In the interest of saving time on the actual game night, would be nice to have an official digital tool (web/Android/iOS) to be able to set up the board before hand.

The set up would of course have to be shareable between the players involved (first player sets up their initial start tiles, passes that to the next player to do theirs and so on).

Could be done via some sort of cloud service players could log into, or perhaps just the ability to get a generated key after a setup, to send to the next player to enter into their app.

Also perhaps include some kind of quick start set up randomiser function?

Just a thought.

ridiculous.

Set up doesn't take long and is a huge part of a player getting their strategies worked out. There is literally no reason for this to be done remotely, and about a zillion reasons to do it live on game night.

Just to restate... set up dose not take anytime at all. It will take far longer to do a single turn than setup. Assuming you have the parts out and ready to go.

Sorry but this is the craziest idea I have heard on the Fstar forums ever.

ridiculous.

Set up doesn't take long and is a huge part of a player getting their strategies worked out. There is literally no reason for this to be done remotely, and about a zillion reasons to do it live on game night.

Just to restate... set up dose not take anytime at all. It will take far longer to do a single turn than setup. Assuming you have the parts out and ready to go.

Sorry but this is the craziest idea I have heard on the Fstar forums ever.

Set up does take some time (our group meets once a week, for a few hours after work, any time we can save for the night itself would be nice) and doing it digitally, if done right, would still fulfil the "huge part of a players strategy".

Anyway, it was just a thought, it's not like I'm demanding for it to be done, or that I'm asking you to do it, please get some perspective and calm yourself.

Unless you're just slamming down tiles and forces without thinking about it, each tile could easily take 3 minutes or more to place and set up. In a 4-player game, with 12 tiles, that means that the setup of the board would take over half an hour. I would certainly not say that it "does not take anytime at all". And that's not taking into account the set up of cards, tokens, etc. So cutting down a 45 minute setup to 10 minutes would definitely be an advantage.

A setup randomiser would also be a neat addition.

ridiculous.

Set up doesn't take long and is a huge part of a player getting their strategies worked out. There is literally no reason for this to be done remotely, and about a zillion reasons to do it live on game night.

Just to restate... set up dose not take anytime at all. It will take far longer to do a single turn than setup. Assuming you have the parts out and ready to go.

Sorry but this is the craziest idea I have heard on the Fstar forums ever.

The set-up time depends entirely on the players. If you just throw the tiles down and place your units without any real thought then yes, it's quick. But if you're playing a four player game and each player is putting some thought into their tile placement and unit deployment, looking at how others have placed their units and tiles in relation to your objective tokens.... the set-up can take time and have a huge impact on how the game itself plays out.

You've clearly not understood what's being suggested as the idea is far from ridiculous. If our game group was able to remotely plan out their tile placements / unit deployments etc in advance using a shared online tool of some description, giving each player the time to think and plan their strategy before passing it to the next player in turn for their next tile placement etc it would mean more time actually playing instead of setting up when we meet.

Ridiculous is not the word. Maybe unnecessary. It would still be cool though!

I think you've identified the key point which is that the setup of the game is different than most games of this nature in that the units and objectives are being placed without knowing the map. It allows people to be more intertwined and closer to objectives. Without it, you could be in one corner and all of your objectives placed in the other corner by your opponents.

Having said that, if you're crunched for time, anything helps. My experience is that this changes the game drastically. We inadvertently setup the game without placing the objectives until the end the first time we played.

Hope this helps...