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#584076
I’m trying to analyse the game state as I see it from a fresh eye. I think (and this is my opinion only) that there are a few things ‘wrong’ at the moment.

I could be completely off-base with this however and I’m asking for opinions on what I have found/think. If I’m wrong – please let me know!

My views are based on assumptions that I’ve gathered from reading through articles, decks, forum posts and game reports.

From what I can see:

1. The game is over too quickly – lots of evidence and views seem to concur with this. A 10 turn game is a long one...

2. All decks that are posted have this in mind and are as efficient as possible.

3. This leads to draw decks that are virtually all Personnel as they are the most efficient in terms of gaining ground. There is also a lot of ways they play for free. So most cards, indeed most card TYPES (Equipment, most Events, Interrupts?) are instant binder fodder or see play only in the most select of games.

4. To maximise your drawing engine so that you can get all the Personnel cards you want out on Turns 0-2 (at most) there is a huge amount of Objectives/incidents/Events played on the table in the Seed Phase before play starts. This makes the game area cluttered and players having to refer to card X and card Y as they explain their set up to the opponent. This is a BAD thing for newer players

5. Then you have the Dilemma Phase and seeding. So if play is over in about 6-8 turns, it seems that most of your game time is setting up the table and all your seed cards before the actual game happens in a complete blur (with lots more ‘refer to card X so I can do effect Y, then see card Z so I can do effect XX etc). And 15 mins later the game is over! This seems a BAD thing?

A LOT of cards, mostly hugely thematic though, have been designed by the CC to speed up the game from where it was ‘play one, draw one’ – which I agree was way TOO slow. Decipher started this off way back when, and since then the CC has done a great job of doing ‘Continuing Mission’ type cards which lead to ‘Warp Core’ cards which basically move 1e to the ‘warp Drive’ rules of ‘play 2/draw 2’ which is probably balanced in terms of speed. They have also managed to get some starting Personnel and a Ship out in Turn 1 which was a real pain back in the day as you waited for your first Ship...

I have a feeling that there is now too many of these cards however that when combined together can give a draw/play engine that is out of control. BUT it’s necessary at the moment as you have to ‘keep up’ with the speed of the game, so....

Here is a list (in no particular order) of proposals to tweak the game, together with my reasoning to suggest them. I would like to gather opinions on which are feasible, which would make no difference, which are too far out, and which would cripple the game:

1. Only a maximum of 4 copies of any 1 card can be brought to the game by a player. REASON: I have seen decks where players have 12 of the same Tactic or event in a side-deck or 6 in a draw deck. This seems like the card is unbalanced so it is being exploited.

2. Only a maximum of 5 Objectives/Incidents/Events can be seeded at the start of the game. REASON: Speeds up start of game, reduces speed of some decks to make a longer game. Also some might find their way into draw decks reducing the proportion of Personnel in there.

3. Only a maximum of 60% of your Draw deck to be Personnel. REASON: This is a harsh one but it would slow the game down, give more variety and more theme to decks.

4. Artefacts - Not seeded but are closer to 2e in that they can be played when you complete a Mission with Archaeology. Acquisition or Anthropology. REASON: More theme and quicker seeding. Artefacts don’t see much play either for powerful cards. Perhaps they should be play for free? As a side note, I would look at banned Artefacts cards such as the infamous Horg’han and make them bonus point earners if returned to a Facility. Nice and clean and thematic.

5. Equipment – make ‘Equipment Replicator’ a straight rule. REASON: Equipment cards never come out of the binder.

6. Q’s Tent – Reduce capacity to 10. Anyone know why it was 13 anyway? REASON: Reduce a players’ reliance on downloading, more chance of varying cards appearing in a draw deck. I would prefer to throw it out entirely and replace it with a ‘Computer Core’ card that does the same thing in that its’ a store cupboard for downloading cards from, but we could have different ones for different Affiliations that can give some thematic flavour and automatic downloads if you say, initiate a Battle (Klingon), solve a Diplomacy Mission (Feds) etc..

7. Dilemma Side-deck - Via Doorway atop deck (similar to Dyson Sphere Doorway). Stock 30 Dilemmas here. When a Mission is first attempted draw X cards from the Dilemma deck where X = Points of Mission/5 So a 30 point Mission draws 6 cards. Place Dilemmas that cannot be played due to Space/Planet restrictions face up beneath Dilemma deck (so you shuffle deck when you have gone through it once). Place Dilemmas that CAN be seeded beneath the Mission in an order of your choice. We’d have to put some restrictions here otherwise players would ONLY play Planet/Space dual Dilemmas so there would be no mis-seeds, say 12 Planet/12 Space/ 6 Dual? REASON: Play starts quicker, we could also do some theming...

8. Increase Ship Staffing – Another way 2e got it better. Add a ‘Staff’ Icon to all Ships that already have a Command/Staff icon. REASON: Slows down play just a touch, more on theme.

I'd REALLY appreciate opinions on those - and if I'm wrong, let me know what you think. And if I've missed anything?

Thanks in advance
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By OKCoyote (Daniel Matteson)
 - Director of Communications
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1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#584079
dragoncymru wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 11:36 am 1. Only a maximum of 4 copies of any 1 card can be brought to the game by a player. REASON: I have seen decks where players have 12 of the same Tactic or event in a side-deck or 6 in a draw deck. This seems like the card is unbalanced so it is being exploited.
We had this as a format. It was called Revised. Nobody played it, and it was phased out.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#584084
And 15 mins later the game is over!
Well, it's not as bad as all that! Right now, the seed phase typically is 5 minutes and the play phase is typically 60-90 minutes. Yes, the game is over in ~8-9 turns (I think that's closer to the current norm assuming it's not speed solver vs. speed solver), but the turns are long on average: about 4-5 minutes per turn, by my figures? Everyone's getting plenty of time to play. They just have to do all their stuff in a compressed number of turns, which makes temporary lockout effects like Friendly Fire much more powerful and slow stuff like "going through the Barzan Wormhole to hunt the enemy" (or anything to do with Artifacts) much weaker.

TBH, I am having more fun with the game in its current state than I ever have before. I am biased, because I was in Design at a couple points during the past couple of years and obviously had the chance to put in things I thought were fun. But the game right now is (IMO) at like an 8 out of 10: room for improvement, but very healthy on the whole.

One of the things I'd like to see improve is the length of turns. I think they are too long. I get bored during opponent's turns after the fifth minute or so, which happens a lot near the midgame. They've got all these reporting engines firing off, and they have to ferry people around, and then they stare at their cards for a while, then it's a mission attempt, which takes time but at least I'm in the mix then, then they stare at their cards some more to try to get around the dilemma they found, then it's another mission attempt, then end of turn stuff... oi! Sometimes I have to resist the urge to go look at my phone while they do their thing.

A pet idea I have -- something that is hardly ready for prime time but which I would like to trial in a kiddy pool format somewhere when the opportunity arises--is a concept that @Fritzinger introduced in the 2E Bridge Crew format (a format I played once and had quite a bit of fun with, and I mostly never have fun in 2E). I think Fritz got the idea from @FranklinKenter . The notion was that, every turn, you have to make a choice: is this going to be an agenda turn where you advance your victory conditions, or a supply turn where you play stuff? You can't do both. This simple mechanic greatly sped up play and reduced the amount of downtime I had. It effectively sliced every turn in half... which was fine, because we got twice as many turns! It also introduced a new strategic choice every turn: do I feel I have enough to go for the mission? Or do I need to hang back one more turn and risk my opponent pulling ahead?

My 1E interpretation of this: on any turn where you play a card, by any means, (except an Interrupt, Doorway, or "at any time") or draw a card (by any means), you cannot attempt (or scout) a mission or initiate a battle during the same turn (or vice versa). (You could still move, cloak and execute other orders.) Something like that could change some 1E format somewhere from an 8-turn game to a 15-turn game without adding minutes, adding a bunch of rules or curbs or deck limits, or reducing the game's strategic complexity.

Or it might not! Most ideas that sound good on paper blow up in your face during testing, which is why I was so impressed by Bridge Crew, which didn't!
 
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#584096
OKCoyote wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 1:42 pm
dragoncymru wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 11:36 am 1. Only a maximum of 4 copies of any 1 card can be brought to the game by a player. REASON: I have seen decks where players have 12 of the same Tactic or event in a side-deck or 6 in a draw deck. This seems like the card is unbalanced so it is being exploited.
We had this as a format. It was called Revised. Nobody played it, and it was phased out.
That's really interesting. Why was it introduced and why did no-one play it?
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#584097
In the Dark Days after the fall of Decipher, the game was pretty clearly broken (at least, in the eyes of many), but there was no authority around to fix it. The handful of groups that continued playing 1E (instead of the less broken 2E) generally resorted to various homebrew rules in order to keep the game working.

Out of that community-driven decade of perseverance and survival came two general approaches to "fixing" First Edition:

1. Curtail all the broken mechanics.

2. Ban all the broken cards.

As the CC got underway and started looking at 1E again, those different approaches coalesced into two actual formats. Revised took the first approach, and X-List (aka Standard) took the second. You can read their rule sheets here:

Revised: https://starshipexcelsior.com/othersite ... sed_v8.pdf

X-List (aka Standard): https://starshipexcelsior.com/othersite ... andard.pdf

I believe that Revised was the actual rules set for the 2009 World Championships (won by Franklin Kenter). X-List was never required at Worlds, though Jeremy Commandeur (who ran 1E almost single-handedly) often tried to incentivize players to use X-List-compliant decks.

Finally, in 2010, the CC attempted to "unite the tribes" with the new "Official Tournament Format" (aka OTF aka the format everyone plays today if they aren't still playing Decipher rules). OTF took portions of Revised and combined them with a much smaller (compared to X-List) ban list, attempting to clean up the game by doing a little rule tweaking and a little banning (but not too much of either). OTF did away with Revised's [Ref] pile, but later added Q's Tent: Civil War to perform a similar function.

OTF was hugely successful, and it sucked the air entirely out of the other two formats. Revised's copy limit was always unpopular with people for eliminating one of 1E's more distinctive features and for eliminating so many viable decks.

(And, to be fair, whatever problems the game has today, I don't think bringing back Revised's copy limit would solve any of them. It would prevent a lot of decks from existing, and make deck-building a lot harder for people who depend on staples like Handshake, but I don't see it reining in power or pace at all.)
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By nobthehobbit (Daniel Pareja)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
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Moderator
#584103
BCSWowbagger wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2022 2:50 am In the Dark Days after the fall of Decipher, the game was pretty clearly broken (at least, in the eyes of many), but there was no authority around to fix it. The handful of groups that continued playing 1E (instead of the less broken 2E) generally resorted to various homebrew rules in order to keep the game working.

Out of that community-driven decade of perseverance and survival came two general approaches to "fixing" First Edition:

1. Curtail all the broken mechanics.

2. Ban all the broken cards.

As the CC got underway and started looking at 1E again, those different approaches coalesced into two actual formats. Revised took the first approach, and X-List (aka Standard) took the second. You can read their rule sheets here:

Revised: https://starshipexcelsior.com/othersite ... sed_v8.pdf

X-List (aka Standard): https://starshipexcelsior.com/othersite ... andard.pdf
I may be misremembering, but as I recall, at least one of Standard and Revised, maybe both, were made official in the Decipher days, not long before they lost the Trek licence. (If only one was, it was Standard, as I believe that came first, since a blanket ban of lots of cards from lots of sets is easier than coming up with new rules.)

I seem to recall reading an article or two about those formats on Decipher's site, at least.
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By Smiley (Cristoffer Wiker)
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#584118
This sounds like it could have been a post by me =)
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
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Regent
Community Contributor
#584119
Fritzinger wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2022 7:40 am I think that might have been the format they used for the last worlds before 2e?
Nope. Worlds 2002 was Open.

It had ALL the bullshit.
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By nobthehobbit (Daniel Pareja)
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Moderator
#584123
Fritzinger wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2022 7:40 am I think that might have been the format they used for the last worlds before 2e?
As I recall, whichever of Standard or Revised was proposed in the Decipher days (maybe both were), it wasn't until well past the time when active 1E development had ceased. (There was The Enterprise Collection but that shows the signs of having been made by people more used to 2E's design principles, and was mostly just done in order to put the backwards-compatible bar on more 2E cards.)
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#584124
Armus wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2022 6:46 pm
Fritzinger wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2022 7:40 am I think that might have been the format they used for the last worlds before 2e?
Nope. Worlds 2002 was Open.

It had ALL the bullshit.
Not ALL the bullshit! People forget this now, but there was a ban list at 2002 Worlds: Barzan Wormhole, Ooby Dooby, Revolving Door, Rogue Borg Mercenaries, Vic Fontaine, and partly Caretaker's Array. (Decipher banned the use of its report-with-crew function specifically, which was effectively errata.)

...but, yeah, MOST of the bullshit. :P
nobthehobbit wrote:As I recall, whichever of Standard or Revised was proposed in the Decipher days (maybe both were), it wasn't until well past the time when active 1E development had ceased. (There was The Enterprise Collection but that shows the signs of having been made by people more used to 2E's design principles, and was mostly just done in order to put the backwards-compatible bar on more 2E cards.)
If this is true, it was never listed on the Decipher First Edition rules page, and I've never seen a rules sheet for either format that wasn't authored by Jeremy Commandeur personally or the Continuing Committee corporately.

However, you may still be correct: they never announced the existence of the Enterprise Collection in the First Edition section, either! Game design was Decipher's strong suit; communication less so.

If one of the formats was Decipher-era, I think it must have been X-List. I have notes indicating that Revised was in CC playtesting in early 2009, and was finally announced as a new thing on 24 May 2009. (I wish those podcasts he mentioned still existed.) So I think Revised must have been post-Decipher. X-List, though, I dunno. Since it was never the Worlds format, I paid much less attention to its history, and I can't account for any version of X-List prior to X-List Version 6, which is undated (but arguably dates to 2004, which would be consistent with it being old).
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By nobthehobbit (Daniel Pareja)
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Moderator
#584125
BCSWowbagger wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2022 9:02 pm
nobthehobbit wrote:As I recall, whichever of Standard or Revised was proposed in the Decipher days (maybe both were), it wasn't until well past the time when active 1E development had ceased. (There was The Enterprise Collection but that shows the signs of having been made by people more used to 2E's design principles, and was mostly just done in order to put the backwards-compatible bar on more 2E cards.)
If this is true, it was never listed on the Decipher First Edition rules page, and I've never seen a rules sheet for either format that wasn't authored by Jeremy Commandeur personally or the Continuing Committee corporately.

However, you may still be correct: they never announced the existence of the Enterprise Collection in the First Edition section, either! Game design was Decipher's strong suit; communication less so.
My recollection is that this was very near the end: Decipher had lost the Lord of the Rings licence (they never even uploaded all the card images for Treachery & Deceit!), and everyone was speculating (if it wasn't already known) that Trek was on the way out, because the upcoming Abrams film would make the licence too expensive for a company in Decipher's financial straits to retain, and there was essentially just one front page for news. It's entirely possible that this was so close to the end that there's no Wayback archive of the site as it existed at the time; I recall an article announcing the formation of the CC (that's how I got here in the first place), and it wasn't too long after that until they started teasing what eventually became Fight Klub and scrubbed their site of anything to do with their other games. (Then that died, they started teasing something to do with "How to Host a Murder", and now my AV blocks their URL when I try to visit it.) Still, I seem to recall that Standard/X-List was a very late Decipher-era format proposal, but I can't prove it one way or the other, and such proof may well be lost to the mists of the internet.

However, here's an article from Jeremy @Commandeur (if you're still around, would love to get clarification!) announcing an update to Standard/X-List (this is the earliest reference I could find on the CC's site to the format), with a note that the format had been in development since 2003, which makes it entirely plausible that the first version of the format was rolled out when Decipher still ran the show.
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