[boromirofborg]

In the topic about what regions should be focused on or made, one of the main objections is that regions can be very negative for the non-region player.

• Promotes turtleing inside the region
• Can separate opponents missions by too much

My proposed solution would either a rules change or a card that would do this:

You can move from a mission on one side of a region, to the mission on the other side for the range of the destination + the highest span in the region.

Take the following spaceline

• Prepare War Game Scenario (Span:4)
• Investigate Decaying Radiation (Span:3)
• Investigate Destruction (Span:3)
• Patrol Neutral Zone (Span:5)
• Reported Activity (Span:3)

So either player could move from Prepare War Game to Reported Activity using 8 range. (5 + 3), or the other direction for 9 range.

Moving within the region would be unchanged.

I believe this would have the following benefits:

1. Flavor: the region truly feels like a region that could be bypassed. Many regions (Bajor, Sector 001) are both single solar systems and their immediate surroundings, and it makes sense to be treated as one stop for a ship flying by.
2. Keeps the defensive ability of a region by requiring hunting ships to actually transverse the traditional span to catch the opponent.
3. greatly reduces the negative effects on the opponent.

thoughts?

[Ensign Q]

Im all up for more realism, but making the game more complicated, idk.

Maybe regions just seed upper and lower side instead of left and right?



that way you can fly to a region and then in the region.

it also makes the spaceline look cooler.

[Armus]

Im all up for more realism, but making the game more complicated, idk.

Maybe regions just seed upper and lower side instead of left and right?

That picture makes my brain hurt.

Is this game not complicated enough for you already?

[Ensign Q]

i dont think its much more complicated. where is the hurt?

[Slayer07]

Ensign Q's proposed fix makes more sense to me than boromirofborg's. Trying to read and understand his 'fix' made my brain hurt. Though I admit Ensign Q's suggestion is only the base look for the missions and doesn't take into account how the table looks after placing a facility or two on the table, and when one of those facilities is a Nor then you're playing sites down as well so yes that could get messy in practice. Even though at the core it seems to me either one means you go by the region and then choose to either further explore it (using more range) or ignore it and move on.

In a way I think this is one of those things that doesn't really need fixing.

[Ensign Q]

[Armus]

So it's not that I didn't understand what you're trying to do, here's what's making my brain hurt with that photo:

- Facility placement, and more generally card clutter, is an issue. Is Deep Space 9 at Bajor or Characterize Neutrino Emissions? If the former (which I assume is correct in this illustration, then the fact you can't even see the latter is a problem. Sites were mentioned above but that can be worked around, but what about ships? Just playing the game can turn into a cluster of cards and that's not simple at all.

- Movement rules are unclear. Can the Decius move directly from Covert Installation to the Defiant's location? It would appear not and they have to go past Iconia first, but why is that? Couldn't it be argued that if the Regions are vertical that flying to one mission from a common entry point is the same as flying to another mission? At the very least your approach is unintuitive.

That said I think I see what you're trying to do, and it brought up an old memory of mine.

I remember doing a 4-player game once a long time ago on a very large table where we had a 6x4 "square" grid of missions. We had a few house rules:

1.) Each player had to seed at least one mission in each six-mission "quadrant" to encourage interaction.

2.) The first mission for a given region had to be seeded at a non-edge location on the space grid. Subsequent missions from the same region had to seed adjacent (on any side) to an existing mission from that Region.

3.) You could move laterally in any direction using normal span. You could move diagonally in any direction using span +1.

4.) For Cytherians purposes the "opposite end of the spaceline" is the outer corner mission of the quadrant diagonally opposite the quadrant of the mission where the Cytherians was encountered. You could take any path to get there. (Needless to say everyone brought Cytherians)

5.) The Borg Ship dilemma takes the shortest path off the end of the spaceline - the same destination rules as Cytherians. (This was also a widely used dilemma)

6.) The Sheliak starts on the opposite corner and takes the shortest path to the target mission.

7.) A Q-Net placed between two missions also prevented diagonal movement from one of the affected missions to a mission adjacent to the other affected mission - you had to go the long way around (basically the Q net was 3 missions wide).

I'm sure there were a few other rules but 2+ decades of time passing leaves it imperfect in my memory.

I do remember we had a really big table and we used all of it, and we needed it because there were card+-sized gaps between the missions specifically designed to minimize cluster. The game was a blast but it took hours... like 8ish? I remember both lunch and dinner being involved... much pizza and soda had by all.

That said, it probably doesn't translate into an improvement for the standard game. I'd recommend the multi- dimensional spacelines be kept to scenario games and 2e.

[Ensign Q]

Slayer immediatley got it, so it seem intuitive to him (and me)

But Im not here to argue with you Armus. Its clear to me you dont want anything changed in the game at all. If the movement rules are unclear, i dont want to see you drive a car or playing any boargames like parcheesi

[AllenGould]

Slayer immediatley got it, so it seem intuitive to him (and me)

That's nice, but I immediately had a pile of questions (most of which were answered, but I'd add "that's gonna be a gawd-awful mess once you add a few away teams" and "Brad help you if both players are in the same region".) So, if you're taking the score route, that's 50% of players who currently don't get how that works.

[Ensign Q]

spaceline (on lackey is cluttered anyway), but in paper it shouldnt be a big problem. Afterall its the same amount of cards, just in another order
if someone doesnt get it after one match, i cant help.

but how about addding a better idea to the topic, instead of downtalking my approach. Its borgs topic after all.

man i really get pissed off this community, I better quit and let it die.

[Armus]

Slayer immediatley got it, so it seem intuitive to him (and me)

But Im not here to argue with you Armus. Its clear to me you dont want anything changed in the game at all.

I'm not arguing, just participating in the discussion.

I think the improved, more intuitive movement rules is one thing that 2e got right. Unfortunately, 1e isn't built for such elegant simplicity. It's less than elegant simplicity is built on a one dimensional space line, and to deviate from that presents a trade off between elegance and simplicity (ie it necessarily gets more complicated).

Since tradeoffs are involved, I'm looking at the practical application of your suggested changes and I'm trying to see the costs added and the benefits added and do a proper cost/ benefit analysis. Based on what I see right now, I'm not sure the tradeoff is worth it, but I'm open to changing my mind. Also, I'm not so dug in that I'm inherently opposed to any change. On the contrary, I'm always looking for ways to make the game better.

By all means keep going, I'm not trying to shut the conversation down. I definitely find it interesting, and you reminded me of some fun times I forgot from 20+ years ago, so thank you for that.

[MidnightLich]

The design team working on The Neutral Zone discussed some very similar ideas to those proposed by boromirofborg and EnsignQ. The original idea was to treat Regions like "sub-spacelines", where you could enter them or you could "fly by" them. But we couldn't figure out a good way to do it. Moving the spaceline into 2D instead of 1D ate up a lot of table space and made things messy and difficult to use.

We also played around with a card that just let an opponent "fly by" a region (moving from one end to the other and ignoring what was in the middle). I think there was potential there, but it was difficult to word and there were potential Rules issues.

In the end, we went with just the RANGE boost on The Neutral Zone to help. It is a way of dipping our toe into the water of this space and seeing how it works. There's potential for more similar cards in the future, as we generally think card-based solutions to problems like this are best.

-crp

[Ensign Q]

the spaceline is a 2 dimensional pathway were you can "step" on. each step in any direction come with a cost.

thats such a basic principle that any 5yr old would understand.

Its that way already.

I dont get how you assume, you could go diagonally suddenly. Is that how you drive on intersections?

[MidnightLich]

the spaceline is a 2 dimensional pathway were you can "step" on. each step in any direction come with a cost.

thats such a basic principle that any 5yr old would understand.

Its that way already.

I dont get how you assume, you could go diagonally suddenly. Is that how you drive on intersections?

I think this is a flawed analogy. You're trying to compare movement in 1E to how people drive on a real world traffic grid. It's really not the same, because they didn't start from the same place. In reality, a change like this is introducing a new driving rule to those that we have had for years. A better comparison might be going from 2D driving to 3D driving, with the addition of moving up and down. I think that would cause a LOT of chaos and confusion in the world.

Also, I encourage everyone to avoid comments that attack others that aren't agreeing with us. It doesn't add much to the conversation.

-crp

[Ensign Q]

uhm im not sure 2D and 3D is what you think it is

3D would stack missions on top of each other.

on this spaceline the "driving rules" are exactly the same. you step from one field to another, but it needs a connection.