Hey everyone. After borrowing a friend's core game and playing a few times, I bought the core game and Exodus expansion for myself. We had five people, two of them new, playing with the core game and the CFB three times in one day. By the second game, someone noticed that it was better for the humans to leave one basestar beside galactica than to actually destroy it, since cylon ship activations would no longer trigger anything on the CFB. Without any CAC in the crisis deck, the space around the ship was pretty much empty for most of the jumps. On the third game, the revealed Cylon couldn't do enough from the CFB to be a threat, ship-wise. From the boards, it sounds like this does happen a bit. Also, it's weird having the humans know where the cylon ships are coming in.

There are a couple of workarounds that I can think of, and I'd like your thoughts on them on their own or in combination:

1) Player-override-able auto-random-mapping of the cylon fleet onto the Galactica board. While no revealed Cylons exist, Cylon ships in each sector would jump around Galactica using one more die roll. So, while all players can see how many Cylon ships are coming, there is still some mystery as to where they might wind up, which seems more in the spirit of the game. (Otherwise it's as if humans are scouting the cylon forces...) When a revealed Cylon player exists, each sector could be deployed as normal, or rolled for a random placement.

2) What if the Basestar Bridge choice about placing basestars or raiders allowed the revealed Cylon player to RECALL a basestar or up to three raiders from the human fleet? This only mitigates the toying around when a Cylon is revealed. It may prevent the humans from ignoring cylon ship activations some of the time, but since it takes half a Cylon action it may not be as overwhelming to the humans as the next option:

3) What if Crisis Card cylon ship activations ALWAYS triggered the CFB? Thematically, more ships are being prepared to jump in, especially since a lone basestar or raider has found the human fleet. This doesn't require a revealed Cylon to work. Gameplay-wise, is that too overwhelming?

4) Has anyone tried mixing in some to all of the CAC in addition to the CFB? How has that worked out for you?

I want pilots to be fighting a bunch of Cylons, not herding a couple of them.

Thanks in advance for your help!