#456547
guys, calm down.
we've had special downloads since First Contact. many cards have been designed with "suspends play" timing in mind. a special download represents something that's actually built into the card, always at hand, usable in a pinch. (in 2E, many such downloadable verbs would actually be abilities printed on that personnel, which would allow for different timing on each - which btw also caused a lot of discussion and confusion... in 1E, there's just no space on the cards for that.)
in my opinion, 1E's special downloads are doing a FANTASTIC job modelling this concept:
- the thing you're downloading is separate, yet always at hand
- the rule is deceptively simple, yet creates interesting, powerful interactions
- it still requires choice during deck building (most decks cannot possibly include all downloads that would be available on their cards)
- if you really don't like the concept, it can still be fought in-game (Containment Field, Computer Crash, ...)
yes, getting out of the middle of a mission attempt is powerful. so is adding skills during a mission attempt. of course it's worth building decks around maximizing these abilities. but it's neither creating massive NPEs nor pushing game speed to unacceptable levels. please don't change what's not broken.
on a personal note:
i don't know about you, but i grow attached to my cards in play, and don't want to lose them. i've always sought out ways to play 1E "safe": staying in other quadrants, scanning dilemmas, ... however, i also vastly perfer attempting with all i've got to having to micro-manage crews, or redshirting. big attempts have grown increasingly risky since the Scans were banned (and then nerfed). Mission Debriefing punishes big attempts enough already. Cytherians (with 1E's liberal battling) and Denevan Neural Parasites punish big attempts way too much.
you think the game is slow now? removing the possibility of "emergency" special downloads like The Gift and Smoke Bomb and Out of Time, while keeping the dilemma power level unchanged, would definitely not work for me. my experience from games where i didn't draw my emergency downloads (or was facing Computer Crash), shows that, forced to (knowingly) play under these conditions, i'll take loads of time before each mission attempt, sorting through my personnel, thinking through everything that could go wrong, selecting the perfect team, trying to keep everybody as safe as possible. sometimes i'll start redshirting (ignoring all the possible redshirt punishment, because the prospect of losing all i've reported to a single bad dilemma outgrows the sum of all redshirt punishment in the game). and i've hated each such game. if that's something my opponents have to devote significant resources to, i'll swallow it up and move on. but if the game of 1E were changed to such conditions globally, permanently, i do believe that would make me quit 1E for good.
"arguing with idiots is like playing chess with a pigeon. no matter how good you are, the bird is going to shit on the board and strut around like it won anyway."