3 hours ago, Forresto said:

I wouldn't mind more. They could limit it to five players but have more civilizations to choose from although there aren't really many more major powers left I can think of.

The Dominion

The Tholians

The Gorn Hegemony

The Breen Confederacy (although they allied with the Dominon didnt they remain a separate entity?)

• Dominion , sort of on par with the Borg or supposed to be the Borg of DS9. The big bad unstoppable can't see threat. Where Borg was a juggernaught ad you see them coming but can't stop them. Could make for a good NPC
• Tholians and Gorn are definitely good ideas with them only being seen in TOS and only mentioned briefly in other seasons.
• Breen was supposed to be that mysterious race that no one has ever saw or was permitted into their territory. Then wartime DS9 came.
• Bajorans all though were not really a galactic power. They were more of a nation-state that had the misfortune of being located in an area of strategic interest among the other superpowers. Still there is enough lore to make a civ on them as a small fledgling empire. Although the planet's inclusion in the Cardassain expansion makes thin unlikely. Again might be a good NPC.
• Vulcans and Andorians , both planets are unusually absent from the game leading to speculation that they might be included in their own expansion as they were their own nations in Enterprise. However because of their merger into the Federation charter this makes it look rather hard to fathom. Maybe if they added in some mutual treaty where players could team up for a shared victory at a higher victory requirement (9 Ascendancy, 5 homeworlds to include both their own).
• Xindi , why did Enterprise went with these guys instead of just including the Gorn it is beyond me. After all if Dr. Who can make Slaurians look different in later episodes and Star Trek already did the same this would have been fine. Anyways another reason I didn't get interested with the enterprise series.
• Borg , coming as a NPC, and are the least similar from all the races (no trade), but I still think they could be a good player race with 4 or more civs. You jsut have to lock them away early game into the delta quadrant and make it so that they have to invade to win. Because ST ascendancy starts before Enterprise and extends past Voyager I can see Borg starting as weak as any race but becoming a superpower in the late game.
• other , Am I forgetting any from the TV series? I am not including Star Fleet Battles, or Movies like Insurrection. Also haven't included mirror universe although Terran Empire and Klingon-Cardassian Alliance seem to be interesting in a Game of Thrones sort of way.

well if you want to get REALLY technical there are dozens of stronger factions out there but most of them just keep to themselves.

Lot of TNG and TOS episodes have dealings with a race you never see outside of that episode, or if you do its like one other time. Some of them would be best described as "city-states" to coin a term from civilization but others were strong enough to lay the hurt on the Enterprise. I just cant recall any names off the top of my head.

I cant for the life of me remember who they were...i just remember "Darmok, his arms wide" in that episode where Picard was suppose to fight 1on1 with another captain and instead learned much about each other before the alien captain succumbed to wounds from that invisible monster on the planet. Never saw those guys outside that 1 episode but they basically flicked a switch and the Enterprise was shut down lol. Definitely strong enough to be a playable faction if they got desperate.

Oh wait. One i can remember is the Hunters from Voyager. While kinda distant theyre not too far away and are definitely quite deadly while not being Borg level deadly

Playing Saturday!

On 3/10/2017 at 1:10 PM, Vineheart01 said:

well if you want to get REALLY technical there are dozens of stronger factions out there but most of them just keep to themselves.

Lot of TNG and TOS episodes have dealings with a race you never see outside of that episode, or if you do its like one other time. Some of them would be best described as "city-states" to coin a term from civilization but others were strong enough to lay the hurt on the Enterprise. I just cant recall any names off the top of my head.

I cant for the life of me remember who they were...i just remember "Darmok, his arms wide" in that episode where Picard was suppose to fight 1on1 with another captain and instead learned much about each other before the alien captain succumbed to wounds from that invisible monster on the planet. Never saw those guys outside that 1 episode but they basically flicked a switch and the Enterprise was shut down lol. Definitely strong enough to be a playable faction if they got desperate.

Oh wait. One i can remember is the Hunters from Voyager. While kinda distant theyre not too far away and are definitely quite deadly while not being Borg level deadly

Yeah it does that with the Warp Capable civs in the exploration cards. with lvl 1 (3rd world) lvl 2 (equal tech) and lvl 3 (technologically advanced). However each of these planets could b considered city states. I wonder if they will bring a lvl 4 civ. Lol but then again there are not very many 4 node systems out there.

The Hunters were Hirogens, they were added in as a separate faction in the Voyager section of the decipher card game much like the Ferengi and the Dominion. Voyager Decipher also had Kazon and Vidillians as the other factions. Although I don't know how those would get added in. The Borg didn't like the way they taste.

Guys have you seen the HD versions of DS9 battle scenes? I desperately want an HD remaster of DS9 now.

As much as I like the special effects the Dominion war did rub me the wrong way and not just how it ended or how many times the federation came close to losing to supremacy victory if it were not for divine intervention. But I think the end of this video (36:00) does explain it .

But just like SW Rebellion where Death Star blows up Kayshykk and the Rebels win at the battle of Bespin ST Ascendancy lets the other players decide what happens in their time line.

9 hours ago, Forresto said:

Guys have you seen the HD versions of DS9 battle scenes? I desperately want an HD remaster of DS9 now.

That's beautiful. If only we could have a season 8 of DS9, or a post-DS9 series. But alas we have to see the wonderful era of 10 years before TOS....

I love the original series, I have high hopes for Discovery, but yeah im kinda not thrilled that its a prequel yet again.

I would love a series set in a large time jump after Voyager, maybe by a hundred or so amount of years. My original idea ive always pitched was have an enterprise so far in the future that skips around to different galaxies but Mass Effect is sorta doing that now.

The problem with extending far beyond the next gen era is that those 3 shows established so much tech development that it becomes really hard to create any drama that can't be solved with the push of a button.

Yeah i think advancing the timeline more than say 20 years would be difficult.

Compare TOS vs TNG. The ship dang near quadrupled in size, what was considered uber high tech in TOS is child's play in TNG, TNG has several new techs that it tosses around casually that would completely break the interactions in TOS, and nevermind about the scale of damage the weapons cause or the beating the shields can take. TOS shields folded pretty quick, it basically only stopped surprise attacks since it went down after 3-4 shots almost EVERY TIME. TNG's shields rarely went down without an outside force shutting them down.

100 years in the future after Voyager would put us at the time tech being common play rather than extremely situational and experimental stuff. I would rather not have that be a thing where "Time Cruisers" are common lol. Heck even one of Voyager's episodes does that where 7 of 9 ended up helping them solve some catastrophic event by "teleporting her through time" at various points where she could potentially stop the inevitable until it worked.

I dont remember how far in the future that ship was suppose to be but it was a dedicated time-travel vessel. Which spells all sorts of issues for writers and viewers alike.

Well it would be difficult I imagine but I don't think making the jump from the Original Series to the Next Generation was necessarily easy either and they could do it again.

As for things such as time ships well maybe make the next series retcon the assumptions of previous ones. In Enterprise in particular they talked about the temporal wars and the like which the Tholians and the sphere builders were apart of but if i'm not mistaken they ended and the timeline reset. If a show was set in the 31st century maybe as a result of the war and defeat of the sphere builders things such as timeships and other devices that promoted time travel were actively destroyed and banned. Post temporal war time travel is not actively encouraged or used as all factions would see the futility in such activity, think of it as MAD but with time machines. If one factions does it to undermine the other then another will retaliate, there's no victory everyone is destroyed.

Pull a reverse Deep Space Nine, rather then have the build up to a major war show the Federation and others reeling from the aftermath of one that preceded the show. Now for technology well technology has always been a means to an end in Star Trek. That's a big aspect of the series so I won't go into it now because I don't have time but we haven't reached a technological zenith in the series yet.

Make the series both within our galaxy but also extragalactic with external threats. Make new political entities. The Borg have either been defeated or contained.The Ferengi, Klingons, and a portion of the Cardassians have joined the Federation. The Romulans are now exploring other galaxies. The Federation and Dominion are now in direct competition for the Delta quadrant with the Borg having been essentially declawed. Elevate other races and make them powerful such as the Gorn and Tholians and Breen, maybe they form a coalition with part of the Cardassian Union to counter the power of the Federation and the Dominon? In other galaxies maybe there are terrifying new enemies that can maybe reach our galaxy.

I think there's a lot of really cool stuff they could do if they time jumped especially its right after all the stuff other series have mentioned, which can be retconned.

On 3/12/2017 at 9:14 PM, Forgottenlore said:

The problem with extending far beyond the next gen era is that those 3 shows established so much tech development that it becomes really hard to create any drama that can't be solved with the push of a button.

Especially with Voyager and the Time Federation . Because space travel is so passe. Well they could go to another Galaxy like Mass Effect: Andromeda without needing a Q or Traveler to send them there. But I guess that would end up boring. Well back to that mirror universe only without the practicality of Game of Thrones in their intrigue.

Well after much delays and that GF9 finally admitted that only last month the expansions have started to be printed. Here is the latest news.

I want that table!!!!!!!!

Still tempted to buy Ascendency. With the Borg, Ferengi, and Cardassians coming it is so tempting! I might wait till it goes on sale on amazon.

I am debating between this and Rebellion.

On 6/5/2017 at 4:04 AM, Marinealver said:

Well after much delays and that FFg finally admitted that only last month the expansions have started to be printed. Here is the latest news.

FFG has nothing to do with Star Trek Ascendency, Gale Force Nine is the company that is making the game. And ugh it has been so long for them to release their expansions, they make FFG look like Speedy Gonzales, the Cardassian expansion was supposed to be released at the same time as the base game with the Ferangi getting released that Winter but nope, they most likely won't come out until Gencon at the earliest. Its a fun game and I love playing it but the jerk around for the expansions has been aggravating.

On 6/6/2017 at 2:39 PM, Sithborg said:

I am debating between this and Rebellion.

They are two very different beasts. If you like Star Trek and 4X games then I'd recommend getting Ascendency. If you however, prefer the Rebellion scraping by and trying to turn the galaxy around to turning on the Empire through missions and heroes, or conversely using your overwhelming forces to squash the rebels and find their base then go with Rebellion.

1 hour ago, Animewarsdude said:

FFG has nothing to do with Star Trek Ascendency, Gale Force Nine is the company that is making the game. And ugh it has been so long for them to release their expansions, they make FFG look like Speedy Gonzales, the Cardassian expansion was supposed to be released at the same time as the base game with the Ferangi getting released that Winter but nope, they most likely won't come out until Gencon at the earliest. Its a fun game and I love playing it but the jerk around for the expansions has been aggravating.

...

Blasted autocorrect strikes again. OF course I meant GF9. Thanks for pointing that tiny bit out.

So after **** near 8 months since the expansions were spoiled theyre finally getting printed to be available?

I honestly forgot this was a thing because it was taking so **** long. Couple days ago i opened my closet where my games are and saw it and remembered "Oh yeah we STILL dont have the 4-5 player expansions!? What the hell??"

I loved this game, but 3players is a very bad number for such a game. It almost always defaults to a 2v1, with the 1 being whoever either threw the first punch or showed the first possible victory. From my experience in such FFA games, 4+ tends to not do this unless one player is just MILES ahead where it makes people feel the need to gang on him. 3players is literally "Cut off the third wheel, then lets duke it out!"

Not sure how i like the idea of the player becoming the borg if he dies. That leads into intentional "defeat" as the Borg are bound to be crazy powerful, limited only by the fact that its not player driven (other games do this where theres an "AI" deck for instance. The unit, model, or player in question would be insanely strong if it didnt have an RNG system to its behavior instead of tactical and thought out movements)

7 hours ago, Vineheart01 said:

So after **** near 8 months since the expansions were spoiled theyre finally getting printed to be available?

I honestly forgot this was a thing because it was taking so **** long. Couple days ago i opened my closet where my games are and saw it and remembered "Oh yeah we STILL dont have the 4-5 player expansions!? What the hell??"

I loved this game, but 3players is a very bad number for such a game. It almost always defaults to a 2v1, with the 1 being whoever either threw the first punch or showed the first possible victory. From my experience in such FFA games, 4+ tends to not do this unless one player is just MILES ahead where it makes people feel the need to gang on him. 3players is literally "Cut off the third wheel, then lets duke it out!"

Not sure how i like the idea of the player becoming the borg if he dies. That leads into intentional "defeat" as the Borg are bound to be crazy powerful, limited only by the fact that its not player driven (other games do this where theres an "AI" deck for instance. The unit, model, or player in question would be insanely strong if it didnt have an RNG system to its behavior instead of tactical and thought out movements)

They revealed a fair bit of news for the borg stuff if you are interested in it.

http://www.startrek.com/article/the-borg-set-to-invade-star-trek-ascendancy

http://www.startrek.com/article/star-trek-ascendancy-borg-assimilation-preview

So finally getting the stupid 4 and 5player expansions, my friends and i are going to give it a go sunday.

Will report on how much better/worse it is at 5players later lol.

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.

I've got a game day scheduled for the 4th and 5th player expanisons. Can't wait! I enjoyed the 3 player version but am looking forward to to more player options.

The 3player aspect was literally my only true complaint about the game. 3player games that arent vs an AI always end up 2v1.
I'm hoping with 5 the board will not only be big enough for it to be almost impossible to gang on someone anyway, because ideally 2 players are too far, but also add some diversity in the interjections and all.

Only other complaint i had was we always ran out of worlds to explore lol. The 4/5 player expansions gives you quite a few extra though so hope thats enough.

So we didnt finish the game since the store closed (havnt played in awhile and we had a guy thats never played it before too so it took awhile) but we played for about 4.5hours, and wow the game is SO much better with 5 players!

The 3player aspect is gone. Everyone was worried the guy next to them was going to backstab them if they joined a fight because the spacing pretty much forced it to be that way. The board ended up choking the middle of the board off with several planets literally right next to each other so they couldnt connect (no space), leaving almost just the outside ring to move around. Which meant the Klingons couldnt do jack to me because he had to go through the Cardassians and the Romulans, which if he did the Federation next to him might do something dirty. The amount of times the game swung to who was winning or in a good position was insane.

New races:
Cardassians are kinda RNG-based since by default they are at a disadvantage, requiring fleets in each system to get production out of it meant he couldnt expand as quick and/or have a big enough fleet to conquer colonies or even explore rapidly. However, a LOT of his researches are outright devious. One of his techs allows him to generate a research from another player's deck (1 card instead of 2 from your own). This let him steal some pretty gnarly crap, which combined with his other cards was nuts! He managed to get Warp6 before the game ended lol....talk about zipping across the board.

Ferengi are fun for someone like me that loves to mess with people's head. Profit, all about the profit! I basically solidified my alliance with the Cardassians because my trade was what was keeping him alive, which in turn gave me tons of income. Romulans next door decided to be a prick and not trade with me so i wasnt able to trade with multiple factions sadly, but i see the Ferengi rocketing out of control if they get 2 good trades going on (they need a ship in multiple rival colonies in order to have their trade do anything, unlike the other factions which just have 3 cards for 1, 2, and 3 resources they trade off). They captured the image of the Ferengi perfectly and i love it! And the techs are amazing...i cant add my Ascendancy when attempting Hegemony, but i have a tech (which the cardassians stole by generating a research from my deck...grr) that lets me spend a production to improve my odds instead...basically meaning i can auto-pass hegemony at the cost of 4 production lol. I can also spend a production to exhaust trade agreements or military advancements! I need to go through the deck to see what all is in there one of these days.

Allies:
Ferengi box comes with a bunch of new Exploration cards called Allies. They require a test (green number, add ascendancy, if its greater you win and get the ally) and then instill a permanent affect. Found one that made us able to spend production for shield upgrades and it passes to the player on the left once your building phase is done...i literally bought my shields from +0 to +4 in one round LOL

New Phenomenons:
Lot of the new phenomenons have special effects that mess up fleet battles or deny the use of your shields etc etc. We only found two of these, but one in particular really messed with us: ship battles in this system can only hit on a 6. That pissed off the Klingons since they had buffed their weapons a fair bit lol.

Overall:
The game is so much better now. Whats best we didnt run out of planets this time either so the game can truely be different every time since we might not even draw certain planets (we had almost no phenomenons until the very end). Previously it was pretty much just the explorations (which btw there are way too many Virgin World cards now) and it no longer feels like a gangup game. Previously pretty much whoever was the first to do any war stuff or ascend a couple times got ganged on and you auto-lose. Now thats gone out of fear of the guy that cant join in the fight backstabbing you lol. I wish we could have finished it, need to find a 5th person since my roommate usually doesnt have the days off the rest of us can play sadly.

23 hours ago, Vineheart01 said:

So we didnt finish the game since the store closed (havnt played in awhile and we had a guy thats never played it before too so it took awhile) but we played for about 4.5hours, and wow the game is SO much better with 5 players!

The 3player aspect is gone. Everyone was worried the guy next to them was going to backstab them if they joined a fight because the spacing pretty much forced it to be that way. The board ended up choking the middle of the board off with several planets literally right next to each other so they couldnt connect (no space), leaving almost just the outside ring to move around. Which meant the Klingons couldnt do jack to me because he had to go through the Cardassians and the Romulans, which if he did the Federation next to him might do something dirty. The amount of times the game swung to who was winning or in a good position was insane.

New races:
Cardassians are kinda RNG-based since by default they are at a disadvantage, requiring fleets in each system to get production out of it meant he couldnt expand as quick and/or have a big enough fleet to conquer colonies or even explore rapidly. However, a LOT of his researches are outright devious. One of his techs allows him to generate a research from another player's deck (1 card instead of 2 from your own). This let him steal some pretty gnarly crap, which combined with his other cards was nuts! He managed to get Warp6 before the game ended lol....talk about zipping across the board.

Ferengi are fun for someone like me that loves to mess with people's head. Profit, all about the profit! I basically solidified my alliance with the Cardassians because my trade was what was keeping him alive, which in turn gave me tons of income. Romulans next door decided to be a prick and not trade with me so i wasnt able to trade with multiple factions sadly, but i see the Ferengi rocketing out of control if they get 2 good trades going on (they need a ship in multiple rival colonies in order to have their trade do anything, unlike the other factions which just have 3 cards for 1, 2, and 3 resources they trade off). They captured the image of the Ferengi perfectly and i love it! And the techs are amazing...i cant add my Ascendancy when attempting Hegemony, but i have a tech (which the cardassians stole by generating a research from my deck...grr) that lets me spend a production to improve my odds instead...basically meaning i can auto-pass hegemony at the cost of 4 production lol. I can also spend a production to exhaust trade agreements or military advancements! I need to go through the deck to see what all is in there one of these days.

Allies:
Ferengi box comes with a bunch of new Exploration cards called Allies. They require a test (green number, add ascendancy, if its greater you win and get the ally) and then instill a permanent affect. Found one that made us able to spend production for shield upgrades and it passes to the player on the left once your building phase is done...i literally bought my shields from +0 to +4 in one round LOL

New Phenomenons:
Lot of the new phenomenons have special effects that mess up fleet battles or deny the use of your shields etc etc. We only found two of these, but one in particular really messed with us: ship battles in this system can only hit on a 6. That pissed off the Klingons since they had buffed their weapons a fair bit lol.

Overall:
The game is so much better now. Whats best we didnt run out of planets this time either so the game can truely be different every time since we might not even draw certain planets (we had almost no phenomenons until the very end). Previously it was pretty much just the explorations (which btw there are way too many Virgin World cards now) and it no longer feels like a gangup game. Previously pretty much whoever was the first to do any war stuff or ascend a couple times got ganged on and you auto-lose. Now thats gone out of fear of the guy that cant join in the fight backstabbing you lol. I wish we could have finished it, need to find a 5th person since my roommate usually doesnt have the days off the rest of us can play sadly.

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