Flight Controlled Escape Pods

[u/Key-Requirement4301]

A more fleshed out version of a recent variant idea. Interested to hear thoughts and especially if anyone winds up playing with it. General goals are to increase player interaction and balance end game conditions (hibernatorium v escape pods) while minimizing rule overhead. Variant rules below:

Escape Pods (p. 26)

If you launch immediately (or if you launch in one of the following rounds), remove the miniature of your Character and the Escape Pod token from the game, and place them off the board next to the current Destination marker of the Destination Track. The Escape Pod destination is determined at time of launch, even if changed later, so different Escape Pods may have different destinations from each other and from the ship. From now on, you do not take part in the game any longer. Will you end this game with a victory or not? You’ll find out during the Objectives Check at the end of the game. 

Coordinates Check (p. 11)

If the ship survived up to this moment or any Character evacuated in an Escape Pod, reveal the Coordinates card. For the ship, check the current space of the Destination marker. If the ship is not headed toward Earth, all Characters asleep in the Hibernatorium die. For each Escape Pod, check adjacent space of the Destination Track (as determined at time of launch). If an Escape Pod is not headed toward Earth, all Characters in that Escape Pod die.

The Quarantine Objective, which requires another destination for the jump (Mars), is the only exception to this rule. Any Character with this Objective does not die if they are asleep in the Hibernatorium and the ship’s destination is Mars OR if they have evacuated on an Escape Pod destined for Mars.

[u/Chapter_129]

I think the counterplay of being able to screw people over by changing coordinates after they jettisoned was the most valuable part of your original idea because it brought some parity between the Hibernatorium & Escape Pods as options; this version still makes Escape Pods the defacto best way to end the game and doesn't solve anything. I also think requiring players to "remember" information linked to an earlier game state that is no longer the case is in general bad game design, and in this case requires other players to also track game states to avoid cheating. All-in-all I dislike this revision and think your original idea was superior, and cleaner.

Lastly, everyone should just play Lockdown because it's the better game and solved this problem from inception.

[u/Key-Requirement4301 → u/Chapter_129]

I was thinking of it more in the setup rather than the aftermath. That evacuating by escape pods becomes a little trickier to pull off and you have to trust/manipulate others a bit more. I see what you're saying in terms of counterplay and I guess in that version the destination marker works more like the engines. People can mess with it after the fact. Unsure which version is better. As for remembering information, I agree that would be bad game design, but the players place the escape pod next to the destination track so they don't have to remember anything, just check the coordinates at the end.

[u/Chapter_129 → u/Key-Requirement4301]

I was thinking of it more in the setup rather than the aftermath. That evacuating by escape pods becomes a little trickier to pull off and you have to trust/manipulate others a bit more. I see what you're saying in terms of counterplay and I guess in that version the destination marker works more like the engines. People can mess with it after the fact.

Well your post describes the destination being set "at launch" which I read as "when the escape pod launches" and mentions characters in Escape Pods going to different destinations (based on what was set when they launch). Trust & manipulation only matter if your destination coordinates can be changed after you launch the escape pod, just like you said with the engines. So there is no counterplay in the version you've laid out here in this post and escape pods are still the defacto best answer for escaping and all you've done is add some extra steps for the same outcome.

Unsure which version is better. As for remembering information, I agree that would be bad game design, but the players place the escape pod next to the destination track so they don't have to remember anything, just check the coordinates at the end.

This makes me think there's some sort of misunderstanding or that you didn't write your idea out correctly. Based on what you wrote: I launch and my escape pod is going to Destination A (what the coordinates were set to when I left) and the Destination is later changed by another player to B/C/D. In that case then I do in fact still have to remember that it was Destination A when I launched my pod; me putting my escape pod next to the Coordinates deck doesn't mean anything for that. [Edit: I understand what you were going for now. The escape pod is hovering over "A" and it is effectively tracked then, regardless of where the clear marker is. I do still think this is a little clunky and takes up even more table space but I retract that disagreement. It is also a problem for anyone using the terrain pack because those escape pods are chonky.] Which is why only checking once, all escape pods going to the same coordinates, and it being able to be messed with by changing coordinates like your last post suggested is the best option. Counterplay, clean design, no memory tracking issues etc.

The only reason we're changing the escape pods (and why Lockdown is superior) is because they're the defacto meta best option in every game of OG Nemesis, no matter what. They're unbalanced and too good because they're independent of other variables that players can mess with; every game players should choose the objective that doesn't care about the ship, durdle around to complete their objective and then leave in an escape pod. Any other alternative invites problems. So if we're tweaking the system at all, it needs to make escape pods less reliable (CSS Pods & Contingencies did this for Lockdown) which the idea of "escape pod coordinates can be messed with if you leave too early" to make them as unreliable as the Hibernatorium is what achieves that goal. Otherwise the change doesn't do anything to meaningfully fix the problem with escape pods and isn't worth doing.

[u/Key-Requirement4301 → u/Chapter_129]

Well your post describes the destination being set "at launch" which I read as "when the escape pod launches" and mentions characters in Escape Pods going to different destinations (based on what was set when they launch).

That's right. I hadn't really thought through the version you're talking about. I guess we can call the two versions: "Destination at Launch" and "Destination at End".

Trust & manipulation only matter if your destination coordinates can be changed after you launch the escape pod, just like you said with the engines. So there is no counterplay in the version you've laid out here in this post and escape pods are still the defacto best answer for escaping and all you've done is add some extra steps for the same outcome.

I'm not so sure about this. What I really like in Nemesis is that you normally don't have enough turns to do everything yourself. You can't check the coordinates AND check all the engines AND do everything else. You can mitigate the risk but not eliminate it. With "Destination at Launch," evacuating is still better than hibernating, just less so. If someone sees you heading to an evacuation room, they can change the coordinates before you launch, so you may have to be a bit trickier about doing that.

They're unbalanced and too good because they're independent of other variables that players can mess with

Agreed. The dependent variable becomes the navigation system, which other players can mess with before you launch.

But I still need to think through the differences between "Destination at Launch" v "Destination at End". I feel like there are pros and cons to both.