[cerveza_fiesta]

I am indifferent about which faction I play in the game. I've not yet completed a game so I don't have much opinion.

As for expansions, let's just keep it simple with the core game. If you guys really want an expansion, that's fine, but pick one that makes minimal modifications to the game so us n00bs don't get too starstruck.

yay eclipse!

[D'rek]

cerveza_fiesta, on 11 January 2013 - 12:54 PM, said:

I am indifferent about which faction I play in the game. I've not yet completed a game so I don't have much opinion.

As for expansions, let's just keep it simple with the core game. If you guys really want an expansion, that's fine, but pick one that makes minimal modifications to the game so us n00bs don't get too starstruck.

yay eclipse!

Don't worry too much about the expansion stuff - most of it is just more add-on content, ie there's several new discovery tiles, but you don't really need to worry about what they are until someone actually gets one.

The biggest thing is probably the new races, but those are needed if we do a big game and they still work with the same core mechanics as the existing ones.

This post has been edited by D'rek: 11 January 2013 - 02:30 PM

[Tattersail_]

Is there an online board where we can mess around with our moves?

[Tattersail_]

I watched the last game but wondered if any of you was using something like that..

[twelve]

It's looking more and more likely that we are not going to get to 9 players So I'm assuming that Tapper and IH are out. I'm also not sure if Gnaw is in or not. I signed him up but he didn't really say that he was in. We'll leave the sign up open through the weekend and see where that leads. Also D'rek, the link you provide that sent us to the instructions that includes the new races sent me to something else. Does anyone have a PDF file they could link so I can read up on the expansion stuff.

Thanks.

[twelve]

Tattersail, on 11 January 2013 - 02:40 PM, said:

Is there an online board where we can mess around with our moves?

I don't have one. I had to rely on the updates from the mod to keep track of things.

[D'rek]

Tattersail, on 11 January 2013 - 02:40 PM, said:

Is there an online board where we can mess around with our moves?

That's what Morgy was using. It's called Vassal. I was planning to kinda-sorta-pseudo-use that for getting the images to give you guys, but not actually run the game in it.

twelve, on 11 January 2013 - 03:38 PM, said:

It's looking more and more likely that we are not going to get to 9 players So I'm assuming that Tapper and IH are out. I'm also not sure if Gnaw is in or not. I signed him up but he didn't really say that he was in. We'll leave the sign up open through the weekend and see where that leads. Also D'rek, the link you provide that sent us to the instructions that includes the new races sent me to something else. Does anyone have a PDF file they could link so I can read up on the expansion stuff.

Thanks.

Hmm, maybe you have to have an account to see and download the file. It's too big to attach directly to this post, so I'm not sure.

In short, the expansion content is:

New Races:

Magellan (there are 3 identical magellan factions, like the 6 terrans) - balanced species, have more flexibility with resources and discovery tiles (the way humans have more flexibility with trading and moving)
Pirates - no dreadnaughts, very untrustworthy, get money when they fight, can move a lot of ships at once
Lyra - super-turtles: each round can build a shrine (costs resources) to gain bonuses, can use colony ships to re-roll failed dice
Exiles - Start with orbital tech and their orbitals fight like starbases


Rare Technologies - additional technologies that can be researched, but there's only 1 of each. Some are new ship parts, like the Sentient Hull that gives +1 Computer and +1 Hull in one part. Others are capabilities, like Point Defense Cannon that lets you try and shoot down missiles before they hit you.

They are drawn randomly from the bag like regular technologies, so I can give explanations of them as they become available, too, so everyone doesn't have to memorize what everything does. (Actually, I can also put a reference sheet of techs and parts and stuff at the first post, too)


Developments - 1-time bonuses that cost various resources. You buy them with the reseach action like technologies. Some are instant resource conversions (ie: you spend 5 science and 5 money to gain 12 materials) and others let you place special tiles (ie: spend 20 materials to place a Shellworld anywhere that acts as a science planet and gives whoever owns it 5 points)


Warp Portals - 2 or 3 hexes have them, and there are 1 discovery tile and 1 development that let you place them in additional hexes. You can act/move through a warp portal to any other warp portal just like a full wormhole connection, so you can make alliances through them, move ships through them, etc. Really helps people on one side of the board have some influence on what goes on across the board from them. They're most common in the outer hexes, too, so helpful to people who are stuck out of the middle.


New Discovery Tiles - more possible discovery tiles to uncover, that work the very same as the original ones. There's 4 new ship parts, a balanced resource bonus (immediately get +3 money, +2 science and +2 materials), a place-a-warp-portal, and a place-an-orbital


Alliances - diplomatic relations can be upgraded into full alliances. Allies can enter each other's hexes and fight together. The players in the alliance get their average score at the end of the game. Leaving an alliance gets you -3 points permanently (unlike the traitor card) and you can't form another if you do. The max number of alliances and number of people that can be in the same alliance (2 or 3) depends on the size of the game.


Simultaneous Play Variant - there's two "active player" markers that get passed around, so two people can take actions at the same time (as long as there's no timing conflict - otherwise you do the two one at a time). The basic way to do this is the first person to pass gets the primary marker and the person across from them gets the secondary marker, and only the primary marker can use the research action. There's some disadvantages to this and people have proposed a lot of variations on it to make it fairer but still speed up the game. Not sure how effective this would be for us - we were just skipping around a lot last game, anyways.


Direction of Play - the 2nd player to pass decides if in the next round the play order will go clockwise or counter-clockwise. Gives you a bit of flexibility if the person to your left is constantly passing first, always making you last!


Ancient Hives - random hexes (semi-good for planets) (I think there's one in Tier 2 and one or two in Tier 3) that start with 3 ancient ships (the regular ones from the base game) in them. At the end of each round, there's a possibility the ancient ships in the hive will move from the hive to an adjacent hex (and fight you if you are there, or stay there if no one is).

Ancient Homeworlds - in 2/3/4/5/7/8 player games, the hexes where other players would start if this were a 6/9 player game are filled with semi-good hexes that start with an Ancient Cruiser ship on them. The cruisers are hard to kill, so it slows down the advantage the players next to a big open space would otherwise have with being able to explore more than the other players.

Galactic Centre Takeover - instead of the GCDS in the center hex, an "ancient dreadnaught" ship is placed there which is (arguably) harder to kill than the GCDS. Killing it gets you a free point at the end of the game.

^^unlike the ancient ships and GCDS from the base game, the ancient cruisers and dreadnaught can have more than just basic yellow cannos and +1 computers - ie they can have shields, missiles, etc. Thus they can be stronger than the original ships but you can also tailor your ships specifically to defeating them (ie get the point defense cannon rare tech to fight an ancient cruiser that has missiles but no cannons)

[twelve]

Yeah you are right I had to set up an account to download the pdf but thanks for the quick and dirty summary.

I'm still a bit confused by how the interceptor bays work though. Is this a way to move inceptors without acctually spend movement actions to move them?

[Gnaw]

I'm going to have to give this a pass.

[D'rek]

twelve, on 11 January 2013 - 06:42 PM, said:

I'm still a bit confused by how the interceptor bays work though. Is this a way to move inceptors without acctually spend movement actions to move them?

In short, yes. It turns your move action into:

1. For each Arrow:

a} You can move any interceptors on the board "inside" cruisers/dreadnaughts that are in the same hex as them and have the Interceptor Bay ship part (each I-Bay ship part can hold 2 interceptors)
b} Move a ship the # of hexes you want/can like you normally would
c} Unload any interceptors you want on the board - they unload into the same hex as the ship they are "inside"

2. Repeat above for each Arrow
3. (End of Move action) unload all interceptors

So basically it lets interceptors tag along with dreadnaughts or cruisers when they the bigger ships are moved. The whole "inside" thing is because the interceptors don't contribute to pinning while they are "inside", and also because you could move a dreadnaught with two interceptors in it with your first arrow and unload them at the end of that arrow, then with the next arrow move the recently unloaded interceptors.

I think it sounds a bit more complicated than it is, and actually I don't think it would be used all that much.

This post has been edited by D'rek: 11 January 2013 - 08:40 PM

[EmperorMagus]

I will read the rules over weekend and will play if I understand anything.
if you guys have no problem with me being kinda scarce till end of next week which is when my finals will be finally over.

btw D'rek , I did not mean to warn you exactly, I wanted to scare you into shutting up. it seemed like a good idea to my sleep addled brain at the time. next day I checked the thread and said " WTF" .

[twelve]

D, on 11 January 2013 - 08:40 PM, said:

twelve, on 11 January 2013 - 06:42 PM, said:

I'm still a bit confused by how the interceptor bays work though. Is this a way to move inceptors without acctually spend movement actions to move them?

In short, yes. It turns your move action into:

1. For each Arrow:

a} You can move any interceptors on the board "inside" cruisers/dreadnaughts that are in the same hex as them and have the Interceptor Bay ship part (each I-Bay ship part can hold 2 interceptors)
b} Move a ship the # of hexes you want/can like you normally would
c} Unload any interceptors you want on the board - they unload into the same hex as the ship they are "inside"

2. Repeat above for each Arrow
3. (End of Move action) unload all interceptors

So basically it lets interceptors tag along with dreadnaughts or cruisers when they the bigger ships are moved. The whole "inside" thing is because the interceptors don't contribute to pinning while they are "inside", and also because you could move a dreadnaught with two interceptors in it with your first arrow and unload them at the end of that arrow, then with the next arrow move the recently unloaded interceptors.

I think it sounds a bit more complicated than it is, and actually I don't think it would be used all that much.

I don't know about it not used much. Just think if you had the interceptor bay in your current game and you built your interceptors where your dreads are you could move 6 ships with one action. If you were a Terran you could move 9 instead of three. That could have a huge tactical advantage especial late in the game.

[twelve]

EmperorMagus, on 11 January 2013 - 09:05 PM, said:

I will read the rules over weekend and will play if I understand anything.
if you guys have no problem with me being kinda scarce till end of next week which is when my finals will be finally over.

btw D'rek , I did not mean to warn you exactly, I wanted to scare you into shutting up. it seemed like a good idea to my sleep addled brain at the time. next day I checked the thread and said " WTF" .

If you can log on to check the thread multiple times a day even if it's for a few minutes each time to take your turn then I don't see a problem with it. If you are restricted to just a short posting window each day then we might have you as a bottleneck for the rest of us. But if it's just for one week it should be fine. I went ahead and added you to the signups.

[EmperorMagus]

twelve, on 11 January 2013 - 09:23 PM, said:

EmperorMagus, on 11 January 2013 - 09:05 PM, said:

I will read the rules over weekend and will play if I understand anything.
if you guys have no problem with me being kinda scarce till end of next week which is when my finals will be finally over.

btw D'rek , I did not mean to warn you exactly, I wanted to scare you into shutting up. it seemed like a good idea to my sleep addled brain at the time. next day I checked the thread and said " WTF" .

If you can log on to check the thread multiple times a day even if it's for a few minutes each time to take your turn then I don't see a problem with it. If you are restricted to just a short posting window each day then we might have you as a bottleneck for the rest of us. But if it's just for one week it should be fine. I went ahead and added you to the signups.

I can check for multiple times a day but it will be between 1:30 GMT to 7:30 GMT when I'm home.
If anyone else can play, I would be delighted just to watch. But if not I will play and try to not ruin the game.

[twelve]

EmperorMagus, on 11 January 2013 - 09:26 PM, said:

twelve, on 11 January 2013 - 09:23 PM, said:

EmperorMagus, on 11 January 2013 - 09:05 PM, said:

I will read the rules over weekend and will play if I understand anything.
if you guys have no problem with me being kinda scarce till end of next week which is when my finals will be finally over.

btw D'rek , I did not mean to warn you exactly, I wanted to scare you into shutting up. it seemed like a good idea to my sleep addled brain at the time. next day I checked the thread and said " WTF" .

If you can log on to check the thread multiple times a day even if it's for a few minutes each time to take your turn then I don't see a problem with it. If you are restricted to just a short posting window each day then we might have you as a bottleneck for the rest of us. But if it's just for one week it should be fine. I went ahead and added you to the signups.

I can check for multiple times a day but it will be between 1:30 GMT to 7:30 GMT when I'm home.
If anyone else can play, I would be delighted just to watch. But if not I will play and try to not ruin the game.

I'm assuming you mean 1:30 PM GMT - 7:30 PM GMT. If that is the case I think that is 5:30 am-11:30 am for me local time. That is in a good chunk of my peak on-line hours so It works out great for me. I'm pretty sure D'rek is in the GMT -5 to GMT -8 range as well and seems to be on-line similar to me. Khell and Tats always seems to be on. CF I think he lives in the States but I'm not sure of his usual posting times. I also think if Tapper plays he can be found to post during that time frame as well. IH is the the one I'm least sure of but I'm not sure if he is even committed to play if we don't hit the 9 player mark. Have I forgotten anyone? Gnaw, naw () he's too chicken to play in a game with me as he knows I'll be out to get him

This post has been edited by twelve: 11 January 2013 - 10:19 PM

[Imperial Historian]

If your playing with expansion bits I'll play, as I'm considering buying it, so will be nice to try it out.

I'm UK based, and pop in and out most times in the day.

[D'rek]

So you guys want to close sign-ups and start this tomorrow?

Looks like we have:

1 ) D'rek
2 ) Twelve
3 ) Tattersail
4 ) cerveza_fiesta
5 ) Khellendros
6 ) Imperial Historian
7 ) EmperorMagnus

So should I just mod and let you guys play with 6, or do we go with 7?

[Khellendros]

D, on 14 January 2013 - 02:13 AM, said:

So you guys want to close sign-ups and start this tomorrow?

Looks like we have:

1 ) D'rek
2 ) Twelve
3 ) Tattersail
4 ) cerveza_fiesta
5 ) Khellendros
6 ) Imperial Historian
7 ) EmperorMagnus

So should I just mod and let you guys play with 6, or do we go with 7?

Argh, I'm only on page 20 of the instructions! Can you mod AND play? The more the merrier I say.

[twelve]

I agree let's close and go with 7. Should be fun.

How would we like to determine order and starting races for everyone?

[cerveza_fiesta]

I'm fine with whichever race. Just randomize - names out of a hat style.