2nd Edition Playtest Report- Terran Commonwealth

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wminsing
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Re: 2nd Edition Playtest Report- Terran Commonwealth

Post by wminsing »

Thanks for all the feedback Tyrel!
The process you went through for creating the new emerging empire looks right, Will. There is a bit of manipulation that you have to do to get things right, and it's really up to the player/CM to decide which systems to explore and where to place them on the map, or how to handle dead ends like the one you ran into in Van Maanen.
Good, I'm ok with making judgement calls but just wanted to make sure I hadn't done anything too crazy.
It's nice to see that the Geidi Empire does have two systems that are capable of producing some food. I really think we'll need to roll back to 2 food per Census (versus 3 food per Census) to allow for faster population growth to relieve the population bottlenecks that we've run into in the current batch of playtest games.
Based on my experiences with the Terrans I would have said that 3 food/census was ok, but seeing the bind the Geidi Empire is in I'm thinking that 2 food/census does make more sense. BIO is still rarer than Raw so it makes BIO 3+ planets valuable.
The rules say to take the highest AG of the two and divide by 4, rounding down, to find the percentage chance of a first contact war occurring.
Ok, must have missed that.
For the sake of player sanity, every jump lane that is explored is explored for everyone.
Whew, that makes things easier! I will go with this system. The one question I have is that when the Geidi jumped into The Vortex they have 'seen' the Jump Lane the Terrans had explored. Should they have 'known' there was another alien power out there at that point?
The Geidians chance of declaring war is calculated by taking its AG - Relationship and then multiplying the result by 10% (round to nearest). This gives them (55 - (-5)) x 10% = 6% chance per turn of declaring war. Once the war is declared, however, the scope of the conflict is limited by its effective relationship (this really needs a better name), which at the current level is -10.
Whoa, I had calculated this very wrong. I see the chances for war were much less than I thought. I will keep the current Bran/Geidi war but I'll make sure to use the right calculation in the future!
Bah, I thought I had trimmed that out. It is in fact Utilized Industry x 5 right now (though I really want another system resource to govern that).
Argh, I could look at changing it back if it doesn't foul things up too badly....
The supply limit is on a system-by-system basis for cases where you have units operating outside of the supply range of a supply depot. Therefore a system that has 25 industrial capacity (5 Utilized Industry x 5) could maintain up to 25 CC of military units even if there isn't a friendly supply depot nearby to keep them in supply. It patches a problem with how supply used to work and allows colonies that are outside of your supply lines to still resupply units using their own industrial capacity.
I have some other thoughts on this topic I'll post in the system stats thread. The basic idea is that I like using the industrial capacity for supply (not maintenance), and supply depots just 'extend' this supply capability to over jump lanes.
Okay, this is some good situational testing and is brining up things that I hadn't considered. Specifically, the contested system stipulation needs to be removed, at least for the damage relations mission.
Something along these lines would work I think. I think 5 EP per die roll mod makes more sense in this case, or maybe 5 EP + 1/jump EP. I'll try a system along these lines in the future. This also can brings up another rules question; can you run diplomatic missions if you don't have communications? For damaging relations this makes sense, but maybe not for improving relations.

-Will
"Ships and sail proper for the heavenly air should be fashioned. Then there will also be people, who do not shrink from the dreary vastness of space."
-- Johannes Kepler, 1609
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Tyrel Lohr
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Re: 2nd Edition Playtest Report- Terran Commonwealth

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

Based on my experiences with the Terrans I would have said that 3 food/census was ok, but seeing the bind the Geidi Empire is in I'm thinking that 2 food/census does make more sense. BIO is still rarer than Raw so it makes BIO 3+ planets valuable.
I still like having high BIO systems be rarer, but I think shifting to 2 food per Census and probably giving a minimum of 1 BIO per system is probably for the best overall. That or make the chance of 0 BIO be lower than it currently is. I'm not sure if both changes are necessary, as they might end up cancelling each other out, but I'm going to test and see.

After my last game I have to say that if I was to err one way or the other I'd prefer to have more BIO and faster population growth than the opposite. Having lots of real estate you could live on and no way to pull it off because of food problems is honestly really disheartening.

Whew, that makes things easier! I will go with this system. The one question I have is that when the Geidi jumped into The Vortex they have 'seen' the Jump Lane the Terrans had explored. Should they have 'known' there was another alien power out there at that point?
They would have known that an alien power had previously entered the system and from where, but they wouldn't have had any other information to go off of. The best way to think about it is that once a jump lane is explored you end up with a lot of ancillary traffic that would be detected by anyone that visits the system. This electronic chatter might come from navigation beacons or from civilian prospectors that are moving in and out of the system trying to strike it big under the radar.
This also can brings up another rules question; can you run diplomatic missions if you don't have communications? For damaging relations this makes sense, but maybe not for improving relations.
You can damage relations with an empire that you don't have communications with but you can't improve them, at least not at present. I can see an argument for allowing two empires to perform friendly gestures to boost confidence in each other while they're still trying to communicate, but I'm not sure it "feels" right to allow empires to do that. From a mechanical standpoint it might be easier to just allow it and remove a special rule consideration, though.
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