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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
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#540121
As you all know, you can, at the start of your turn, exchange a version of a persona in play (say, Data (Cold Front)) with a version of that same persona in your hand (say, Data (The Next Generation)). This is not a card play.

But the game allows you to do this with ships, too, and I realized today that I've never seen it done. Has anyone ever tried it?
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First Edition Creative Manager
By KazonPADD (Paddy Tye)
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#540123
This is giving me ideas.

Could we make a ship which is an infiltrator? (For example Dukat’s Naprem pretending to part of the Klingon Defence Force)

Can you persona swap missions? (I’m guessing not)
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
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#540127
KazonPADD wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 6:28 pmCan you persona swap missions? (I’m guessing not)
Correct.
Could we make a ship which is an infiltrator?

Not under current rules (and the text of existing cards presents difficulties as well).

But I know I've looked this up before, so I've been asked at least once (possibly by myself?).


EDIT:
All told, I think I would prefer that the persona exchange rule not exist, since it's basically never used outside the Borg Queen (this isn't even the only rule that we keep on the books solely for the Borg Queen's benefit!), and its timing is weird and it occupies precious space in the Rulebook. I think Decipher created the swap rule just to create value for their new star power cards for First Contact / reassure PAQ players that their bridge crew rares weren't being rendered obsolete... and I don't think it really worked. (Notably, persona swapping was not part of the persona rule when it launched in Q-Continuum. It was added for the FC bridge crew specifically.)

But the rule is there today, there's no serious discussion of removing it, and if anyone has managed to use that particularly neat feature of ship exchange, I think that must be a great story!
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#540130
BCSWowbagger wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 6:50 pm (Notably, persona swapping was not part of the persona rule when it launched in Q-Continuum. It was added for the FC bridge crew specifically.)
And that's actually a set too late, since Major Rakal, the first "oh, here's Bob in a different outfit" card is from AU. :)

And I think the fact that people don't persona swap enough is just empty design space. :)
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
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#540131
AllenGould wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 7:30 pm
BCSWowbagger wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 6:50 pm (Notably, persona swapping was not part of the persona rule when it launched in Q-Continuum. It was added for the FC bridge crew specifically.)
And that's actually a set too late, since Major Rakal, the first "oh, here's Bob in a different outfit" card is from AU. :)
Oh, wow, I completely forgot that Major Rakal's bold text was errata!

I think that's probably why she had the [1E-AU] icon, then: at the time she was created, a player could have both Rakal and Troi out at the same time, and that obviously violated TrekSense, so Decipher gave her an [1E-AU] icon to explain it away!
And I think the fact that people don't persona swap enough is just empty design space. :)
When a city government comes upon an abandoned, decrepit house that nobody has lived in for years (except the odd squatter), it basically has three choices:

(1) Repair it, reoccupy it, and make it a good and wholesome part of the community.

(2) Tear it down and build something better in its place (or enjoy the green space!)

(3) Leave it abandoned and decrepit.

Which idea is the best idea in a given situation depends a lot on what kind of city you're in.

If you have TONS of decaying houses, with a shrinking tax base, and the city is only barely keeping up with the ones people actually live in, it's probably best to just tear the abandoned one down and let the citizens enjoy an extra space to play in.

If you have a really healthy city with lots of growth and money to spare, though, it is obviously great to fix it up and bring in new families.

I think 1E Rules at the present time are closer to the first than the second. The Rules have been moving in the right direction for a long time, but there's still a lot of decaying houses around here. If we find a rule nobody's using, I'm more inclined to tear it down and give everyone back some nice mental "green space" while we spend our limited resources on things people are already using, like making action timing work better.

But I can see the case for "redeveloping the property" by exploiting its design space instead. It's a judgment call.
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By SudenKapala (Suden Käpälä)
 - Delta Quadrant
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#540132
Never swapped a ship. Have swapped Queens. Intend to swap 2 Quarks, but haven't been able to play that deck yet.

I'd love to swap more, and do I take it into account when I can, but I usually don't gave an abundance of rares; so each persona goes into the next affiliation deck. (E.g., [Baj] Kira Nerys in [Baj] deck, [Car] [Baj] [Fed] Kira into [Car] deck.)

But I am also working on a deck which relies on swapping Datas.

So, as I plan to make use of more swapping, I'm very much against deleting the rule!
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By Boffo97 (Dave Hines)
 - Gamma Quadrant
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#540133
How I would encourage Persona Swapping.

* Change swapping from a beginning of turn action to an any time action. After all, assuming incompatible affiliations aren't an issue, a persona swapped character is still the same person, just adopting a slightly different mindset. And a different ship persona is usually just slightly different programming or somesuch (though it is weird that the Starship Enterprise can transform back and forth between series and movie modes, but that's an issue Decipher caused, not me.)

* Design a new seedable side deck Doorway, but have the side deck start out empty. Whenever you do a persona swap, you can put the card you're replacing under this Door instead of in your hand. And you can swap from side deck to persona swap again. Maybe also let the doorway to allow you to twice per game download a different version of a personnel you already have in play for a persona swap.

I believe there was some quote somewhere about how we're different roles to different people. That would work.

* Plain, Simple Garak now has a meaningless special skill. Errata him to be able to download any other version of himself.
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Director of Communications
By OKCoyote (Daniel Matteson)
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1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#540147
PantsOfTheTalShiar wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 11:09 pm What even are the ships with multiple versions?
OK, let's go down this rabbit hole while I await an absent opponent.

[Bor] Queen's Borg Sphere (First Contact) and [Bor] Queen's Borg Sphere (Resistance is Futile)

[Bor] U.S.S. Enterprise-E (20th Anniversary), [Fed] U.S.S. Enterprise-E (Chain of Command), and [Fed] U.S.S. Enterprise-E (First Contact)

[Fed] Starship Enterprise (Chain of Command), [Fed] Starship Enterprise (The Trouble with Tribbles), and [Fed] Starship Enterprise (The Motion Pictures)

[Fed] Stolen Defiant, [Fed] U.S.S. Defiant (Chain of Command), and [Fed] U.S.S. Defiant (Deep Space 9)

[Fed] U.S.S. Enterprise (Premiere), [Fed] U.S.S. Enterprise (Chain of Command), and [Fer] U.S.S. Enterprise (20th Anniversary)

[Fed] U.S.S. Voyager (Voyager), [Fed] U.S.S. Voyager (Chain of Command), and [Kaz] Voyager (Engage)

[Kli] Cha'Joh (The Sky's the Limit) and [Rom][Kli] Cha'Joh (Deep Space 9)

[Kli] I.K.C. Pagh (Premiere) and [Kli] I.K.S. Pagh (The Next Generation)

[NA] Liberty (Voyager) and [NA] Val Jean (The Maquis)

I think I got all of them.
Last edited by OKCoyote on Mon Jan 18, 2021 11:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
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#540148
OKCoyote wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 11:23 pm
PantsOfTheTalShiar wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 11:09 pm What even are the ships with multiple versions?
[Kli] Cha'Joh (The Sky's the Limit) and [Rom][Kli] Cha'Joh (Deep Space 9)
Ok this one I actually wanna do... I've wanted to get that Cha'Joh into a [1E-TNG] deck for awhile.... to the deck lab!! :shifty:
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Director of Communications
By OKCoyote (Daniel Matteson)
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2E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#540149
Edited original post; found a non-aligned pair!

Also, this doesn't include universals. While I'm aware there are two Starship Constitutions, they don't count for persona swapping as they are not unique.
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#540150
OKCoyote wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 11:23 pm I think I got all of them.
You beat me to posting, but I had the same list.
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#540151
Since Daniel beat me to the list, I'll tackle the "let's go through and see why people don't swap them" (or maybe "why they should" - I'm writing this before doing the lookup. :) )
[Bor] Queen's Borg Sphere (First Contact) and [Bor] Queen's Borg Sphere (Resistance is Futile)
The RIF version is +1 WEAPONS, +1 RANGE (and FC is RANGE 5, so every point counts!), adds Borg Queen as an optional staffing requirement, and swaps the niche Temporal Vortex download for the much nicer Optimize Drones. I suspect if the downloads were switched you might see people grab the Optimize download and then swap to the better stats (and second possible download), but in general I'd say this is just a Strictly Better problem, combined with "spheres kinda suck and no-one uses them anyway" (according to the deckbuilder)

[Bor] U.S.S. Enterprise-E (20th Anniversary), [Fed] U.S.S. Enterprise-E (Chain of Command), and [Fed] U.S.S. Enterprise-E (First Contact)
One is Borg, so swapping is off the table. Between the other two, CoC seems to be the deckbuilding favorite (probably because once you staff it you've matched the FC's stats, and then you get to pile on the bonus generally as opposed to FC's flat bonus against Borg stuff. No downloads, and not really even a situational bonus. So if you're allowed the CoC version I can't see why you wouldn't use it.
[Fed] Starship Enterprise (Chain of Command), [Fed] Starship Enterprise (The Trouble with Tribbles), and [Fed] Starship Enterprise (The Motion Pictures)
Weirdly, the one that gives you a download of *any* OS personnel (the TwT version) is by far the most popular. Who woulda thunk? :shifty:
CoC swaps the download for Where No Man Has Gone Before (which is good but not "any personnel" good), and TMP staffs on Movie rather than OS, so that's a hard ask to swap between.

If there was a fast way to swap between CoC and TwT, I could see people thinking of double-dipping maybe. But it's another "why not use the good version" issue.
[Fed] Stolen Defiant, [Fed] U.S.S. Defiant (Chain of Command), and [Fed] U.S.S. Defiant (Deep Space 9)
Stolen Defiant is [Maq] (incl. in the staffing), so not a lot of desire to swap in/out of that. Between the other two, you're choosing between +1 SHIELDS or +3 WEAPONS & SHIELDS vs [Borg], and the deckbuilder stats seem pretty clear that folks will take the guaranteed point of SHIELDS over the situational bump. (And are you going to stock CoC Defiant just in case you face a Borg opponent, when the bonus doesn't really make the math better?)
[Fed] U.S.S. Enterprise (Premiere), [Fed] U.S.S. Enterprise (Chain of Command), and [Fer] U.S.S. Enterprise (20th Anniversary)
Setting aside the Ferengi version, the deckbuilder suggests this is a pretty even matchup and I'm not sure why - the CoC version downloads Wall of Ships which gets you either another Enterprise or a stat bump that makes up for the lower specs. So either people actually are playing both (swapping to Premiere to up the stats after firing the download), or - and this is my guess - the deckbuilder stats are skewing to all those OTSD/Premiere events ;)
[Fed] U.S.S. Voyager (Voyager), [Fed] U.S.S. Voyager (Chain of Command), and [Kaz] Voyager (Engage)
This is an interesting one - each ship hits a different niche (Kazon, DQ Fed, Alpha Fed), that I think swapping probably isn't a great idea for any of them. Maybe my favorite set of personae so far.
[Kli] Cha'Joh (The Sky's the Limit) and [Rom][Kli] Cha'Joh (Deep Space 9)
One gets double commanders and Romulans, one reports to Soran. I saw someone mention that they wanted to try this one, and now I'm really curious why, because I'm not seeing the upside for the Soran version.
[Kli] I.K.C. Pagh (Premiere) and [Kli] I.K.S. Pagh (The Next Generation)
Another one where I wonder if Premiere is inflating the numbers. TNG version loses a point of RANGE and gains "draw an extra tactic". I suppose mileage may vary on which is better, but you probably don't want to swap.
[NA] Liberty (Voyager) and [NA] Val Jean (The Maquis)
Unsurprisingly, Liberty gets more use here - better stats, can play in DQ, reporting ability. Val Jean is much more niche.


So, in summary: why don't people swap ships?
* A lot of ships are niche plays - different affiliation, different faction, different staffing icons - so you couldn't easily play either
* Most ships don't have abilities that are worth swapping into/out of. The reason Borg Queen sees swaps is that those two downloads are great, and then you get the skill beast.
* It's not worth the hassle to stock extra copies and then find them. The other reason Borg Queen sees swaps is that she's a good probe and Borg download like freaks so there's no downside in having a ton of copies.

Not sure what the lesson is, but hey - research!
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By Orbin (James Monsebroten)
 - Delta Quadrant
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#540152
AllenGould wrote: Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:06 am
[Kli] Cha'Joh (The Sky's the Limit) and [Rom][Kli] Cha'Joh (Deep Space 9)
One gets double commanders and Romulans, one reports to Soran. I saw someone mention that they wanted to try this one, and now I'm really curious why, because I'm not seeing the upside for the Soran version.
The answer to this is the Deep Space 9 version has a Deep Space 9 property logo and therefore does not work in a Continuing Mission deck. If you use the persona swap it won't break Continuing Mission and you'll be able to use the better ship!

- James M
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
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#540153
OKCoyote wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 11:30 pmAlso, this doesn't include universals. While I'm aware there are two Starship Constitutions, they don't count for persona swapping as they are not unique.
I may be misreading the rule -- as I said I rarely use it or see it used -- but I don't see anything in there limiting it to uniques. (OTOH, I don't see much point, since you can just play both.)

I like the two Fed Voyagers. At first blush, I'm thinking you seed [1E-DQ] Voyager at Caretaker's Array with Full Complement of Shuttles on the table, get all its downloads, then swap for CoC Alpha Quadrant Voyager and take advantage of its "download shuttles from discard pile" to make your shuttle management easier.

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