@FlyingDadBomb I agree with auctions being horrible due to trash picks. But i dont see how hadsch halla and lantids are bad picks with this board and victory conditions. Geoden is horrible though.

@cneessen forget about that one. I have never had this few tech tiles and didnt see i dont have a normal tech tile to cover up. feel free to delete the post :)

https://www.boardgamers.space/game/BGR-03

In this game i am playing as Baltaks (dont laugh), and i am at sci 4 with an unflipped fed.

While I can up gaia (it flips my fed) I am not allowed to pick adv-sci tech tile.

thanks a lot for the explanation!

The game does not allow me to make the below shown federation. I'm not sure why. It's the shortest path between the selected buildings as far as I can tell.

I do get an error but I can't make sense of the suggested satellite placement.

@Robert-Shepherd Yeah I don't think that using the planet/building icons like that works well in combination with the current resource icons. Too many squares and circles, circles in circles, and squares inside of circles. Even if you write it out it's confusing :)

Sidenote: It's a mockup made in powerpoint so you'd have to imagine the colors being the same as used on the current tech tree.

That said, I do like the simpler icons without perspective and gradients overall much better considering the overload of information that the board tries to convey to the user. I'm not saying I like my icon proposals better, cause I don't think they are any good. But that the style of the current icons matches the platform (mobile) the game is played on better, in my opinion.

What's interesting, to me, if you compare the current (text based) with the new updated visual style proposal is that my attention is directed to different things.

• Currently the one thing that stands out are the players positions on the tech track. I find this very useful information to get at a glance. Players positions on the track change all the time and noticing these changes quickly is nice.
• In the updated style my eyes are drawn more to everything around the board (tech, advanced tech, and round scoring). For me personally that's less important to get at a glance as this information stays the same from game setup to the end.

Good luck with the next steps!

@coyotte508 Attached is a mockup I created quickly in powerpoint (horrible spacing/alignment/etc.). I created it mostly just to get it out of my system as I was curious what it would look like.

What I did:

• Tryout with the basic tech tiles using the same icons you already use consistently across the game. So instead of saying "+4c" on a tech tile, I used the coin icon you use elsewhere (e.g. eco tree).
• Some icons didn't exist yet so I tried creating them using a similar 'style' as the current ones. Simple, and without too much frills to keep it readable on a small screen

Not quite sure how I feel about it myself, but perhaps it's of use for you so I'm sharing it here regardless. Hope it helps and keep up the awesome work, it's much appreciated!

@zuli ye definitely, the contrast is lost between player markers and the icons on the tech steps making it nigh impossible to see who is where on the tracks. Could work if you'd make the new icons less sharp so the player markers stand out proper.

I do however see a huge improvement of trying to get rid of the text only icons for the tech tiles. I had a real hard time getting used to them when I started playing, and I played many gaia games before joining the app. I can imagine that new players will simply run away at first sight.

The old graphics are only applied to some things, but where they do they are clean, readable, and work nice on mobile. There is nothing wrong with them.

I would suggest to keep that and apply the same style to the text only tech tiles, boosters, etc.

For example, the old way of the eco tech tree is so much better than the new.

@ariallito I believe there is a mobile app for Eclipse

Nations
Forbidden stars
Game of Thrones

@Semioteric If that is the case, it would matter indeed. But I think in case it is automatic it should be done on the moment you pass in the last round. So any charge you get after your final pass is lost. At least that is how we play IRL, might be wrong though!

The extra discs dont matter anymore after you passed in round 6? I dont see how it can affect final scoring.

might be the effect from the taklon PI still triggering even after game end

All other players have passed on the final turn and I just build a trade station near a Taklon mine.

After confirm end turn I expected it to be my turn again (since everyone has passed), but instead it is now Taklons turn.

Is this a bug or is there a scenario where this could actually happen?

thank you for the replies and sharing the planned changes to spaceships @coyotte508

We also encountered an issue where one player (with advanced spaceships) was able to trade 21 times. From what I understand from the rules, you only have 15 normal + 5 wild trade tokens.

hi @coyotte508 , my notifications (circle at top bar) doesnt update anymore unless I tap it to see my list of active games.

We have currently played/playing 3 spaceship games and the overall first impression is positive. Here are my 2cents:

• Overall trade feels like a nice addition
• Trading offers nice turn sequencing choices surrounding the power wheel of your opponents
• The choice between gaining a token or charging, when someones trades with you, is interesting.
• It's not that the knowledge track is too weak (it's on par with the other original tracks), but it's trade that feels too powerful. Getting 2K per trade feels like too much as a base rate.
• The ship track is really strong, I don't think it needs an additional bonus at step 4 (the extra step on either int or nav tracks)
• The fact that the federation token of the advanced ship can be flipped is very powerful. The only other track that does this is the terra track. But the ship track generates (science) income making it a good early track to go up. The combination of the ship track being a good early and having a flippable federation token at the top feels too powerful.
• Really like the fact you can only place ships on mines, it has a nice interaction with upgrading buildings.
• Getting tech tiles from the trade track steps does not feel right to me personally, especially for advanced tech tiles. For most factions it takes planning (upgrading in correct rounds) or high resources (4Q) to get (advanced) tech tiles. Getting tech tiles so 'cheap' did not feel like an improvement to the game.
• In our first game we had an interesting misinterpretation of the rules: some of us thought that each planet could only hold 1 trade token (instead of 1 trade token per color). This brought forward super interesting placement and sequencing decisions. Not sure if this would work for the game, but during rounds 1 and 2 it was really fun for us until we found out we had been playing it wrong.
• Top of trade track is super powerful, as the track supports itself (tech tiles providing additional steps) it takes very little investment to get there. If the tiles align it provides ~similar resources as the eco track.
• Havn't played with all the boosters and advanced tiles to know enough about them yet. So far they all look super interesting though. I really like that they appear to mostly fall into the "situationally powerful" category.
• The '2vp per trade' tech tile felt incredibly strong in comparison to other basic vp earning tiles. Compared to the '3vp per gaia' it appears much stronger at less of an investment/risk.
• You can go up to top ship and top trade track by the end of round 2 (with a single federation). It feels really powerful to gain 8k and 4q per turn for 4 rounds. And while doing so you also gain an additional 2 tech tiles and an extra step on int or nav. This is a "going tall" strategy and typically this can be blocked by "going wide" strategies taking all the good planets. However the ships (and bonus q's) give you reach to further sectors.
• The trade final scoring is simply won by whoever gets to the top ship track first. It's a bit weird that the race for first place from that point is over (in our games that would be in round 2 or 3).
• I liked the idea of the culture final scoring, but that will be very hard to track outside of a digital platform.

My apologies if this comes across as negative, it's not meant to be. I really enjoy the spaceship expansion and the games so far have been fun. I feel that most of balance issues come from the fact that a basic unupgraded trade action provides 2k. This makes everyone race up ships, and everything that's related to the ships escalates because of it.

@coyotte508 Thanks!

@coyotte508 correction to my previous report. I tried creating a spaceship game (several) times, but it creates normal games instead. So the game icon and tick box show the correct state in the lobby. I just can't create spaceship games anymore.