Known Universe - space exploration (co-op?)

Seth, first of all: cool name

second of all: Welcome to bgdf!

third of all: don't apologise for long messages - we are boardgame dudes and we like getting stuck into things and helping out

fourth of all (does that exist?): your game sounds cool!

Ok, if you haven't made a game before or are still trying to work things out (as we all are really) I would HIGHLY reccomend (as in: do it now) you to read the wonderful article that some pro designers put up here (from the old forums) someone else is going to have to help me with th original link, but the bgg copy-pasta link is here:

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/693766/best-advice-game-design-design-pr...

read it at least twice and print it out. Its just so cool.

TO BUSINESS! *raises pointed finger*

First - you want to use a catan board (you have played catan) second you want to use co-op mechanics (you have played pandemic and the island one) so what would be good is to work out how these fit together well. Remember catan works by "bunkering down" into certain areas and trading. Pandemic works around 4 actions a turn and seperate player powers: how does your game work?

Theme wise : its a cool theme. Make the most of it!

Through the title of it (which is very cool) I'm getting a exploration vibe. So either humanity has recently discovered faster than light travel: or perhaps these little ship have been blasted into worm-hole-yness like what's his name out of Farscape. There needs to be some kind of "unknown" in order to call it "known universe" - which is also cool. What is the unknown? New space? Alien colonies? hmm....

Remember to read the thread I linked btw. That just popped into my head again ;)

So yeah I would go for something like the tech tree is humanities effort - each player is from each country or commercial corporation that have come together to help defend humanity from a supernova. I like that better than aliens I think for now. Aliens maybe later.

So your board would be hexs but in a "fan" kind of shape? Starting with earth, then kind of going in one direction but adding more and more hexs. If you want to keep it pandemicy/islandy, then how about the Game ends when you discover the way to stop the super nova radiation rays reaching earth. Otherwise the pulses of radiation-ness (you are going to have to tighten that lol) slowly disintegrates all solar systems / spacial areas / hexs from the outer most layer making its way to the center. Or thinking about it again, if you had a hexagony approach but made it circular: earth in the middle and then various places radiating outwards: as a game on a table, it would look beautiful - might be worth going for that actually.

Earth in the middle: a ring of "undiscovereds" around it, and a further one, and a further one etc. When the super nova kicks off: the nuclear-death pulses start waving there way to earth from all directions: random hexs (with some kind of number/ naming system) would start disappearing and being flipped over or having a token on them, or being removed completely: showing that that area of space is so deadly it is rendered obsolete. This continues until both ships are gone, or the earth is torched. Probably some kind of probability system that would make the outer-most ring of hexs the first to go: as soon as they go, the next ring goes and so on until earth is reached.

sticking with the catan theme, get some dice involved. 2d6. or if you want to be cool 1d6 and 1d8. Anytime a certain number comes up: then certain things happen (link this into your resource/production/research system) and whenever rarer numbers - or perhaps doubles come up: then the "known universe" starts shrinking. Of course players sihps can't fly through these squares anymore: they have to go around: taking longer to accomplish whatever it is they want to do.

To encourage the players to keep moving once they have explored every hex, I would perhaps add some kind of random event thing: any asteroid with a green "11" icon on it, produces one "Mega resource" if the dice ever roll an 11 in each players turn. They ca then fly there spaceships onto the asteroid, collect it to receive resource/research bonuses or perhaps they have to take it back to earth to collect the bonus.

How about: If a players ship is destroyed, they either just die or perhaps earth can spend resources (or on a certain dice roll: evens? any roll with a 6? a natural 12?) to produce another ship, in which the blown up player can resume control. Or perhaps that could even happen at anytime, so players could control multiple spaceships at once?
If you need more options from your dice rolls, get a red one abd a blue one, and of course any "blue 6" means one thing whereas any "red 6" could mean something else.

Theme = Popular (space opera) but never covered in such a way before (defense of the earth against natural supernova)
Production Value = the board will look really pretty once you put it together, with bright spaceships hurtling all over the place, a nice blue earth in the middle and burnt out portions or space disapearing in waves
Gameplay = Catan vs Pandemic
Audience = family players all the way to super nerds
Fun = that's down to you and more playtesting, but i am envisaging people winning only on the final last turn - so the board would consist of a single earth, one other hex with some production bonus on it and like 6 spaceshisps all huddled around what is left of "the known universe"

Done. - Not too bad if I do say so myself!

Hope I've helped man!

sam

Heya Seth!

Yes it does sound quite fun as I read it all back!

What is important that you don't get too many ideas on the go at once. Keep it simple. Keep it elegant. Keep it straightforward.

We could just keep throwing in way more ideas; say there was a farscape style wormhole adventure scenario: trying to get back to earth, you could have it asymetric where one player plays "earth" and another plays the "lost spaceship" they would each have a set of things to accomplish and would work together to get him home. But stick to a nice idea. Then leave it there dn refine it: once chosen, don't flip the main idea too much.

did you read the best design principals Seth? You haven't? Well do it now...Oh you have? Well read it again for good measure. The BGDF pros are too cool and it is a very very handy refernce.

SO I don't think you could do the wormhole scenario with a radiating board. Because something has to be in the middle. The only way you could, is if there is a Stargate scenario where the middle is a deactivated gate / non-energized wormhole: then the players need to go exploring around the board to try and find "Plot tokens" (a certain nunmber of a certain thing will do something) so perhaps 4 ancient tablets, 8 power sources, 3 glyphs whatever.
The game would then be an exploration game and you would need a loooot of hexs to keep it going: remember that the more people there are, the more hexs you need too - so this would be a huge map I think.

Alternatively, stick with the earth in the middle and have the pulsing nuclear-ionisation waves - thats nice. Remember that as opposed to catan, your game will have little sihps. So I would say there needs to be 3 things:

Unexplored map, so if the ship moves onto it, they discover something (alien tech / windfall resources / etc) as a one shot thing. They might even discover continuous resource producing asteroids. That stay with you and produce for you the whole time.

Also I think there needs to be 2 further ideas:
1. When a ship is on a hex tile that lands its "catan resource roll", the normal bonus happens and IF THE SHIP IS ON IT AT THE TIME OF THE ROLL, an extra bonus happens. I am thinking perhaps discoveries of cards or double resource, or extra resource: or even you could have each hex say what its resource success roll could be without any ships on top, with 1 ship on top, and with more than one ship on top. Players would then have to co-ordinate their efforts "Ahh man, we really need a guaranteed "X" resource/card next turn, lets both go on sector B5 and get a guaranteed resource next turn ok?" kind of thing.
2. Maybe players can expend cards/resources/time/turns/ships to build some kind of base on a certain tile: this is similar to the above, but would count that the player is there on every turn. Or perhaps give some other benefit. Obviously people wouldn't build moon=base mining platforms if the earth was about to explode in 3 turns time: unless turns are years? or something? Perhaps just reskin moon-base to something like "Research Matrix" - which would be thematically just some mars rover kind of sensor equipment hovering in space that notifies them of any changes, that the spaceships can just drop off out of their hull. (Perhaps actually, the ships are only allowed a cargo of 1 research matrix and if they expend it they must dock back at earth for a turn! coool!!)
Perhaps another idea would be to kind of "capture" a hex by putting research matrixs in a certain pattern around it (6 all the way around it? 3, one on every other side? any juxtaposition of 2 ?) of course, these will be easier to lay down as the game progresses.

You can see now how we have a lot of choice in the game, after the initial "FLIP THE HEX, YOU HAVE NOW EXPLORED THIS AREA." the hex is essentially voided (other than the standard catan roll) so to make the game have more options and choices to master (this is good) have different options on each newly discovered hex:
1. If no ships on this hex and 8 is rolled: +1 space resource
2. If 1 ship is on this hex and 8 is rolled: +1 space resource and +1 space card, put this into your hand
3. If more than one ship is on this hex and a 5,6,7,8,9 is rolled: +1 space resource and +1 space card for each player on the hex
4. If a mining-base / research matrix is on this hex and an 6,7,8 is rolled: +1 space resource, +1 green space resource

Obviouslt not all of them: but somethiung like this.

This basically turns the game into a nice mix between pandemic type games / catan dice roll games and upgrading type games too.

You better make this game Seth, I would love to play it,

Otherwise I am stealing this idea and making it myself! lol

:)

Huh? It's probably just me. But I am really not getting this idea. Maybe it's my simple mind or because it is just to brilliant.