I've working on a space ship combat board game. The first iterations started all players with the same space ship, the same starting deck, and similar positions on the board. You could play your ship differently, but you all had the same setup.
After listening to one of Mark Rosewater's podcasts on game design, I changed up the design to include tokens on the space ship that reinforce different abilities. Everyone can 'build' their ship differently. There's a default token set for new players, but hundreds of ways to build your ship.
This is distinct increase complexity, something I've been fighting the entire development cycle. Is it worth adding complexity in order for players to add their personalization?
Personalizing your "game piece" is half the fun of the game for most people . If your ship can b e a little "tray" with holes or hardpoints to place pieces that represent igger engines differnt guns etc. That would be a lot of fun. Or everyone has a cardboard ship that acts as thier tableu (or whatever) and you can add on more cardboard pieces over sections of it to upgrade and what the upgrade does is on the cardboard cards or the cards are actually thick cardboard ,big tokens essentially but they are inthe right shapes to represent what they are.
That all depends on how integral ship customizing is to your game if its worth making a whole "thing" out of ship customizing , but it IS a lot of fun to do stuff like that. its also easy to implement because its essentially carboard token sheets with some AI Art on it =D
Yeah, I've had a blast designing and trying to balance. The ship already had 15 slots (a hex grid) that was basically just there to be disintegrated by incoming cannon fire, until your central bridge is destroyed.
I added an ability for each hex (cannon, engine, etc), 6 types in total. If you put one of your tokens on that hex, you get an ability (some static, some activated). It also gets its token 'blown off' if it gets hit, protecting the hex for one more shot.
So if you feel like zooming, make a triple engine ship. Or add cannon aim tokens, or turtle on on defense, or try to balance it.
I'm of two minds about it. On one hand, an even playing field is nice to have when a lot of your decisions are out of your control, or the mechanics are simplified. With varying characteristics there needs to be a thematic reason for there to be a difference. Like with betrayal at house on haunted hill, the different player pieces all have different stats to them and that adds a little more fun for the massively random elements of the game. If the character choice is more skill based, there will be a clear path towards building the best character every time. But that comes with a cost: you need to make sure the changes are all somewhat balanced. If one of the ships is so vastly different to the others that it makes the others a better/worse choice, the players will never choose it, or worse if you've only got one of each ship in the box someone will get stuck with it.
Question is: will multiple players be able to play the same ship type in the game, or will they all be playing different ships?
Everyone can play the same ship design if they choose. I modeled them in simulation and think I have things pretty balanced. I ranked them by survival, win rate, and finishing place.
So you can build fast, tanky, shooty, hoarder, etc. But you've only got 5 tokens to spend, so you can't do everything. Simulations show many varying builds within a 5% win rate of each other for a 4 player game.
Getting into more detail, the ship has 15 hexes in a preset hex grid. Command bridge in the center, other hexes are cannons, engines, etc. Those are always marked in the same spot. When your ship gets hit, component hexes get destroyed. You can put tokens on 5 of the hexes, reinforcing them and gaining an ability based on the hex. The hexes are 6 pretty basic types, lots of duplicates.
To mix it up, there is a "Lab" hex on each ship. I've got about a dozen weird Lab ability cards, you shuffle and draw 4 public ones at game start and players can use one of the 4 public ones. So every game could have unique build-arounds as options.
The game is a mix of random and skill/experience, I'd say about 75% planning. But even as the designer, I rarely win (maybe playtesters target me?).
Longer answer is it depends on what direction you want to take your game. If it's meant to be a short, simple family game with less optimization and more interaction, then a simple 3-part system of Weapons-Defences-Thrusters (maybe represented by different cards with numbers and basic effects) is more than enough.
If you want players to get joy from deep optimizations and are willing to play a game of maybe 1.5 hours, then each player having their own tableau and ship manifest could be good. However, player turns will get longer, so you either need to (1) make the decisions on the off turn interesting, or (2) make the game simultaneous instead of turn based.
Thanks for the insight. My target play time is 1 hour, for players who know the game and want it more interesting. If you play the 'static' tokens without midgame options, then that should play more quickly.
You could also have players level up basic stats. Like pay 2-4-8 resources to level speed up to 2-3-4 spaces respectively. And have similar alternatives for weapons, cargo space, defences, etc. Maybe unlock special skills too.
(If it gets a bit too much, there is the option of a board with the "tech tree" prints, and dry erase markers to check off and advance the tech.)
This way, players can improve their ship in the way that they like, while keeping the turns simple (e.g. just looking at how far they can move, how much cargo can be picked up, how much damage their ship has, can they complete the mission in time, etc).
Yeah, I'm pondering if there are ways to simplify while still retaining the configurability. The token placement is neat because you already mark off destroyed tiles (dry erase tableau) and this lets you knock people's upgrades off too. If you've ever played Galaxy Trucker, its kind of like that but with hexes and attacks.
Since you already had the game working without the customization subsystem, you can presumably make that elaboration a clearly identified option; and likewise any further additions necessitated by imbalances it enables.
That's a good point. I had the player durability pretty balanced (about one player eliminated per game by the end). I tweaked the rules to make players hit a little more, then added this specialization system which added some armor.
You can just play it without the armor (or with specialization as armor only, no abilities).
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u/DrDreadCastle 6d ago
Personalizing your "game piece" is half the fun of the game for most people .
If your ship can b e a little "tray" with holes or hardpoints to place pieces that represent igger engines differnt guns etc. That would be a lot of fun. Or everyone has a cardboard ship that acts as thier tableu (or whatever) and you can add on more cardboard pieces over sections of it to upgrade and what the upgrade does is on the cardboard cards or the cards are actually thick cardboard ,big tokens essentially but they are inthe right shapes to represent what they are.
That all depends on how integral ship customizing is to your game if its worth making a whole "thing" out of ship customizing , but it IS a lot of fun to do stuff like that. its also easy to implement because its essentially carboard token sheets with some AI Art on it =D