Need help increasing player control in Leaving Earth

I love blind bidding and use it in a lot of my designs myself. I'd have to know exactly what your five actions are but I may have an idea for you. I designed a game with similar goals and this is how I got around a similar issue. In my game I had a total of 9 actions. There where three categories each with three of each type of move. By categorizing my actions it gave a hint to the other players what that action might be and narrowed the possibilities down so that they could potentially counter that action. This, paired with board placement gave everyone a hint at what the strategy of the player might be. They were color coded and consisted of warfare, politics, and subversion (espionage/sabotage, etc.). I also threw in a 10th plan which was a deception plan where the majority of resources played by the player went back into there hand, while the attempted countering player spent all of his.

If you categorize your moves into say economic, etc. Your players will get a better sense of what is being done by the other players and have more control over countering the outcome.

Another design element in an entirely different game I've designed involves every player simultaneously placing a card face down. There is an open bid for control of the initiative, it's limited throughout the game turn. The player who wins initiative then actually holds onto an initiative card and either goes first, or hands it to whomever he wants during that round. When handed over, the player who receives the card then chooses whether to flip and play his card or hands it to whomever he chooses etc. until everyone has gone. Some moves are optimal at the beginning of the round and some at the end. For example market prices degrade each successive move so getting to it first is the best. Players fighting over an area would be advised to wait until the end after other players have weakened themselves by fighting it out etc. Each card may have an optimal time to be played and that may be completely screwed by not getting the initiative at the right time. The effect is that players are constantly interacting, making deals and begging and negotiating the initiative holder for the chance to flip and play their card. It also allows a lot of deception too because players can say that the move they have secretly played won't effect the initiative holder when in fact it might. Be warned though, it can get very vicious and you have to decide whether this is right for you or not.

Orangebeard sort of mentioned this, but I think having a guaranteed effect will help give players control. Players buy the guaranteed effect with their bid, and then get something better if they win. For example:

--------

Unloading Action

Whoever bid the most for this action (or tied for most) may exchange any amount of their Cargo for twice that many Credits.

Each player who bid at least 4 Credits for this action may exchange up to 4 Cargo for twice that many credits.

Each player who bid at least 2 Credits for this action may exchange 1 Cargo for 2 Credits.

---------

Scouting Action

Whoever bid the most for this action (or is tied for most) may play an asteroid card from their hand.

Each player who bid at least 6 Credits on this action may play a small asteroid card from their hand (certain weak asteroids are labeled "small").

----------------

This will allow players to have some control over what happens. Anyone who wants to play a small asteroid, for example, doesn't have to win a frustrating bid, they just have to pay at least 6 Credits and their play is guaranteed. It sounds like you have some sort of similar system in your game already, but it may help to emphasize it.

If you try to make the consolation effects predictable, players will have an information hook that will assist them in bidding. For example, if player's hands are face-up and you see Alice has a small asteroid, you know she'll probably bid at least 6 credits in the Scouting action. Then you can safely decide to bid few credits in that action. This is especially nice for newer players who will feel like they're flailing in the dark until they can learn how to predict more subtle player actions.

Regarding the "fleet admiral": is the order of actions each round really important? Really really important? If it doesn't have much of an effect, I would eliminate it. If you're worried about ties, I would first look to see if an "all tied players win" system works and if not either break ties randomly (which would be exciting but possibly frustrating) or have a "tiebreaker token" that passes right after each round. Whoever has the token or is leftmost to the token wins the tie. There are other tiebreaking system too, of course.

I'm confused why you'd want to replace blind bidding with worker placement. You'd end up with a completely different game.

Give the last player to go in the previous round a bonus when bidding for admiral in the successive round. Or give the "fleet admiral" a limited term of say 2-3 terms in a row and then they are ineligible for the next round after that. Call the bidding bonus a "charter" and it would give them some reasonable bonus when bidding. These are catch up mechanics of course but could fit into the game without too much trouble. They would help mitigate players from getting screwed forever and add another layer of strategy in that timing the bonus or term as admiral could be critical.

So, the big player-control problem is that losing bids accomplish very little. I think the suggestion that there are guaranteed returns for certain bids is a really excellent solution.

Obviously, this doesn't work for the Fleet Admiral role.

Here's a suggestion which would dramatically increase player control:

• The losing bids on Fleet Admiral are refunded and players gain them as a temporary "bid pool".
• When the blind bids are revealed in turn for the other actions, players may augment the blind bids with bids from their bid pool.
• The bid pool is lost at end of round.