Space Empires IV - Board Game!

[Krsqk]

I haven't had a chance to try it (my wife didn't give it a second look, and don't ask about our aborted first attempt at a game of SE4 ), but it looks good. I don't know that I'd change anything. Well, I take that back. I'd definitely change somethings, since I'm a hopeless tweaker, but I don't know what I'd change without trying it.

[spoon]

Ok, here's that feedback...

The Map:
- The player in the Upper Left one less planet "available" than the other three players (there should be another planet in between the damaging warp to the lower left and that Methane planet).
- The map works well with two or four players, but not so good for 3 players (since the player sandwiched between the two players would have a harder time expanding). One fix would be to make the map a balanced 6-player map, since that would accomodate 2, 3, 4, and 6 players. Another approach would be to make the map out of "tiles" so you could line up your systems depending on how many players you have... maybe they could connect with themselves, or they could connect to a hexagonal hub...

Downtime:
You can reduce the downtime between players if you split up the turn so that each phase of the turn is done by all players before progressing to the next phase. For example, in a two player game, turn order would go like this:

Research - Player A
Reserach - Player B
Ship Purchases - Player A
Ship Purchases - Player B
...
Administration - Player A
Administartion - Player B

It's even better if you can do each portion simultaneously, by introducing things like simultaneous (hidden) orders or bidding. For example, in the research phase, you could flip over X research tiles (X being the number of players) then bid on each of the tiles (obviously you'd have to have more items to research than currently listed!) For the movement turn, each player could place hidden orders on each of his ships/fleets, and then resolve movement one order at a time, alternating between players. (check out the Game of Thrones boardgame for a good example of how this works).

Elimination:
I personally don't like boardgames of 3+ players where someone can be completely eliminated from the game (eg, Risk, Monopoly) since that means you could leave someone out of the "fun" for the rest of the evening! So I'd rather see different victory conditions, such as: "The first person to colonize X planets" or "The person with the most Victory Points after X number of turns" or a combination of the two. The latter two options also have the side benefit of being able to better control how long the game would take to play, making the game more appealing to people who have to "schedule" their time to play games...(ie, us married folk!)
But again, this is personal taste, so do as you will...

Research:
I thought that the research was too random, and didn't have enough choices. (I also couldn't find in the rules how Research Facilities were supposed to work, so that maybe that alleviated some of the randomness???). I would probably come up with significantly more options, and not let progress be determined by a die role. I like either auctioning research (as mentioned above) or simply buying research (with minerals or with "research points" that would be generated by research facilities (or a combination of the two)).

Movement:
I like simultaneous order giving. Two obvious Orders are Move and Defend - but maybe throw in some other orders for good measure (though they would obviously need mechanics to go with them) such as Retrofit, Patrol, Lay Mines, etc). Anyway, everyone places all their orders face-down, one order per ship/fleet. After all orders are placed, reveal them, and each player executes orders one at a time. (eg, Player A moves one fleet, then Player B moves one fleet, etc, etc.) In the Game of Thrones boardgame, certain order types are executed before others: so you might resolve all movement orders before you resolve Retrofit orders.

Combat:
I would simplify it where possible: I'd get rid of the "called shot" (though possibly make a researchable component that lets you do that). And I'd also get rid of the defense roll... the attack roll is probably good enough. (ECMs could work like so: Any ECM in the enemy fleet reduces/eliminates the Combat Sensor bonus of all ships in the other fleet).
I wonder if keeping track of damaged components is too hard or not, but I like your idea and would playtest it (I also wonder if moving the ships around the map would also cause problems (ie, it would be difficult to tell at a glance what forces an enemy has in any given system - you'd have to pick up each fleet and flip through the ships, while not messing up the components on the ships...)

[Atrocities]

Sounds like a great idea.

[Suicide Junkie]

Some replies:
I've never hear of the Thrones game you're talking about, but I based the mechanics on the Axis and Allies board game.

The map is arbitrary, really. Anybody can make a giant picture, throw on some SE4 planet portraits and then draw some lines between them.
The one provided can be considered an example, with harder/easier starts for handicap purposes.
In the game I played, the number of colonies didn't really enter into it anyways. We both got one colony built, and then fought and glassed before any more could be started.

Once we got into the flow of things, there was very little downtime.
While the other guy is pondering his movement, you take a look at your mitt full of components and decide what ships you're going to build.
The administration is mostly "Ok, 10 bucks for my homeworld, 2 for the little colony, and toss back 5 for maintenance. Grab 3 more component cards."
Repairs are rare, and a lot of the rest is special case items. Buying mineral miners on the colonies is a quick given as well.
The hidden orders would take a long time to write down and then unveil properly, I think.

Victory conditions were mostly unspecified.
If you lose all your stuff, you're obviously out, but house rules for victory are easily added.

Research might stand to use more items, but too many tech modifiers to the components could get hairy. Its based on AnA; most of the time you don't have the funds to devote to research instead of bolstering your defenses.
A simple modification might be to collect one coin for each research facility, and put it in a special research pool to spend on a roll when you get enough collected.

The damage is fairly simple.
Components are either flipped over (damaged), or removed permanently (destroyed).
We arranged the ships around the planet/sector they were in, and it fits 4 ships fairly easily (components were partly piled to avoid spillage)
More than four ships starts generating combat penalties, so the fleets shouldn't get much bigger.

We also only used one page of ships, since we were tired of cutting, so we were limited to three of any one type of hull and that helped keep the numbers down too

As for construction, we simplified it a tad, by just laying down the components with the hull, since the surprise is minimal, and events during the turn never conspired to require a different design.

[PashaDawg]

Hmmmm looks fun!

[deccan]

PashaDawg said:
Hmmmm looks fun!

Hey! I didn't know you played SEIV too?

[spoon]

Suicide Junkie said:
Once we got into the flow of things, there was very little downtime.
While the other guy is pondering his movement, you take a look at your mitt full of components and decide what ships you're going to build.

Looks like it works great then for two-player... How long did it take you guys to do a turn? Maybe downtime wouldn't show up until you did 3-4 players?
Also, if you guys weren't really expanding, you might want to consider either 1) trying it to see if it is more effective - and then see if that has an impact on turn length or 2) making it more tempting to expand (easier to do, better rewards, etc), or 3) Excluding the option to expand and simplifying the game down to what you like: good ol' fashioned ship-to-ship combat.

[spoon]

Suicide Junkie said:
The hidden orders would take a long time to write down and then unveil properly, I think.

You wouldn't write them down. You would make Order Tiles (or cards, or whatever you want to call them) and place them face down over your fleets. After everyone has placed them, flip them all over and start executing them one by one, alternating players.

[Suicide Junkie]

Wouldn't the order tiles have to be specific rather than generic?

Such as "move to system X" and "Attack ship Y"?

As for the expansion rate, I was going full out on it, although I was admittedly hampered by a run of bad luck in the cargo bay department
I did manage to smash the opposing transport before it could finish the colony, and built 3 transport hulls to drag coins to the colony to help build it up faster.

Our warships simply did the monkey smash faster than the transports built colonies


I'm not sure how long the turns actually took, since it felt like only a minute, but when we looked up, it was 1 AM.

[spoon]

Suicide Junkie said:
Wouldn't the order tiles have to be specific rather than generic?

Such as "move to system X" and "Attack ship Y"?

No, they would be very generic, such as "Move". You decide where they actually move on your turn. If you had three fleets with a move order, you would decide which fleet to move first (and where to move it. The ships in the fleet could move all toghter, or you could split them up and move each ship to a different system). Then one of the other players would execute one of their Move orders. Combat would occur when enemy ships were in the same sector.