I played TP last night, and it went well. Current files for the game can be found here. There are a few issues I'd like to iron out though. Let me know your thoughts on the following:
1. Game End Trigger. Currently I have it like Ticket to Ride, where the game end is triggered, then each player gets 1 final turn. The player triggering the ednd gets the final turn. I think this might have been to incentivize actually ending the game. It was pointed out that if you're winning, you might WANT to end the game, and incentivizing it only rewards the winner more. I'm considering a switch to Hansa style game end, where once triggered you simply finish out the round (Railroad Tycoon is sorta like this too, though it gives one more full round)
2. Asteroid fields occur in some sectors. They act as a hindrence, when you fly by you have to roll to see if you get hurt (crash into asteroids I guess). Originally, once a player put a Mine (colony) on an Asteroid field, that player could roll fewer dice. Later I clarified by saying that once a player had a colony in the same sector as the Asteroid field (even if not on the Asteroid field itself) they get the benefit. And now I'm thinking that once ANYBODY colonizes a sector, all Asteroid fields in it are 'tamed' - completely, not just by 1 level (i.e. no roll vs roll fewer dice). This was mostly because once there are markers on the space, it was easy to forget to roll for asteroids or notice they're there.
3. Scoring Mines. Currently a colony scores as follows: 2 VP per planet plus 1 VP per sector back to Terra Prime. Asteroids don't count. Currently, if you put a mine on a lone asteroid (no planets in the sector), it's worth 0 points. I'm thinking it should be worth 0 + distance back to TP, for uniformity of rules as well as to help incentivize (or at least not dis-incentivize) putting up a Mine.
4. The main scoring in the game comes in 3 ways - Colonizing planets (which takes exploration and trips back and forth to TP), Killing Aliens, which requires exploration, and hoarding money, which required delivering lots of goods and not spending too much on ship upgrades. Currently the game has a good feeling that money is tight at the beginning, but as soon as people start delivering goods, they have a handful of money and can afford pretty much whatever they want. However, overspending will hurt them because money translates directly to VP at the end of the game. The intention was that players should want to stop spending and start saving at a certain point, so as not to penalize their score. However I think it might be better to find a way to keep money tight the whole game...
... The way you currently get money is by delivering goods, and the amount you get is dependant on the Supply/Demand tracks. Would it be good to seperate money from VPs? Maybe award VPs the way I currently award money, and award a static money reward for delivering (like $1 for Green or Blue goods, $2 for Yellow,and $3 for Red)? This way someone not worried about 'shipping' a lot of goods can just get whatever for income, and someone who's persuing a 'shipping strategy' could be more careful WHAT they deliver - either way everyone gets the same cash reward..?
... Another idea would be to do like Princes of Florence, allow the purchase of VPs at the time of the cash reward, and then cash leftover is worthless at the end. Maybe easiest, let the players decide ow tight their money will be. This might make it too easy to be money rich though :/
5. Regarding production - the rule is that at the beginning of your turn, all your colonies produce a good. So you refill all the colonies who's good has been taken. In practice, it's a little bit annoying to do that, and it gets missed a lot - though it's easy to fix. Would it be worth it to simply not put the goods on the baord, and just say 1 good is always available at each Colony, once per visit? Or does this make it too easy to get goods, or lots of goods? It's not a whole lot different really, except the way it is now I can stop you from picking up a good by picking it up myself (in some instances), which is sorta cool, but maybe not necessary.
Oh, and one thing in general, I like to encouage using other player's planets (picking up their goods, buying upgrades from them), not discourage it. So keep that in mind while commenting, especially on point number 4, if you can deliever whatever you want for cash, then why go to anyone else's colony? Also, does that diminish the cool economic supply/demand model I have going?
