Ive played a few times now and a couple of things come up and I wonder if there are answers or opinions.

1 Are the differences in the cylon activation and jump track on the water shortage cards intentional.

2 Can the president (or other character) take a card based action or activate a viper etc when in the brig.

3 If there are no base stars out when base stars activate to attack galactica does nothing happen or does it place a new base star

(if nothing happens would a house rule allowing the placement when no base stars be an unbalancing rule)

4 Can a non pilotskill player activate a single unmaned viper from a location other than command if so can a player do it from the brig.

5 are there suggestions for adjusting the crisis deck based on the number of players (ie removing cards xy and z)

1. What difference are you talking about? Are there two versions of the card?

2. You can take any action you can normally take anywhere: skill card, quorum card, title card, character card.

3. It does not. I'm not sure how unbalancing this would be to change. It doesn't seem like Activate Basestars comes up very often.

4. No

5. Not that I've heard, non that I'd suggest. Crises should scale well with player size, as there are the same number of crisis cards to cards drawn.

There are 5 water shortage cards in my set

3 have basestars attack and jump

1 has basestars attack and no jump

1 has activate raiders and jump

Yes, these differences are intentional.

Your house ruling will most likely imbalance the game. Every placed base star is one less for a crisis card to set up, hence mitigating their effectiveness. The cylon setup cards and the game components are carefully balanced in that they will allow the game to pose a serious threat but not overwhelm the players. You destroy this balance if you "randomly" place basestars. Also, under which mechanic would you decide where to place them? Would you also place raiders and heavy raiders? Why? Why not? Where would you place them? Why?

Stop house ruling and just play the game. It is not imbalanced.

The idea would be that you would only place a basestar when the basestars attack galactica activation symbol was drawn and no basestars were in play. It would default to in front of galactica or the current players choice. Much like when raiders or heavy raiders are activated and if none are in play a some are launched from basestars. With the limited amound to assault threat cards to place new basestars its entirely possible to the humans to never see more cylon ships.

All the other cylon ship activations specifically state that if there are no basestars nothing happens but the basestar attack does not state this.

There are 39 cards that advance the jump track 10 that allow new base ships to be placed and 11 that activate basestars to attack.

Without a basestar to threaten the humans it is incredibly difficult for the cylons to effect the outcome of most things even when revealed

I was thinking it would provide for a more consistent threat level. Ive seen long stretches of the game where cylon ship activation just gets ignored because there are no base stars and even when a fleet shows up. The humans are on auto jump the next time anyway.

I think the instances where this would effect things overly dramatically would be very few while the chances that the humans get a good long run with no activations or easily jumped avoidance is more probable.

In fact only 4 of those basestar attack activations do not include a jump to follow them so even if a new basestar is placed it would often also get jumped away from as well.

To me this is the only statisically flawed part of the game.

Even the supercrisis cards only have one fleet arrival and the statistical chances of that card being pulled are not good.

I'd seriously suggest re-thinking the power of the Cylons before you go house-ruling to give them more military options.

Just as the humans will lose if they only concentrate on fighting off attacking raiders and not politics and leaderhip, the Cylons have many more options available to them besides attacking the fleet.

Granted I've only played one game, but in that the Cylons very quickly took complete control of Galactica and neutralised all but one of the humans by putting them in the brig. We were defeated through simple psychology and taking advantage of changing circumstances. We were under attack by Cylons at the time we were defeated, but that proved only to be one part of our downfall.

I think a Cylon victory relies much more on psychology and awareness of opportunities than overpowering Galactica in assaults. They don't need more of a rules advantage, they just need to attack the human players' own weaknesses.

aammondd said:

This is so wrong-headed and indicative of someone who hasn't played the game very often (or it just shows that you enjoy the ship fighting and want more of that). The cylon ships are a nightmare. Absolutely you can go through entire cycles without being threatened, and thank the gods of Kobol for that! They tend to pile on like an avalanche once they show up. The humans just can't cope with a Cylon attack every single time they're "resting".

aammondd said:

Are you kidding? Basestars firing nukes has to be the WEAKEST thing the Cylon fleet can do. Raiders ripping into civilians is the scariest thing. Heavy raider/boarding parties are second.

I think you're way too focussed on the military. This isn't a wargame. Cylon attacks aren't meant to stop the humans. They're just there to crank up the pressure from time to time. The crisis cards are what's really hammering the humans. Consider a five player game and there are two revealed Cylons. One player's hand of cards MIGHT be able to deal with a crisis card on its own if you assumed nobody else was playing cards. So all three humans need most of their cards to deal with the crises they draw. Then the Cylon players toss two more at them. Plus the Cylons can toss a skill card into every skill check which often forces the humans to overcompensate to be sure of success. You have to let some things get through. It's a war of attrition.

I have played several games now and have watched the deck skew 2 ways

1 a long succession of no jump track advancements Cylons have a field day

the other long stretches of no cylon ship activations the Humans pass skill checks regularly or manage resources very well.

Ive played 2 5 player games where there were no cylons before the sleeper agent phase but once we got to the sleeper phase the game advanced very quickly to the end game in one game nearly every civilian ship was destroyed in the other only 1 and that was the result of the jump. The first the cylons won the second the humans won. The difference in the game was the availability of cylon ships.

Ive seen the long stretch of no ships in more games than Ive seen the long stretch of no jumps.

I would probably agree however that it only apply as long as there is no revealed cylon or that there were no cylons at all.

It wouldnt attack the ship or launch anything it simply would show up.

All games Ive played so far have been cylon victory save 1 through resource depleation

aammondd said:

Yeah, the game is definitely skewed towards Cylon victories (purposefully), that is why any kind of house rule like your proposed one could be devastating to the game balance, as it could give them an even larger edge that makes it impossible for humans to ever win.

Remember however that in 2 5 playr games Ive played most of the damage has been done by humans themselves (ie no cylons before sleeper agent)

Indeed. That is part of the game and further proof that Cylons do not need to get stronger. Humans can be destroyed by Cylons or by themselves, which is how the game is and should be. Even if most of the damage is being done by humans you even said yourself that all games save one had been won by Cylons. Look at many, many others in the Cylon/Human victory count thread. Almost every single person has had more Cylon victories than Human ones. For a lot of those people the ratio is like 75% or higher in favor of Cylons. Regardless of when the Cylon cards are dealt out. Once all of your players become more comfortable with the game it will be like that for you as well.

If you want to implement a house rule than by all means do it. But if you want my advice, or the advice of many of the others who already gave their thoughts on this, I do not believe that would be a healthy decision for the long term fun of the game.

No problem

To me it seemed like it might be possible for the humans, if they played smarter, to really take advantage of the down time.

Maybe its this no immediate threat that gives rise to all the suspicions otherwise.

I mean if the humans can get through 2 jumps basicly unmolested the game is really hard for the cylons to win and this is just a function of the cards not a function of the cylon or human play.

aammondd said:

You keep speaking as if attacking ships are everything. Do you not believe that the Cylons can win if their ships never show up at all? You'd be wrong. I'll tell you what's far FAR more important. When do the Cylons know they're Cylons? My experience shows that has more influence over who'll win than anything else.

I think the Cylons tend to win at first because it's just easier to be a Cylon. The humans have to constantly work together. The Cylon just keeps trying to make a mess. Eventually, the human do learn what to do and a few games down the road they start winning games. NOW you're at the point where you're having a real contest when you play.

So far it has been my experience that revealed cylons are only really devestating late game.

Its not the attacking ships that I think is really the issue its the threat that needs to be dealt with that allows for opportunity for things to go haywire.

They are forced to move locations pull people out of the brig use cards other than for skill checks etc.

Most of the people say that the game is really fun even when you lose but I find the cylons losing to the deck very unenjoyable.

You are correct that when the cylons know they are cylons has an impact on the game too.

If you look at the card break down you will see that the basestar appearance after the first jump is rather unlikely for some time.

If there are no cylons in the first half of the game it makes it all the worse.

My proposition would be the following progression for the base star attacks.

Following the normal rules

If there are no basestars and no other cylon ships and there is no revealed cylon then one basestar appears current players choice but does not activate.

aammondd said:

Right. I doubt I'd reveal myself as a Cylon until the mid-point at best.

You seem to like statistics, so let me give you something else to consider. There are a number of ways to see what the next Crisis is ahead of time and skip it. More often than not, you're skipping over a non-Cylon fleet card, right? So doesn't that mean that the Fleet cards'll get activated a little faster than you're guessing?

I'd agree that the Cylon fleet and the brig shenanigans are mostly distractions to keep the humans from doing so well on the crises. If things are too quiet, it's the Cylons job to shake things up. Can you frame someone else as a Cylon? Can you get someone tossed into the brig and make the humans waste resources tossing someone in there and getting them back out again? What if you reveal and go to the resurrection ship and give your other loyalty card to another player to cause distrust? Sure, if no distractions ever show up then the humans are probably going to have an easy time of it, but that's not always the case and I've yet to see the cards fall like that. I HAVE had long, sleepy stops that the humans could sleepwalk through, but it doesn't last...