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.

Last edited by Writhyn (2019-03-25 13:57:13)

Further Thoughts:

Like the original post says, the game's mechanics break into three categories: the Asteroid, the Cards, and the Parts. Each of these affects the other in (ideally) intuitive ways. But I'll drop some overview thoughts I had about each:

The Asteroid:
Originally, the asteroid was just gonna be a stack of cards that dictated what players get: resources, bonuses, or attacks. Although this is certainly a simpler method than it now stands, it made the Mining aspect of the game an afterthought, when I rather like it as a mechanic in itself. The idea of multiple stacks of asteroid dirt makes for a level of strategy not found with one "deck" of cards: players can latch onto a stack for extra resources with the Tether, or drop a mine in one and try to out-think their opponent's picking habits a la Vizzini. This also allows players to speed up or slow down the rate at which the asteroid gets more dangerous by mining from all the piles instead of just one. The Mrs and I actually had a brief "alliance" wherein we agreed not to exhaust any piles for awhile, but still tried to shoot each other
Overall, the different stacks give strategic options, but more importantly (in my opinion) they give the asteroid a sense of presence or location that a deck of cards could not. This is a game about ships, and since the ships themselves are stationary on the table, the rock they're near should have a sense of place (even movement) to offset the static nature of the ships. For a hot second, I considered forming more stacks and having a little ship avatar to move around them to represent the macro-scale ships, but this was too much. Hopefully the way as is will be a solid medium.

The Parts:
Each of the parts should have a unique, intuitive purpose, and even a secondary purpose to give interesting options. Armor and Mines are the only single-use items, and even they give extra purpose to other parts (EMP disables mines, and the TactiComp's defense option generates Power from Armor hits).
I've eliminated parts that were largely redundant along the way (batteries were for storing power, but I put that as a secondary for Power Cores and the whole thing feels more streamlined).

On top of the purpose of the parts themselves, the shape of Solar Struts, Splitters, and Armor gives opportunities to just make your ship look cool. Done right, armor can make wings, spines, or fins, for example. This extra fun bit was an unexpected result, and I'm thrilled with it (pending any game-breaking issues, of course).

The Cards:
These are perhaps the newest mechanic, and are in the greatest flux ATM. Generally, I want the cards to serve multiple purposes (hit declaration, special effects, part-specific salvage, collection bonuses, and damage counters) to cut down on piece count, and to give more strategic options: not least because the "collection bonus" is almost always at variance with the "salvage bonus" since you can only play each card once.
Small note, I've more than once caught myself getting excited that I had the right cards for a fun trade-in, only to realize this meant I was almost dead. Sure, I could hope for a third Adrenaline Rush card instead of just playing a pair...but it might kill me instead

Skype night!

(I still haven't had time to engage with this thread. Now I'm just being a jerk about it. Sorry.)

Such video would be invaluable when the time comes!

Update #3

Cards

Right now, both methods of keeping Crit cards in the game (either adding them gradually with the Asteroid attack tokens, or discarding and replacing with a normal damage card) feel kinda janky. This would be the disadvantage of replacing dice with cards in my particular system: that is, one that requires players to keep hit cards as damage counters. I'm very, very reluctant to go back to dice as I am a huge fan of the multiple angles afforded by the different card bonuses. I'm sure there's an elegant solution, just need to find it.

Additionally, I'm going to be testing special card effects soon. Hit cards will have total negatives (discard a resource, damage a particular part, weapon misfires at yourself...) while Half Hit cards are more double-edged (exchange all Rare for Common, or common for rare) that may or may not really suck.
Dodge cards are set to be more beneficial of course, though rare.
Crit cards are gonna be baaaad (leaking air, power overload, longer-term effects). I'm interested to see if these effects will clutter the game or give it more life. We'll find out!

Parts
Now to an issue that's more instinct, but may not be a problem at all. Basically, I'm worried that building parts is just a tad too easy in this game. Not that it should just be more expensive, but that maybe the prices aren't balanced in such a way that real choices have to be made.

As of now, unless I've been *very* unlucky, I'm more or less able to build every part I want without having to *think* about it. Sure, some games I have to make tough choices because the asteroid is harder than usual, but like I said this is more of an instinct or feeling than something I can point to.
I don't want to go crazy and say "Make parts more complicated" as they actually feel pretty good right now. It's specifically their building that makes me nervous. Like it should be just a tad bit more choice-y than it is.
*shrug*
I'll keep banging my head on it and update later.

EDIT:
Perhaps I'll have to sit down after a few more playtests and evaluate whether the parts actually interact with each other enough. The thing is, the solution is almost certainly not "make things more complicated." Strategic depth should (at least I think so) come from how simple mechanics interact with each other. It shouldn't be a forced depth by just making everything complicated.
Like chess (different type of game, but still): just a few pieces with simple rules, how they interact with each other is where the strategy comes from.

Last edited by Writhyn (2019-03-28 13:32:43)

Any Hit cards must be taken unless blocked by Armor, effects and all. Same for Crits, except they can't be blocked by armor.

The only effect players would get to choose is *if* they draw two half hit cards, they pick which one to keep. This still counts as a full hit, of course, but the effect/salvage can be chosen in that case.

Update #4
I think I figured out how to do color combos for damage instead of printing "half-hit," "hit," or "Critical Hit" on the cards. And it requires attackers have more choice in things, so that's a good thing!

Here's how it breaks down:

There are 4 categories for the ship parts; Basic and Tech (Main categories), and System and Tactical (subcategories). Each part has one Main and one Sub category (eg a Cannon is a Basic/Tactical), and there are 3 parts for each combination.

Also, there are 48 cards in the Damage Deck, with 4 colors equally divided to represent the part categories:
Purple (Basic),
Yellow (Tech),
Blue (System),
Red (Tactical).

This is all old stuff. The colors/categories already serve as combo-makers for some repair bonuses as a player amasses damage, to help them recover a liiiiittle bit.

The *new* stuff is this:
Whenever a player attacks, they declare a specific target part. For example, let's say it's a Cannon (Basic/Tactical).
The defender draws as many cards as required by the number of weapons.

A Critical Hit is scored when both categories of the target part are drawn: in this case, a Basic and a Tactical must be drawn. Such a hit would bypass Armor and disable the Cannon. Then the defender would pick one of the two damage cards to keep as permanent damage.

If there are leftover cards (or a critical was not landed), these are hits only if they are Main categories (Basic or Tech). Sub-category cards only land hits as part of Criticals.

This means for a regular Hit to land, there is about a 50% chance from the deck (depending of course on which cards have not yet been drawn). Same odds as before with the "Hit" and "half-hit" printed on the cards. When a regular ole Hit happens, the defender either discards a piece of armor or chooses a Basic or Tech part to disable, then keeps the card as permanent damage like before.

According to a nifty tool I found called the Deck-u-lator, there's ~13% chance of landing a targeted Critical hit with just two cards (not far from a d6 crit at ~17), ~29% at three cards, or ~45% at four cards.

Those odds sound pretty good to me. And quite a bit more refined than my pre-game post from before talking about 3-of-a-kinds and pairs and such. I have to playtest this properly, but I think it will work providing the Deck-u-lator's math is right. I wouldn't know. https://deckulator.appspot.com/

But the advantages of this system are:
1) it allows (in fact requires) the attacker to target a part directly, giving them more say in the results.
2) Critical Hits (although rare-ish) can happen until most of the cards are removed into players' damage pools. But since the max number that could be removed until someone wins is 12, that should work.

Right now, the only disadvantage I see is that a little ship with one cannon won't be able to land a Critical Hit, since that requires two cards. Hitting a bigger opponent's armor is the best they could hope for. But, with a little working of the EMP, the Tether, the Mines, and the asteroid, that could be worked around.

Last edited by Writhyn (2019-03-30 01:33:13)

Update #6
Figured it out! For any player attacks, the attacker targets a part and those components are hits, as before. Asteroid attacks, on the other hand, are more general: they automatically target Basic and Tech. So those categories are hits, and a basic/tech combo is a crit. Since players can't target a basic/tech combo, this actually gives the asteroid a bit of extra variance.

Played it, and this just...feels good. Feels really intuitive with the ability to target parts and hits being dependent on the target categories. I like it a lot. So tomorrow I'll start testing it with a couple of friends as an early beta. Depending on how that goes, we might be ready to send out a prototype soon!

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.

Mini-update:

Just a refit of the card concept, now that we're not using the printed "Hit" and "Critical Hit" bits:

I think there's a tad too much space in the black section under the bullet trail, but I'll get to that

Last edited by Writhyn (2019-04-11 21:32:06)

I have now had a chance to try to engage with this thread, and, unfortunately, I'm still confused. You've done a great job of spelling everything out in terms of details; I'm just rotten at taking a barrel full of details and coalescing a general summary from it. Since that's largely an artifact of how many things are involved in this game, and since the game requires that-many-things (because it's not, like, Candyland)... I think I'm probably just not particularly cut-out for complex board games.

(Which is a bummer, because I'm definitely cut-out for designing abstract rule-sets. I live for that stuff. Hmf.)

This continues to be a great thread, and I continue to lend my spiritual support in whatever ways would help.

Awesome! (And thanks.)

In that case, lemme float one item of confusion for me:

Can you define what is meant by 'combat' in terms of both the metaphor (what we're doing to each other in the game canon) — and the mechanic? (What we're doing to each other with our plays, I guess.) Not that you haven't answered this question before, but in my brain thus far, where I want to find [an understanding of what we're talking about when we talk about 'combat' vis-a-vis this game], I mostly find [a hazy sense of something happens which involves motivations and strategies that the players will probably understand at the time].

That kind of thing.

(Something else that might help me is just to read a generic good strategy for playing the game. What to 'do.')

Thanks.

...

Hm.

I feel like I'm just being a baby about this, but — solely to be honest — I don't want to sit across a table from someone I know and systematically try to kill them. Like: even 'Monopoly' is offputting, y'know? I don't even want to systematically try to bankrupt someone in a table game — much less kill them. I'm left with this deep (dumb) sense of ickiness at the prospect; as if this game is called "Just Keep Strangling Someone Until They Stop Breathing," and I'm meant to play it with friends.

(Video games are different, to me. I have a theory for why, but who cares.)

Like I said, I feel like I'm just being a baby; and even if this mechanic were altered somehow — 'they're just disabled!', or whatever — I still might not be cut-out for it; this could just be my subconscious attempting to rationalize a deeper reaction to something unrelated. Who knows. In any case, I don't think my position here is likely to be common (or reasonable), but... out of curiosity, has anybody else mentioned anything similar?