hey everyone!

this is a very rough WIP/first draft right now so I'd really appreciate any feedback/ideas anyone has right now.

my goal with this is to format it really well, get a ton of playtesting, and eventually publish it to the level people can use it broadly. I really feel like this sort of thing is missing from the game right now. Aces High is cool and all but it has a lot of politicking and memeing that makes it tricky as a competitive format.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XM7o4K_HBjTJqW46fzUr9FwQ1E0hSPRa22xT32-_8p4/edit?usp=sharing

please let me know what you think of it right now, and watch this space for the better formatted and more readable versions etc.

That sounds really really cool! I like the idea with the victory points (and it also solves regen nicely). Going for 45min games for everyone, and the way of selecting the game mode is awesome!

• Domination looks like a more interesting "standard" game: destroy as much as you can in 45min.
• I like that Beacon control assigns points to whoever has most ships nearby, instead of requiring that no enemy ships are around. And placing charge tokens back to solidify them is cool. I'm not sure about VIC=charge on beacons, that sounds a bit strong to me. But I haven't tested it obviously.
• Beacon hunt looks more appealing to me, but I can't tell you why.
• Detonation (I like "player with fewest ships"!) sounds like the most experimental and the one that could be broken most easily, but again I haven't tested anything so it's just a feeling

Just a tiny addition: "Squads are placed as normal at range 0-1 of the player board edges and/or touching the player’s board edge. " The bold part is not necessary because range 0 means touching. Or what am I missing?

1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

Just a tiny addition: "Squads are placed as normal at range 0-1 of the player board edges and/or touching the player’s board edge. " The bold part is not necessary because range 0 means touching. Or what am I missing?

thanks, glad you like it! the idea here was to cover how large ships can protrude past range 1 if they're angled weirdly, so they just have to be touching the board edge... might have to expand that though to make more sense

Slight issue with the point brackets model; it kind of gives a strong incentive to build toward the top end of each bracket, which will naturally push some very specific pilot-upgrade combos to the forefront while others trail behind, in the interest of conserving VPs granted to the opponent.

Maybe a welcome idea in the short term as it changes stuff up, but would end up creating its own set of meta issues.

That said, I do absolutely prefer low-count VP scoring than squad points destroyed/preserved.

2 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Slight issue with the point brackets model; it kind of gives a strong incentive to build toward the top end of each bracket, which will naturally push some very specific pilot-upgrade combos to the forefront while others trail behind, in the interest of conserving VPs granted to the opponent.

Maybe a welcome idea in the short term as it changes stuff up, but would end up creating its own set of meta issues.

That said, I do absolutely prefer low-count VP scoring than squad points destroyed/preserved.

yeah the points thing is kind of a problem but I considered it a lesser of two evils because adding up squadpoints at all these junctures sounds miserable. Definitely open to suggestions on fixing it though.

Since these are adapted from video games to some extent, I think they're best balanced against the 3v3 team format where everyone has a 30 point ship... I think I probably need to put more thought into adapting to more flexible squads.

The beacon and bomb things that refer to "number of ships" might skew the meta as well, something to consider...

17 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

yeah the points thing is kind of a problem but I considered it a lesser of two evils because adding up squadpoints at all these junctures sounds miserable. Definitely open to suggestions on fixing it though.

Since these are adapted from video games to some extent, I think they're best balanced against the 3v3 team format where everyone has a 30 point ship... I think I probably need to put more thought into adapting to more flexible squads.

The beacon and bomb things that refer to "number of ships" might skew the meta as well, something to consider...

I kind of like the simplicity of the Aces High ship scoring: it self-corrects.

Each ship is equally valuable at the start, but if one starts popping your TIEs, your reward for killing it is that much higher. It’s incredibly simple and gameplay-dependent, and it balances itself. It also takes away the unfair rewards for fortressing and regen to a limited degree, and it makes them think twice about upping their own bounty vs just pursuing more objectives.There is a slight advantage to the squad with the lower ship count, but when you consider how hard those ships are to half-point in standard anyway, it balances out mostly.

I would just drop the “first blood” rule as it would favor the low-count squad by more.