[edgeofhearing]

Greetings Trek Friends,

It's that time again! This is a thread wherein you can ask questions of the designers of the new set Where No One Has Gone Before. We'll do our best to answer them.

Lucas Thompson
Nathan Miracle

[GooeyChewie]

I don’t have permission to edit, so until and unless that permission is granted I will simply respond to each post.

[Faithful Reader]

Qeustions from Bob:

You are going to have a wild weekend. A 'What Happens in Vegas' kind of weekend. Which card do you take with you?

You are going to commit a crime. Which card do you take with you?

You have a deep secret you that is dear to you. Which card do you share it with?

You have reached the natural end of your life. Which card do you want by your side?

Which card is your secret crush?

[GooeyChewie]

Qeustions from Bob:

Hi Bob!

You are going to have a wild weekend. A 'What Happens in Vegas' kind of weekend. Which card do you take with you?

I would say Vegas is in a different quadrant, so I might want to phone home for some support. I would bring the nice interrupt Lucas mentioned in the intro article.

You are going to commit a crime. Which card do you take with you?

The Crime card, of course.

You have a deep secret you that is dear to you. Which card do you share it with?

One of the characters on 66V6 Vulcan Mindmeld. The one who doesn't talk. (Unless it cries out about there not being any hiding place?)

You have reached the natural end of your life. Which card do you want by your side?

66V36 is the most likely to make it no longer true that I have reached the end of my life.

Which card is your secret crush?

I'm not big on crushes, but I'll ship 66V6 Vulcan Mindmeld and 66V9. Lots of options there.

[boromirofborg]

Quadrants are a theme this set. If you had the ability to Q-snap your fingers and changes something about 2E from the beginning, what would you change about quadrants in the game?

For me, it would be that all personnel and ships should still have quadrant icons, but unloaded unlike 1E. So you could have that care, and some that don't.

Honestly, I'm not sure I'd change much quadrant-wise. I've also wished that personnel could be separated by quadrant in the past, but I think that would mainly just make personnel like Tosk much less useful (not that he sees a ton of use anyways).

Hey, I can edit now! I have a long list of things I would change if I reshape things from the beginning. But quadrants is not one of them. While I see the appeal of personnel having quadrant icons, I would prefer to use that space for era icons (22nd, 23rd and 24th century), and reserve and for storylines with actual time travel. I suppose one could make the argument for as a quadrant, though.

[Faithful Reader]

What consideration did you give cards like Distant Exploration or Expedient Opportunity when you made the Quadrant spanning cards?

Those cards showed up in most quadrant-related test decks. I think Expedient Opportunity in particular does a lot of heavy-lifting for making decks that do missions in other quadrants playable.

Obviously those two cards will play a big role in nearly any cross-quadrant deck (aside from DS9 not needing Expedient Opportunity). Even with them, historically we only see cross-quadrant decks show up when affiliations get specific support for them. I would say the main consideration we gave those two cards was not repeating what they already do.

Which card went through the most changes?

I think Telepathology went through the most iterations, but the changes weren't very large (IMO), they were fine-tuning changes. 66V1, on the other hand, was almost completely re-written.

I agree with Telepathology being the most iterative. It took quite a few tweaks to get right. I count 11 versions of the text.

To what degree does the work done with Telepathy contrast with the recent work done with Intelligence?

Telepathy has a lot of catching up to do to be on par with Intelligence (the second-rarest skill). I think a lot of that falls on what Call to Arms did with Rogue Borg Ambush and Gomtuu Shock Wave.

RBA instantly made Intelligence a desirable skill by placing it opposite a Hand Weapon requirement. And, once players want a skill, designers are going to make more of it.

That didn't happen with Gomtuu and Telepathy because Telepathy was also on an Integrity requirement, a higher one than the Diplomacy/Integrity requirement. 10,000 years ago, if Decipher had put Telepathy on, say, a Cunning requirement, that would have made it a much more desirable skill, and we'd have more of it today - and more uses for it.

Intelligence isn't just more prevalent on personnel than Telepathy is, it also appears on far more missions and dilemmas. There just hasn't been much reason to make more Telepathy missions when really only TNG decks would benefit from them. But, for example, with Juliet Jurot out there now, there are a number of Kes-related DQ stories that could make interesting missions which we actually have reason to make.

Better late than never, right? The Telepathy part of the set is only 14 cards, but will ideally increase Telepathy's desirability, and we'll get to see some more telepaths in the future. This set leans heavily on non-unique telepaths since that would make the biggest difference in the smallest number of card slots, but if players are asking for more Telepathy in the future I've got a list of interesting telepaths that could show up.

Good analysis by Lucas. I would say Intelligence is more akin to Acquisition than Telepathy. Some affiliations have practically none of it, while others are awash in it. And both of those have gotten full strategies over time. Meanwhile Telepathy is super rare among characters not named Troi, across all affiliations.

As for missions, prior to Where No One Has Gone Before there were only five Telepathy missions. Meanwhile there were just as many Intelligence missions in the base Second Edition set alone.

What is your favorite card from the set?

I'm very fond of Telepathology; if I were tasked with making Telepathy desirable in only one card, it would be that one. From an art perspective, I'd have to go with 66V1 though.

66V1 is the best art, hands down.
66V9 is the one I most want to build a deck around.
66V33 will be the most fun one to say.

[Danny]

When a one-off character from an episode appears in a different shade to their original outing (see Ba'els, Bilby, Duras (from Reunion), Kurn (from Sins of the Father), Laas) or even in their same colouring (see Karina, Kassem, Kilana, Macet), there's typically been a little change in their skill set.

Was this posited when Hanok and Ornithar went from Dominion's 'Lavender Grey' to Ferengi Orange? If it was, what factors lead to them retaining their original skills?

Trek's original pitch had those skills and, while their abilities changed from the original pitch, those skills line up well with non- Acquisition missions and with general needs. When non- decks got tested people were generally happy with those skills on those personnel, so they remained as they were.

As an aside, Kurn, Squadron Commander has amazing skills for decks. I've often wished that we had a cheaper version of him with those same skills (or even just errata for the original to cost 3).