[AllenGould]

Here's my thought - what is 1E about, at it's core?

If one wants to kill stuff in the Trek universe, there are games dedicated to that. Ascendancy is the strategic board game version. Attack Wing does the quick-and-dirty minis. Star Fleet Battles lets you get into frankly hilarious levels of detail around power allocation and tactical planning. (If you've played the old Starfleet Command PC game, that's the "slimmed down" version of proper SFB combat.) Bridge Crew or Artemis gets you the "we're all on the bridge isn't life won-OH GOD WE'RE GONNA DIE" experience. And so on...

1E's strength is in the "let's go solve missions" experience, and we don't want to pull a Podracing and divert *too* much attention away from that.

[Discovery suxs]

Wow definitely a shocking poll.

No 12
Yes at 10
If you factor in everything.

[Mogor]

I wouldn't mind seeing Battle Bridge Door being baked in as a default part of the game and not as a required seed card. Honestly I dont see it impacting serious interaction decks significantly

[Se7enofMine]

I dont think the BBSD should be a free seed, nor should anything for personnel battle. If you want to use it, pay for it. If you dont, omit it.

But omitting it only harms the people who don't want it in the game.

isnt that true of every card?

This.

Any player builds a deck how they see fit. I choose to occasionally play with Q-Flash or Storage Comp Dooror BBSD. Some none of the above.

I dont see how creating a new side deck for personnel battle and choosing to use or not use would be sny different.

[Data's Socks]

And so on...

Yess, Star Trek video game represent! Found some version of the code in a book of game programs checked out from the library, and it was off to beat up some Klingon ships. I just remember it was really hard and I was mostly getting beaten up instead.

---

The Battle Bridge side deck is in a weird spot where there's this awkward straddling of the original rotation damage and then this much more developed system. For me it's a maybe on the free seed, but... still probably not. Partly because I'm just not a fan of them (Missions excepted, but not Sites for non-Nor decks), or come to that pulling in stuff from outside the game. I think it's because seeing the "customizable" part in the name was a huge draw--not only that you could choose what to put in, but that you also had to choose what to leave out, and therein lies the space for creativity, fun, and remorse. Free seeds feel like they slowly move away from that.

The other thing is that, had the entire Tactics concept by some miracle actually used the other cards in the deck to figure out boosts and damages, I'd be more inclined to say yes, but that's a whole other side deck to deal with. Considering the game isn't all about battling, it feels cleaner to me to not force players to have to build that part unless they really wanted to.

[Tim]

0.02 - I've never felt the Battle Bridge Side Deck brought interesting choices to deck building or game play. Not worth dealing with another side deck.

[Not_always_but_often]

0.02 - I've never felt the Battle Bridge Side Deck brought interesting choices to deck building or game play. Not worth dealing with another side deck.

I think a lot of it is how Decipher choose to make the tactics - so many of them are just +3 attack +2 defense for a specific affiliation. The monster hunter tactic from The Cage makes the choice of what to bring a little more interesting, and we could use more tactics like that. Right now the battle bridge side deck is too easy to "solve" for optimal tactics for a specific deck.

[AllenGould]

0.02 - I've never felt the Battle Bridge Side Deck brought interesting choices to deck building or game play. Not worth dealing with another side deck.

I think a lot of it is how Decipher choose to make the tactics - so many of them are just +3 attack +2 defense for a specific affiliation. The monster hunter tactic from The Cage makes the choice of what to bring a little more interesting, and we could use more tactics like that. Right now the battle bridge side deck is too easy to "solve" for optimal tactics for a specific deck.

And if memory serves, the goal of the BB was to give battle a meaning beyond "I blow you up". That's why the damage markers kill random (or targeted) folks, or turn off special equipment, and what have you. (And then as an added bonus, put in a touch of randomness because the outcome wasn't 100% predetermined).

[Discovery rox]

And if memory serves, the goal of the BB was to give battle a meaning beyond "I blow you up". That's why the damage markers kill random (or targeted) folks, or turn off special equipment, and what have you. (And then as an added bonus, put in a touch of randomness because the outcome wasn't 100% predetermined).

that was what was neat about tactics. the consequences and random variation in damage affects.

the class specific and affiliation specific tactics were pretty boring. cards like crimson forcefield and borg cutting beam and target shields were more interesting and added more of a sense of choice and variation in battles. but most players would probably just optimize for highest numbers instead of interesting deck specific choices.

if i were to redesign tactics and battle bridge door, i would add more of a rock paper scissors mechanic and have the tactics interact with each other more instead of just adding flat numbers to weapons and shields. make it so that even if your ship is a lot stronger then mine, i can still have a chance of surviving and maybe even evading the battle. or if your ship is the same strength as mine, you can still have a chance of scoring a lucky shot and crippling me.

that would also make people want to use the battle bridge side deck because it would give them a chance even if they arent a battle deck.

[SudenKapala]

And so on...

Yess, Star Trek video game represent! Found some version of the code in a book of game programs checked out from the library, and it was off to beat up some Klingon ships. I just remember it was really hard and I was mostly getting beaten up instead.

Man! I once had a game like that, on my even-then-ancient Acorn Electron basic terminal. It came from a 2nd hand retail cassette tape. I hacked it to make it less difficult, and tweak some things. That was fun.
The packaging was actually not from Star Trek, obviously to avoid copyright claims -- but the content was like that wiki link. Only more graphical, and in colour.
Fun memories!

[Tim]

And if memory serves, the goal of the BB was to give battle a meaning beyond "I blow you up". That's why the damage markers kill random (or targeted) folks, or turn off special equipment, and what have you. (And then as an added bonus, put in a touch of randomness because the outcome wasn't 100% predetermined).

that was what was neat about tactics. the consequences and random variation in damage affects.

the class specific and affiliation specific tactics were pretty boring. cards like crimson forcefield and borg cutting beam and target shields were more interesting and added more of a sense of choice and variation in battles. but most players would probably just optimize for highest numbers instead of interesting deck specific choices.

For battle interference decks, in my experience, you either have the weapons or not. No half measures. BBD ends up just being another weapons stat boost for a seed card. The exact boost not being random exactly, just not always apparent in the table.

In theory, it should work better when it's battle vs battle? I haven't really tried that recently, but battle vs battle has always been a tedious mess when I've seen it. Ship battle does not seem to be designed to handle multiple ships in a symmetrical setup. So actually, handling multiple ships better might be more useful area to look at?


Damage targeting Tactics have always seemed much more interesting in combo with dilemmas, but not really in a way that ended up feeling like they worked particularly well.


I don't really play at high level though, so my opinion may not be broadly useful.

[Kander77]

Space battles seem fine to me, or they did when I played.

Personnel battles though always seemed clunky and time consuming.