Recently, all of my creativity has been directed towards a game I'm calling "Fringe Worlds".
--Objective statement:
Fringe Worlds is a strategy game that aims to take elements from long, drawn out space opera games and condense the juicy bits into 90 minutes or less by using a semi-simultaneous turn format.
--How it works:
Play takes place in a series of rounds. At the start, players select from a hand of cards that represent the focus of their empire for that round (examples include: developing planet upgrades, constructing ships, conquest, research, etc.). You pull them from your hand, and place them face-down on the table in front of your play mat and wait for others to be ready. When all are ready, each player flips one card over at the same time, and resolves the action in order based on the "advantage" track in the middle (players highest on the advantage track go last, letting them choose what they do after seeing how everyone else has acted).
Any conflicts are resolved at that point, and then the second card is flipped and resolved in the same manner.
As of right now, the game is going to end after a player reaches a certain score cap. Scores are tallied at the end of each round, and are public knowledge to all players.
--Why I think it'll be fun:
It condenses the tough decision making such that it happens far more often. I find that making tough decisions (without having to suffer for 6 hours afterward until the game ends) is what often makes a fun for me. 7 Wonders and Bohnanza are great examples of this: forcing you to make tough decisions in a shorter game format (although arguably, Bohnanza might not be that short).
--What I need help with:
I need to figure out how to handle conquest. I want there to be a set of planets that a player knows to be their "fringe worlds". Presently, I have it viewed like an inverted pyramid: your homeworld is closest to you, and you make a pyramid going away from you (second row has two planets, third row has three, etc.). This solves the Risk problem where if you conquer enough, you only have one front to protect. However, this breaks down when someone else captures a planet of yours, and I wanted to see whether anyone else had any suggestions.
Thank you for your suggestions. I'm grateful for your help.
I see, however, that I need to clarify what's going on presently.
First, every planet tile is a square. You place your homeworld closest to you, and the next two planets on the edges that are away from you. Every time you gain another planet, you place it on edges that are away from you on your most distant planets, resulting in an inverted pyramid of sorts.
For example: imagine a scenario where two players have three planets each. If one attacks another, they can only attack the two planets furthest away from the other player (your homeworld is nestled safely behind them). If they won the fight, both of their planets would be exposed, and vulnerable to direct attack, because one side of the homeworld is exposed. In essence, they no longer have any fringe worlds.
The player who won, however, would take the planet and put it in front of one of their planets, following the same rules. This would result in three attackable planets, no matter where they placed it. This is a good thing, however because it means that although the player is winning militarily, they have more territory to defend.
It doesn't feel realistic to place a planet wherever one wants withing an empire, but the system seems to work on paper (haven't playtested yet). I was wondering whether anyone else could help me come up with a better way to have an expanding front, or whether I should just solve it with the theme (planets are connected by jump lanes, or ships move so quickly that their placement is irrelevant, but attacking planets further in depends on controlling closer things... I could come up with a sci-fi reason for it I suppose)
EDIT: I suppose I should also insert more about the rest of the game and collect your thoughts on this as well.
Certain planets have symbols that indicate that a specific improvement can go thereon. You build such improvements by choosing the "develop" card at the beginning of the round. Doing so is one of your two actions for the round, so you have to choose wisely, and weigh the cost of doing so now against its longer term benefits.
The structures that you could build are factories (which can produce chips), research stations, and special racial buildings. I'm trying to super-simplify the developing aspect of the game, because that's not the core.
When you go to build ships, you can build a colony ship (has no guns, but is necessary to add a planet to your empire), generic warships (rolls d6), and capital ships (roll d8s, and have racial benefits). However, capital ships have an additional cost of -1 from the advantage track in the middle (the one that determines turn order). During combat, on a roll of 5 or more the opponent loses one ship of their choice. However, on a roll of an 8 (rolled by capital ships), you get to choose what dies, not your opponent. This means that yes, cannon fodder can help keep your colony and capital ships alive, but only to a point. (That was one of the things about Axis & Allies that always irked me). I've playtested the combat mechanics already, and they're been a hit among my playtesters, but I thought I'd share them with you so you can see a clearer vision of what I'm doing.
Finally, research is super-simplified, and usually influences what capital ships can do. There are only three techs per player, and they're detailed on their play mats, so it's not like Twilight Imperium where there's a ton of things to memorize.