End Game Mechanic, Too simple/boring?

is it just me or it sounds like a German style board game.

I don't play those games so I would be a bad person
to comment.

Those German games seem to be board games out of
really unusual settings that we hardly see in the USA.

Egyptian cities, Mississippi boat racing, etc.
So even if your Moon beam game isn't the usual
action hero type board game as long as it has
a cool setting like the German games, should help it right?

I'm imagining a desolate cold steel space station floating by the moon
in the darkness of space...
I hope your board is a blend of realistic photos rather than
fantasy art because then we will be expecting to blast aliens
know what I mean?

hope this helps.

Hey Justin,

I think it sounds like a nice basis for a game. I like the fact that you have to choose whether you want to put Moonbeam in your supply, where you can use it to further build up your strengths, or in your crate to score points. That could be a nice, tough decision. I also like the idea of the randomly triggered scoring rounds which award VPs based on crate majorities.

However, I agree with the previous poster that removing Moonbeam from the crate every turn if it has been there for longer than two turns could cause some frustrations. Perhaps a better idea is to remove Moonbeam from the crate after a scoring round, if it has been there for two scoring rounds.

Here's a way you could implement this:
During his turn a player may acquire Moonbeam, and choose it put it either in the "dock" (where it scores points) or in his "factory" (where it can be used to produce more units, or whatever). There's also a "cargoship", which can also hold Moonbeam.

Now, when a scoring round occurs VPs are awarded based on majorities of Moonbeam in the dock and the cargoship. Then, all the Moonbeam is removed from the cargoship, and the Moonbeam from the dock is moved into the cargoship, clearing the dock. This would create a nice delay effect, as Moonbeam put into the dock will score for two rounds, but then will be gone.

I also think the game would benefit from adding another scoring method, to create tension with the VPs for Moonbeam majorities scoring mechanic. I'm sure you can up with somethign clever.

Good luck!

Hello Justin,

Just a though: people could purchase warehouses, and each warehouse could extend a crate's life expectancy(or all crates) by one turn. Thus, a player with one warehouse would see his crates last three turns (2 turns + 1 turn due to warehouse) instead of the two standard turns. The only annoyance I can see with this system is, you need to track which crate has been in play for how many turns. You could have some kind of chart where you move your crates on.

Also, what happen in cases of ties, where two players have the same number of crates ready to be shipped.

Regards,

Jeb

Replace "Ares" by "Arakhis"
Replace "Moonbeans" by "Spice"
and you have ...
Dune 2
(^_^)

If you wish, you could make, like somebody said before, make the game work on both front " the military" and "the economic". I am not sure about the victory point system, my Idea would be either conquer the market or conquer the land. Both method should be as efficient. For example, if a player take military action, another player can cut his price or make some sort of boycott to hinder the other player.

The winner could be come the one who destroy all other player, or if you do not want player illimination, the player who possess more than 51% of the economic, and military ressource. Since we consider that at this point that he wil have enough ressource to conquer everything.

You do not necessarily need to make complex military rules. Use somthing simple like diplomacy or risk since the player has other things to manage than the military.

To increase cooperation, you could allow player to bluild stuff usefull for other players. For example, if a player buy a star port to ship spice ... uh! I mean moonbean, other players can depend of his starport for their exportation. They want this player to stay alive and friendly until they build their own star port. It will make some alliance and dependance between players, increasing diplomatic relation.

Jebbou wrote:

You could have each player start with 2 warehouses and have then as tiles (or some such) wich they place the moonbeam tokens on. At the start of each turn they move the moonbeam tokens to the next warehouse tile in the line. If they buy more warehouses then they just place them on the end (begining or end depending on how you want the addition of more warehouses to influence the moonbeam already in storage) of the line and therefore extend the time moonbeam can be stored.

Materu wrote:

Starports could be part of a teritory in hte game (this encourages military) if you hold a teritory with a starport you can ship more moonbeam each turn for resources (money or such). They could also be used a little like the tardeing ports in "Settlers of Cattan".

Here is a simple rule for the military:
When attacking a teritory players subtract 1 military unit for each enemy military unit the opponent has (both sides do this simultainiously).

Only units in teritories adjacent to the defending teritory can attack.

Players may cooperate to attack a teritory (like diplomacy) and they decide on the spoils of war (who gets what from the teritory and other payments).

It sounds like a good game.