Two posts in one weekend? What's the world coming to?
So, I've been messing around with the player powers in the game. These powers are asymmetric; each player is randomly assigned one power at the start of the game and is not able to change it or get more. Each player power is a once-per-turn effect that gives some unique perk or ability. They're called "Captain Skills" in the game, representing some talent you have that's useful towards fixing up your ship.
For a while now, I've been having trouble deciding what those powers should be. Two of them, the red and blue powers, I've felt have been pretty solid; the power level is about where they should be, though I could see tweaking the costs a little. The other two, the white and the green, have been up in the air for a while.
Until now... hopefully.
I hit upon this iteration of the white power a little while ago, though it's taken several playtests for it to feel right. Even now, I'm still thinking the cost could possibly be adjusted. But the ability itself feels good to play. Once per round, I can mark off one area on my ship for only the cost of activating the power, but I lose on gaining any of the marks on my tracks that that space would have given me. While this doesn't sound that great on the surface, it's actually quite potent. Getting around the ship quickly is one of the challenges of the game, and this helps by shortening your path by one step for each time you use it. Additionally, the players get bonuses for completing specially-colored areas of the ship, and this can help there too. (Sure you don't gain the bonuses from the colored spaces when you use this, but the area still counts as 'completed' for the purposes of gaining bonuses.)
I was apprehensive when I created this new iteration of the green power. Previously, I've been avoiding freely-available game abilities that effectively let you ignore the color of your cubes. Sure, they are there, but they are few and far between. More specifically, players can always pay two energy (one of the game's resources) to treat a cube as a different color, and lowering that cost has always broken the game. So anything that does similar must also be broken.
Except... this ability might not be broken. The power basically says that you can reclaim a cube you previously used during that same turn. Normally you would use that cube right away, but there's always the possibility of storing the cube for a future turn. Later in the game, during turns where you draw a huge number of cubes, this effectively means that you get a wild cube. On the surface, that sounds broken. But in practice, it doesn't always go that smoothly. Sometimes you don't draw the cube color you want at all, and you can't recover what you didn't spend. (Sure, you can use a color change effect to spend a cube as something else, but when you recover that cube it goes back to its original color, the cube does not 'remember' it was altered.) Or you could possibly need two cubes of a color, but you only drew one; for a cost of two of a color, you can't spend the one cube and then recover it to spend as the second cube, you must have the entire cost already in hand.
I'm still playtesting, of course. (Sooo much playtesting...) But so far this new idea seems to be holding. Either that or it's overpowered, but the other abilities are also overpowered so it balances out? We'll see. But I'm hopeful that this is the point where I can stop tinkering with it. One step closer to a completed game. :)
So, I've been messing around with the player powers in the game. These powers are asymmetric; each player is randomly assigned one power at the start of the game and is not able to change it or get more. Each player power is a once-per-turn effect that gives some unique perk or ability. They're called "Captain Skills" in the game, representing some talent you have that's useful towards fixing up your ship.
For a while now, I've been having trouble deciding what those powers should be. Two of them, the red and blue powers, I've felt have been pretty solid; the power level is about where they should be, though I could see tweaking the costs a little. The other two, the white and the green, have been up in the air for a while.
Until now... hopefully.
I hit upon this iteration of the white power a little while ago, though it's taken several playtests for it to feel right. Even now, I'm still thinking the cost could possibly be adjusted. But the ability itself feels good to play. Once per round, I can mark off one area on my ship for only the cost of activating the power, but I lose on gaining any of the marks on my tracks that that space would have given me. While this doesn't sound that great on the surface, it's actually quite potent. Getting around the ship quickly is one of the challenges of the game, and this helps by shortening your path by one step for each time you use it. Additionally, the players get bonuses for completing specially-colored areas of the ship, and this can help there too. (Sure you don't gain the bonuses from the colored spaces when you use this, but the area still counts as 'completed' for the purposes of gaining bonuses.)
I was apprehensive when I created this new iteration of the green power. Previously, I've been avoiding freely-available game abilities that effectively let you ignore the color of your cubes. Sure, they are there, but they are few and far between. More specifically, players can always pay two energy (one of the game's resources) to treat a cube as a different color, and lowering that cost has always broken the game. So anything that does similar must also be broken.
Except... this ability might not be broken. The power basically says that you can reclaim a cube you previously used during that same turn. Normally you would use that cube right away, but there's always the possibility of storing the cube for a future turn. Later in the game, during turns where you draw a huge number of cubes, this effectively means that you get a wild cube. On the surface, that sounds broken. But in practice, it doesn't always go that smoothly. Sometimes you don't draw the cube color you want at all, and you can't recover what you didn't spend. (Sure, you can use a color change effect to spend a cube as something else, but when you recover that cube it goes back to its original color, the cube does not 'remember' it was altered.) Or you could possibly need two cubes of a color, but you only drew one; for a cost of two of a color, you can't spend the one cube and then recover it to spend as the second cube, you must have the entire cost already in hand.
I'm still playtesting, of course. (Sooo much playtesting...) But so far this new idea seems to be holding. Either that or it's overpowered, but the other abilities are also overpowered so it balances out? We'll see. But I'm hopeful that this is the point where I can stop tinkering with it. One step closer to a completed game. :)
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