This forums is for questions, answers, and discussion about First Edition rules, formats, and expansions.
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By Marquetry
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#589982
KazonPADD wrote: Sat Dec 10, 2022 2:11 am I agree with Exon. I dislike the change because of the easy dilemma busting that comes with it (in particular Row, Row, Row Your Boat, "God", Enemies of the State, Clan People, etc), a feature that surprise surprise would heavily benefit the Federation, who seriously do not need ANY help right now.

2 personnel on 1 card works. It might be a little tricky for newbies to understand at first, but it works. 2 cards on 1 personnel leads to it being broken, and would force the CC to not make any more dual personnel.

I’d like this proposal to die in a fire frankly.
Yes, agree with this and the concern of unintended gameplay balance issues. Leave things how they are.
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
 -  
Regent
Community Contributor
#589984
Marquetry wrote: Sun Dec 11, 2022 2:50 pm
KazonPADD wrote: Sat Dec 10, 2022 2:11 am I agree with Exon. I dislike the change because of the easy dilemma busting that comes with it (in particular Row, Row, Row Your Boat, "God", Enemies of the State, Clan People, etc), a feature that surprise surprise would heavily benefit the Federation, who seriously do not need ANY help right now.

2 personnel on 1 card works. It might be a little tricky for newbies to understand at first, but it works. 2 cards on 1 personnel leads to it being broken, and would force the CC to not make any more dual personnel.

I’d like this proposal to die in a fire frankly.
Yes, agree with this and the concern of unintended gameplay balance issues. Leave things how they are.
Counterpoint: gameplay balance issues are a two way street.

When you can download Sergey and Helena on Turn 1 you basically turn ASP into *another* drawing engine.

The same is true for Worf and Jadzia and Mr. and Mrs. Troi and Defend Homeworld, but at least you can't stack those with each other.

And as we all know, the more cards you can draw earlier, the more bullshit you can pull.

I think I'm in the general ballpark of @Hoss-Drone ... make the change, but not until some counterplay becomes available to address the identified gameplay issues.
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Executive Officer
By jadziadax8 (Maggie Geppert)
 - Executive Officer
 -  
2E North American Continental Semi-Finalist 2023
ibbles  Trek Masters Tribbles Champion 2023
2E Deep Space 9 Regional Champion 2023
#589990
Armus wrote: Sun Dec 11, 2022 3:17 pm I think I'm in the general ballpark of @Hoss-Drone ... make the change, but not until some counterplay becomes available to address the identified gameplay issues.
Maybe with a [Ref] ? :shifty:
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By Exon
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
1E Risa Regional Champion 2023
#589991
jadziadax8 wrote: Sun Dec 11, 2022 3:53 pm
Armus wrote: Sun Dec 11, 2022 3:17 pm Counterpoint: gameplay balance issues are a two way street.

When you can download Sergey and Helena on Turn 1 you basically turn ASP into *another* drawing engine.

The same is true for Worf and Jadzia and Mr. and Mrs. Troi and Defend Homeworld, but at least you can't stack those with each other.

And as we all know, the more cards you can draw earlier, the more bullshit you can pull.

I think I'm in the general ballpark of @Hoss-Drone ... make the change, but not until some counterplay becomes available to address the identified gameplay issues.
Maybe with a [Ref] ? :shifty:
Counter-counterpoint: It sounds to me like the gameplay balance issue is with the draw engine, not the dual personnel. There are many draw engines that can be set up easily on turn 1. If that needs fixing, then address it directly, without damaging other, unrelated parts of the game.

I'm totally onboard with keeping [Ref] around as a soft-counter repository for strategies that inadvertently turned out to be a little too strong. What I wouldn't want to see is deliberately creating seriously overpowered cards and assuming that [Ref] or other specific counters will rein them in.

That's in effect what Decipher did with the original versions of Your Galaxy is Impure, The Weak Will Perish and Borg Nanoprobes. I don't think it's good design.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#589993
Thanks everyone for a valuable discussion thus far. Those who like the idea and those who dislike it have all offered valuable opinions and perspectives that have allowed me, at least, to get a better handle on how the community weighs the pros and cons of the idea (although I reiterate that playtest data will always be the most important guidepost). Feedback here has been more copious (very useful) but just as mixed as it was in Testing, which confirms once again that our playtesters really know their stuff. I came here uncertain whether this proposal has a future, and I remain uncertain.

On the Facebook group, a couple players suggested that, instead of counting attributes as combined, you instead treat attributes as options. The idea is that you treat the dual personnel card as one personnel, but, whenever you use a dual personnel's INTEGRITY, CUNNING, or STRENGTH, you pick one of the two values and ignore the other one, like Rom's variable attribute (apparently some Facebookers already play this way).

I'm not sure how I feel about that, and certainly haven't talked to Rules about it, but it caught my attention after I heard variations on it a few times, and I'm wondering (out loud) whether something like that might (theoretically) allay concerns about attribute totals (and/or create new concerns).
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First Edition Creative Manager
By KazonPADD (Paddy Tye)
 - First Edition Creative Manager
 -  
1E European Continental Runner-Up 2023
1E The Neutral Zone Regional Champion 2023
#589999
Armus wrote: Sun Dec 11, 2022 3:17 pm
Marquetry wrote: Sun Dec 11, 2022 2:50 pm
KazonPADD wrote: Sat Dec 10, 2022 2:11 am I agree with Exon. I dislike the change because of the easy dilemma busting that comes with it (in particular Row, Row, Row Your Boat, "God", Enemies of the State, Clan People, etc), a feature that surprise surprise would heavily benefit the Federation, who seriously do not need ANY help right now.

2 personnel on 1 card works. It might be a little tricky for newbies to understand at first, but it works. 2 cards on 1 personnel leads to it being broken, and would force the CC to not make any more dual personnel.

I’d like this proposal to die in a fire frankly.
Yes, agree with this and the concern of unintended gameplay balance issues. Leave things how they are.
Counterpoint: gameplay balance issues are a two way street.

When you can download Sergey and Helena on Turn 1 you basically turn ASP into *another* drawing engine.

The same is true for Worf and Jadzia and Mr. and Mrs. Troi and Defend Homeworld, but at least you can't stack those with each other.

And as we all know, the more cards you can draw earlier, the more bullshit you can pull.

I think I'm in the general ballpark of @Hoss-Drone ... make the change, but not until some counterplay becomes available to address the identified gameplay issues.
Replace ASP with Group Therapy…
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
 -  
Regent
Community Contributor
#590001
They don't play for free, so you at least gotta spend a card draw to get them to hand and then a card play to play them. So can you do that turn 1? Sure, but now your breakeven is 4 turns... that's at least half a game these days.

There's broken-er stuff out there at that point.

EDIT: I'm comparing this to the baseline case of playing a Kivas to draw 3 with your normal card play on turn 1. Doing that also gets you a Continuing Mission draw = 4 total turn 1 draws vs. Downloading S&H with the CM draw and playing them with the normal card play. It'll take 4 turns at the love cafe to break even.
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By Smiley (Cristoffer Wiker)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#590006
I asked my new players how they interpreted dual personnel and got an interesting answer.

The general thought was that they were two personnel on one card. Still, you only got to choose one when trying to use them, be it dilemmas, missions solving etc... Anything else they thought would be bonkers as that would make them not just better but a lot better than other personnel.

So maybe that's the way we should go. They are two personnel sharing one card; you have to pick which one to use when using the card. And if there is an opponent's choice, well, then the opponents can have two personnel to choose from on the same card and, as such, balance it out a bit more.
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By Takket
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#590009
BCSWowbagger wrote: Sun Dec 11, 2022 4:30 pm On the Facebook group, a couple players suggested that, instead of counting attributes as combined, you instead treat attributes as options. The idea is that you treat the dual personnel card as one personnel, but, whenever you use a dual personnel's INTEGRITY, CUNNING, or STRENGTH, you pick one of the two values and ignore the other one, like Rom's variable attribute (apparently some Facebookers already play this way).
I've been kind of watching this form the sidelines because there are so many pros and cons of each choice that i'm not sure how I feel.

This however... is not a good idea. If the goal is to make the rules easier to understand, this does just the opposite. I would never expect it to work that way.
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By Smiley (Cristoffer Wiker)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#590032
I don't agree there. The problem is that we are measuring players with lots of experience vs players with less. And the players with less are the ones that usually have the most straightforward solution as they are seeing this for the first time without the knowledge of hindsight.

I think it's quite smart and it will play down the benefit you get from them. They will still be interesting but not broken as now.

And if we do the same thing for the classification/skills as the stats then we are really there with simplicity.
 
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#590054
This is tricky so I've been watching from the sidelines too. The three feasible options I see are:

1. Adopt the proposal as is, they are treated as one personnel for all purposes with combined skills/attributes. This is the cleanest rules-wise, and best describes the story of dual personnel working together so closely that everything that happens to one happens to the other. The problem is the balance issue, especially dilemmas and giving yet more options to [Fed] (as others have mentioned). Hoss-drone's suggestion of postponing the change until appropriate balancing cards are in place is appropriate. Even aside from dual personnel, there is still plenty of design space for punishing personnel or crews/teams with too many skills and attributes. More should not always be better.

2. Treat them as one personnel card, and at any moment you can decide which of the two personnel is "active" -- exactly analogous as to how Rom's CUNNING or Quark's INTEGRITY can be whatever you want it to be whenever it's checked, you don't have to switch it as an action. Not just the attributes, the whole personnel, skills, staffing icon, and all. (I have not checked whether there are characteristics issues where the lore is unclear which personnel has which.) Kind of a Schrödinger's card with two personnel in quantum superposition, whenever it's "observed" the controller chooses which one it is. Better balance, but loses story-wise (why is one of the personnel slacking off at any given moment?).

3. Do nothing. I admit the rules are not clearly understood even by experienced players, and as someone not involved in rules I don't have to constantly answer questions about them. But how often does this confusion have a meaningful gameplay impact? 1E has a lot of odd, vestigial parts, and indeed that's part of its charm to some players (myself included). Is it really causing enough of an issue in practical play that it needs to be fixed? Note -- I don't play often enough to have a valid opinion on this question, so I am posing this as a genuine question.

I am not a fan of the proposal to treat them as one combined personnel EXCEPT for the purposes of attributes, when there are two exclusive options. That has the worst of both options 1 and 2, if we are going to have a "hybrid" case where sometimes it's combined and sometimes there are two choices then we may as well just stick with the current rule.

Whatever is decided, I hope it's the last fix needed for dual-personnel, hopefully forever, at least as much as that means in a CCG that keeps evolving. bhosp put it best in one of the threads threads in the OP, it's a major issue that "everyone has their own wrong understanding of the rules that used to be right 20 years ago."
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By PantsOfTheTalShiar (Jason Tang)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#590060
BCSWowbagger wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 6:15 pm Whoever came up with that stupid post in the first place, you're a dick.
I clicked the link and now it's blue, does that make it official? :)

More seriously, could you or someone else give an example of having to redo a random selection? I'm not familiar with that concept.
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