[twelve]

I survived until the end. I guess that was a pretty major accomplishment. I don't have the computer nor skills to mod.

[Morgoth]

Congrats to all of you! This was a marathon of a game, and I also think 14 is too much. 11 maybe?

I don't understand why the Arborec are rates so low, to me they felt exceptionally flexible, and I wouldn't be opposed to picking them when next TI comes to the table. Though to truly benefit from their amazing production you do need a little more resources than I could muster this game. Losing that fleet was a serious pain.

It feels selfish to echo the others, but I doubt I have the time to mod a game. You have noticed it I am sure throughout this game, I have periods where I work a lot and fall almost completely out of the game for a week or three. I can do my best to help with the map and such though, and even try my hand at battle calculation (seeing as the program Blend used tracked the calculation, so the results would be easily verifiable I think). It could reduce the work requirement of the mod I hope.

[Morgoth]

As for how this game developed, I was pretty sure I would lose spectacularly when we had the map in front of us and I saw the great position of Nom and IH. I figured I'd be at the very bottom if they ever made war on me, so I did my best to be friends while also focusing on getting the GF upgrade as early as possible to make my relatively poor systems seem not at all worth the effort. Six months of effort and here we are, I was ridiculously pleased all week-end

[Khellendros]

If someone wants to show me the ropes, I can probably have a go at modding, as I have no teaching obligations this semester (I still think Gnaw would be better suited though ).

[Morgoth]

Khellendros, on 21 January 2019 - 11:46 AM, said:

If someone wants to show me the ropes, I can probably have a go at modding, as I have no teaching obligations this semester (I still think Gnaw would be better suited though ).

I promise to help as much as I can, and am very happy that I get to play

[Blend]

Khellendros, on 21 January 2019 - 11:46 AM, said:

If someone wants to show me the ropes, I can probably have a go at modding, as I have no teaching obligations this semester (I still think Gnaw would be better suited though ).

I can help you figure out how to mod, and can certainly help with map updates throughout the game similarly to how Gnaw helped me out when I had to take a hiatus for family vacation times!

[Imperial Historian]

Yeah if we were all able to do map updates that could speed things up significantly. We'd still need someone to do action cards and check for errors etc, but map updates and even battles could be handled by the players.

[Tattersail_]

I have been reading through the races today already. All the ones not used so far look great. Except the Yin Brotherhood, they look bad.

Open sign ups already

I echo IH that if Map Updates is something we could ALL do then that would be a big boon for the MOD

[D'rek]

Should be reasonably easy to all be able to do map updates. Just put the SVG file on a google drive somewhere, and make sure everyone saves the results as a new image file every time in case of errors/two people working at same time.

[Blend]

Tattersail_, on 21 January 2019 - 03:47 PM, said:

I have been reading through the races today already. All the ones not used so far look great. Except the Yin Brotherhood, they look bad.

Open sign ups already

I echo IH that if Map Updates is something we could ALL do then that would be a big boon for the MOD

Apparently Yin are actually pretty good once you figure out how to use them properly.

[Khellendros]

Blend, on 21 January 2019 - 03:10 PM, said:

Khellendros, on 21 January 2019 - 11:46 AM, said:

If someone wants to show me the ropes, I can probably have a go at modding, as I have no teaching obligations this semester (I still think Gnaw would be better suited though ).

I can help you figure out how to mod, and can certainly help with map updates throughout the game similarly to how Gnaw helped me out when I had to take a hiatus for family vacation times!

Thanks for all the PMs Blend, super helpful, and I will have a proper long gander later tonight.

[Morgoth]

Khellendros, on 21 January 2019 - 08:01 PM, said:

Blend, on 21 January 2019 - 03:10 PM, said:

Khellendros, on 21 January 2019 - 11:46 AM, said:

If someone wants to show me the ropes, I can probably have a go at modding, as I have no teaching obligations this semester (I still think Gnaw would be better suited though ).

I can help you figure out how to mod, and can certainly help with map updates throughout the game similarly to how Gnaw helped me out when I had to take a hiatus for family vacation times!

Thanks for all the PMs Blend, super helpful, and I will have a proper long gander later tonight.

Thanks again Khell! It's a real commitment, and it's great of you to let us get to play again

[Tapper]

Many thanks for the upcoming modding, Khell! I will be happy to do map updates, too!

[Morgoth]

I haven't heard much about you guys' thoughts on the game. What were your plans and strategies? were there things that worked well and things that didn't? Why did you make the choices you made? Come on, I'm curious!

[Khellendros]

Morgoth, on 23 January 2019 - 01:11 PM, said:

I haven't heard much about you guys' thoughts on the game. What were your plans and strategies? were there things that worked well and things that didn't? Why did you make the choices you made? Come on, I'm curious!

Obviously I played the Saar wrong. I went all in on the vagrancy/mobility aspect - and it was fun to travel the whole galaxy - which meant it was much harder to maintain friendly relations. Plus letting go of all my systems was clearly a bad play. Everything went perfect the first couple of rounds - I completed POs, negotiated successfully with the Mentak for their no-pillage PN, and took Mecatol Rex first. But I should have tried to make my starting systems more secure with my neighbours before trying to move further, and should not have let them go so easily. Never picking up Imperial for extra points while I controlled Mecatol was also probably dumb (though not doing so did allow me to spectacularly invade Tatts' home systems). Having said all that, I finished on 9VP - had I had more luck with secret objectives it could have been 10-12VP, which I think shows that it is possible to be successful with the Saar while only holding the bare minimum of systems.

I recommend the Saar - no one will like you, everyone will want you gone, but they are so different to anything else in a very fun way. The roaming Saar balls of death and the impenetrable asteroid fields are fantastic.

[Tattersail_]

Khellendros, on 23 January 2019 - 01:31 PM, said:

Morgoth, on 23 January 2019 - 01:11 PM, said:

I haven't heard much about you guys' thoughts on the game. What were your plans and strategies? were there things that worked well and things that didn't? Why did you make the choices you made? Come on, I'm curious!

Obviously I played the Saar wrong. I went all in on the vagrancy/mobility aspect - and it was fun to travel the whole galaxy - which meant it was much harder to maintain friendly relations. Plus letting go of all my systems was clearly a bad play. Everything went perfect the first couple of rounds - I completed POs, negotiated successfully with the Mentak for their no-pillage PN, and took Mecatol Rex first. But I should have tried to make my starting systems more secure with my neighbours before trying to move further, and should not have let them go so easily. Never picking up Imperial for extra points while I controlled Mecatol was also probably dumb (though not doing so did allow me to spectacularly invade Tatts' home systems). Having said all that, I finished on 9VP - had I had more luck with secret objectives it could have been 10-12VP, which I think shows that it is possible to be successful with the Saar while only holding the bare minimum of systems.

I recommend the Saar - no one will like you, everyone will want you gone, but they are so different to anything else in a very fun way. The roaming Saar balls of death and the impenetrable asteroid fields are fantastic.

Don't rub it in! I was prevented from scoring objectives in 2 status phases cause of you, and 1 cause of Twelve which was understandable. Lessons learned though.

[Tapper]

Morgoth, on 23 January 2019 - 01:11 PM, said:

I haven't heard much about you guys' thoughts on the game. What were your plans and strategies? were there things that worked well and things that didn't? Why did you make the choices you made? Come on, I'm curious!

Sol is powerful. Being able to quickly go to 3 green, 3 blue is great and gives access to a very cheap fleet, good reach and an infantry first defense which is counter to what most players will do with research and production (more/better ships) and works like a charm against them.

The extra CT, Orbital Drop and quick access to the CT tech (with Special Forces 2 in its tech path) allow you to stall and turtle at the same time from fairly early on.

Early game I had to crawl out of a hole, courtesy of my starting sector and Khell, mid-game became easier because my one immediate neighbour had left: not being able to reliably trade all 4 commodities was my main pain in the back.
Late game I combined action cards, SOs and tech into some cool moves, and overall I should be very satisfied with 13 VP at game's end.

[twelve]

Morgoth, on 23 January 2019 - 01:11 PM, said:

I haven't heard much about you guys' thoughts on the game. What were your plans and strategies? were there things that worked well and things that didn't? Why did you make the choices you made? Come on, I'm curious!

I'm pretty sure everyone already knows my thoughts on the last game. Biggest take away for me is to clearly negotiate for systems with my neighbors at the beginning of the game.

[Imperial Historian]

I enjoyed playing the ghosts but struggled translating the tactical mobility into points. The ability to play people off against each other buying wormholes was fun, though it definitely didn't make me friends.

That said I enjoyed the ridiculous things you could do as the ghosts, being able to reach practically every hex on the map opens up a tonne of options.

[Blend]

Imperial Historian, on 23 January 2019 - 06:16 PM, said:

I enjoyed playing the ghosts but struggled translating the tactical mobility into points. The ability to play people off against each other buying wormholes was fun, though it definitely didn't make me friends.

That said I enjoyed the ridiculous things you could do as the ghosts, being able to reach practically every hex on the map opens up a tonne of options.

If I don't end up with Muaat, and Letnev isn't still on the list, I'll likely go Ghosts this game - there's a lot of stuff I wanna try doing with them!