Combat metaphor:
Primarily, we're building cannons and shooting (and trying to evade) each other, disabling specific parts and doing general damage until one of the ships simply can't take it anymore. The secondary weapons (emp's, Mines) are ways to do the same, but mainly in combination with the cannons. Once one ship is just too far gone, they blow up and the survivor can safely carry the exclusive data about the asteroid back to their company.

Combat mechanic:
If you have the means and desire, as the last action of your turn you can "attack" me. You declare a target part (say, a Container), and the cards that match the target's categories (in this case Basic and System) become "Hit" cards, while cards of the *other* categories (Tech and Tactical) are "miss" cards. I use whatever countermeasures I can (thrusters, card combos, etc.), then I draw as many cards from the deck as your weapons require, and apply damage accordingly. A "hit" will both do permanent damage (contributing toward killing me), and Part damage (a red token is placed on the part, and it is useless until repaired).

In the meantime, the Asteroid is attacking both of us in much the same way, just targeting with Basic and Tech cards.

Update #8

I've noticed something. Putting together a game like this means figuring out numbers of things, and a lot of it. And for whatever reason, I keep gravitating toward particular symmetries without any idea if the end result will be *balanced*. The asteroid is made up of 54 tiles, an even number that I rather liked. Then, I had 9 good ideas for upgrades to hide behind the asteroid, but that wasn't divisible by 6, so I wracked my brain to come up with 3 more. Then, I worked the resource distribution so there would be an even 60 resource tokens.

Then I just *had* to make sure there were 12 buildable parts, of which 6 were Tech and 6 were basic, then adding the subclasses of System and Tactical, also with an even 6 distribution. Like, I forced myself to come up with the TactiComp *because* I just needed one more Tech/Tactical part to round it out.

Of course, before I was using cards, d6 were the combat resolvers, so I was unhappy with the 52-card combat deck. So I made it 48.

Point being, this game just gravitated toward multiples of 6 in my head, and even though that's somewhat arbitrary, it feels like it almost auto-balances the random parts of the game *because* it's symmetrical.

That's probably just because brains like patterns, but hey, I'll take it.

Update #7
Played with a couple of friends who hadn't been exposed to the game at all prior. They picked it up pretty quick, and one of them beat me. While there is a lot of info to go over at the start (particularly with the different parts), they didn't really get confused anywhere and said the rules were intuitive enough to wing it. Given that they're both already the type to enjoy longer strategy games, I'd say that's a good indicator.

I'll be trying it out with a few other people, but I think it's worth planning on the prototype kits soon.
To do that, however, I have to do a granular overhaul of THE RULES. Make sure they are as clear and concise as they can be, since of course I won't be at every game play to answer questions

This is going to be a particular challenge, but I look forward to it.

Update #5

It works pretty well! The color combos are great, and give the part categories even more use.
I modified the system slightly so that instead of all Basics and Techs being "main classes" that always equal Hits, the two classes of the *targeted part* are "Hits." So if a Tech/Tactical part is targeted and the defender draws two tactical cards, that's two hits. A critical hit would still be if *both* a tech and tactical card are drawn.
The two cards unrelated to such a target (Basic/System) are considered misses.

One issue that was revealed in playtesting was the fact that the Asteroid can't actually target a specific part for Critical Hits. I may have the player who draws the Attack token declare a target, or the *other* player declare. Not sure yet.

Also, that was an insightful review. That is disconcerting mix of messages in the gameplay

Update #2

It's amazing how much this process is showing how dumb I can be

So the cards work really well, but over the last few games I've started to realize that, despite Critical Hits being a 1 in 6 chance, we always seem to end up with them in our damage pool. Why? Because we can't block them. So we can block a lot of Hits and Half Hits, but Critical Hits blaze right through defenses.

This is all well and good. That's what they're for. But what it means is that the late game has practically no Critical Hits left in the deck! Because in this system, cards that hit you are kept as damage markers. And since at that point defenses are good enough for any one or two shots, it tends to drag on a bit.

The Mrs suggested a system where we start with fewer Crits in the deck, and add them whenever a black token gets added to the Asteroid. That might work.

Alternatively, my idea is to make Crit cards their own category: when you draw one, there's some sort of extra damage effect on it you have to deal with, then immediately discard it and draw the next card,  keeping *that* one (whether Hit or Half-Hit) as a damage marker. This means Crits (like Dodges) stay in the deck and gradually get *more* likely.

I'll update after testing these.

Coddammit, Teague

Duuuuuuude ok this is super helpful! it makes perfect sense.

I'll hopefully post a more complete sense of the game this weekend.