So, the exploration cards are clearly the replacement for the Distant Suns option. I have some random thoughts.

Unlike DS, apparently all of the Exploration cards are "good". Some may have a cost to use, but none of them outright do bad stuff.

The swinginess of DS was one of the main criticisms of it, that one bad draw could cripple you early on. Do you think having only good results fixes this?

The other side is that Exploration results seem to be better than most DS results were.

If I understand the cards correctly, they also seem to provide permanent benefits, unlike the one and done results of most DS tokens. Is that going to make them even more powerful, or is the idea that people can fight over a really good planet now so it's less game breaking?

It sounded like you didn't have to explore as soon as you landed on a planet. What do you think of that? Or do I have that wrong? (I thought there was a point where they indicated exploring a planet after capturing it from another player).

I don't know. A lot of people really liked the concept of DS, but there were a lot of very valid critiques of the mechanic in 3rd. I'm just wondering if Exploration fixes the issue, or if it is just a reskin of the same problems. (but harder to ignore since more things reference exploration in the expansion).

If what you mean by "good" is the absence of early, game-crippling randomness , then yes. IMO, anything that reduces the variance of the exploration mechanic is beneficial for all, and it seems that Dane has applied a "regression to the mean" to accomplish this feat. In other words, the positives are more along the lines of "oh, that's nice" and the so-called negatives at least provide you a choice about what you like to do (e.g. lose an infantry unit to gain an effect).

If you the first player to conquer a plane, you may explore it and select a card from the appropriate deck. If the planet is later taken for you, the aggressor does NOT get to re-explore (unless they have a specific tech to do so). The presence of planetary traits also provide another layer of theme, in that you're likely to find more choices like the one I mentioned above when exploring Hazardous planets than Cultural or Industrial. Some effects may be permanent, but I had the impression most were a one-and-done affair. Dane mentioned in an interview with SCPT that the Frontier cards can offer some very good bonuses for those players that acquire Dark Energy Tap early (such as the Empyrean ).

I'm sure more details are forthcoming, but it sounds as if Dane has executed the Distant Suns mechanic the way it was meant be- something fun that potentially provided a bonus and absolutely avoided a negative player experience. The inclusion of the these decks truly gives TI the Xploration that was noticeably missing from a reputable 4X game...

My only gripe with the No negatives aspect of the exploration decks, is that races with a lot of transports and GFs early can really reap in planets. With Distant Suns, you had to commit a little more to avoid a fighter attack, local defense etc.

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A lot of people really liked the concept of DS

DS was practically universally despised, it was always the primary critique of the game. People like Distant Suns (aka exploration) as a concept true but mechanically speaking Distant Suns had a lot of issues.

At the center of the problem with DS was less that there were positive and negative effects, but more that the negative effects had had considerably less impact on already strong races while being triply bad for already weak ones so it created situations where weak races got weaker and strong races got stronger. While the opposite was also true that strong races benefited far more from positive effects while weak races really didn't get much out of it at all.

I don't know that this solution will really solve things as it seems to be built around more or less the same premise poorly thought out premise.

What TI has always needed was an identifiable "exploration rating" for each race, giving the stronger races a weaker rating while the weaker races a stronger rating. Then creating the exploration effects around the rating so that through exploration weaker races get more out of it then stronger ones.

By default, mechanically speaking however, if you provide a method to gain benefits on an equal playing field, the result will always be that stronger races get even stronger and weaker races get even weaker.

This typically in other mechanics in the game is handled by added benefits strengths being measured to the strength of the race. So for example Racial tech benefits are always much better for weaker races and weaker for stronger races sort of balancing out the received benefits. This of course wasn't always successfully done in TI, but at least that was the general idea.

This is why the exploration mechanic however has always struggled as it is a general mechanic that applies the same way to everyone, which results in, again, weaker races getting weaker and stronger races getting even stronger.

Generally speaking TI is not a balanced game however and its in the understanding of this basic fact that you can accept mechanics like DS for example and realize that "ok, the weaker races need to work together". In a situation where at the table there is a good understanding of who is stronger and who is weaker (by design), through early teaming up, these conditions can be overcome. However if everyone simply plays to win on their own, the stronger races have an overwhelming advantage in the game. This is how its always been.