For posting 1E deck designs for feedback from other players and members of the community.
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By SudenKapala (Suden Käpälä)
 - Delta Quadrant
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#461020
I'll admit not having read all of this. But the issue is interesting to me, since the game's current speed would deter me from joining tounaments.

Since out-of-box ideas such as L&G (and e.g. some in EnsignQ's post above) could be implemented without errata, rules changes or bans -- i.e., just by creating new cards -- I think there might be some interesting prospects there.
Interesting also, in a mineur way, to see some of them get dropped from development so soon.
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By Ensign Q
 - Delta Quadrant
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#461569
I actually think 6 turns is exaggerated. Lets say your draw engines starts running T1 and you have 4 reports a turn (its more likely just 3), then you can maybe start attempting turn 2. Id say the average dilemma setup takes at least 2 turns to overcome and then you also need the right skills to solve it, so probably more like 3 turns per mission.

So now we are at turn 5 and solved one mission! and thats incredible fast already. I guess you also need to fly around and stuff.

Other way around, you wait 5 turns and start solving with 20 guys, which might overcome the mission in 2 turns. turn 7 already.

A single cytherian in both scenarios ruins your day though and easily drags the game to turn 7+

the fastest game i had was 9 turns i think and it still lastet like 2.5 hours, so Id think that its more likely turn 6 when time is called and the one with most points wins, so that why everybody tries solving asap.
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By DarkSabre (Austin Chandler)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#461648
Depending on the dilemma pile & the people you report, yes it can be as soon as turn 4. Its been done.

I want to work on having games 'live streamed' or 'recorded' because its really hard, on the fly, to be subjective about the turns and what is going on but if you can watch a recording you can get a better idea of what is up
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By Ensign Q
 - Delta Quadrant
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#461726
Id appreciate to see 1e games on youtube or twitch since there are basically none. One paper tournament with a bad camera angle ive found. That might help getting fresh blood to the game as well.

Turn 4 done seems insane, but probably possible in a speedsolver vs speedsolver scenario where dilemmas are cut down to like 12?
It takes me usually 3 turns to overcome dilemmas, so there is tons of luck involved in those quick games (getting the right skills and "reading" the dilemma stack.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#461760
My record's 5 turns. It was against 18 dilemmas. I've also done 6 turns, again versus 18 dilemmas. In both cases, there was a combination of factors at work:

(1) I started attempting Turn 1.
(2) I was smart about dilemmas, correctly predicting certain combos.
(3) I had two teams working on missions by Turn 4.
(4) I had [DL] special downloads that worked during dilemma encounters to allow me to either pick skills on the fly or bail out of a mission attempt that was going badly.
(5) My opponent wasn't running active interference (or wasn't fast enough to interfere with me this early).
(6) I got a bit lucky.

Many people can cut it a bit closer by going for a two-mission win, which means facing even fewer dilemmas. This is often done by using Assign Mission Specialists for 15-20 bonus points per mission.

My average is more like 7-8 turns.
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By Ensign Q
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#461804
interesting. how was the quality of those dilemmas?
i cant see anybody succesfully attempt mission t1 without either getting stopped by "classification" walls or kill entrys like rules of obedience.
piling up a bunch of bonus points with ams seems kinda strong. theyre not loaded with skills though lol.
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By PantsOfTheTalShiar (Jason Tang)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#465998
Wait, what interactive decks need 4 turns to set up? Haven't we had our facilities invaded by turn 2? My Romulan capture deck, for all its flaws, staffed a warbird and sent it toward my opponent on turn 1. If you give someone 4 turns, they'll have plenty of time to assemble an outpost-destroying fleet.

Speed decks try to race interactive decks, okay. I'm assuming "interactive" means "battle." What else can anyone do against battle? If you can't overpower an opposing force, you have to out-maneuver it.

I actually think it's fine that ships have less effective range in the modern game. That helps keep the spaceline meaningful. The spaceline is an important source of variance in a game where the seed deck and downloading remove a lot of variance. It's good if you don't always solve the same missions each game! Contrast this with my 2E deck, where I always complete the same two missions in the same order. This is one reason I'm worried about all the teleporting we got in Enterprise block, and don't want to see that trend continue.

There's no need to boost so-called time-value cards, or continuous effect cards. Why? Because everyone already uses those kinds of cards. Play engines and draw engines add value over time! Heck, if you're going to count personnel, then literally everyone uses time-value cards. It's just that some of them are a lot better than others. Adding more turns to the game isn't going to change their relative power.

Personnel and play/draw engines are of course the most useful, because those are what you use to solve missions, which is what you use to win the game. In contrast, "when you solve" bonuses suffer from their circular logic. The reward is usually a thing that helps you solve missions, but yet you need to solve a mission to get that reward. The reward is also irrelevant if you've already won the game from solving the mission.

On closer examination, a lot of these solving bonuses are underwhelming and easier to obtain through other means. Take Test Propulsion Systems. If I wanted a range boost, I could use Plasmadyne Relay or Defiant Dedication Plaque. My TNG Fed deck could download either of those on turn 1 if it wanted. Or, I could seed multiple facilities, reducing the amount of RANGE my deck needs to ferry personnel where needed. I could also increase my effective RANGE by using a 3-span mission instead of the 5-span TPS. These alternatives are available earlier in the game, thus they will always be better because you will always get more turns with them.

Likewise, the problem with Establish Trade Route isn't that there aren't enough turns to the game, it's that Establish Trade Route is a terrible card.
1) The outpost download still requires a [Fer] icon, so it doesn't actually expand your mission selection if you want the solving bonus.
2) It requires a lot of skills that rarely help against dilemmas.
3) The attribute requirement is way too high relative to missions of the same point value.
4) The bonus downloads are underwhelming. Do you want multiple facilities? You can just seed multiple, and that's better than seeding one and using another card to hopefully download another later in the game. Equipment isn't very valuable to begin with, and it too is easier to obtain by other means.
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By Ensign Q
 - Delta Quadrant
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#466035
I still think the flaw is that you build your whole strategy in seedphase.

Take the Khan deck for example.
It starts with all the tools it needs and can start eeling people on fucking turn 1
Borg are an innocent child in comparsion..

to be fair, I hate games based on rng and love that 1e boils down to executing strategies, but it went a little too far. It should at least take 2-3 turns before you start doing things.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#466545
Pants o.t. Tal Shiar wrote:I'm assuming "interactive" means "battle."
You should not because it does not.

Battle is one kind of interactivity -- one that can get started relatively quickly, which is why so much interactivity today is battle.

But other kinds of interactivity include capture, mission lockup, spaceline manipulation (Q-Net and so forth), infiltration, certain forms of draw-deck or hand manipulation, a variety of things you can do with Rules of Acquisition or the Maquis, and far more besides. Most or all of these kinds of interaction have mostly fallen by the wayside... even in the face of Design attempts to revive them. There's no time.
I actually think it's fine that ships have less effective range in the modern game. That helps keep the spaceline meaningful. The spaceline is an important source of variance in a game where the seed deck and downloading remove a lot of variance. It's good if you don't always solve the same missions each game! Contrast this with my 2E deck, where I always complete the same two missions in the same order.
I think there's a happy medium between 2E, where the spaceline is irrelevant, and modern 1E, where the spaceline is practically insurmountable.

That medium, to my mind, is 1E circa 1997.

(Agreed on teleporting.)
There's no need to boost so-called time-value cards, or continuous effect cards. Why? Because everyone already uses those kinds of cards. Play engines and draw engines add value over time!
How often do you see someone use a play engine that couldn't seed? In that tiny sliver of cases, how often do you see someone use a play engine that can't reliably be put in play on the first turn by some other means?

As I wrote on the Design board in March:
Card plays are so rare that they are effectively reserved for ships, personnel, and draws-generators like Handshake. It's too dangerous to blow a precious card play on some weird mid-90s tech like Duranja or Defense System Upgrade or Kal-Toh. It either gives you draws, it can be downloaded, or it's dead -- unless, of course, it seeds, because we'd far sooner blow one of our 30 seed slots on useful tech than one of our 5-10 card plays. It's so bad that the CC has effectively stopped making Events without making them seedable, providing a way to download them, or putting draws on them. (I believe the last time we created even one such card was Empress -- over a year ago -- and this despite some very considerable begging in playtesting to make it more accessible, and a free-play mechanism for it.) That's a rational design response to the current degeneracy in the play environment -- but every seedable / downloadable event we make digs our hole a little deeper. I mean, when's the last time you used a card for a card play that didn't get you draws, ships, or people? Outside a sealed/starter environment? That's a serious question: I quickly scanned your decklists for the past year, and I didn't find anything. Mine look pretty much the same in that regard.
The Cage worked hard to include verbs you can actually play using your card play. We ended up with one in the final file. (17V. 18V came close but couldn't survive testing without a free-play option.)

Yes: the game's current degeneracy has effectively erased one of the game's core card types (Events) from the draw deck.
In contrast, "when you solve" bonuses suffer from their circular logic. The reward is usually a thing that helps you solve missions, but yet you need to solve a mission to get that reward. The reward is also irrelevant if you've already won the game from solving the mission.
...which means there's a golden window in which "when you solve" bonuses are useful. That's not circular logic, that's the very sound logic Rollie Tesh and Tom Braunlich imposed on the game in 1994 (via Artifacts, the ultimate "when you solve" reward) in order to ensure an exciting midgame. We don't have a midgame anymore. A lot of the things you mention (easy access to download Plasmadyne Relays, for instance) are Design responses to the fact that we don't have a midgame.
Likewise, the problem with Establish Trade Route isn't that there aren't enough turns to the game, it's that Establish Trade Route is a terrible card.
1) The outpost download still requires a [Fer] icon, so it doesn't actually expand your mission selection if you want the solving bonus.
2) It requires a lot of skills that rarely help against dilemmas.
3) The attribute requirement is way too high relative to missions of the same point value.
4) The bonus downloads are underwhelming. Do you want multiple facilities? You can just seed multiple, and that's better than seeding one and using another card to hopefully download another later in the game. Equipment isn't very valuable to begin with, and it too is easier to obtain by other means.
I think this misunderstands what ETR is trying to do -- it's a Ferengi card, keyed to give Ferengi more options, more defenses, and more fuel for their endless Equipment hunger, using skills that Ferengi specifically have in spades.

Mostly irrelevant, but there are definitely decks where I would love to use ETR if I had even three or four more turns to enjoy its benefits before the game ended.
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 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#470427
Your tying this to a card is your first mistake as people can simply opt out of using said card. Your making this way more complicated than it needs to be Heaney. My group has already come up with a solution that resolves all of these issues with very minimal rules changes. If your seriously interested in fixing this problem then send me a pm and I’ll fill you in on our fix.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#470488
I'm interested in all proposed solutions to the game speed difficulties. Everything's on the table when your brainstorming. Please do tell!
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By stressedoutatumc (stressedoutatumc)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#488465
I'm a little late to the party, but I have some thought to contribute to whoever might still be following this thread.

I've been playing STCCG since I was a freshman in high school way back in like 98/99 and have recently picked it back up with a buddy. The issue of speed and balance have always been issues, but I also know when I thought the game absolutely died and that was when Q the Referee was released. Yeah, I was just a dumb kid back then, but the overall feeling is that is slowed the game way down and it made it less fun to play. I totally get why you don't want to limit the meta in favor of speed or speed players, but you also cannot ignore that the average person in any game is just...average. STCCG actually has a built-in way to slow down anyone, and that's with dilemma and overall balance with offense and defense. This is just me talking, but here are a few of an old players suggestions.

1. Looking through a bunch of decks in the database, the dilemma strategy is just dismal. There have been wildly powerful dilemma added since I stopped playing (somewhere after The Dominion set). The combinations I've been able to create lately just would crush anyone I used to play with back in the day and serves as a real pain to the speed-solvers my buddy uses. I think the CC has worked hard to create dilemma that's just really freakin hard to pass if used in the correct combination. I let my friend used banned cards like Red Alert and Horgan and Genetronic Replicator and games are still very very winnable consistently because of my dilemma strategy (and I'm nothing special). And, he's using a super Fed Solver.

2. The number of seed cards should be bumped to +6. This would support my first point and let skill in building dilemma be the natural deterrent to direct and speed solvers. This is obviously a radical change but one I always thought made sense. It would allow +1 dilemma to each mission and open up some very tough combos if people had the will and skill to find them. Additionally, it would allow for cards that are sacrificed but could really hurt a speed/direct solver (i.e. computer crash, mission debriefing, etc)

3. On the subject of Ladies and Gentlemen, I think that this card is a fantastic idea and really not that hard to prevent from stalling out a win. All that would have to be added with errata that it cannot be used in the last 45 minutes of a game (or after a certain amount of turns) and that it's automatically triggered when your opponent attempts a mission before you do. The concept is solid; it's like a computer crash for the whole game and gives utility to event cards that, again, might be sacrificed because of number of turn needed to make them viable.
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