15 minutes ago, Shenannigan said:

This is exactly what I hoped to hear. What size play area did you use? (Still 3x3?) and what starting planet placement did you use? (W or pentagon?)

in super excited to play this in a few weeks when my group gets together

We played on a 4x6 table but cut off about a foot on one side for the tokens n such and about 8" around for our cards and the control panel. So in the end we basically only increased it to 3.5x5ft lol. The only way to play larger woudl be to take up 2 tables. There is a larger table upstairs i always forget about though, but thats an 8x8 so...that woudl be a bit much. Its usually taken by the D&D guys since its quieter up there (and a little stuffy so the gamers dont wanna be up there anyway)

Placements was more of a U setup. The W might have been better, since it basically turned into a giant ring. I never made contact with the Feds or the Klingons until the last round before the store closed lol because the route through the Cardassian territory was too long for my piss poor warp speed and the Romulans were being dicks so i couldnt go that way.
We still had about a dozen or so planets left over. I will say this though: get some D20s for resources...the Ferengi kinda cause a LOT of production gain (fitting...) - also the Ferengi player should not double trade with a single faction...it kinda supercharges them....i'm used to being ganged on so i kinda overpowered my cardassian ally (and accidentally gave him the game if we could have finished lol) out of fear of the other jerks trying to illegally infringe on MY profits...... (we dont speak about where i got them ok?)

One thing to remember: this is a friendly board game, not a competitive scene. Dont be afraid to tweak things, for instance we threw the resource bidding for turn order out the window to speed the game up (since we werent spending resources all the time for turn order) and we started with 6 production instead of 3 so we can get more starter ships or quickly build a production building on a new colony. The game rules says nothing about increasing board size....do it because that is way too cramped with 5 players. Basically you'd have 1 MAYBE 2 planets to your name and thats it...and probably next to no phenomenons.

That all makes makes sense. My table holds 3x6 so my plan is to go with that or 3x5. Looking for the balance so that the federation can't just explore out where no one can catch him.

When I played the 3 player version we used pretty much all the play faster rules with random turn order and simultaneous play until first contact. It helped a lot. We definitely like to tweak things as we need to make it a fun time for all

cutrently leaning towards a w shaped for set up. I see people online with circular mats and that looks like the best option.

5players i kinda really want a large circular table tbh. I thought about it and the W setup would kinda shaft the guy at the top of the W as he'd have 4 neighbors immediately able to access him while everyone else has 3.

The U setup was more fair on the neighbors as everyone had 2 immediate neighbors and the middle was basically the "neutral zone" - which is fitting for startrek lol. Only reason i didnt like it is the guy on the bottom of the U shape technically had more space to explore, if only slightly. But again i think i'd rather that then the W shafting the guy with 4 neighbors and 0 "free" space to explore in.

Makes sense. Who'd you put at the base of the U?

Federation was down there. We didnt think about placements at all we just sat around one of the 4x6 tables (which have one end attached to another 4x6 table) and played.

It was only about 2 more systems he had access to since he rolled massive on the warp lanes and clogged it up quick. But i still think i'd rather that than completely shaft the guy at the peak of the W.

On 8/24/2017 at 5:30 PM, Forgottenlore said:

Well, I finally got around to actually giving this game a try, and I must say, I was impressed. We only got to play a couple rounds, but I am really liking how they do a couple things. I like the cultural annexation (though it seems kinda cheap, are culture tokens a really rare commodity?), tech taking time to research is awesome, and I love the feel they managed to create with the exploration cards. Discovering civilizations at various stages of development like that is awesome.

What I find my self really wanting to do, however, is to create some sort of mash up between Ascendancy and Twilight Imperium. I noticed that the trade agreements in STA are virtually identical to the trade agreements in TI3 (someting TI4 changed). I also noticed that if the "hit roll" in ascendancy was expressed as a modifier instead of a flat number you could incorporate ships of various types into the game (cruisers, destroyers, et al), so a dreadnought could have a better attack than a destroyer, but upgraded weapons would still effect both; and coming from the other direction, the Twilight Imperium forums have been discussion how TI4 doesn't include the distant suns tokens (the randomized tokens that create an exploration feel to early expansion) and there was some talk of creating something akin to STA's exploration cards to replace them.

So now I have all these ideas about taking the longest, most complicated (and most fun) parts of each game and combining them into one super 4X game that no one would EVER want to actually play with me because it would take 20-30 hours and probably require a spreadsheet to keep track of all the information.

Sigh.....

edit: and naturally, I came to a forum devoted to X-Wing to discuss this idea.

Got a little housing issue that is keeping me from making any purchases for the moment, the store is keeping a hold on it for me though.

There is a lot of discussion on Board game geek. One topic that keeps coming up is trade. Now Ferengi expansion made a lot of use on trade and Cardassian makes it so that you want to have trade agreements. Someone on BGG said that earlier prototypes had different trade agreements for each race but got rid of it for balance reasons. However with the Ferengi now in that might be something that could be added in later. Here is an idea for different trade agreements for the different civs.

Federation

• Research
• Production Research
• Research Research

Klingon

• Production
• Production Production
• Production Production Production

Romulan

• Production
• Research
• Culture

Cardassian

• Production
• Production Production
• Production Research Culture

Ferengi

• Ferengi Trade
• Ferengi Trade
• Ferengi Trade

Now I know this does make some civs have more valuable trade than others, and some might see it as a downside (especially combined with Romulan's suspicions restriction). But I found that having better trades can be an advantage even if it is not equal in your favor. Federation was simple, add in research since feds don't have money. Klingons is the opposite with lots of production making them the favored of Ferengi. Romulans being rather suspicious won't give much but what they give would be in great quality with research and culture. Cardassian has the tri-color trade agreement which seems like a Cardassian thing to do. Give them one trump card that they can try and bank on as a bargaining chip.

So with the other 2 civs being the Enterpris factions (Pre-Fed Vulcans and Andorians) I have put up my idea of waht their trade would be like. Kind of hard as we don't know either their bonus or restriction.

Vulcan

• Research
• Production Research
• Production Production Research

Andorian

• Production
• Production
• Production Culture

The idea is that for Vulcans the first production is replaced with Research as it seems to be something the Vulcans are good at and are willing to share with species that prove to be responsible enough with it. Also they are another civ with a 3 token trade agreement so it should make them a sought out civilization. I am not so certain on the Andorians. They are sort of a militaristic society on martial discipline and culture. That has often brought them at odds with other races (such as the Vulcans). To be honest I am not fond of having a civ with two trade agreements that are the same. As for the 3rd trade agreement I wanted to give the Andorians something valuable yet unique so I threw in the Culture but added another production. So in essence they treat everyone the same but one very trusted friend might get a bonus. This might be better for Thoians as they are a more insular race and this trade set up seems to describe them better but they haven't been announced yet.

Tbh i do wish there was a research agreement thing. Every 4X has something of that nature.
Culture is too powerful as you can sneak-win pretty easy with it.

I just dont want flatout trading to be a thing. As in "Give me 4 science i'll give you 10 production" kinda crap. The trade agreements keep you loyal for quite awhile to get any benefit out of them.

22 hours ago, Vineheart01 said:

Tbh i do wish there was a research agreement thing. Every 4X has something of that nature.
Culture is too powerful as you can sneak-win pretty easy with it.

I just dont want flatout trading to be a thing. As in "Give me 4 science i'll give you 10 production" kinda crap. The trade agreements keep you loyal for quite awhile to get any benefit out of them.

Well Romulans have a research tech that does something like that but it is more of an espionage thing. And yes Culture is the VP of the game so that is why I only put it on 2 trade agreements out of the 15 they have and only the races that have a difficult time with trade. As for Ferengi they do some interesting tings with trade, (Imagine the Emerate of Hacan getting their own expansion). But there is no 4 science for 10 production, all the trade are high, medium, and low tier trade. I consider the low to be a safe introduction, the high as a bargaining chip.

Out of curiosity does anybody here know of a 3D print file for the nodes in this game?

STA has a noticably low number of production nodes....

Finally played this game and loved it! Gonna try to get the xpansions soon!

On 9/22/2017 at 11:06 PM, Crabbok said:

Finally played this game and loved it! Gonna try to get the xpansions soon!

It’s so much better with the expansions. I played this past Saturday with 5 players.

Ferenghi have it the toughest. They almost have to trick people into not noticing what they’re doing until it’s too late. (Thematic)

cardassians isolated themselves pretty quick and we’re strong the whole game.

Romulans and Klingons got into a Cold War at one side of the board.

Can’t wait to play again. Can’t wait to play with borg.

On 9/25/2017 at 5:21 PM, Shenannigan said:

It’s so much better with the expansions. I played this past Saturday with 5 players.

Ferenghi have it the toughest. They almost have to trick people into not noticing what they’re doing until it’s too late. (Thematic)

cardassians isolated themselves pretty quick and we’re strong the whole game.

Romulans and Klingons got into a Cold War at one side of the board.

Can’t wait to play again. Can’t wait to play with borg.

When the Borg comes out I'm going to try and house rule them into a playable civ. Delta Quadrant Systems, probes replacing trade (since there is no diplomacy), I'm going to try and set them up as a turtle race since they were no where to be found in the TOS series. Start in the Delta but have to go into the Alpha/Beta quadrant to achieve either supremacy or ascendancy victory. Teh borg cube cards assimilate other vessels to gain a weapon shield bonus against that civ.

Just some of the ideas I got going.

On 9/22/2017 at 8:06 PM, Crabbok said:

Finally played this game and loved it! Gonna try to get the xpansions soon!

I guess no video, well it isn't exactly Star Wars so. I'm surprised Angry Joe doesn't post his board game reviews up because I saw it in the background of his AvP Board game.

6 hours ago, Marinealver said:

I guess no video, well it isn't exactly Star Wars so. I'm surprised Angry Joe doesn't post his board game reviews up because I saw it in the background of his AvP Board game.

I probably won't do a video for it until I've had the chance to play it even more. The one game I have played we might have made some mistakes and I don't want to talk about the game incorrectly.

Picked up the game. Real excited to get a game in eventually.

Also, they announced that Vulcans and Andorians will be the next expansions.

Vulcans were expected, even though afaik they dont even do anything outside of the Federation. Not like this is a pure continuity game anyway.

Andorians mark the point where they start bringing in the less used, but still seen multiple times races. I dont remember ever seeing them in TNG/DS9 though i could be wrong and they only popped up in the original series a few times.
Gorn and Caitians are an obvious 8/9th pick (and even less common than Andorians) but i have no idea who the 10th player would be. Not Dominion, they would definitely be another NPC thing. Same goes for the Undine for that matter (Species 8472).
(Gorn are the reptile guys that Kirk had a sparring match with and Caitians are the cat people that first popped up in the animated series)

I guess... Bajorans? honestly hope not because theyre just a bunch of useless idiots that cause trouble and solve nothing.

I think they confirmed that Dominion will be another NPC when they do them.

I do think Gorn, Breen, and Tholians are the favorites for factions 8, 9, and 10.

oh yeah, Breen, way better option than bajorans.

Not sold on Tholians though, that'd be kinda weird to try and implement their gimicks into this game without either being totally pointless or overpowered. The whole "Tholian Web" thing would cause issues if they didnt do a good job with it and all sorts of hate if they didnt even bother trying and ignored it lol

On 10/21/2017 at 8:17 PM, Crabbok said:

I probably won't do a video for it until I've had the chance to play it even more. The one game I have played we might have made some mistakes and I don't want to talk about the game incorrectly.

Well the Borg allows for solo and 2 player co-op/counter-op play. So I may be able to get a full game that way.

On 12/31/2017 at 7:57 PM, Sithborg said:

Picked up the game. Real excited to get a game in eventually.

Also, they announced that Vulcans and Andorians will be the next expansions.

Do you got the source? As for that I hope they come out with some sort of Alliance mechanic that allows players to form permanent teams but gain a higher victory condition. As I tend to say 2 player alliance (5+ players) need both homeworlds for victory and combine ascendancy of 9 with each player having a minimum of 4 ascendancy tokens or control of 5 homeworlds. 3 player alliance (7+ players) need all starting homeworld for victory and a combined ascendancy of 13 with each player having no less than 4 ascendacy tokens or 7 homeworlds. I can see a TOS Federation/Vulcan/Andorian alliance vs Klingon/Romulan Alliance maybe with Cardasian and Ferengi being solo because the believe they can get their conditions before any of the large teams do.

On 1/2/2018 at 8:24 AM, Vineheart01 said:

...

I guess... Bajorans? honestly hope not because theyre just a bunch of useless idiots that cause trouble and solve nothing.

Considering that Bajor is in the Cardasian expansion it is not likely but that doens't mean you could not add them in.

If I was going to add them I would use them as a NPC for a 2 to 3 player game and a playable cive for a 4 player game. I can imagine a Federation vs Cardasian game with Bajor being in the center and militia NPC making occupation and hegemony difficult.

For a playable civ I would give them something similar to romulan culture bonus with orb icons being in systems or in tech. For a restriction that is easy, they do not start with warp travel and cannot build research nodes in open spots. That way they do feel like a 3rd world nation in the galaxy and not as a superpower. They can gain warp travel once they complete a project with a warp token but there is only 5 of them in their project deck making them much slower. I can see them as a cultural powerhouse that is always getting occupied.

Vulcan and Andorian factions are disappointing, as they should fall under the Federation. I'd rather see the Tholians, Breen, and Dominion get released, or even the Xindi, before the Vulcans and Andorians.

7 hours ago, Marinealver said:

Do you got the source?

3:50 in the video.

I've got all the expansions for Ascendancy now! Tried to get a 5 player game in recently but it failed. Going to try a 3 player game next week - including the borg too!

There's something about this game that I just think is magic!

finally got the stupid borg expansion, for some reason i simply could not find it. Eagerly awaiting a game with it now

reading through the rules...wow borg cubes are mean. I knew they regen'd, i knew they had to die in one combat (if you flee, its healed again), but i didnt know it flatout ignored shields. It wont kill very many in one go but the fact that you cant do anything to it (by default) to reduce the damage is nuts.

i suspect someone will get clobbered by them quick lol

Got the Borg Expansions too. I am thinking of finding ways to make them a playable faction using only components from the box.

Stupid spoiler tag I wanted to cut out the 2nd paragraph not assimilate the entire post

Oh well it was all my zany ideas for house rules on the Expansions of the game anyways (click at your own risk). I should go back to image editing some Twilight Imperium 4th edition stuff. Got a stupid-crazy idea of using the 8 sided dice from Armada and the Combat system from Star Wars Rebellion. Yeah I like to add to games, not take stuff away (looking at you FFG).