"I'm going to throw up on the screen ...." ... sounds like your day and mine have had much in common :D 100+ factions ... the Cosmic Encounter of 4X? There's a market for fast 4X in space .... or at least it's a common question, evergreen, perennial. While that's not for me, I'll happily point others who are looking for this toward this one!
This certainly looks interesting and is now on my RADAR. As an often, solo player I'd like to see how it plays with bots. It would be great to make the TTS mod available, even if it had limited game components and factions (maybe just the tutorial Humans?) so potential buyers could try out the game first. This seems to have been a very successful strategy for many games in development and often provided valuable feedback from the "free" playtesting the game gets on TTS during this phase.
I personally have no problem with this, but it is out of my hands. I imagine GMT would be okay with it too, but I am not sure at which stage of development.
Awesome! I p500ed the game and am looking forward to the finished product. Can you speak briefly about how the bot works? I'm particularly interested if/how the bot trades. Thank you!
The bot is a simplified version of my Firefight Tactical bot. Each bot turn you flip a card and evaluate top to bottom. The card will give you an action and one or more sectors to target. Pretty simple. For trading you select a bot and flip top card to see what suit the bot wants. For each card you trade that way you increase your resource points of the action you are playing. Your traded cards go under the bots faction card. During the bots next turn they increase their resource points by the number of cards under their faction board (regardless of what suit they were) and then discard them. You can only trade with one bot per game round. Thems the rules.
Assuming the game does well enough (which it already seems it will, yay!) there will be a second expandalone core box with all new content that can be combined for up to 8 player. Technically, you could already do it with just two copies of the base core box but you would run into two issues. One: there are only four player colors in the box, so you would need to come up with a way to differentiate them. Two: you would double on the sector deck, which means you might see duplicate planets. This isn't a mechanical issue in the slightest but aesthetically isn't great. If neither of those bother you, you could totally just combine two core sets to go to 8 players from the get go.
@@DeathByBoardGames Thanks for the swift reply. Thing is, GMT's usual production schedule means even if this does well it will be several years until it sees print and a "this did quite well so let's do some more" expansion will be years after that. So, very sadly, this is probably a "no" from me.
Pretty sure I'm not a fan of the explore action being "spend points until you get what you want". To me, explore is about finding what's there, good or bad. Makes this game a 3X for me. The same thing happened with Voidfall. I expected a 4X, and it ended up being a 1½X.
Not sure how well it read in the video, but in play it doesn't feel like "spend points until you get what you want". It is much more about risk management. Commonly you are choosing whether to spend all of your resource points on a single sector to get exactly what you want (in which case I believe you should), or to spread your points across multiple sectors at once. In the former case you have a generally safer exploration at the cost of action economy and being behind in the game. In the latter case you are well ahead in the action economy with considerably greater risk in what you may find. The latter is almost always the optimal path.
@@DeathByBoardGames Right, but in the end you are sort of "choosing" what's there rather than discovering it. In a euro game, it makes sense, but it's not thematic at all. Regardless, the game is on my radar.
@@ekted I hear where you are coming from. We will have to agree to disagree. I personally find it much more thematic to spend resources on an expedition to increase the likelihood of finding what you are searching for rather than simply flip a card/tile that is the only thing representing an enormous section of the galaxy. To each their own though.
@ekted - just house rule you can only spend one point. ;-) I see what you mean, but I'd be willing to try it out as written and house rule it if I don't like it.
Short answer: no. Longer answer: the concept of a "tech tree" has been broken out into two mechanics. Your faction specializes and grows stronger in specific actions by way of colonization. Rather than colonies just giving you more resources, they expand your abilities. Because colonization gets progressively harder it isn't a matter of just colonizing whatever you can, but rather selecting the planets that will help you pursue your intended strategy. The second mechanic is the faction specific research ability that gives you the more flavorful expansion of abilities. In play these combine to give you the same effect of a research track. When one faction at the table has so many mobilize worlds colonized that a single mobilize card will let them move across the galaxy they definitely feel like their ships are more advanced than everyone else's.
Looks like a great game when the group isn't feeling up for Space Empires 4X. Will definitely be keeping my eyes on this one!
This looks great. I just preordered it on p500.
"I'm going to throw up on the screen ...." ... sounds like your day and mine have had much in common :D
100+ factions ... the Cosmic Encounter of 4X?
There's a market for fast 4X in space .... or at least it's a common question, evergreen, perennial.
While that's not for me, I'll happily point others who are looking for this toward this one!
Thanks a lot for the help!
Thanks for an overview, this one will probably be a hit with a crowd 😀 Sounds like we'll get a GMT update soon...
I really hope so… There is enough content to keep this one alive for a long while if people dig it.
This certainly looks interesting and is now on my RADAR. As an often, solo player I'd like to see how it plays with bots.
It would be great to make the TTS mod available, even if it had limited game components and factions (maybe just the tutorial Humans?) so potential buyers could try out the game first. This seems to have been a very successful strategy for many games in development and often provided valuable feedback from the "free" playtesting the game gets on TTS during this phase.
I personally have no problem with this, but it is out of my hands. I imagine GMT would be okay with it too, but I am not sure at which stage of development.
Looks like a lot of fun! (BTW, the Tarqa Superhive faction card has a typo in the 3rd ability - "cruisers" is a missing a C. 🙂)
I know. Shame. The corrected version is on the preorder page but it didn’t arrive in time to make it into the video. It will haunt me forever.
@@DeathByBoardGames It's OK, it happens to us all! (I'm a tech writer, so especially to me! 🙂)
If you ever have to send out a prototype copy to a passioned solo player, remember me! 🙂
Awesome! I p500ed the game and am looking forward to the finished product. Can you speak briefly about how the bot works? I'm particularly interested if/how the bot trades. Thank you!
The bot is a simplified version of my Firefight Tactical bot. Each bot turn you flip a card and evaluate top to bottom. The card will give you an action and one or more sectors to target. Pretty simple. For trading you select a bot and flip top card to see what suit the bot wants. For each card you trade that way you increase your resource points of the action you are playing. Your traded cards go under the bots faction card. During the bots next turn they increase their resource points by the number of cards under their faction board (regardless of what suit they were) and then discard them. You can only trade with one bot per game round. Thems the rules.
@@DeathByBoardGames Fantastic! Thanks for the reply!
Looks interesting, but maximum 4 players would make it a "no" for me. Could two sets simply be added together to make it an 8 player game?
Assuming the game does well enough (which it already seems it will, yay!) there will be a second expandalone core box with all new content that can be combined for up to 8 player. Technically, you could already do it with just two copies of the base core box but you would run into two issues. One: there are only four player colors in the box, so you would need to come up with a way to differentiate them. Two: you would double on the sector deck, which means you might see duplicate planets. This isn't a mechanical issue in the slightest but aesthetically isn't great. If neither of those bother you, you could totally just combine two core sets to go to 8 players from the get go.
@@DeathByBoardGames Thanks for the swift reply. Thing is, GMT's usual production schedule means even if this does well it will be several years until it sees print and a "this did quite well so let's do some more" expansion will be years after that. So, very sadly, this is probably a "no" from me.
@@MarcGillhamAll good, though you may end up surprised. Either way, I hope I can convince you to jump in when the second core comes out.
"...thematically ...in the game. "
phew
Pretty sure I'm not a fan of the explore action being "spend points until you get what you want". To me, explore is about finding what's there, good or bad. Makes this game a 3X for me. The same thing happened with Voidfall. I expected a 4X, and it ended up being a 1½X.
Not sure how well it read in the video, but in play it doesn't feel like "spend points until you get what you want". It is much more about risk management. Commonly you are choosing whether to spend all of your resource points on a single sector to get exactly what you want (in which case I believe you should), or to spread your points across multiple sectors at once. In the former case you have a generally safer exploration at the cost of action economy and being behind in the game. In the latter case you are well ahead in the action economy with considerably greater risk in what you may find. The latter is almost always the optimal path.
@@DeathByBoardGames Right, but in the end you are sort of "choosing" what's there rather than discovering it. In a euro game, it makes sense, but it's not thematic at all. Regardless, the game is on my radar.
@@ekted I hear where you are coming from. We will have to agree to disagree. I personally find it much more thematic to spend resources on an expedition to increase the likelihood of finding what you are searching for rather than simply flip a card/tile that is the only thing representing an enormous section of the galaxy. To each their own though.
@ekted - just house rule you can only spend one point. ;-) I see what you mean, but I'd be willing to try it out as written and house rule it if I don't like it.
Yea, I also felt it strange to "spend points until you get what you want"... 🤔
Will this game comes with tech tree? ⚗
Short answer: no. Longer answer: the concept of a "tech tree" has been broken out into two mechanics. Your faction specializes and grows stronger in specific actions by way of colonization. Rather than colonies just giving you more resources, they expand your abilities. Because colonization gets progressively harder it isn't a matter of just colonizing whatever you can, but rather selecting the planets that will help you pursue your intended strategy. The second mechanic is the faction specific research ability that gives you the more flavorful expansion of abilities. In play these combine to give you the same effect of a research track. When one faction at the table has so many mobilize worlds colonized that a single mobilize card will let them move across the galaxy they definitely feel like their ships are more advanced than everyone else's.