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Space 4x Board Design Ideas

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Thu, 12/31/2015 - 11:01
DarkDream
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I have been working on a 4x space empire type of board game and have come to the point of designing the board.

A part of the board will have columns for different regions of space. For example, the "Core" region column will contain spaces for the players' home planets. The next column to the left will be the "Colony" region which will contain spaces for nearest set of unexplored planets/systems and so on. I am thinking of maybe four to five regions.

Simply think of it as a five by five table where each slot in a table can hold a planet/system. The players' starting planets will all be in the right most column.

The part of the design I am having trouble working with is what should each slot hold. Right now I have poker sized planet cards and poker sized alien race cards (a planet discovered can hold an alien race). A planet card has a bunch of stats and areas on the card to hold resource cubes and population markers.

The reason I have planet and alien cards (rather than just having a planet and a race printed on the board) is to allow for variability on what planets and races show up.

My initial thinking was that each slot in the area table could hold a planet card and an alien card (positioned one above the other). However, a board which delineated the area to put two cards for each system would be quite big. Plus some planets maybe empty of aliens (thus no alien card to place) and thus there would be wasted board space. Also another consideration is need to place some resource cubes next to the planet on the main board so some extra space will be needed for that.

In my game, a player can take over another planet (including its alien race) and be able to control the resource and population tokens on that card.

Now in many games, when a player gains something they usually will place that in front of them. I am considering whether or not the owning player should be able to manipulate the planet from the main board or from in front of them.

If the player does take the planet card, for example, something will need to replace it on the main board to indicate where the planet is.

So here are three different designs of the board I see:

(1) All planet cards and alien cards are on the main board.

This takes up a lot of space, but if player's are forced to manipulate the planet on the main board then there is no need for duplicate picture planet cards to indicate where a planet is located once its planet card is located.

(2) Only planet cards are on the main board.

Under this design, any alien race discovered will be placed off of the board to the side of it. An alien emblem (specified on the alien card) will need to be placed on the planet card to indicate it is owned by that race.

This design takes up less board space (no space for the aliens), but it is not as clear at a glance what race is from what planet.

Again, if player's are forced to manipulate the planet on the main board then there is no need for duplicate picture planet cards to indicate where a planet is located once its planet card is located.

(3) Planet and alien cards are off the main board where a matching "picture" planet card will indicate the location of the planet on the main board.

Under this design, every time a planet is discovered (by flipping over a card to reveal a picture planet card), a matching planet card or small planet board with all the information (which will need to be looked for) is then placed to the side of the board along with the race which is placed next to it.

If the player owns it, they place this planet card and alien race in front of them.

This option should take up the same amount of space as 2, but better lends itself for players to take things in front of them. The downside, is that it is less evident at a glance which are neutral and unowned planets.

What do you guys think of these three options? Any other alternative ideas?

By the way, happy New Year!

Thanks,

DarkDream

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Thu, 12/31/2015 - 12:24
#1
ElKobold
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My first question would be -

My first question would be - what are you trying to achieve?
What kind of game in the sense of scope? How many players? How complex? How long is the planned play time? Competitive or coop? Military focused or economy focused?

What will be different, compared to all the other 4X games out there?
From there, you can start thinking about the mechanics.

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Thu, 12/31/2015 - 13:03
#2
DarkDream
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Design Goals

The general idea of the game can be seen here:

http://www.bgdf.com/forum/game-creation/new-game-ideas/idea-galatic-repu...

The game is intended to be 2-5 players and playing time 2-3 hours at the most. As a 4x game, it will be reasonably complex but the goal is to be around the same level of Eclipse.

This will be a semi-cooperative type of game where players will compete against each other for prestige in the galactic Senate but will work together to stave off of attacks and galactic events like super novas, grey goo and so on.

The main focus will center around the political/cooperative element with an emphasis around economy. For an idea of the economy aspect, I have posted here before on a mechanic for it:

http://www.bgdf.com/forum/game-creation/mechanics/space-4x-world-develop...

What I think will be different from other 4x type games is the cooperative aspect of running an empire together but also competing at the same time. Most 4x is just straight competition.

What I am trying to achieve in this post, is the best way to design a board that allows for the exploration of planets -- either to colonize, or use diplomatic means for an intelligent race to join the galactic senate (ability of players to gain a planet for use).

Hopefully, that provides some context.

Right now I am not so much concerned about the mechanics but the overall board layout and what seems to make sense with using cards for planets and aliens -- essentially the usability and ergonomics of the board.

All the best,

DarkDream

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Thu, 12/31/2015 - 15:37
#3
ElKobold
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Oh, now I remember. The

Oh, now I remember. The resource management part at least. Didn't realize it's the same game, sorry.

Well, if you're not going to focus on a player-vs-player combat, then having a set in stone map isn't that important, i think.

You could have each player managing their cards separately. Which will probably be more convenient.
And you could use the planet types you've mentioned (homeworld/colony/outer rim) to determine distances if you need to.

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Sun, 01/03/2016 - 11:08
#4
lewpuls
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Minor suggestion: as most

Minor suggestion: as most (westerners) are accustomed to reading left to right, have the home systems on the left of the board, not the right.

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Mon, 01/11/2016 - 06:24
#5
doug2001cz
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Hi! Does this game require a

Hi! Does this game require a board at all? Can't you get a way with just a 5x5 grid of Planet cards -and maybe place the race cards below, partially exposed, to save space?

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Mon, 01/11/2016 - 16:34
#6
killerkilroy
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Idea for the board

Looks like a neat idea from what I've read. Since you're wanting a variable configuration each game, and you're aiming for a higher level of complexity already, I think maybe using a token or marker might work.

Placed face down originally, when a player reaches the space they flip the token. It will indicate whether there is nothing, a planet, or a planet with an alien race (possible to have planetless aliens?). Then you simply draw the top card of the the corresponding decks and put them into play.

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Mon, 01/11/2016 - 18:46
#7
DarkDream
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Good Suggestions

doug2001cz wrote:
Hi! Does this game require a board at all? Can't you get a way with just a 5x5 grid of Planet cards -and maybe place the race cards below, partially exposed, to save space?

This is a good point. In theory, it does not need a board, but it would be nice to have sections on the board showing where the cards are discarded, the draw pile and so on. Plus, of course, you can have nice galaxy art. If I can not keep the board down to a reasonable size, this is definitely an option.

killerkilroy wrote:
Placed face down originally, when a player reaches the space they flip the token. It will indicate whether there is nothing, a planet, or a planet with an alien race (possible to have planetless aliens?). Then you simply draw the top card of the the corresponding decks and put them into play.

Very good suggestion. If I went with the third option in my original post (use essentially a picture/marker card on the main board with a larger matching card off board with all the stats associated with that planet), I would not need a card at all but could use a token as per the suggestion. This obviously would reduce the board size significantly.

I was thinking of having event cards which would be played above each column of where the planet markers/tokens/cards would go to indicate this card effects this column (or in game terms, the region of the galaxy). I would want a card as it would explain how it effects the game (for example, how an "asteroid storm" effects the planets in that region). Due to this card taking up space for the column width, to use smaller tokens might reduce the height of the board spaces but not the width.

Taking all the input in, I do think option (3) in my original post is the best.

What I failed to mention, is that a planet card has a lot of information on it and will need to have markers on it to mark resources and so on.

In order to reduce the main board size, which would largely consist of a table of 25 spaces for planet cards, is to use mini size cards (or even tokens) with the planet's name and a few stats printed on them. These mini cards would be placed on the board to mark the location where the planet resides.

By reducing the cards' size, that significantly reduces the board size.

There will be a set of matching planet cards (to be placed off of the board) but these cards are larger so as to contain more information and space for markers.

The advantage of having these larger set of cards off the board is that the cards can be quite large (I am thinking 80mm x 120mm) without impacting the board size.

The same thing applies with the alien cards in that they are off board.

What I was thinking is that planets with no alien races would have the large planet cards to the left of the board. For planets with alien races, one would place the alien race card on the right side of the board and the large planet card under it. Any large planet card under an alien race card, indicates ownership.

If you wanted at a glance on the main board to see what alien race owned what planets, one could place a marker with a unique symbol on the small planet card on the board. This unique symbol marker would match one of the symbols on an alien card. Thus the alien species that has that marker symbol on a planet is the owner.

However, this does not seem to be strictly needed due to the information is already next to the board as described.

How does this refinement of my third initial option sound?

--DarkDream

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Mon, 01/11/2016 - 19:41
#8
killerkilroy
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Failed update

I realized that my suggestion was very similar to your #3 after I reread the post. I tried to edit it, but I guess it didn't go through.

Another idea I had was to use cards or full sized tiles to represent planets, with all the applicable info. Again, placed face down, but instead of drawing a planet and an alien, you just flip it over to reveal the planet you discovered (and place a marker to indicate ownership). You could determine the presence of alien races through a dice roll, or simply seed the alien-races deck with "no life found" cards and draw a card for every planet you encounter.

I like the idea of using a unique marker to represent each alien race, so you can easily tell where they are located. If the races are tied to a planet permanently, there's not really need to have a card floating around as well as a marker and a planet. Maybe just a reference sheet/player aid that tells what each race does once it's assigned to a planet.

I think anything you can do to consolidate information and make it more quickly accessible to players is going to be appreciated. For me, having to cross reference cards at the side of the play-space with planets on a grid with alien races in a 3rd place would be overload, especially if trying to make tactical decisions regarding multiple locations at once. With the ideas above, a player can see who owns each planet, what resources etc. it has, and what alien race is there.

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Tue, 01/12/2016 - 11:05
#9
DarkDream
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Some Great Input

killerkilroy wrote:
Another idea I had was to use cards or full sized tiles to represent planets, with all the applicable info. Again, placed face down, but instead of drawing a planet and an alien, you just flip it over to reveal the planet you discovered (and place a marker to indicate ownership). You could determine the presence of alien races through a dice roll, or simply seed the alien-races deck with "no life found" cards and draw a card for every planet you encounter.

Hi killerkiroy. Thanks for the comment. Yes. I was struggling with whether to have the full sized cards with all the information on them on the board itself. That was really option (2) in my original post. You make the good point that it is simpler in that you simply turn it the card over and place a marker for ownership without having an extra smaller planet marker card/tile as in option (3). The reason I went with option (3) was that to have the full size card meant a larger board, plus I also wanted a player who, for example, conquers the planet able to take the planet card in front of them without having to place a marker on the main board as to where that planet they just took is located.

Yes. I would have two separate decks: a planet deck and an alien deck. The planet deck could be seeded with no planets or an asteroid belt. The planet card would indicate either an alien or nothing (if the planet is too barren then no creature) and like you mentioned the alien deck can be seeded with "no life" and I was thinking insentient species (like man-eating plants).

killerkilroy wrote:
I like the idea of using a unique marker to represent each alien race, so you can easily tell where they are located. If the races are tied to a planet permanently, there's not really need to have a card floating around as well as a marker and a planet. Maybe just a reference sheet/player aid that tells what each race does once it's assigned to a planet.

I do think you are right that if you have just one planet card on the board then it definitely makes sense to use an alien marker on it to denote ownership.

If I am understanding you correctly, you have a concern of an alien card floating around. I think the point you are making is that it can be eliminated to reduce clutter with a reference sheet or something.

There again it may be difficult as the alien card has quite a bit of information and needs some space to place a counter.

In the game, players can negotiate with aliens and thus gain control over them which would result in the player essentially gaining control of the alien and its planet. To reflect this, the player can take the alien and its associated planet card in front of him.

killerkilroy wrote:
I think anything you can do to consolidate information and make it more quickly accessible to players is going to be appreciated. For me, having to cross reference cards at the side of the play-space with planets on a grid with alien races in a 3rd place would be overload, especially if trying to make tactical decisions regarding multiple locations at once. With the ideas above, a player can see who owns each planet, what resources etc. it has, and what alien race is there.

I do think you make a very important point. It is definitely better to avoid cross referencing and so on to make it quickly accessible. Ideally, placing all information linked together in one place is the ultimate solution. And this is the essential problem of designing the board: try to have all the information together in one place but have a bigger board or make a smaller board which necessitates an amount of cross referencing and thus less "user friendly."

Regardless if I go with option (3) in my original post, having the alien species marker of ownership on the planet will definitely need to be done. As maybe a compromise, I can still have two separate planet cards but the marker planet card on the board can summarize the planet so avoiding to look at the main planet card which would only be used for an individual player manipulation and marker placing (does not apply to all players). Similarly, maybe with the alien emblem counter placed on the planet card on the board to indicate ownership, the counter can have some additional icons printed on it indicating the alien's behaviour (hostile, pacifistic, technologically advanced and so on). Again, this should reduce unnecessary cross referencing.

This way you can have all the information gathered in one place albeit summarized and still have a reasonably sized board while still allowing for markers to placed on planets and alien cards which would be only cross referenced only when needed.

I think at this stage it is just best to try a mock up of the board and see how it goes.

Some excellent feedback. Thanks a lot.

--DarkDream

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Thu, 01/14/2016 - 12:02
#10
Mike_Strickland
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Sounds interesting

I really like this idea, and I like your approach of keeping planets/systems in different columns on the board. I think Doug2001cz has a good suggestion though with regard to possibly not needing the board, and just laying out the cards in a column. You could possibly incorporate something like this and create a micro 4X game, which would be cool.

Anyway, how about each alien card has about 1/2 inch at the top which is a solid color (representing the color of that race), and when an alien race discovers or controls a planet, they place their alien card underneath the planet card, with the top 1/2 inch part showing. This way players could look across the table and clearly see the color underneath the planet and know which race controls it.

Also, resource cubes could be placed directly to the right of the planet cards, and if you're going to employ a board, maybe have a small column (about 10mm-15mm wide) to the right of each planet/system column where the resource cubes would go. Or you could always place the resource cubes on the planet cards themselves.

Just some thoughts. Anyway, sounds like a game I'd be interested in, so I'd love to learn more about it and maybe having a premise would be helpful too.

Cheers,

Mike

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