(For the record, I absolutely love this thread, I just haven't had time to engage with it yet.)

Seems cool I don't really have the reading comprehension and visualization to critique it without playing but I'd like to be the first to sign up for a prototype kit when you're comfortable sending them out. I'd be happy to turn a camera on us and not really do it as a presentation but then you can watch people who haven't played wrestle with getting their heads around the rules and figure out where there are any rules that need to be cleared up that you may have been making assumptions about.

Skype night!

(live from a hospital bed somewhere in England )

I've nothing to add - not being a big game player but as a noob, it all scans okay. Once the creases have been ironed out, id be happy to help out making the elements for a Tabletop Simulator version.

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

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.

Oh, just realized I never actually posted in here. Sign me up for a test version when it's ready. It'll give me a good excuse to harang my friends into a game night.

I would be interested to read your The Rules, whenupon they are correlated.

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.

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.