To Browoodstock

whoops it was supposed to be the immdiete left, i don't know how i ****** that one up

ok i'l simply remove the refresh racial.

i agree with your racial tech ideas.

ok i'l thinnk i'l just make the guy almost unkillable and nix his effect(the nekro virus councilor can still off him)

and yes, i meand 4 Dyes hitting on 8s, i just find it making more sense to writing it 4x8 for some reason

ok Regul Fifth Draft.

and thank you for, both your constructive Critisism, and your patience.

p.s about the noctus, would'nt it be more convenient to mark the refineries with trade goods?

Racial Abilitys

you do not need to pay strategy allocation for using the secondery of the assembly strategy card.

When Executing The Secondary Of the assembly Strategy, draw a political card, this is in addition to the secondary.

When using the primary ability of the Assembly Strategy card, and you play out a political card from your hand, you may resolve it without voting, you choose the outcome. If you use this effect, The player to your immediete left receives the speaker token.

All players Receive +1 in space battles against you, when you lose a space battle the victor receives two trade goods.

You may never willingly brake your own trade contracts(including trade secondary, action cards, etc, etc.) You may never activate a system controlled by a player whom you have a trade contract, if you get the traitor preliminary, you may reveal it and draw another preliminary objective.

Home System :Reg 2/2 Rul 0/4

Trade Contracts 3/2

Starting Techs

Enviro Compensators

Micro Technology.

Starting forces

2 carriers

1 cruiser

3 ground force.

Racial Techs

Synaptic Wave Generators (4) - You may count up to three exhausted planets unexhausted for the purposes of voting only by paying two trade goods for each.

Synaptic Disintagration Cannons( 5 )- Whenever an unmodified roll of 10 is made in a combat (by you or your opponent) in a combat, Reduce the number of your hits scored by your opponent by one.

Representetives

Ratas Dill XXXII-Councilor+1- This representetive is immune to the effects of all spies and action cards. (the ghost of creuss's spies effect takes precidense.)

Trygonian Septimer- spy + 2 -Target a representetive, that representetive must abstain from voting,

Ragas, High priest of Dill- Councilor + 4 .-When this representetive is killed by a spy, or action card, there is no vote and you decide it's outcome, after a vote, you may choose to kill this spy, and discard the political card without it's effect resolving.

Flagship:"The Will of Ratas"-Cost:12

Sustain Damage, all enemy ships in the same system as this ship receive a -2 on all combat rolls.

Fifth Draft complete.

p.s Most of my Twilight Impirium group has agreed to test-run the race next friday, I'l let you know how it goes.

Sorry, just confused on one thing.

Are you saying that your opponent would be able to use the disintegration cannons as well? Or are you saying that if your opponent rolled a 10, it would basically count as a miss for them? If it's the second case...not a good call in my oppinion. It basically negates your "opponent gets +1 to rolls" racial because it's a roll that they miss on. Generally, rolling a 10 on a die should always be a good thing in combat. So it makes sense for if YOU roll a 10, then you get to negate one of their hits.

Count Jondi said:

I for one would like to have the requirement to hit first and the number of die last.

Count Jondi said:

Not so sure about that one. If the Noctus use refineries there is a way for the oter players to deny them the possibility by building refineries themselves. They are a finite type of card after all. It's also easier than to have all other players hoard TG's to deny the Noctus extra resources.

Count Jondi said:

I for one think the 3/2 combo is a wee bit much. 2/2 would be adequate i think.

Count Jondi said:

No Space dock to start with is either a bit too harsh or a good restriction. Not sure which...

Count Jondi said:

Fnoffen, when i said to mark them with trade goods, i meant by placing them on the map.

about the requirement to hit, and tthe numbers of attack last, again i don't know how i keep saying 4X8.

About having the space dock in starrting, i pretty much thought that having a space dock is just so auxiliary that i did not need to mention it, but they are supposed to have a space dock.

anyway, yesterday i played twilight impirium with my group using the Regul. I did not play them i played as the Federation of Sol, however, a friend of mine did. This was an expirienced player who more than once has snatched a victory from me in previous games. He, and the rest of the group agreed to test run it. I'l give a rough description how the game went. We played using all optianal rules, and the latest strategy cards

Regul started the game as speaker from a random roll, and took technology. the first round went as you would excpect, everyone expanded, i drew two radition tokens and lost 3 ground forces.(the funny thing is that it happens so often, im not even surprised.) The Regul Player had a really good start with the domain counters, picking up the total of 4 trade goods, 1 free technology, and 2 pds domain counters that did not make a single hit, in three diffrent systems, giving him two PDS units for free. The planets the Regul got where mostly high in influence, but low in production. Trade contracts were wery low on the table, the highest being the regul 3/2, followed by the sol:2/2, and the rest were 1/1, and Regul got a Sol 2, and a 1. About mid-game the major players were the Mentak, and the Regul, the Mentak had more planets, and more production than The Regul, and had similar influence once The Mentak player captured Mecatol Rex. Mentak, had completed theeir prelimenery objective, and now drew the secret objective " Focused ", to complete focused, one must control 4 planets with the same technology specialty, and since I, the federation of sol had three planets with the green tech special, and he had two, he went in to war with me. He took two planets, and had the required amount of green tech specialtys, however unknown to him, I drew a Flank Speed action card. right before the turn was over, i had XRD transporters, and gravity drive. The Quann system was next to my home-system. giving my carrier the movement of 3, without the card, and thus i invaded his home-system directly from mine, and seized Moll Primus. what was particularly humurous is that is that I also held Darius, the brotherhood of yin home-world at that time, during the next turn he recaptured his home-world, and i got back all of my planets. He had a sizable fleet at his home-system now. An. incredibly lucky thing happened, i drew another flank speed action card, and took the warfare strategy card. When the turn was over i had his home-system again, and his main fleet destroyed, and he did not have sufficient recources to re-construct it(at least not quickly.) The war with Sol cost the Mentak their victory, which was strange considering his vastly superior position. Whilst this was happening the Regul Where attacked by the L1zix which tore through the Regul. Their Dreadnoughts hit on three'S, even though it was not without casualty'S The Regul and L1zix had 9 victory points, which was strange since the Lizix had a fairly bad beginning. There is questionable whether the Regul might have won, if i would not have done one thing,, i ressearched type IV drive, which gave me the movement needed to go to the Regul Home-System, whose diplomat had been expended to stop a Lizix invasion. I won both the space, and ground combat and took the home-system, restricting them from claiming objectives. My Plan was for the brotherhood of Yin's fleet to take their home-system, in-exchange for their own, leaving it to take another turn where i could have brought myself up to 10 through beraucracy, and taking one or more special objectives. However the Yin invasion of 0.0.0 failed, and he kept his home-system, leaving Lizix as the victor.

It was a very fun game, and the Regul Precence seemed to do little to interfere with it, they blended quite well with the other races. The +1 received in combat against them + the 2 trade goods received, are devestating late-game draw backs, and this seemed to balance out their political prowess quite nicely, the only changes that might be called for, was to wxchange Micro Technology for something else, besides that they felt quite balanced in the whole scheme of things, although their ability's did help them much, along with their high trade contracts.

Maybe I come across as naggy now, but it's a risk I deem worth taking. About the order of the to hit versus number of dice. The game designers themselves put the hit requirement first. That's why I keep bringing it up. Check the stats for Mechanized Units (6x2) and you'll see for yourself.

I can, however, understand that you want to say 4x8 because one probably would say "four dice at 8 plus"

Quite a few players want a race to dominate politics, but this leads to a very unbalanced, broken race. You might as well make Assembly card their personal card.

But if you want to see how to make a race really dominate politics, not balanced at all, this is my suggestions.

To make the race awesome at politics you need to decide what you want.

1. Do you want to use politics as an atomic bomb on other players?
2. Do you want the race to use politics for his own personal benefit but not affect the other players?

Lets modify XXcha

For 1.
XXcha may as an action, spend a strategy counter and present a political card. XXcha may take his races flag or another player races flag and put it on the political card. That player gains the benefits or disaster that happens on the card for the remainder of the round. Any player may spend a strategy counter to cancel the political card.

XXcha can use Political cards like Action cards and strategy counters are the sabotages for these political cards.

For 2.
XXcha may spend a strategy counter, during status to ignore 1 law for the next round.

So XXcha is more of a renegade race, choosing when he wishes to obey laws or not obey laws.

XXcha may spend a strategy counter to "also" may himself the "elected" player, sharing the elected player status with another player.

XXcha has no problem making another player the elected player because XXcha is going to share the prize with him.

XXcha may spend a strategy counter during Assembly, and present his own political card and put his races flag on it. For the remainder of the round, XXcha gets the benefit of this political card.

If the players will not elect XXcha to have the good stuff, XXcha will elect himself for at least for the remainder of the round.

These racial abilities avoids nerfing other players voting, but can cause tremendous chaos and uncertatinty when XXcha is in the game.

It possibly could be balanced because XXcha is limited to political cards in his hands.

Also, the word "Broken" also comes to mind, especially if XXcha would get real lucky in drawing certain political cards....

But how many political cards can one actually draw in the game?

But if you want a homebrew race with racial abilities to dominate politics, this might be a good way to do it.

But your homebrew race will be very close to being......BROKEN

Shadow

You do realize that all the smileys make us more likely to view you as a troll than to take you at all seriously, right? Not really sure why you're talking about modifying Xxcha anyways.

To Count Jondi

After reading through that...I feel that they're still a little over powered, or at least unreliable. Typically, a race shoudl not be subject to extremes of play. They should not be ridiculously strong in one area and incredibly weak in the other. This results in a race that is either nearly impossible to beat, or if the extreme weakness turns out badly, is no fun to play. A lot of your ideas aren't bad, I kind of see what you're going for. My best advice to you is to avoid the "also" parts, where you somehow make 2 advantages out of one.

For example, your abilities regarding the politics. They win regardless of if they get assembly or not as they get to determine the outcome flat out when using primary, making everyone elses high influence planets absolutely worthless (aside from leadership secondary). Not only this, but they get a free political card if they don't get assembly, and free refresh of up to 6 resources/influence of planets. A politically savy player could royally screw everyone at the board just by using the right political card at the right time. It would pretty much become "Okay, someone at this table has to take assembly so that they don't" Can you imagine what would happen if the card "determine policy" somehow wound up in this player's hands?

While a race's special abilities should definitely define their play style, it should not force every single other player at the table to change theirs.

I think its going to be tough to find a happy medium of drawbacks, without either going to far or doing to little as it concerns a race that has the ability to ignore the influence and voting of other players on political cards. Its just too strong.

Also I think you should really consider the advice already given which is "Don't create a race that does something better than a race that is already in the game". What your basically doing with an ability here is replacing the Xxcha as a race, so in a sense I think shadows post about the Xxcha is kind of fitting, because it would make more sense to change the Xxcha than create a race that completetly dilioutes its abilities.

That said if you want to make a strong political card driven race, concentrate less on trying to avoid a interesting mechanic like voting and more on the powers of political cards themselves.

For example instead create two linked abilities that give the player an edge in the votes rather than ignoring it.

example just off the top of my head.

Pay 1 strategy allocation token as an action to draw a political card.

When voting your political cards count as 1 vote.

This gives the race two things, one a way to stall, which plays a part in voting and impacts the activites of other players when this player is in control of the political card and two it strengthens his voting round, but does not make him all powerful ignoring the strategies and tactics of other players. Another words you are probobly going to win a lot of votes, but you aren't 100% in the pilots chair from the start of the game.

I use smiley's because this forum software does not handle bold letters, underlines or quotes very well.

When you do a homebrew race, it is better to start with one of the original races and modify the race from there.

One does not.......reinvent the wheel, one modifies the wheel. It will save you alot of time.

If you take an original race and just modify the racial traits, then the trade contracts, leaders, and starting fleet will probably be right and only need a little modification.

BigKahuna & Shadow

When you say that i am " replacing the Xxcha as a race" I completely disagree with you, the Xxcha are based more heavily around diplomacy and defensive aggression. The discarding of political cards by paying strategy allocation is the only effect directly involving assembly that they have.

I also disagree with the don't make your own, modify the current ones way of thinking, this completely takes the point of creating your own unique race, since doing that will mostly give you cheap copies of the current races rather than an original one. Yes one does not reinvent the wheel, but one invents cars, one invents trains, Even though the wheel has been invented, it's applications and perameters may be expanded apon. And even if im "re-inventing the wheel" as you would say, perhaps i enjoy it, and the jorney is just as, if not more important than the destination of having the race complete.

There is nothing wrong with your ideas of abilities for a race around political cards, but that's the thing. They're your're ideas. Not mine, and again if i would completely follow you're advice, than the race would stop being my idea, and become yours.

If you Read my previous post, you would know that i tested the race to success. They did not automaticly control the political phase, although they had a clear advantage. Even though planets close to his home system boasted of great influence, He would still have been out-voted if 2 or more players voting against him during the assembly

And Finally, i feel you are giving de-constructive criticismm as you advise seems to lean toward the complete re-writing of the race, and the insertions of your own ideas, rather than to expand, modify, or balance my ideas.

To Browoodstock

That the Regul Win when assembly is activated was the intention, as every one of their positive abilities revolve around it, although is might see what you mean.

I don't see the problem with pushing your opponent's to choose assembly, there are always situations from almost every race that would push another race to take a particular strategy card, Well it's a constant rather than a situational.... it's a good point

could you clarify, or give me an example of how i make two advantages out of one?.

The test proved successful, and i lean towards testing them again with minor changes, and some word clarifications.

the "2 advantages with 1 rule" example I gave above was their ability to use the secondary of politics without a strategy counter as well as gaining a political card. Remember, political cards can be spent as TG, so:

With Assembly this is up to 7 resources/influence every turn for free if the situation arises.

With Assembly II this is a planet refreshed and the secondary of buearocracy for free with assembly II. You're gaining the secondary of 2 strategy cards for free here!

The number 3 secondary is used by people almost every turn, so that's almost like saying "The regul gain 1 extra command counter each turn." Consider that this is a powerful enough ability that it's one of only 2 racials that Federation of Sol gets.

Also, not having to spend a strategy counter for assembly is a VERY powerful ability even without the extra political card. If you look at the current races (I know, we're trying to create entirely new ones) the only races that can use a secondary for free regularly are the winnu and hacan. For the winnu, that particular secondary STILL requires them to pay resources to use, and for the hacan they might not even be able to use it depending on the rules being used (I'm assuming almost no one uses core rules anymore). When they can, it's just to break a trade agreement and 1 TG.

The immense benefits of the assembly strategy is balanced out by the fact that it is situational (Must have planets exhausted to even use it effectively). With the regul, you have a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't on two different levels. See the 2 scenarios below

1. Someone doesn't take assembly, and you force a law upon the galaxy.

2. Someone does take assembly and

a. They use it right off the bat before any planets are exhausted, forcing them to contend with your extremely high vote count (which they might have to anyways if you have the one racial tech). With assembly II, you still get the secondary of Buerocracy for free. This also removes the ability of other players to effectively use the secondary.

b. They use it after you've exhausted to avoid facing votes, only to give you massive amounts of resources and/or influence for free on top of the action card and/or political card.

The problem with forcing your opponents to take assembly is that you're ALWAYS forcing them to take it. You're right, there are situations where it's a knuckleheaded move to not keep a particular card from someone else...but it's never 100% of the time. It's very difficult making a race revolve around a strategy card, at the momment there are only 3:

Jol-Nar and Xxcha rely on someone else taking the card in question because they want it, rather than because they are forced to take it. Jol-Nar must still pay resources to milk the most out of their ability, and Xxcha's is very situational

Hacan benefit whether or not they take trade, but they don't gain any more additional benefit from it than any other race when they are the ones to take it.

The benefits you've given dominate the number 3 card with little to no cost to yourself. Racial abilities with immense benefits come with a cost typically, which, while your race does have weaknesses, they are not related directly to the benefits you've given.

The guidelines I use when trying to create a race is to look at other races and determine whether or not the benefit I've given is of the same magnitude. Not necesarily the same ability (we're trying to avoid that) but really, look at everything. Their starting home system, their trade agreements, their starting techs, their starting fleets, everything has to be accounted for.

Count Jondi said:

Well its just advice m8 you can take it or leave it, the whole point of the forums is to discuss ideas and you have put yours up for debate by posting it.

But if I was a player in your group I would insist the Xxcha are pulled. I wouldn't want to play them in a game with this race.