Notes from a self test of Colony One
Some initial testing of the game has been done, and now I want too the very few bits that worked and redo everything else.
Immediate issues were too much money and too many colonists/population markers.
Money was a bit meaningless really, and deal making for use of colony modules tended to be an assumption, as there was always good quid pro quo situations, and everyone had access to something useful. There really needs to be a limit on the use of them, being always possible to use just did not work.
Reasons for there being too many colonists: there wasn't enough to do, there needs to be more than extraction and production happening.
Also explorations tiles really limited when you could extract. Several times my imaginary players had a plan that involved specific resources coming up, and they just didn't by chance. As there are chains of dependency these basically became null turns.
Exploration was a bit blah all round.
The trips between Earth and Colony One element didn't really work, I thought it would add a good rhythm to the game, but it didn't really work.
I did like token placement to do things, the general idea of modified actions worked OK, and despite issues with pop marker amounts and things to do, this bit seemed to work. The whole money thing, not so much.
So, things to change:
Exploration - Heavy Metals and Volatiles. Mixing these in with exploration tiles stilted the game somewhat, but if they aren't in there it limits the game somewhat. So, Heavy Metals and Volatiles should always be available. There should be locations to place markers for resources. Something like 4-6 places to get volatiles, all place one marker get one. 3 places for Heavy Metals, the first one taken earns 2, the other two 1.
I really did like having the story tiles and I want to keep those in some fashion, so I was thinking about making it a 6 turn game, and having a set of event tiles. One drawn each turn. These may be somewhat more detailed now. The ones I trialled in the playtest were three Archaeological Sites (the 3rd resource basically), a Crashed Ship (automatically gain an Artefact), an Android Workshop (+2 Colonists) and a Lost Earth Research Base (1 Political Point). I really want to get back to the original idea of having these more story based, and having things like, sometimes Aliens will be on the planet, and sometimes they won't. I think broader spanning event tiles could do this. Especially as they don't need to reward the explorer. With 6 event tiles, it would make it a strictly 6 turn game. Otherwise have a mix of event tiles, and some end game sets that trigger with certain outcomes.
What about exploration then, I think there should be an exploration/cartography track as one of the places to devote workers to. Modules would exist to improve use here, and it should link into some events in some ways.
As for other things to assign colonists to. The whole extraction and manufacturing thing works not too badly - keep that, it seems to be the mechanics around it that don't work so well.
Remove the whole Earth trips element - and have a construction option for building modules, so getting one each turn isn't a given, it is something you can do to trade for future advantages. Also it provides something to soak goods, if trips home aren't there to soak up resources.
Dropping trips home, also means dropping the money element. Just population (which I might leave unnamed, so not population, but the general stuff that makes stuff happen, representing people, resources, money, whatever) and the various extracted and manufactured items.
There should still be some selling back element, so resources worth set VP at end, plus also events like traders from earth that allows them to be sold during game.
As well as Exploration track, I'd like there to be a more defined Independence track, and Independence, and colonial development be one of the key places to assign population cubes to.
Immediate issues were too much money and too many colonists/population markers.
Money was a bit meaningless really, and deal making for use of colony modules tended to be an assumption, as there was always good quid pro quo situations, and everyone had access to something useful. There really needs to be a limit on the use of them, being always possible to use just did not work.
Reasons for there being too many colonists: there wasn't enough to do, there needs to be more than extraction and production happening.
Also explorations tiles really limited when you could extract. Several times my imaginary players had a plan that involved specific resources coming up, and they just didn't by chance. As there are chains of dependency these basically became null turns.
Exploration was a bit blah all round.
The trips between Earth and Colony One element didn't really work, I thought it would add a good rhythm to the game, but it didn't really work.
I did like token placement to do things, the general idea of modified actions worked OK, and despite issues with pop marker amounts and things to do, this bit seemed to work. The whole money thing, not so much.
So, things to change:
Exploration - Heavy Metals and Volatiles. Mixing these in with exploration tiles stilted the game somewhat, but if they aren't in there it limits the game somewhat. So, Heavy Metals and Volatiles should always be available. There should be locations to place markers for resources. Something like 4-6 places to get volatiles, all place one marker get one. 3 places for Heavy Metals, the first one taken earns 2, the other two 1.
I really did like having the story tiles and I want to keep those in some fashion, so I was thinking about making it a 6 turn game, and having a set of event tiles. One drawn each turn. These may be somewhat more detailed now. The ones I trialled in the playtest were three Archaeological Sites (the 3rd resource basically), a Crashed Ship (automatically gain an Artefact), an Android Workshop (+2 Colonists) and a Lost Earth Research Base (1 Political Point). I really want to get back to the original idea of having these more story based, and having things like, sometimes Aliens will be on the planet, and sometimes they won't. I think broader spanning event tiles could do this. Especially as they don't need to reward the explorer. With 6 event tiles, it would make it a strictly 6 turn game. Otherwise have a mix of event tiles, and some end game sets that trigger with certain outcomes.
What about exploration then, I think there should be an exploration/cartography track as one of the places to devote workers to. Modules would exist to improve use here, and it should link into some events in some ways.
As for other things to assign colonists to. The whole extraction and manufacturing thing works not too badly - keep that, it seems to be the mechanics around it that don't work so well.
Remove the whole Earth trips element - and have a construction option for building modules, so getting one each turn isn't a given, it is something you can do to trade for future advantages. Also it provides something to soak goods, if trips home aren't there to soak up resources.
Dropping trips home, also means dropping the money element. Just population (which I might leave unnamed, so not population, but the general stuff that makes stuff happen, representing people, resources, money, whatever) and the various extracted and manufactured items.
There should still be some selling back element, so resources worth set VP at end, plus also events like traders from earth that allows them to be sold during game.
As well as Exploration track, I'd like there to be a more defined Independence track, and Independence, and colonial development be one of the key places to assign population cubes to.