Discuss all of your questions, concerns, comments and ideas about Second Edition.
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Second Edition Playtest Manager
By Faithful Reader (Ross Fertel)
 - Second Edition Playtest Manager
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#563588
It's Wednesday! We're more than halfway through Since we are over the hump, let's look at a question!

Last Week: Favorite Voyager Main
9-22-21 Devouring a set
9-15-21 Recommend a 'beyond-starter' deck
9-8-21 Justify Your Existence!
9-1-21 Civilian, Justice & Shackelton
8-25-21 What affiliation/faction have you played the least?
8-18-21Ross is Rong 2019 Edition
8-11-21 What personnel do you want?
8-4/21High Cost Dilemma Promo Vote
7-28-21 Kill a deck
7-21-21 Let's get person(el)l
7-14-21 MCU Draft
7-7-21 Let's Get Dangerous (Missions)
6-30-21 Episode Untouched by Human Hands
6-23-21 More Keywords? More keywords!
6-16-21 We Want You as the New Recruit
6-9-2 1Most Underrated Personnel
6-2-21 Pop-Up Edition!
5-26/21A Protected Voyage
5/19/21: Mission ... Unknown!
5-12-21: Favorite theme from Heroes and Demons
5-5-21: Most Favoritist Errata Ever (May 2021)
4-28-21: Region(al) love
4-20-21: Shiny New Toy!
4-13-21: Mission: The Good, the bad and the powerful
4-6-21Change this Dilemma now!
3-31-21Which affiliation should get an HQ next?
3-24-21What keyword needs some love?:
3-17-14Which are your favorite and least favorite keywords?
3-10-14 Where can you play Trellium-D?
3-3-21Balance Team Focus
2-24-21Ding Marry Kill: Apocalypse Rising
2-17-21Cardassia Prime: Subjugated Planet Survey


We are less than forty-eight hours away from the release of Caretaker. This is the fourth in a series of sets based around the theme of interaction. You've seen the immediate plans for the next year (or so) on the front page and neither interaction or a series of sets in in the cards.

Should we revisit interaction as a theme for sets? Should we do a series of sets based around a particular theme? The answer for both of those is probably some variant of 'it depends,' but what is your preference?
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
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1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#563592
My answer is a "it's complicated."


Should interaction be a theme of sets? It's more (in my mind) that interaction should always be a strong theme. STCCG, both 1E and 2E are at their weakest as a game when it devolves into 2 player solitaire.


The core problem is that some players (or even most players) don't like it when interaction happens and it goes unfavorably.

Interaction is best when it's a one way street, where I interfere with your plans while I sail thru and win.
(Edit to add: I was very unclear that this is meant to be sarcastic, and the general feel that you get from many games and genres of people that don't like certain forms of interaction.)

One of Decipher's biggest mistakes with 2E from the very first set was making battles (both ship and personnel) require cards. That immediately limits the ability to interact on the fly. They were trying to prevent the 1E extremes of lock outs, and having headquarters missions was a great step for that.
Picard, you are about to move into areas of the galaxy containing wonders more incredible than you can possibly imagine, and terrors to freeze your soul.
Q, Q Who.


Every time you move your crew from the safety of your HQ, you should be putting them in danger. Many should never make it home again. The dangers are from dilemmas (and the dilemma pile is a great form of interaction.), but also from opponent's capturing, killing, or interfering.


Yes, interaction should always be a big theme. I should never be able to goldfish efficiently and get a good idea of how my deck will perform compared to against real opponents.
Last edited by boromirofborg on Wed Oct 06, 2021 3:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
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#563594
boromirofborg wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 1:01 pm Interaction is best when it's a one way street, where I interferes with your plans while I sail thru and win.
I'm sorry. But this point gets a HARD disagree from me. What you just described isn't "interaction" at all. You shooting me and me blowing up isn't interaction. It's just a jobber squash.

You say there should be risk every time you leave your homeworld. That's fair as far as it goes, but it stands to reason that such risk should extend to your battle fleet or your Jem'hadar troop carrier does it not?

Why should the explorers be the only ones running the risk of getting blown up in that big dangerous space you're talking about?

The problem is neither game does a particularly good job of providing cards that introduce these types of risks at a playable cost, so we're stuck in this speed solver or hammer meta.
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
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1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#563613
Armus wrote:I'm sorry. But this point gets a HARD disagree from me. What you just described isn't "interaction" at all. You shooting me and me blowing up isn't interaction. It's just a jobber squash.
Sorry, I was very unclear on that. I meant that to be what people seem to think after interacting. It's not what I mean at all.

I prefer long interactions where anything could go either way. I want hard fought games where I ear the win.

But across all kinds of games and genres, people *think* of interaction as they doing things that are fun, and when your opponent interacts it's not fun.

I really failed in highlighting that.


_____________

yes, I fully agree the risk should be there on both sides. I think tactics in 1E helped, or had the potential to help. There should be a risk to running battle decks, and there should always be a away that the scrappy underdog reverses the story and blows up the bigger fleet. (As usually happens in the canon.)

On a 2E level, I think that there needs to be some built in way to slow the opponent without necessarily requiring certain cards.

On a broad theory, I loved the idea from First Contact in 1E, where you could delay the Borg forever by attacking them. It had the huge risk of now this 24/24 ship could fight back.

I don't think it should be possible to build a deck and plan on *just* speed solving. There should have to be some way to interact with the opponent, and a way to deal with their interaction.
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#563640
I go different ways on this.

Half of the game for me is seeing a great crew come together and seeing what cool stuff they do, so having them be shot/captured/assimilated with great effectiveness is demoralising.

Even if I win, it's probably because my superstars all went away, but I could draw and play enough replacements, which means that my superstars weren't really that special and I could just do this thing with random mooks.

Racing to victory is just as capable of generating excitement as a battle. Imagine saying that Tennis doesn't have enough interaction because people can't stop and shoot at each other.

However, I think that the designers missed a trick, because there's not much visual representation of the race. LotR does a better job, where players race down the same track, even though their Fellowships don't fight each other directly.

Have more thoughts, will post later.
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By GooeyChewie (Nathan Miracle)
 - Gamma Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Architect
#563715
Fritzinger wrote: Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:39 am LotR does a better job, where players race down the same track, even though their Fellowships don't fight each other directly.
I feel like the Star Trek theme could be well-represented using the Lord of the Rings mechanics. (Proposed changes hidden for length.)

•You have Personnel instead of Companions. Your Captain takes the place of the Ring-Bearer, and "Crew" refers to your personnel other than the captain. Your captain has a Command instead of the One Ring. Burdens represent the burden of command instead of the burden of the ring, but Captains would still have a stat to represent how much burden they can bear.
•Rather than personnel getting killed, the "dead pile" is called Sick Bay. That way when we get some version Sent Back (which in LotR let you bring Gandalf back from the dead), it makes narrative sense that the personnel recovered rather than came back from the dead. It also makes for better Trek Sense than the current game. It feels weird to be happy that your personnel with a good "when you play" effect gets killed.
•The Free Peoples cultures would be replaced with the Federation sub-affiliation icons (and the Starfleet icon). So you can pick which cast you want to play. This side of the deck could expand out into other affiliations which help our heroes. Don't worry, we'll get to affiliations that oppose the heroes as well.
•Shadow tokens are replaced with Risk tokens. They work exactly the same way, but when you add a bunch of Risk to the pool you get to recite Kirk's "Risk is our business" speech.
•Personnel have classifications, but not regular skills. The classifications are used by other cards. For example, a phaser might say "Plays on your SECURITY personnel." Personnel could still have three attributes used to face dilemmas, but I would replace Integrity with Diplomacy.
•Speaking of dilemmas, they would replace the Shadow cultures. Dilemmas will have one or more of the attributes that personnel have. Instead of having Skirmishes, you will assign dilemmas to personnel for that personnel to face, comparing the personnel's attributes to the attributes on the dilemma. Dilemmas might represent actual characters. For example, Weyoun might be a Dominion dilemma with Diplomacy and Cunning attributes. Jem'hadar on the other hand might be Dominion dilemmas with Strength attributes.
•Equipment would play on individual personnel, as it does in LotR. For example, that phaser that plays on your SECURITY personnel might give them +2 Strength. Events and Interrupts would exist exactly as Conditions and Interrupts do in LotR.
•Missions would take the place of the sites in the adventure path. There won't be any "failing" of mission (which, let's be honest, has really weird implications for missions like "Evade Borg Vessel"). Just like with the site path, you move to the next mission each turn, and after facing the dilemmas at that mission can decide whether to move again or stop. The missions themselves tend to help out dilemmas which would thematically show up at those missions, since just like in LotR the opponent of whoever is in the lead picks the next mission.
•Have your Captain get past the dilemmas at the 9th mission and you win! Or, have your dilemmas send your opponent's captain to the sick bay and you win! (Of course, just like Sam can take the Ring, a First Officer might be able to take command once per game.) Or, put too much burden on your opponent's captain to make them resign and you win!
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#563873
GooeyChewie wrote: Fri Oct 08, 2021 11:51 am
I feel like the Star Trek theme could be well-represented using the Lord of the Rings mechanics. (Proposed changes hidden for length.)
Excellent thoughts! I offer my own in return:




What about putting dilemmas in the same deck and evening up like in rings? On your turn you wouldn't want dilemmas clogging your hand, on your opponent's turn you'd want more dilemmas in your hand.

Some mechanic where you keep main crew, but some of the cards are allies and they go away when they're not at their home mission... Would be good. Just to keep from board overload.
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
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1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#563913
Well, this is some very interesting thoughts that I’ll spend too much time when I should be doing work next week figuring out. :p

First thought is that Voyager especially lends itself to this hybrid with LOTR, being able to have a clear journey narrative and the core goal being to survive.

Also you have “shadow” cultures with clearer territory for home sites.

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