I've been working on a light euro style worker placement / auction type game. The game revolves(orbits) around the idea of building a solar system. Right now, and i'm pretty firm on this, the theme i'm going for is: You play a character (with specific character abilities) who is a son or daughter of the emperor(king? master? ruler?) of the galaxy. It's your father's 14 billionth birthday and you all independently come up with the same idea for a present (neck tie syndrome), a beautiful new solar system.
The overall concept is you collect resources, dust, comets, asteroids and build planets with those resources. Worker placement to collect resources. Blind bidding on the contracts for different kinds of planets and star formations (gas giants, small rocky, life supporting, all sorts of stars [binary, giant, dwarf, average]). Players will collect points for having the most sophisticated and unusual planets.
Each player will have a player board that has a spot for a star at the center and orbital rings around it. The main board will have stations for workers that will get resources, cards that help you win, and cards that give you more points for solar systems with specific sets of planets and/or stars, and an interstellar planet production area where you can bid on planets (in secret, highest bidder pays).
Fri, 11/09/2012 - 10:26 — wtenny85New
As it stands now, the ability to get resources is limited by the spots on the board to place workers. It will be scalable based on the number of players. This is a pretty common method in worker placement and it seems to work well with rotating starting players. I want the main competition to come from bidding against other players for planets with resources and old planets to buy or upgrade to a new planet. The trick right now is trying to balance it all out so no one feels like they can't ever get the planets they need but not have it be so easy that the competition isn't there. The auction system I'm working on now has the planets cost specific resources(2 comets, 3 asteroids ect) but players can bid beyond that with resources(value based on difficulty to get) or old planets or a combination. More valuable planets will be brought up for bidding as the game goes on.
The cards are mostly for special abilities but some will get you resources or other benefits on a one time only basis. Other cards, from a different stack will be available to get extra points for sets of planets, kind of like the route cards you can get in ticket to ride.
Players will also be limited by where they can put certain planets in orbit. For example, you can't put a huge gas giant right next to your star nor can you put a life supporting planet (exceptions of course) too far away from the star.