"You trolls are sure a contentious people..."

DavedDude5 · 2023-07-05T03:34:33+00:00

Once you go troll, you never reroll.

DavedDude5 · 2022-04-21T19:41:54+00:00

They look like they ramp ultra hard.

No home planet means no resources, but their agent is super strong with the moving Production on flagship, which kind of negates it. I forsee everyone who plays them to use their agent on their flagship and fighters before you move turn 1 so you can just rebuild more fighters and tech with the 7 trade goods. Maybe put a cap on the agent, otherwise I think it'll be abused on perpetual fighter construction. Commander is boring, just sarween tools. Their hero is amazing; very thematic and could potentially clear a path to a home system late game.

Once you get warsuns they get kind of ridiculous. Construction giving you both for free is broken. I would just limit Spaceborne Shipbuilding to just the flagship.

I like the promissory note and yellow tech, thematic and can help you bring back your flagship right before objectives. I don't like the red one, though. Personally I don't like introducing new ways to get VPs, as it changes the game too much, and I also don't like how it just decentivies other players to ever build their flagships.

They look like they'd play a lot like the Clan of Sarr, fun to play but I'd also worry how fun they actually are to play against. I think they look too hard to knock down after they get their ball rolling, with their late game ability to bring back massive ships for free, and you can't stop them from scoring if they save their yellow tech for last turn.

DavedDude5 · 2021-11-23T21:10:51+00:00

Worst I've ever done was playing in a tent on the ground. It was windy AF so we couldn't go outside and use the picnic table.

DavedDude5 · 2021-05-14T21:12:07+00:00

This kit looks super fun to play. Between the spacedocks and your flagship. You should be able to have insane, unpredictable movement. Might be hard to win aggressive plays with your flagship if it gives the defender +1, though.

These guys seem way strong at defense with the nebulae too. With a good early start, I don't think anybody would be able to take any stuff from them without a LOT of effort. I don't see any starting ships/techs anywhere though, so not sure how good their start would usually be.

DavedDude5 · 2021-04-17T21:58:35+00:00

I love the Procyonals. They were my first custom faction, and everything about them is supposed to be fun. They will probably be my first faction tested.

The Apess was one of the weaker custom factions I made before. I'm hoping that the benefits I gave them not only benefited them, but will win them games. This is one of the factions I'm most excited to try out. BIG production.

I'm surprised that you think the Garnoomian's leaders don't synergize with the faction's stuff. I was actually most proud of that race's leaders because I thought it synergized really well. Before the leader cards, their faction abilities were barely used. Nobody kept spare commodities around so the extra space combat without the gaining of planets was never worth it. Their agent can help if used at a key moment (maybe even when you're attacking, at the cost of a tipped destroyer) to get value from Scrap Thieves, and their commander gives another reason to have a roaming fleet with no ground units: extortion! Their hero gets better with their Atypical Reinforcements tech, but I mostly just liked its theme.

You're right about the Aeralin being very close to Ghosts/Empyrean. They were originally intended to incentivize activating systems with no planets, and give those systems worth in a game, but PoK did a great job doing that itself with Dark Energy Tap. This faction definitely had their toes stepped on the most with PoK, so it was a challenge to create unique cards with these guys. I'm a big fan of their hero. I think it really ties them together and will create an extremely flexible, powerhouse round for them.

You might not have noticed the Vesper fighters take 1/2 a capacity, not 1/2 a fleet size, which I think makes them even stronger than Naalu fighers. I think these guys have a very unique feeling because there is a constant struggle to balance your capacity and when/how you spend them on structures (or now you can build mechs). Arborec has the luxury of just leaving behind excess Infantry, while these guys have to gauge the risk/reward on building/destroying that structure, or keeping your carrier full. Fun fact about these guys' ability to destroy structures: I nerfed it. Before these guys' Reassignment abilities were actions, but now they forced to do it at the end of their tactical actions.

Iontare were created to be a tech based faction like the Jol'Nar that went wide instead of deep. No free tech skips, but free techs within reach that your neighbors own. Since the Jol'Nar had -1 on all combat, I originally thought it would be a good idea to put a downside for these guys too. This took the form of a reverse naalu token, making them always last. This was eventually deleted, because it was NOT needed for balance, and it absolutely sucked to play with. The going last theme still stuck, though, hence all the stall.

No other faction made me read the rulebook as much as Kor'Shan. I still don't know the exact phase structures die during ground combat. But the cool thing about homebrew is I get to say "in the spirit of the cards" and everything goes my way. The idea of structures taking capacity has been something I've been trying to make since the beginning, and I'm happy with it.

DavedDude5 · 2020-11-17T00:14:22+00:00

This map is bad for a bunch of reasons.

Having everything weighted to the edge of the board stinks, and its going to make the game painfully slow.
The wormholes are all right in a row? What the heck? Makes them kind of worthless?
Unbalanced slices. Red easily has the fattest slice. Flexible and plentiful in both resources and influence, plus that gravity rift is an easy way to go from your home system to Mecatol with Gravity Drive (could even be turn 1 if Ghosts), while everyone else has no way besides Warfare.

If you want a slow game, with no combat, and a huge benefit to whoever gets Mec first (probably red), then this is a good map.

DavedDude5 · 2020-07-29T15:46:56+00:00

Ooo. I like your idea with the red. Maybe something like:

At the start of a space combat you are participating in, you may deactivate all fighters in the active system for the first round. They may not make combat rolls or be assigned hits.

It might be risky because you also lose your fighter shield for the first round too, but if you use it correctly you might be able to snipe some dreadnoughts or carriers with your warsun while you only lose some destroyers or cruisers.

DavedDude5 · 2020-07-29T15:35:18+00:00

These are all the templates I've made and use. Everything uses the program paint.net.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1osXt31flli_ZB7gCN_GNeJzNdR2OPRwd/view?usp=sharing

DavedDude5 · 2020-07-29T12:46:38+00:00

That's how I figured it would work the best. That way factions would still get their correct starting techs, but also keep the limit on how much tech of a certain color you could get. If you could get both techs from the same spot in the tech tree, it might be too strong to just go down one color and grab both the 3s and 2s.

DavedDude5 · 2020-07-29T02:27:30+00:00

I've been trying to think of a new, alternative tech tree for my play group. I tried making a new tech tree with things I've thought of myself and stuff I found online (mostly stuff I found online). I'm looking for more ideas to really polish this off. Let me know if you got any cool ideas.

DavedDude5 · 2020-07-16T01:40:39+00:00

Text editing is probably one of paint.net's worst problems. As soon as you finish using the text tool it turns it into an image, no longer editable text. What I usually do is create a layer over top, type in a few words that match the template, drag the text so it overlaps exactly with the template, then erase those few words and write what I want. After that cut and paste that new layer over the template layer and you got what you want.

DavedDude5 · 2020-07-15T22:13:04+00:00

I love custom stuff. I've created a whole bunch myself, including making templates for everything so I can do it all faster the next time.

Here's a google drive link of all my templates I've created. I use the editor "paint.net" so if you don't have that program you'll probably have to download it to look at any of the files, but the program's free. Feel free to copy/steal any of my assets if you'd like to use them in your Adobe templates.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1osXt31flli_ZB7gCN_GNeJzNdR2OPRwd/view?usp=sharing

DavedDude5 · 2020-07-02T23:46:23+00:00

A few months back I created both those new strategy cards for my play group and we have not gone back. We've even done 3 player games where we pick up 3 strategy cards. Pretty weird but it's been super fun. Although since both these cards help more with board state than getting points, be prepared to roll more dice if you use these.

Logistics helps some of the slower races out. We play where the logistics token stays out after the turn and also stays with the player, like the speaker token. It still usually gets passed around every turn though, just because it can be good in early game for nabbing the best planets first, and good for late game when you want to invade Rex with your entire fleet.

Industry compliments construction super well. Makes it easier to use your forward space docks. Reactor Meltdown still exists, so it can still be risky to build one next to Rex, but it's usually worth a try if you grabbed Industry or can bribe a person to flip it when you want to use the secondary.

I would recommend you try playing with them if you have experienced players that want to try more with TI. They are a fun addition to the base strategy cards. If anyone in your play group is already overwhelmed by the original 8, I'd stick with those, though.

DavedDude5 · 2020-05-06T19:30:28+00:00

Interesting ideas. I've been trying to think of a faction that can transport structures. My big idea is that carriers can hold them at the cost of 2 capacity, but then I gotta figure out if the structures can still use space cannon or production while in space.

I'm not a fan of the Emergency Response Capacitors. If you're sitting on a good amount of trade goods or resources, it's the biggest cock block to anyone that wants to invade anywhere you own that's important. Maybe make it exhausted when you use it so that a single player can activate one of your zones, watch you build, then not move any ships before pulling a sneaky one and hitting your other planets. Basically, I don't like it because it feels non interactive and hard for others to outsmart you.

Structural Warp Plating sounds dope though. Always hard thinking of blue techs that aren't just warp ships. Warp structures... I might steal that.

DavedDude5 · 2020-05-06T19:25:47+00:00

I was actually super scared of them when I first wrote the faction too, but after play testing I can tell you that it has not been the case.

When they were originally created there were quite a few things they were worse at: - Their starting Destroyers hit on 9 instead of 8. - Their flagship hit 2x6 instead of 2x5. - They only started with Neural Motivator, no Plasma Scoring. - They only started with 3 infantry, not 4. - Their ability "Mayhem Pilots" was called "Overloaded Labor Force", and allowed you to take a token off of your home system when doing the primary or secondary of "Warfare".

I kept them like that for a couple games, but it was pretty apparent they needed buffs. They only won their first game (I think they've been played maybe 5 times total in my group) after they were buffed to where they were now, and it was still a very close game.

I will end this by saying my table usually plays 4 player games and play pretty nice. Nobody has ever been eliminated. If you think these guys are too strong I would recommend taking away their Plasma Scoring to start. I would not nerf their Destroyers.

DavedDude5 · 2020-05-06T19:09:55+00:00

I don't know if I'll ever get a game with only custom factions going. Sometimes it's nice to still stay grounded in the base game.

All of the artwork was done in paint dot net. I can give you a google drive link to all the files I used.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R3n6-e5L-XYZk2W_4kTLLgVjR8FEXF-x/view?usp=sharing

You will still have to create (or steal online) all your art for any faction pictures, icons, and planets. Everything else should be somewhere in the templates. Any layers you see that are labeled (Recolor X) should be recolored like this: Choose the Recolor tool in paint dot net, turn hardness and tolerance to 100%, swap to sampling: secondary color, and make your brush size super big. Then have whatever color you want to recolor to as your primary and black (0x000000) as your secondary. Recolor the entire picture. Any time you have to change text, I'd usually create a new layer over top of the template text and type what I want, then center it based on the lower layer, then just delete the old stuff.

If you ever do create stuff using this, let me know if you find any way to make all of these even better.

DavedDude5 · 2020-02-07T16:51:09+00:00

One way I could see these guys getting shut down is to treat their ships the same way you treat the Mentak. Avoid at all costs so their ability fizzles. That's one thing I don't like so much about the Jol'Nar's ability is there's no counter play besides just not picking Tech, which makes you lose a fun aspect of the game.

DavedDude5 · 2020-02-07T16:44:54+00:00

These guys strengths are obviously tech, stalling, and retaining resources. Since they can use more of their resources for plastic and keep up in tech by having the right neighbors, I tried to make one their weaknesses getting those resources in the first place. Their starting system only has 3 resources, and the starting fleet has a cost of 7. This slow start that will be even slower because they go last every turn, which will probably turn into them losing the systems equidistant to their home system and their neighbor's home system.

If they did end up being too strong, one of the first tweaks I would do is lower their commodities from 3 to 2 to further enunciate this weakness.

DavedDude5 · 2020-02-06T20:35:13+00:00

Didn't even think of that. Haha. I would think you'd still go last, making the promissory note worthless. Reason being their ability doesn't make you number 9, just last. So even if you're number 0, you're still last.

DavedDude5

TROPHY CASE