[Armus]

Moar Holoprograms Pleaz!

[AllenGould]

"typical" = ❖ . Right?

Not entirely - there's ❖ that don't say it, and there's some missions and equipment that have it as well.

But if that's too Venn-y, let's see what's next in line... "representative" will likely be the rest of ❖... bunch of terms that are already used...

Next one up is "chief" (which appears 117 times - two more than "sisko", for the Numberwang among us.)

[SudenKapala]

So you're literally looking at which words are used most often in lore? Hmm, interesting... But you might miss out on other, worthy, possibilities.

But what I meant was, that "typical" (and yes, certainly, "representative") are already represented in the game by ❖ . It seems too close to each other, to be able to do something interesting / new with it. (Like "pilot" and Navigation x2", e.g.)

"Chief" as a position and rank... maybe; but must be distinguished from the meaning/use as "chief among a group", then. What doyou propose we do with it? Whay would the characteristic entail?

What does "Venn(-y)" mean?

[admiral-mogh]

Humanoid!

[SudenKapala]

Humanoid!

But that's a race; and races are already prominently featured in the game. (Admittedly, not that 'race'.) I'd go for something a bit more obscure / novel.
(Still don't know what I'd choose myself, though. )

I did very much like the idea that surfaced recently, to do more fun stuff for the Borg with their former races (Klingon, Cardie, Bolian, etc.) -- but that's outside of the scope of this topic.

[BCSWowbagger]

Matthew Zinno has taken to calling lore references "keyword salad," and I don't think he's wrong. The occasional use of lore to make a particularly neat card is cool. But the fact that we now have to study the lore of pretty much all cards pretty intently to see all the characteristics makes the mechanic feel slow and bloated. No single card is responsible for this, and most of the worst offenders were actually Decipher cards, but the cumulative effect is significant.

Worse: Design occasionally feels the need to put certain keywords on people where they have zero canonical support, because we needed to provide answers to certain walls. This means we can't even rely on our knowledge of Trek to tell us who's going to have which keywords; we have to actually read the lore, often many times. The paradigm case of this is Ethan Novakovich, a Decipher card (a bad one!), but we've done our fair share too (uh-oh two of those are from my sets -- and the last one's a UP link!).

So I'm as guilty of this as anybody -- check out my contribution to making named-in-lore way more of a universal thing than it used to be! -- but Matt has worn me down. I'm reasonably convinced we should back off of making new lore references for a while, and we should probably stop adding game-relevant characteristics that aren't clearly justified by the story. What we have is fine, but it feels like time for a pause.

All of which is to say: you should give some love to some characteristics that don't rely on lore!

My nominee? Special equipment! There's so many special equipments that only show up on a few cards, can't be added to others, are only referenced in a couple places, and/or have built-in rules that would be nice to offload. Energy Dampener! Solar Sail! Invasive Transporters! Particle Scattering Device! I already said Solar Sail but I'm saying it again! Holographic Skin! There's some cool design space to be explored down in the ship equipment box.

And it doesn't require anybody to go digging through lore to toss a "keyword salad."

[sexecutioner]

My nominee? Special equipment!

Yup, I'd love more special equipment fun

I'd also love to see more use of the secondary species on Borg

[SudenKapala]

Humanoid!

But that's a race; and races are already prominently featured in the game. (Admittedly, not that 'race'.) I'd go for something a bit more obscure / novel.
(Still don't know what I'd choose myself, though. )

I did very much like the idea that surfaced recently, to do more fun stuff for the Borg with their former races (Klingon, Cardie, Bolian, etc.)

With the above, I meant the below:

My nominee? Special equipment!

Yup, I'd love more special equipment fun

I'd also love to see more use of the secondary species on Borg

[edgeofhearing]

I wish information broker were on more cards.

[BCSWowbagger]

My favorite oddly specific lore tag is "Snappy conversationalist."

https://www.trekcc.org/1e/index.php?mode=search#Results

[Discovery rox]

Worse: Design occasionally feels the need to put certain keywords on people where they have zero canonical support, because we needed to provide answers to certain walls. This means we can't even rely on our knowledge of Trek to tell us who's going to have which keywords; we have to actually read the lore, often many times. The paradigm case of this is Ethan Novakovich, a Decipher card (a bad one!), but we've done our fair share too (uh-oh two of those are from my sets -- and the last one's a UP link!).

your last link is broken.

i always thought ethan was supposed to be more of a joke.

at least the criminal characters are justified in being thieves. and wasnt the reman bodyguard actually bodyguarding in the episode?

My nominee? Special equipment!

yeah, special equipment is a good idea.

even tractor beam. thats used so much in star trek but isnt used much in star trek ccg. give it more uses. that would also make shuttles a harder choice to use, since they dont have tractor beams. free voyager shuttles should come with more of a cost.

[Data's Socks]

Being rather enthusiastic about ships my first thought was "flagship," but having the Flagship cards (e.g. Federation Flagship: Relaunched) call out specific ones themselves would be a less lore-stressful way to handle it. Maybe admirals can turn ships into personal ones as well, increasing the potential pool. I did find it interesting that no 1E Enterprise except for the I.S.S. Enterprise NX-01 mentions it. And also that if it's a simple keyword check, that would be an amazing turn of events for the U.S.S. Sutherland.

Instead, I'll nominate having more things to do with the alternate-future ships.

[BCSWowbagger]

your last link is broken.

OR IS IT??

(It links to a card in development that most people can't see.)

at least the criminal characters are justified in being thieves. and wasnt the reman bodyguard actually bodyguarding in the episode?

Yes, Venoxis deserved to be a bodyguard. I was commenting on his status as a "dissident," which was in no way indicated by the episode. Why'd we put it on there? Because Cold Front had a cycle of cards dedicated to "making dissidents a thing." (It was actually originally a much larger part of the set, but did not succeed in playtesting.)

And we really wanted our new Romulan faction to be able to take advantage of the new dissident tech in the set. So we needed a universal dissident, and decided it would be Venoxis. Creative kindly provided exactly what we asked for.

And so we contributed to the proliferation of keyword salad. Which, again, is pretty cool on its own, but the cumulative effect of it adds up.

even tractor beam. thats used so much in star trek but isnt used much in star trek ccg. give it more uses. that would also make shuttles a harder choice to use, since they dont have tractor beams. free voyager shuttles should come with more of a cost.

Yeah, I want more Ship Seizure in the game. I don't know why nobody builds decks around that card. I guess I probably should try!

[AllenGould]

I was commenting on his status as a "dissident," which was in no way indicated by the episode. Why'd we put it on there? Because Cold Front had a cycle of cards dedicated to "making dissidents a thing." (It was actually originally a much larger part of the set, but did not succeed in playtesting.)

Also worth noting that questions about PAQ Decipher cards in the form of "why is Tomalak (or any other name-brand non-Fed) such a weak card?" can be answered by "they only put on what they could justify in episode back then". So.. letting designers whole-cloth some details on folks who the episode only cared about as "I need you to be menacing for three minutes" makes the game better.

[KazonPADD]

Think you mean Venoxis not Dividius....

#HeaneySpoilsAgain