[Imperial Historian]

Blend, on 30 September 2019 - 04:18 PM, said:

Reviewing the last few games, I think we'll build the map the same way we did in the game that Khell modded (Game 3). That means that everyone will be assigned a slice on the following map:



And will be given random tiles which they will then decide how to place in their slice.

For those who were not here for that game, just because you are assigned a slice for the map build does not mean you will be on that slice in the game.

We will choose starting locations and races using a snake draft.

So I will randomize the list of players, then the first player on the randomized list will choose either their starting location OR their race OR the Speaker token. Then the second player will do so, then the third and so on until the 9th player, who will first choose either their Race, starting location OR speaker, then choose one of the others that s/he hasn't yet chosen, then player 8 will go, then 7, and so on. After everyone has chosen, whatever is remaining will get assigned to whoever is missing it (i.e. if someone chose the speaker token, that person will get to choose either their race or starting position which they will not have done yet. If not, then speaker token will get assigned randomly).

Initiative order for the strategy phase will always be clockwise around the "table."

Can I speak out against the snake draft? The first player gets a double advantage as they can choose location first, then race after knowing there neighbours picks. In my view a fairer option is to choose race and position at the same time, ie the first player gets the best position and race of there choice, but there neighbours get the option to choose a race which directly counters them. I'd then give the speaker token to whoever has last pick.

[Blend]

I am not opposed to drafting differently, but from what I've read online, a snake draft is widely considered to be the fairest way to do it.

Anyone have any objections to IH's above suggestion?

[Tattersail_]

Not knowing which slice your race will get is a disadvantage too, giving the first pick both location and race is quite powerful. In that situation, speaker or no speaker I'd hate to be near the bottom of the draft.

[Blend]

So just for the hell of it, I think I'm gonna create 2-4 new hexes. As it stands, we have 43 hexes including all the anomalies and blank hexes. We need 54 to fill the map. I could just add 9 anomalies and blanks, but I think it would be more fun if I added maybe 3 new planet hexes, 3 anomalies and blanks. Thoughts?

Anyone have any suggestions on what we could use more of in the game? You know, without breaking it?

[Jazzarm]

9 players?! This is gonna get crazy and I already love it and dread it at the same time.
Is the plan to start the game (first turn) Monday, or start map building/set-up at that time?

[Blend]

Jazzarm, on 01 October 2019 - 04:50 PM, said:

9 players?! This is gonna get crazy and I already love it and dread it at the same time.
Is the plan to start the game (first turn) Monday, or start map building/set-up at that time?

I am hoping to get the map built and starting location and race selection done throughout this week so that Round 1 Strategy Phase starts on Monday.

That, of course, depends on everyone being timely in getting everything to me after I've sent out PMs to everyone, but I think we should be able to manage it!

This post has been edited by Blend: 01 October 2019 - 04:58 PM

[Morgoth]

Imperial Historian, on 01 October 2019 - 03:39 PM, said:

Blend, on 30 September 2019 - 04:18 PM, said:

Reviewing the last few games, I think we'll build the map the same way we did in the game that Khell modded (Game 3). That means that everyone will be assigned a slice on the following map:



And will be given random tiles which they will then decide how to place in their slice.

For those who were not here for that game, just because you are assigned a slice for the map build does not mean you will be on that slice in the game.

We will choose starting locations and races using a snake draft.

So I will randomize the list of players, then the first player on the randomized list will choose either their starting location OR their race OR the Speaker token. Then the second player will do so, then the third and so on until the 9th player, who will first choose either their Race, starting location OR speaker, then choose one of the others that s/he hasn't yet chosen, then player 8 will go, then 7, and so on. After everyone has chosen, whatever is remaining will get assigned to whoever is missing it (i.e. if someone chose the speaker token, that person will get to choose either their race or starting position which they will not have done yet. If not, then speaker token will get assigned randomly).

Initiative order for the strategy phase will always be clockwise around the "table."

Can I speak out against the snake draft? The first player gets a double advantage as they can choose location first, then race after knowing there neighbours picks. In my view a fairer option is to choose race and position at the same time, ie the first player gets the best position and race of there choice, but there neighbours get the option to choose a race which directly counters them. I'd then give the speaker token to whoever has last pick.

I genuinely don’t think it’s that big of deal with the race selection. Most races can manage fine next to pretty much every race. The one exception might be Arborec Muaat, and maybe (maybe) Hacan and Mentak. Sure some combinations are more of a pain, but combat is the last resort anyways.

[Jazzarm]

Blend, on 01 October 2019 - 03:53 PM, said:

I am not opposed to drafting differently, but from what I've read online, a snake draft is widely considered to be the fairest way to do it.

Anyone have any objections to IH's above suggestion?

I think snake draft is the fairest way in 6p bc if you do the standard tts/tournament draft you first create a pool of 7 factions to pick from with a ban phase and a nomination phase. So now if you firstpick the best slice you will only get to choose between the 2 factions everyone else leaves behind.


With a 9p snake draft the firstpick will still have a choice of 9 factions after fp'ing a slice (17-8). That might be a bit imbalanced. A solution could be to ban 7 factions before the snake draft begins. Maybe everyone sends a private message to our host with 5 factions they nominate to ban, and the 7 factions with the most votes are banned? Now you snake draft with a pool of 10 factions and picking first has some choices to make.


I think that would be a more fair system than giving fp the choice of slice and faction as IH suggests, because now they get a top tier slice/faction and even though other players get to 'counterpick' their faction choice it's still a huge advantage.


As for tiles, I like 27 blue tiles (3 per player just like in 6p) but only 20 exist. One way to add 7 new blue tiles is to use the home systems of unpicked factions. They would not count as home systems for the purpose of conquer the weak and action cards. Another way is to use custom tiles or duplicate existing blue tiles (bereg/lirta5 anyone?). Custom tiles are cool too, BGG has planets that tech skip any color but only for unit upgrades, and planets where you draw an action card when you gain control. You can also borrow planets from ti3.

This post has been edited by Jazzarm: 01 October 2019 - 06:06 PM

[Blend]

Jazzarm, on 01 October 2019 - 05:56 PM, said:

Blend, on 01 October 2019 - 03:53 PM, said:

I am not opposed to drafting differently, but from what I've read online, a snake draft is widely considered to be the fairest way to do it.

Anyone have any objections to IH's above suggestion?

I think snake draft is the fairest way in 6p bc if you do the standard tts/tournament draft you first create a pool of 7 factions to pick from with a ban phase and a nomination phase. So now if you firstpick the best slice you will only get to choose between the 2 factions everyone else leaves behind.


With a 9p snake draft the firstpick will still have a choice of 9 factions after fp'ing a slice (17-8). That might be a bit imbalanced. A solution could be to ban 7 factions before the snake draft begins. Maybe everyone sends a private message to our host with 5 factions they nominate to ban, and the 7 factions with the most votes are banned? Now you snake draft with a pool of 10 factions and picking first has some choices to make.


I think that would be a more fair system than giving fp the choice of slice and faction as IH suggests, because now they get a top tier slice/faction and even though other players get to 'counterpick' their faction choice it's still a huge advantage.


As for tiles, I like 27 blue tiles (3 per player just like in 6p) but only 20 exist. One way to add 7 new blue tiles is to use the home systems of unpicked factions. They would not count as home systems for the purpose of conquer the weak and action cards. Another way is to use custom tiles or duplicate existing blue tiles (bereg/lirta5 anyone?). Custom tiles are cool too, BGG has planets that tech skip any color but only for unit upgrades, and planets where you draw an action card when you gain control. You can also borrow planets from ti3.

We actually already have 11 custom tiles that have been created for previous 9-player games, which brings our number of tiles with planets on them (blue tiles as you name them) to 31 + the 2 wormhole tiles. If you want to see what they look like, go check out the map from Game 3. Our custom tiles are Mansa III, Gwynan, Tura Nora, Ensapta, Lodd Eru, Daemon, Nevant, Silvano, Zej Rajja, Herrah VI and Everra (which is a planet in a nebula).

I'm thinking of adding 3 more tiles with planets on them (I'm looking at everything currently in the game to ensure balance), which means we would have 34 planet tiles, 2 wormhole tiles, 2 Supernovas, 2 Nebulae (+the Nebula planet tile that we created), 2 Gravity Rifts, 4 asteroid tiles and 8 blank tiles, which if I mathed correctly would bring us to the 54 tiles we need. PLUS we have the Mallice tile which exists off the main board.

Right now, we have one 4/0 planet in our custom tiles (Daemon), so I thought I'd add another 4/0 planet tile, and then two 3 planet tiles (keeping in mind that I'd be balancing the number of planet traits as well as balancing the total resources/influence to keep around the same ratio as was previously in the game).

The reason for the first (addition of a 4/0) is because right now any time someone gets the action card that allows them to exhaust someone's planet in order to gain the resources from that planet always gets used against Daemon. A second planet, I think, would help balance that.

The reason for the second and third is cause I thought it'd be fun to have a couple of 3-planet tiles on the board.

If I add that many planets, though, I think I would have to modify the objectives where you have to own X amount of planets with the same planetary trait to add 1 more for the 1VP objectives and 2 more for the 2VP objectives, because altogether including the tiles we've already custom made, we'd be adding about 5 of each planet trait to the overall game board.

This post has been edited by Blend: 01 October 2019 - 07:27 PM

[Blend]

I really like Jazzarm's suggestion of having a ban phase and reducing the pool of factions down to 10 as a way of making a snake draft a little more equitable.

I'd appreciate other people's opinions! It's open to discussion until we get past the map building phase. I plan to create the new planet tiles tonight then SHOULD be able to send everyone their slice colour and tiles, so I'm hoping to be able to create the map by tomorrow evening, at which point I will make a decision on how we draft based on everyone's input in here!

[Imperial Historian]

I would be happier with a snake draw if we reduced the number of factions, makes the choices matter more!

[Jazzarm]

Alright, it sounds like I tried to reinvent the wheel with my talk about extra blue tiles, haha.

I think as long as we get the same amount of cultural/hazardous/industrial planets per player on average as in a 6-player game there should be no need to increase the requirements of those objectives. Not to mention 6 of the same is already one of the easier objectives to deny. A quick planet head count reveals 11 Hazardous, 11 Industrials, 10 Culturals. Remove Saudor and Vefut and you're down to 10 of each. As long as there are around 15 of each in this 9p map the objectives can remain unchanged. If we're adding significantly more planets there's reason to consider increasing the requirements.

[Blend]

Jazzarm, on 01 October 2019 - 10:09 PM, said:

Alright, it sounds like I tried to reinvent the wheel with my talk about extra blue tiles, haha.

I think as long as we get the same amount of cultural/hazardous/industrial planets per player on average as in a 6-player game there should be no need to increase the requirements of those objectives. Not to mention 6 of the same is already one of the easier objectives to deny. A quick planet head count reveals 11 Hazardous, 11 Industrials, 10 Culturals. Remove Saudor and Vefut and you're down to 10 of each. As long as there are around 15 of each in this 9p map the objectives can remain unchanged. If we're adding significantly more planets there's reason to consider increasing the requirements.

That's actually a very good point, I hadn't considered the additional players when thinking of the objective. Thanks for pointing that out!

With the tiles I am planning to make tonight, we would end up with 17 Industrials, 17 Hazardous and 15 Culturals. I think that should be fine, yeah?

This post has been edited by Blend: 01 October 2019 - 10:21 PM

[Galactic Council]

Alright, I have sent everyone their map tiles and what section of the map they need to populate! I've added the map to the OP of this thread for ease of reference!

I reserve the right to move things around if I deem it absolutely necessary (i.e. two or more warp holes next to each other, or a long line of anomalies all next to each other), but will do my best to leave things as placed!

If everyone can get me their tile placements by tomorrow evening, I should be able to move us on to the starting position / race selection phase (or banish phase if that's the direction we end up going).

Quick reminder that just because you are placing your tiles in a certain area does not necessarily mean you will start in that location, so please keep that in mind when building your slice!

I've done what I think is a pretty decent job at balancing the slices. Some will have more planets, some will have less, every slice will have at least 1 pre-requisite in it, some will have 2, while others have other bonuses instead. Resource/Influence is more or less balanced and takes any other bonuses a person may have in their slice into account as well. So all in all, I think we should end up with an okay map!

This post has been edited by Galactic Council: 02 October 2019 - 02:30 AM

[D'rek]

Blend, on 30 September 2019 - 04:18 PM, said:

Reviewing the last few games, I think we'll build the map the same way we did in the game that Khell modded (Game 3). That means that everyone will be assigned a slice on the following map:

Question/complication/confusion... when we used that above layout and everyone setup a coloured slice last time, homeworlds were included in the 6 hexes of each slice, and ie each player was given 5 hexes to arrange. But you gave everyone 6 non-homeworld tiles this time? Where are the home worlds going, then?

[Galactic Council]

D, on 02 October 2019 - 03:40 AM, said:

Blend, on 30 September 2019 - 04:18 PM, said:

Reviewing the last few games, I think we'll build the map the same way we did in the game that Khell modded (Game 3). That means that everyone will be assigned a slice on the following map:

Question/complication/confusion... when we used that above layout and everyone setup a coloured slice last time, homeworlds were included in the 6 hexes of each slice, and ie each player was given 5 hexes to arrange. But you gave everyone 6 non-homeworld tiles this time? Where are the home worlds going, then?

Well shit.... No wonder the numbers seemed odd... Give me a minute.

[D'rek]

If you want a layout where every player places 6 nonHW hexes, how about this:



(Darker hexes of each colour being where the homeworld of that start position ends up - players place the lighter 6 spots of each colour.) Downside to it is that 3 of the HWs are 1 hex farther from MR, but not everyone necessarily wants to go for MR, especially if we're doing fewer possible choices of race.

[Galactic Council]

D, on 02 October 2019 - 04:07 AM, said:

If you want a layout where every player places 6 nonHW hexes, how about this:



(Darker hexes of each colour being where the homeworld of that start position ends up - players place the lighter 6 spots of each colour.) Downside to it is that 3 of the HWs are 1 hex farther from MR, but not everyone necessarily wants to go for MR, especially if we're doing fewer possible choices of race.

Thank you so much D'rek, I've been trying to figure something out and I just couldn't get it!

This is the map we shall use folks!

[D'rek]

Galactic Council, on 02 October 2019 - 04:17 AM, said:

D, on 02 October 2019 - 04:07 AM, said:

If you want a layout where every player places 6 nonHW hexes, how about this:



(Darker hexes of each colour being where the homeworld of that start position ends up - players place the lighter 6 spots of each colour.) Downside to it is that 3 of the HWs are 1 hex farther from MR, but not everyone necessarily wants to go for MR, especially if we're doing fewer possible choices of race.

Thank you so much D'rek, I've been trying to figure something out and I just couldn't get it!

This is the map we shall use folks!

No problemo

I used some different colours, so you'll have to re-PM anyone whose colour changed from the original PM.

[Galactic Council]

D, on 02 October 2019 - 04:20 AM, said:

Galactic Council, on 02 October 2019 - 04:17 AM, said:

D, on 02 October 2019 - 04:07 AM, said:

If you want a layout where every player places 6 nonHW hexes, how about this:



(Darker hexes of each colour being where the homeworld of that start position ends up - players place the lighter 6 spots of each colour.) Downside to it is that 3 of the HWs are 1 hex farther from MR, but not everyone necessarily wants to go for MR, especially if we're doing fewer possible choices of race.

Thank you so much D'rek, I've been trying to figure something out and I just couldn't get it!

This is the map we shall use folks!

No problemo

I used some different colours, so you'll have to re-PM anyone whose colour changed from the original PM.

Yeah, basically I think you just changed the light green to orange, right?