Point based win conditions

Well, I toyed with a "kill the mothership" game for a while, and I ran into a similar problem. So, at least you're not alone!

Keeping track of kills for points may become cumbersome though. Perhaps capturing objectives is a better move? There are a lot of ways to go with it, depending on theme.

Now, with a 2-player armada-esque battle, maybe we should look at Stratego. Could there be a number of available paths, with the objective to sneak to the back of their troops and capture a point? Shoot down the supply ships? Are there ways to manipulate the enemy to create diversions to allow fast, little ships in?

The type of victory condition depends to a large extent on the number of players.

In a strictly two player game, I'd go with a specific event (e.g. 'kill the flagship') victory condition. Chess and Stratego, amongst others, follow this path and have been very successful. Note thought that in both these games the king/flag has no combat value; if the flagship is also a super-dreadnought then it devolves into last man standing. "Kill the flagship" gives the dominant player an advantage, but also gives the losing player a chance to steal the win if the dominant player is careless or over-extends. Even in a two player game, I would avoid "last man standing" because the result is generally obvious by about half way through the game, so the end game lacks excitement. In a two-player game I generally avoid points-based victory for the same reason as last man standing, unless it involves either secret points or secret missions to keep the end game engaging.

In a multi-player game, I would not go with a specific event, nor would I go with "last man standing". Both of these victory conditions tend to reward turtling and other boring strategies, unless it was carefully designed.

For example, I playtested an early version of Dragon Blast (a martial arts board/card game). The victory condition was last man standing. Invariably the winner was the person who hid in the corner while the other players duked it out. The designer later changed the victory condition to earn points per opponent knocked out and added secret missions too, and the game was much better for it in my opinion.

So that comes full circle back to points for the space armada. The most obvious (and common) method is to give points based on ship strength (e.g. Battleship=3, Cruiser=2, Destroyer=1). While functional, in my opinion this is not the ideal because it encourages predicatable gameplay. That is, destroying your opponent's biggest ship not only grants you the most VP but also weakens them the most and reduces their ability to destroy your ships, so it is a no-brainer as to what you are going to do.

Instead, I would consider if there were ways to use the victory condition to encourage creative tactics and meaningful decisions. Some random ideas follow, which may or may not work depending on the rest of your game.

- VP for transports. Transports are weak, unarmed ships. The catch is that you *must* deploy a number of transports equal to the size of your capital ships (Battleship=3, Cruiser=2, Destroyer=1). This means you need to divide your forces between defending your transports and attacking the enemy transports. It also means you have a valid choice between targeting the enemy combat ships (to reduce their ability to counter-attack) vs targeting the enemy transports (to get points).

- VP for Officers. Similar to the transports idea above, except that during deployment you must secretly allocate Officers to your various ships. When you destroy an enemy ship you get VP equal to the number of Officers which were on it. The results may be similar to the transports idea, except that it would introduce a bluffing element. Officers might also give some bonus (extra attacks, or such), but of course to claim the bonus you must reveal the Officer -- thus making that ship a priority target for your opponents.

- Secret missions. In addition to (or instead of) the basic points for destroying ships, have secret missions which are only revealed at the end. Example missions:
- +2 VP per enemy Cruiser you destroy.
- +1 VP per enemy Cruiser destroyed (by anybody).
- +5 VP if you have more Cruisers remaining in play than any other player.

The overarching principle is to design the victory condition / missions / victory points in such a way as to create interesting choices. For example, players will have to choose between the best action to gain VP vs the best action to damage the enemy. If the best action to damage the enemy also gains the most VP then there is no choice.

I don't know if any of the ideas above would work for your game, but hopefully it sparks a creative idea.

Regards,
kos