with people.
In regards to a duel gang, I like the idea of having those NPC and outside threats, but don't want to overload the GM by having everyone duel NPCs the whole time. The stakes of facing outside foes is good and can lead to some interesting drama and possibly recurring rivals. For example, I know a couple of us mentioned wanting to play as underdogs. What if one of those underdogs is forced to play a duel while putting up their duel runner as an ante, only to lose it. It can open up the possibility of someone else stepping in to duel for that duel runner back. Same opponent, same deck, different outcome and stakes.
try not to worry too much about anything recurring or far away plot points for now. The best plans fall apart in the face of the anarchy that is RPing. Still trying to think of an exact overarching goal/reason for grouping together for the gang, though. If the examples you gave are any indication, a simple "Dominate all of satellite" goal that Team Satisfaction had isn't quite going to fly, and actively opposing security won't do the trick either.
One final thing I figured might be worth tossing out there as well, and possibly address at a much later time: tag duels could also be interesting to RP and have been Staples of the earlier shows (can't testify to the later ones). Just thought the logistics, possibility, or desire of those could be interesting to discuss as well.
lmao I'm so used to people just randomly tag dueling whenever they please that I didn't think anyone would even question if it was an element or not. I don't really think this is a question of "if" as much as it is a question of "when" since even Vrains
eventually had two tag duels. Show went a good 100 episodes without a single tag duel in it because links screwed everything up for everyone, but they still did two of 'em.