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Director of First Edition
By MidnightLich (Charlie Plaine)
 - Director of First Edition
 -  
Prophet
#575362
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Friday Question. I've really enjoyed the discussions, both here and on Facebook, about the role of battle in First Edition. I am sure that this will be something we keep talking about as we move forward. But today, I'd like to change gears a little bit and talk about movement.

Specifically, movement between quadrants. The rules in 1E are very clear on this: "It is not legal to move between quadrants unless permitted or required by a card." This means that you can move as much as you'd like between missions in one quadrant, but you can't cross to another without a card allowing you to do so.

There are few ways to do this, most of which are specific to moving from a specific quadrant to another. For example, Bajoran Wormhole lets you move between the Alpha and Gamma quadrants, but you need Bajoran Wormhole: Mirror Universe to move to the Mirror quadrant. Barzan Wormhole lets you move from the Alpha to Delta quadrants, but technically it can get you to the Gamma quadrant too. And of course, you can get to pretty much anywhere with a pair of Wormhole interrupts.

My question for you today is: how difficult should it be to move between quadrants?

Right now, it's basically impossible to move between two different quadrants unless you brought a card that allows you to do it. If I'm playing Vidiian in the Delta quadrant and didn't bring Barzan Wormhole, I'm probably safe from rampaging Klingons in the Alpha quadrant (unless they brought a wormhole). This is especially tough on decks that want or need to be interactive.

Do you think the game should provide a default way to move between quadrants? Even if it's woefully inefficient, should it be allowed for any deck to get to any other deck? Or should it always stay restricted to a few specific cards? Is the onus on the player that wants to interact to include ways to get to all the other quadrants? Or should it be on the player that wants to play outside the Alpha quadrant?

Sound off and let us know. I'm eager to hear what you think.

Those of you celebrating Passover today, I hope it's good. And anyone celebrating Easter this weekend, have fun and don't eat too much chocolate!

-crp
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
 -  
Regent
Community Contributor
#575366
Depends on the quadrants.

AQ-> GQ = Easy
AQ-> MQ = Moderate
AQ-> DQ = Hard -- hell, there was a whole show about how hard it was to get from the DQ to the AQ!

GQ->MQ = Moderate
GQ->DQ = Moderate/Hard ... not sure we need anything besides Barzan Wormhole, but that's just fun!

MQ->DQ Hard ... there's no connection there so it shouldn't be easy to connect them.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#575369
Armus wrote: Fri Apr 15, 2022 6:28 pm Depends on the quadrants.

AQ-> GQ = Easy
AQ-> MQ = Moderate
AQ-> DQ = Hard -- hell, there was a whole show about how hard it was to get from the DQ to the AQ!
This sums up how I've always felt about it, except I think reverse MQ and GQ. (Travel to the MQ has been done like four or five different ways in canon. Travel to the GQ pretty just one: the Bajoran Wormhole.)

The AQ/GQ chokepoint should be the Wormhole, which had such strategic importance in the show. And the DQ should just be really hard to access, because that's the plot of VOY.

For the most part, I think the game is currently in a good place, and has struck a good balance between story and gameplay needs. (Voyager definitely has an easier time getting home in our game than it did in real life! But not TOO easy.)

Nevertheless, there are some affiliations that could really benefit from reduced cross-quadrant travel costs. [Fer] comes to mind, as does [Kli] . Some affiliations do have dramatically reduced cross-quadrant travel costs (thinking here mainly of [Bor] with their Transwarp Hub and ubiquitous Transwarp Network Gateway). That example might be worth copying to specific affiliations that need a little more ability to get to another quadrant for whatever reason.
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By Enabran
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
2E Austrian National Second Runner-Up 2022
#575385
It is good as it is now.
There are enough ways to travel between quadrants.
If your deck needs to go to another quadrant, you have ways to do it. If you don't care, it is also okay. But a rule like in 2E is unnecessary.
Quantum Slipstream Drive and Wormholes are universal cards and we do not need more.
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#575390
My feelings on this have changed overtime.

I always thought that GQ and MQ were pretty well handled, and DQ from a Trek Sense, but not gameplay.


At its core, the problem as I see it is that it should be a moderate investment to get my cards to a different quadrant- but it should require no cards for my opponent to come visit me.


Interaction is the key to any game, and there is a big problem over the years if I can hide in the DQ and your deck has no way to get there. (There was also the wormhole issue, pre-errata).

But I don’t want something like 2E where quadrant is virtually meaningless.

If I was designing the game from scratch, I would either build in to the rules or design a card that was a required seed/download if you seeded any non-AQ mission that was something like:

- at the end of any players turn that may move between any space line end and here. Ships here are not present with each other.

The goal there would be that the default way of quadrant hopping takes 1.5 turns If you are in another quadrant, you would want to include faster ways for yourself. But you also can’t lock out your opponent from interacting.


In many ways, the game had this because the GQ and MQ both required you to come to AQ to win.


Regardless of the trek sense of Voyager’s trip home being hard, it’s just never good gameplay if you and I can know from the seed phase that we will 99.9% not have to interact.

————-

Should the onus be on the ones that want to interact? : good question, and here’s my rough feelings.


I (interactive) should be prepared with ways to work around my opponent’s strategy, but the coin flip of opponents affiliation shouldn’t be a game loss from the beginning.

Imagine a hypothetical card:
DQ Fed - seeds on table. Countdown4. you are Vidiian. You win the game at the end of the countdown. Nullified if opponent seeds a DQ mission.



That would be horrible design in the same way that Writ was a horrible design.

The metagame choices (affiliation, archetype, individual cards) should give you an advantage, but should never tip the game to a 85% advantage. (Statistic made up)


—————

Overall, I think a difference is that tge GQ/AQ should be easy to move between but slow, and the DQ/AQ should be easy to get to the DQ, hard to get home.
(After all, Voyager was full of things that ended up there).
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By WeAreBack
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#575400
It needs to be easier than now to prevent two players sitting actross from each other playing solitaire. There are a few mechanisms for doing this without making it too easy or too cheap.

The easiest way I can think of to do this is:
(1) Errata Barzan Wormhole so that it connect the Alpha and Mirror Quadrants if you have ENGINEER & SCIENCE or a damaged ship. (That is, in principle nothing should keep the Barzan wormhole from working the way the Bajoran Wormhole did in the DS9 epiode Crossover.)

(2) Create a version of Wormhole Terminus that downloads Barzan Wormhole. The easiest way to do this would be a new version of Wormhole Negotiations that has the same requirements as the original but is only worth 30 points. (Which is more in line with how relatively easy that mission is to complete given the skill inflation we've seen since it was originally released. Additional affiliation icons, [1E-Fer] [Car] [NA] should also be added). This would allow any player playing an Alpha Quadrant deck who wants a guarantee that they will interact with their opponent (mostly battle decks) the ability to do so without "wasting" a seed slot. (Note: the game text would have to read: "During the dilemma phase, you may download Barzan Wormhole" because you won't know where to put it until all your opponent's missions are on the table.)

There would also be a couple of other interesting ways to make accessing [1E-DQ] easier. One would be to add text Caretaker's Array to allow the opponent of the player who seeded it to relocate a ship at any spaceline end, or any Badlands region location (including [MQ]) there. Just like in Voyager, it would be a one way trip. Likewise, for players using Museum of Kyrian Heritage, a line could be added allowing the opponent of the player who seeded it to relocate there when time traveling or moving from one spaceline to another.

Basically, if you want to take advantage of the more popular [1E-DQ] free reporting mechanics you have to open yourself up to your opponent slightly.
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By Takket
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#575415
I don't really think there is a whole lot more that needs to be done. Traveling between quadrants should have cost to it, otherwise there really aren't spacelines. And the more you pay the better you can get. We can all see access to GQ and MQ via Bajoran wormholes. And if you pay more cost, like investing your DH download in Umat'adon, you can get more benefits.

I wouldn't mind seeing an objective played on BW you could complete that has an benefit like downloading WNS to the table as an event.

Delta is more difficult, and it should be, since there is no stable wormhole. Maybe you could add a mission called "access borg transwarp hub". need a ship with ablative armor aboard to solve it, but then you can move between it and AQ. I don't mind sprinkling it some additional ways to do it but they shouldn't be any "less expensive" than what already exists.
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By Smiley (Cristoffer Wiker)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#575421
Depends what sort of game you want this to be really.

If you want it to be easy to learn and play, make it so that going from one quadrant to another (or timeline/parallel dimension for that matter) easy. Say going to the end of a spaceline and using full range and then being stopped. This way anyone can do it even if cards are involved but they can't get to them or they have been discarded or whatnot.

If you want to go for complicated and/or thematic then force players to only be able to do it with cards, that can be discarded, closed or in other ways removed from play so that this tactic could become mute.

And if you then add on the requirement to need to go to the alpha quadrant to solve a mission to not incur a penalty, then maybe the first one should be the solution to go for.

So the question should probably be; how many players do we want by making the game harder and more complex all the time as the competition from other games keeps getting stiffer and evolving to make better less complex all the time?
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By Smiley (Cristoffer Wiker)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#575441
I don't agree. You seem to believe it to be so tough.
The game has struggled under bad decisions since its release under D. Continuing it now is just a continuation of that. Something the CC can change at any time if they would want to.
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
 -  
Regent
Community Contributor
#575443
Smiley wrote: Sun Apr 17, 2022 6:30 pm I don't agree. You seem to believe it to be so tough.
The game has struggled under bad decisions since its release under D. Continuing it now is just a continuation of that. Something the CC can change at any time if they would want to.
Keep in mind that a lot of people that play this game play the Decipher version, warts and all. To the extent the CC has made the game "easier" through OTF and more structured deckbuilding and playing engines (e.g., [WC] , [RC] , and The Final Frontier), it has turned off as many (if not more) players than it has attracted to the CC version of the game.

To the extent that they want to keep growing, the CC has to adopt a balanced approach between the 1e Decipher purists those such as yourself who want to "fix" all of the things that D got wrong. The problem is, you "fix" enough things and you're playing a whole new game - I'm sympathetic to the argument that OTF is really "1.5e" because of the fundamental changes that were made to the "original" game for the sake of balance and convenience.

The corollary is, if the CC "fixes" too many things, they risk driving away *more* players and the effort to grow and expand the game has the practical effect of the CC working itself into irrelevance, which defeats the whole purpose.
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By Smiley (Cristoffer Wiker)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#575448
Armus wrote:Keep in mind that a lot of people that play this game play the Decipher version, warts and all.
Because word on a forum is hard I'll start this off by saying that this is not an attack on you Armus. I just want to know what you're basing your assumptions on? What's the data that supports this. And even if this was to be true. Are they the target audience of the CC? Because the CC is adding to the game, the same way D did back in the days, Even if we only added similar cards to what they did back in the days, we change the game from what it was, even a small bit, it's not the same as it was before. Just by adding just a single personnel with a skill combo that said affiliation did not have already, will change how that affiliation is played. It could (and have been) the difference between what decks win tournaments
(if that's the thing that they're after)
.
Armus wrote:To the extent the CC has made the game "easier" through OTF
Again, what are you basing this on? How did OTF make the game easier? It might have made the game less complex to build decks but not easier. The game is maybe less unfair or a mess of NPE but not easier with the advent of OTF.
And the play engines have not made the game simpler. It even made the game more complex. But for us that have played the game since its inception back in -94, it might feel like it's simpler. I thought so too back when TNG was released but when I tested it on my students in my game design class I was met with the feedback that it was not the case. The game just loaded a lot of complexity onto players too early in their road to learning the game.
Armus wrote:more structured deckbuilding and playing engines (and The Final Frontier), it has turned off as many (if not more) players than it has attracted to the CC version of the game.
I don't understand how a more structured way of building decks could turn players away? That's sort of backwards. Do players want to feel like pulling teeth when building decks?
And how do you measure the number of players that we have lost due to what the CC has made and how do we know what caused it? was it due to normal diminution of players (migration, family, work etc.) or a hidden diminution (under the guise of something else like the complaint of the game getting harder or not what it was before while it's really still migration, family, work etc.)
Because everything the CC does changes the game. Unless we only make reprints and maybe AI's of older cards available to players. The game is going to change from what it used to be. Saying that one thing is the root of the cause without knowing how to measure it is mostly guesswork.
Armus wrote:To the extent that they want to keep growing, the CC has to adopt a balanced approach between the 1e Decipher purists those such as yourself who want to "fix" all of the things that D got wrong. The problem is, you "fix" enough things and you're playing a whole new game
We're not getting any younger and games around us to keep getting better because they learn to adapt and evolve to the new paradigm in game design and knowledge of behavioural mechanics. So just relying on keeping players that we already have compared to trying to find new ones is not really an antithesis. The ones that like the game as it was can keep playing it as it was designed by D. We can't really stop them from playing the game as it was printed back in the day as long as they keep their cards and play as they want. At the same time, we can try to make the game catch up with all the other knowledge that's out there now, with the possibility of gaining more players that find the game engaging and fun. Relying on new players to understand the archaic and complex game that we once learned because it was one of the first ones to be made back in the day is dangerous as there are more or less zero known past events correlating to this.
Armus wrote:I'm sympathetic to the argument that OTF is really "1.5e" because of the fundamental changes that were made to the "original" game for the sake of balance and convenience.
How come? What D did to the game with OTSD, FC and BOG were far more game-altering than OTF ever did. And that was never considered to be a bad thing or to the loss of players or for that matter considered to be version X of the game.
Armus wrote:The corollary is, if the CC "fixes" too many things, they risk driving away *more* players and the effort to grow and expand the game has the practical effect of the CC working itself into irrelevance, which defeats the whole purpose.
I would argue that if we are not "fixing" the game we are not doing what game designers are supposed to do and that is to make the game "better". Ignoring that as in the past shown to repel more players than it retains in all other endeavours. I would be amazed if this would be any different in this community as it would then be a unique occurrence that would defy normal behavioural patterns.
The only way the CC would work itself into irrelevance would be to not try to make the game better and add new players.

I hope this is not taken as an attack on you, I just want to use all the collected knowledge that I have in game design, behavioural mechanics and game business development to help the game thrive and grow.
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