This topic should collect all, I like to see (which are still maybe possible, if not done already. I guess not everything is finalized, so there should be (slight) changes possible):

• Make the activation (and also the control) markers in the fleet colors, not in the race colors. Cant remember how often I fall into the trap, when I thought for the planning "Oh, that system is already activated by the purple player", just to realize later "Oh da**, that is the blue player, with the purple race. The purple player has the orange markers, and there is of course a 3rd who uses the orange fleet" (it happens esp. often with purple and orange, not sure why those two colors are more subject to this problem than the others; must be a psychological thing). I played it quite often, and it still happen to me, not to mention the newbies, who get very easy confused. It is just nonsense to have two colors for each player, and then have it possible to have one player one possible for ships on the map, and an different player the same color for markers.
• It seems the planets have again a resource and influence value (+ tech spec.), so they seem compatible with the old systems. Make the systems the same size as the old, so people can reuse their 3rd edition tiles.
  Those people can also use their models (as there are no new type of ship) to make up 7 and 8 player games (as they have the different colored plastic to do so).
• It seems, you have all 17 races from the beginning in, so please: GET YOUR RULES RIGHT. I dont know how often we got rules problem because some race ability conflicted with a card. Most often the problem arose, because either a) the order/timing of play of cards was problematic (e.g. "before space combat" was very annoying before Errata/FAQ) b) race ability was not checked for combination with certain action cards/laws (e.g. Yddrasil, with the hand size was always a catastrophe). So please do this:
  1. Take a race: Check every card (action/law) how it interacts with the card and solve the problems
  2. Repeat 1 for every race.
  3. Take an action/law card: Check every card (action/law) how it interacts with the card and solve the problems
  4. Repeat 3 for every card.
  5. Repeat 1. - 4. until you got one pass without problems.
  6. Check the rules again and again (the game is already long, and I cant count the hours, we had to pause the game for rules discussion)
• Make a fu*** insert, that deserves its name. Esp. one that supports/shortens setup and tear down.
• Consider (and actually make) translations of it (German, Spanish, French, ...) and annouce it early (nothing annoys buyers more, than to buy something (like the english version) just to see 2 month later, a version of it that is much better (like a game in the native language). Would make many people happy.
• Rename it in your database to "4th Edition, Twilight Imperium". So it is in the default sorting order top, and I dont have to scroll that much to find it in your page .

I would like the faction sheets/strategy sheets to be indented so that there are small walls between the various token areas and card placements. Its just a QOL thing but it feels more finished and doesnt throw everything around if the sheet is bumped or moved.

The idea or making tokens the same color as ships is brilliant, i also having trouble at times overviewing the board when tokens and ships of the same faction isnt the same color. Just make 6 sets of tokens and markers and we can sort them with the ships, completely separated from the factions.

A functional app to free up some space on the table

I would have liked an 18th race for symmetry.....

32 minutes ago, IDieALot said:

I would have liked an 18th race for symmetry.....

Admit it: You just want to play on Cons a 3 Galaxies game (connected via Wormholes), in each 6 races, and no race twice (when you paint two sets, the colors should be no problem)

Oh, one wish granted, ty FFG (Asmodee): They announced a german translation.

Flying stands for the ships. I can't see them flying trough space with their bellies grinding against outlet space.

More artwork on the components. Space opera need artwork and cool simbology on the cards and tokens.

Rule streamlining.... Please let this take just half a day to play

14 minutes ago, keraun0s said:

Flying stands for the ships. I can't see them flying trough space with their bellies grinding against outlet space.

More artwork on the components. Space opera need artwork and cool simbology on the cards and tokens.

Rule streamlining.... Please let this take just half a day to play

Speculations incoming.

But with only a single endgame goal that one player accumulates 10vp, I suspect the objectives will be more generous and easier to complete. In combination with the new imperial SC that allows to draw new secret objectives as well as scoring 1vp when controlling Rex, I have suspicions that TI4 will in fact have a shorter game length then TI3.

17 hours ago, Flolo said:

Make the activation (and also the control) markers in the fleet colors, not in the race colors.

Not happening. We can already see in the preview pictures 17 stacks of command counters (and some other kind of counter, probably control) with racial symbols on them. I would actually prefer to have everything keyed to each race. for years now I have been tempted to pick up a second set of TI3 and paint the plastic in 8 new colors just to be able to separate each race into packets with EVERYTHING they need to play.

17 hours ago, Flolo said:

Make the systems the same size as the old, so people can reuse their 3rd edition tiles.

Seems almost a certainty. I would be amazed if they were different sizes. Don't yet know for sure though if the resource/Influence numbers will be the same or if the frequency of tech specialties of those mysterious new symbols will effect game play enough to invalidate the old tiles. hope not.

17 hours ago, Flolo said:

I dont know how often we got rules problem because some race ability conflicted with a card.

Such as? I've never had a problem, always thought the abilities were very straight forward.

17 hours ago, Flolo said:

Make a fu*** insert, that deserves its name. Esp. one that supports/shortens setup and tear down.

Would be nice, but not really practical from a business standpoint I suspect. In today's environment, there will be plenty of 3rd party storage solutions.

12 hours ago, Flolo said:

Admit it: You just want to play on Cons a 3 Galaxies game (connected via Wormholes), in each 6 races, and no race twice (when you paint two sets, the colors should be no problem)

That would be pretty cool

34 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:

Not happening. We can already see in the preview pictures 17 stacks of command counters (and some other kind of counter, probably control) with racial symbols on them. I would actually prefer to have everything keyed to each race. for years now I have been tempted to pick up a second set of TI3 and paint the plastic in 8 new colors just to be able to separate each race into packets with EVERYTHING they need to play.

I had considered doing this myself as well. I noted in another post that FFG might benefit from selling plain grey plastic fleet sets for TI for people to paint in racial colours.

34 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:

In today's environment, there will be plenty of 3rd party storage solutions.

Couple this with fleets for each race and everyone can just sit down and open up their pack and not have to sort through anything. Space and time saver.

On 8/12/2017 at 9:03 AM, Flolo said:

This topic should collect all, I like to see (which are still maybe possible, if not done already. I guess not everything is finalized, so there should be (slight) changes possible):

• Make the activation (and also the control) markers in the fleet colors, not in the race colors. Cant remember how often I fall into the trap, when I thought for the planning "Oh, that system is already activated by the purple player", just to realize later "Oh da**, that is the blue player, with the purple race. The purple player has the orange markers, and there is of course a 3rd who uses the orange fleet" (it happens esp. often with purple and orange, not sure why those two colors are more subject to this problem than the others; must be a psychological thing). I played it quite often, and it still happen to me, not to mention the newbies, who get very easy confused. It is just nonsense to have two colors for each player, and then have it possible to have one player one possible for ships on the map, and an different player the same color for markers.

I like the race-specific tokens. More often than not, players will pick the color that matches their race color anyway.

22 hours ago, Flolo said:

Admit it: You just want to play on Cons a 3 Galaxies game (connected via Wormholes), in each 6 races, and no race twice (when you paint two sets, the colors should be no problem)

Actually its so when you play with 6 players everyone could have 3 races to choose from.

Or play with 18 players, 6 players on ring 3 like standard and 12 players on ring 6 for a total galaxysize of 127 systems

Shorter play time, then maybe my friends and I can actually play a full game.

On 2017-08-13 at 11:23 AM, mp663 said:

I like the race-specific tokens. More often than not, players will pick the color that matches their race color anyway.

But when they dont/cant I find it a bit difficult to overview whats whose where etc.

There really isnt a good reason to have activation tokens specific to the races instead of colors, aside from a reason to throw more cardboard into the box, having them separated with the colors makes much more sense. Its of course beating a dead horse since weve already seen the contents of the box.

I might make my own activation/flag tokens according to colors or perhaps repaint the ships from TI3 for use with TI4. Anything to speed up setup and aid overview!

On 2017-08-13 at 0:00 PM, IDieALot said:

Actually its so when you play with 6 players everyone could have 3 races to choose from.

Or play with 18 players, 6 players on ring 3 like standard and 12 players on ring 6 for a total galaxysize of 127 systems

In initial theory this sounds very awesome. However the 12 races in the 6th ring would a)Have less room for expansion, since they can only expand inwards while the 6 inner races could expand both ways, and b)Be situated waaaay further from Mecatol Rex, which is integral to way too many objectives for this to be practical.

Could all 18 races fit in a 7th or even 8th ring, I wonder?

Well no, for 18 races you need a ring the size of 18*3=54 systems

the ring sizes are 6,12,18,24,30,36,42,48,54, so 9 rings would work..... you just need 192 system to fill the galaxy.

I've been thinking on this a bit to much.....

On 12/8/2017 at 9:03 AM, Flolo said:

• Make the activation (and also the control) markers in the fleet colors, not in the race colors. Cant remember how often I fall into the trap, when I thought for the planning "Oh, that system is already activated by the purple player", just to realize later "Oh da**, that is the blue player, with the purple race. The purple player has the orange markers, and there is of course a 3rd who uses the orange fleet" (it happens esp. often with purple and orange, not sure why those two colors are more subject to this problem than the others; must be a psychological thing). I played it quite often, and it still happen to me, not to mention the newbies, who get very easy confused. It is just nonsense to have two colors for each player, and then have it possible to have one player one possible for ships on the map, and an different player the same color for markers.

For who prefer CC and markers in fleet colors instead of race colors I suggest to use colored glass pebbles (like the ones in the image) of the proper dimension. I find them awesome as command counter while I continue to prefer race flags as control markers.

@IDieALot

Where do you get the 192 from? Wouldn't 9 rings amount to 271 systems including Mecatol Rex and Home systems?

Anyway, you could bring it easily down to less systems by splitting the galaxy into three subsectors of one three ring galaxy (with 37 systems) each. In the middle of each three ring galaxy there would not be Mecatol Rex but a wormhole system connecting to an isolated MR (which in this regard functions something like a wormhole nexus). This way everyone is the same distance from MR, individual expansion space is comparable to a regular six player game and you need far less hexes (112 instead of 271). Especially given the new wormhole rules (adjacent for all purposes) this should work fine. Plus you could split the game over three tables. Otherwise good luck finding a table handling 192 systems and 18 players

An isolated MR linked only with wormholes would give too much advantage to the Creuss. In that case it would fit a house rule to consider MR's wormholes out of Creuss racial abilities.
A table for 192 systems can be easily assembled, the problem is how to move the units in the middle of the maps considering a distance of 9 systems plus the player area.
Anyway I find hard to gather 6 players in the same day for this game, 18 players would be likely impossible for me.

Instead of an isolated MR, make it a little 1-ring subsector. There was a 6-player variant that did that with two 2-ring galaxies each with 3 players and a 1-ring galaxy with MR between them. Adding a few extra systems around MR in such a scenario makes going for "the center" a bit more appealing.

Myself, I'd be perfectly willing to play a 6 player game on a 9-ring galaxy and just not worry about MR or VP and play every week until it got boring. Creating on the fly house rules to keep everyone in the game if they start doing poorly.

10 hours ago, Pretorian said:

An isolated MR linked only with wormholes would give too much advantage to the Creuss. In that case it would fit a house rule to consider MR's wormholes out of Creuss racial abilities.

Or simply create 4 E Wormholes, One on ME and one in each 3-ring galaxy center. The Creuss abilities only ever mention A and B anyway if memory serves.