Fritzinger wrote:It’s not about their strength but about how much time multiple attempts takes up. I recorded a cadets vs Klingons game this morning and it took 51 minutes!
So, this is an interesting point. It seems to me that the ultimate driver on the game time will be how long it takes to finish those two missions. And the way missions get finished is by running mission attempts. So mission attempts/hour should strongly correlate with lower game times, right? Like, all that garbage that isn't mission attempts is what is really slowing us down...playing cards, choosing who to load on ships, flying around, declaring end of turn, etc. A second attempt on the same turn means more dilemmas being put under missions, and the game progressing towards an end state.
Now, you've got data, so maybe I'm wrong, but if so...I'm really curious where the flaw in my reasoning is.
If you think of another way to drastically cut time I’m also very interested.
I've got one: The 3 counters per turn/saving up to 7 thing. This limits throughput of dudes who could be out solving missions. I get that it probably saves time *per turn* by making decisions easier, but it also adds a potential bookkeeping headache with counter-tracking. Once I'm already in my Play and Draw Cards Step, will 4 more counters really be the thing that breaks the clock?
Related...are you accidentally strongly-encouraging kill/capture/bounce dilemmas? If I Hard Time your 3-cost personnel back to your hand, that basically ate an entire turn of counters. Why would I waste my time on silly high jinks like making you have lots of Transporters skill?
Oof, and that just opened up another line of thought: If we only have 3 counters, then anything that gives you extra counters/draws/plays becomes proportionally much stronger. Surprise Party, for instance, increases your counters per turn by 33% instead of 14%. At What Cost now gives you 2.33 turn's worth of counters, instead of 1 turn's.
But maybe Y/2 including the ship instead of Y/3?
Perhaps. Let's look at the numbers for Mission value, y/3, y/2, and y/2-7 (what you actually get if you start with the Queen's Borg Cube in play).
MV Y/3 Y/2 Y/2-7
30 10 15 8
35 12 18 11
40 14 20 13
45 15 23 16
50 17 25 18
As we see, with a Y of 30, a 7-point ship actually results in two fewer counters to spend on crew. Whereas up at 50, the value of only dividing by 2 instead of 3 completely erases the cost of the ship, and you actually get one more net counter to spend, even with the 7-coster.
I might actually like this better, on reflection. Since it's a race to finish missions, a person willing to go in on a 50-pointer probably should get some advantage.
Have you graphed Y/3 vs. Average attribute requirement for each mission cost tier? That might be the best way to make sure 50-pointers aren't getting screwed.
I'm a bit worried about combos here. But maybe that can be something to test in 0.8. What would you seed?
Not sure, just a thought I had, since this is really giving me vibe like when Objectives were added in the Special Edition set of Star Wars CCG. They greatly accelerated the early game, and often put a number of "events" into play.
I think there's an upper limit on how broken combos could be here. Presumably, anything we could craft could, with some luck, happen to show up in an opening hand in Standard play anyway. Additionally, you are paying for it by having a slower start with less personnel, *and* you risk being taken apart by Event removal cards (in Star Wars, a lot more cards were immune to removal effects).
That said...if you stick with 3 counters per turn, I would start with Surprise Party (unless I saw my opponent playing Terok Nor, because I would assume that my opponent would start Dukat, Cardassian Representative).
I also thought about allowing equipment to be seeded, which seems less prone to brokenness.
Makes sense. We can already pretty much guarantee the equipment we want in Standard because of Fajo's Menagerie.
Of course, starting with equipment in play makes Fajo's Menagerie much stronger.