[Klauser]

isn't the outpost in the picture upside down?

Takket:

This outpost was taken from Star Trek: The Motion Picture - it was the support base for the contruction yard refitting the Starship Enterprise.

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/disp ... play_media

The model was used next in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan as Regula I - but was show upside down. The model was also used in The Next Generation and DS(.

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albu ... ok0637.jpg


A history of this model's use in Trek:

http://www.sciencefictionarchives.com/e ... inal-model

[Discovery rox]

In theory, it was player interaction. In practice, and in testing, it never was. It also caused a host of issues with rules and other design interactions.

when the theory fails to yield results in practice, you dont push the bad watered down result out the door and into the world. you hold it back and refine the theory until something workable and fun is made. whether thats in this set or in the future.

you do this all the time with the ideas for cards, mechanics, stories, and gameplay you design. i know you do because you and other designers comment on that repeatedly. so i dont understand why this one was treated any different.

people have been asking for an assimilate facility card for a long time and was often thrown around as a way to make tng borgs distinct given there history of scooping up outposts on the show. it was the one piece of the opponents borgs couldnt touch yet. this frankly feels like a slap in the face. instead of giving players what theyve been asking for, you denied them. it would have been a disappointment if you left it at that, but by giving this instead, you also extinguish the hope that maybe assimilating facilities could still show up in the future once its worked out by the designers.

icing on the cake is that now that the whole set is out, there doesnt seem to be any objective focused on player interaction at all. if your designing borgs and not focusing on player interaction, your doing it wrong. borgs on the show were exciting and scary when they were interacting with the heroes, not when they were off doing there own thing.

[Marauder Mo]

icing on the cake is that now that the whole set is out, there doesnt seem to be any objective focused on player interaction at all. if your designing borgs and not focusing on player interaction, your doing it wrong. borgs on the show were exciting and scary when they were interacting with the heroes, not when they were off doing there own thing.

Actually I disagree, I think it's very thematic. The Borg in the show are actually pretty explicit about ignoring other races most of the time. Much of the show they're just barreling forward on their mission until they're given a compelling reason to stop. Literally you can beam onto their ship and they don't even care until you start breaking stuff. In that sense their design choices make a ton of sense in this set.

[AllenGould]

Now that the card is up and I can read it, I'm also a bit confused on what the outpost is doing there, other than "being an outpost". Heck, if I'm reading it right you could fail to find the outpost and never put it there at all, and the objective wouldn't care?

[sexecutioner]

icing on the cake is that now that the whole set is out, there doesnt seem to be any objective focused on player interaction at all. if your designing borgs and not focusing on player interaction, your doing it wrong. borgs on the show were exciting and scary when they were interacting with the heroes, not when they were off doing there own thing.

Actually I disagree, I think it's very thematic. The Borg in the show are actually pretty explicit about ignoring other races most of the time. Much of the show they're just barreling forward on their mission until they're given a compelling reason to stop. Literally you can beam onto their ship and they don't even care until you start breaking stuff. In that sense their design choices make a ton of sense in this set.

Yup, these are Q-Who Borg, life forms meant nothing to them.

The interaction is already out there, Eliminate Starship, Assimilate Starship. Borg Cutting Beam. And with Gowron of Borg due to get the TNG logo, they have all they need for ship based interaction.

[JeBuS]

Now that the card is up and I can read it, I'm also a bit confused on what the outpost is doing there, other than "being an outpost". Heck, if I'm reading it right you could fail to find the outpost and never put it there at all, and the objective wouldn't care?

Here's the tricks we came up with in Discord. I must say I'm not very satisfied with any of them for the mechanics of using a rules loophole on some of them (uncontrolled outposts shouldn't be able to do certain things).

1. Strategic Base + Consume will net you 3 card draws.
2. Consume + Spacedock will instantly repair your ship (cuz Spacedock doesn't care if you control the outpost).
3. Consume + Incoming Message will lure your opponents' ship to NZ. (supposing your opponent plays an affiliation matching an IM and the uncontrolled outpost is "nearest")

[AllenGould]

[*]Consume + Spacedock will instantly repair your ship (cuz Spacedock doesn't care if you control the outpost).

This one doesn't work - it may not care where you play, but you have to be able to dock at the outpost to repair (per "docking" in Glossary, which I only found because I searched for "Spacedock". It's also mentioned in passing under "repair" - which IMO is the saner place, and then "Spacedock" itself has an entry saying you have to dock.) I couldn't find anything talking about being to dock at uncontrolled outposts (Empok Nor works because it's a Nor and has sites that let anyone dock, not because it's uncontrolled)

#3 definitely works (although that's a lot of crufty cards to have stashed so you can find the right one), and I think #1 works (although I'd have made that an argument against having a physical outpost there.)

[Armus]

#3 definitely works (although that's a lot of crufty cards to have stashed so you can find the right one)

Well in a deck where Mutation, The Power, and Q's Tent can all be used without endangering its ability to win, there's more room for crufty cards like this.

I'm not seeing that juice as being worth the squeeze for the moment, but maybe somebody can pull some shenanigans.

It does beg the question though: C:O let's you ignore the ENGINEER requirement, but is there an affiliation limitation when building an outpost or can I just stuff an entire rainbow of outposts in my deck box and bring different ones in based on matchup?

[JeBuS]

[*]Consume + Spacedock will instantly repair your ship (cuz Spacedock doesn't care if you control the outpost).

This one doesn't work - it may not care where you play, but you have to be able to dock at the outpost to repair (per "docking" in Glossary, which I only found because I searched for "Spacedock". It's also mentioned in passing under "repair" - which IMO is the saner place, and then "Spacedock" itself has an entry saying you have to dock.) I couldn't find anything talking about being to dock at uncontrolled outposts (Empok Nor works because it's a Nor and has sites that let anyone dock, not because it's uncontrolled)

You're right. I forgot about that. The "here" rule for facilities.

#3 definitely works (although that's a lot of crufty cards to have stashed so you can find the right one)

It does beg the question though: C:O let's you ignore the ENGINEER requirement, but is there an affiliation limitation when building an outpost or can I just stuff an entire rainbow of outposts in my deck box and bring different ones in based on matchup?

That's essentially what I'm thinking, yes. You just bring every outpost / affiliation combo in the game, then sort it out as a game-time decision which you'll pull in. Since they aren't "in your deck" nor are they in any "side deck", they don't break the Borg rules.

Another problem I have with this whole thing is that it is making rules. As of right now, nowhere in the rules does downloading = building. Downloading a facility requires that you be able to meet the requirements of building, but there's no rule that says downloading initiates building. My argument is that, by the rules as written, Strategic Base shouldn't work with this because the outpost isn't being built, it's being downloaded. These are not the same thing.

[AllenGould]

It does beg the question though: C:O let's you ignore the ENGINEER requirement, but is there an affiliation limitation when building an outpost or can I just stuff an entire rainbow of outposts in my deck box and bring different ones in based on matchup?

It's outside-the-game, which currently has no "deck limits" at all. You can grab whichever one you want at the moment you're required to download one.

Now, you only need Rom, Car, Fed, and Kli (and Neutral if you're inclined), because you still have to match icons and those are the only four affiliations I saw for NZ missions.

[KazonPADD]

The number of affiliation icons available on neutral zone missions will increase soon.

[AllenGould]

The number of affiliation icons available on neutral zone missions will increase soon.

Oh, can't wait to see how Creative justifies more icons on the "Federation/Romulan Neutral Zone".

(And I mean this literally - Creative is really good at this. )

Thank you!

[JeBuS]

[*]Consume + Spacedock will instantly repair your ship (cuz Spacedock doesn't care if you control the outpost).

This one doesn't work - it may not care where you play, but you have to be able to dock at the outpost to repair (per "docking" in Glossary, which I only found because I searched for "Spacedock". It's also mentioned in passing under "repair" - which IMO is the saner place, and then "Spacedock" itself has an entry saying you have to dock.) I couldn't find anything talking about being to dock at uncontrolled outposts (Empok Nor works because it's a Nor and has sites that let anyone dock, not because it's uncontrolled)

Just spit-balling here... how about Croden's Key? Is there a rule that "any player's" means "controlled", or simply "owned"?

I have no idea how or why this would be useful. Just a thought exercise.

[BCSWowbagger]

Another problem I have with this whole thing is that it is making rules. As of right now, nowhere in the rules does downloading = building. Downloading a facility requires that you be able to meet the requirements of building, but there's no rule that says downloading initiates building. My argument is that, by the rules as written, Strategic Base shouldn't work with this because the outpost isn't being built, it's being downloaded. These are not the same thing.

The rules do say that building = playing, and we know from downloads that downloading = playing. Therefore, by the transitive property, downloading = building.

You're not wrong that this is confusing, though. As a youth, I never realized that building = card playing. I thought it was a separate (and free) ability that was in addition to your card play. I didn't realize my error until I was a CC player. The confusing extra terminology was a misstep from day one. But that's on Decipher.

As for this card, I agree I'm not a fan. I get that the card is trying to tell a story, which is very 1E, but simply placing a token on the table -- at considerable cost in terms of cognitive load and table complexity -- is not telling a story, unfortunately. But it comes in the context of a set that I'm very happy about.

people have been asking for an assimilate facility card for a long time and was often thrown around as a way to make tng borgs distinct given there history of scooping up outposts on the show. it was the one piece of the opponents borgs couldnt touch yet. this frankly feels like a slap in the face. instead of giving players what theyve been asking for, you denied them. it would have been a disappointment if you left it at that, but by giving this instead, you also extinguish the hope that maybe assimilating facilities could still show up in the future once its worked out by the designers.

As one of the parade of designers who have worked on Card #3652 Assimilate Facility and its cousins over the years (that's not a spoiler; we've talked before in Q&A's about this card), I don't think the release of Consume: Outpost will in any way hinder the development of Assimilate Facility. The thing that's killed A.F. over and over again is balancing its powerful effect. My prediction is that the game (already) needs better ways for players to recover from losing a facility or having it overrun; once Design figures out how to address that at a broad level, then finishing A.F. will be trivial.

C:O came down a completely different design path from A.F. and never really had anything to do with it. So keep the faith.

[JeBuS]

The rules do say that building = playing, and we know from downloads that downloading = playing. Therefore, by the transitive property, downloading = building.

Logically that would be correct, if it was based on sound premises. However, while downloading is a form of playing and building is a form of playing, it cannot be logically concluded that separate forms of playing are equivalent.

A tuna is a fish. A mackerel is a fish. Therefore, a tuna is a mackerel.
You see the flaw in that logic?

Took me a minute to remember what this was called. It's the fallacy of the undistributed middle.