Skip to Content
 

Galactic Battlecruisers

13 replies [Last post]
tikey
tikey's picture
Offline
Joined: 03/31/2017
Galactic Battlecruisers
GBC - Reference cards
GBC - Prototype

This is the game I've been working on for a while. It's my first attempt at board game design so I don't expect it to be great but I'm quite pleased with it.

Galactic Battlecruisers is a game of capital spaceship combat.
The objective is to disable the enemy ship or at least cause the maximum amount of damage before running out of energy.

Each player gets a ship that’s divided into six subsystems, and a hand of six “energy” cards. During play they use the energy to perform different actions like advancing, rotating, attacking, launch a torpedo or activate shields. Each of those actions have a energy cost.
Each subsystem can withstand two hits, once it receives a second point of damage it’s considered destroyed.
A player achieves victory once he destroys three of the six subsystems or causes seven points of damage overall.
Besides being used for issuing orders cards have a value attached to them that’s used to resolve an attack. The attacking player after declaring his action chooses one of his cards and places it face down. The defending player can use one card from his hand or the card that’s on top of the deck in order to defend. The card with the highest value is successful (in case of a tie the result favours the attacker).
Cards also have special abilities tied to them, so a card might allow a player to destroy a torpedo or to perform a “jump” and relocate his ship to another part of the board.
Right now I’m balancing abilities with the card value. The idea is that in order to use one of the most dramatic abilities you’re sacrificing a high value card that could be used to cause a sure hit. So the game becomes an exercise in using the cards wisely.

I don’t know how original this is, I looked at the boardgamegeek database and looked into several games, from Star Wars armada to Battlefleet Gothic and even some old stuff like Leviathan and there was lots of good ideas but I found most of those to be quite complex, so overall I aimed to develop a combat game that was simple and with as little bookkeeping as possible.

Turn example:
It’s blue player’s turn, so he picks up two cards from the deck and puts them into his hand. He doesn’t have any high value card, so he uses one of low value to rotate the ship one angle. Now the front gun is aimed at one of the opponent’s sectors that’s unshielded. So Blue calls in an attack but Red uses one of his tactic cards that allows him to use another system shield to defend from this attack.
Blue picks his highest value card and puts it face down on the board. Red doesn’t want to spend the few cards he has in his hand so he tries his luck and picks the card on top of the deck. The cards are revealed. Red got a good card, a four. Blue picked a three but the front gun has a +1 to attack so he ends up with four. Since a tie favours the attacker Red has to put on a damage pip on the system. If it were a normal defence the shield should stay in its place but since it was used because of a tactic card it specifies that it should be removed whether the attack succeeds or fails, so Red removes the shield pip too.
Blue decides that he doesn’t want to spend more cards so he finishes his turn.

I'm attaching an artsy photo of the prototype and an image of the reference card which if I made it well it should be self explanatory even if it's in spanish. The main picture is a mock up of the full game.

ssm
ssm's picture
Offline
Joined: 04/06/2017
Thought I posted here

Thought I posted here before.
I like it. I like the prototype. The posts on the ships lend a Battleship appeal.

I think it could also be expanded later. Floating mines, or get close and hook them & board them. kicking off a small battle of another type.

Adam Leamey
Offline
Joined: 02/23/2017
Seems interesting looking

Seems interesting looking forward to seeing more have you started playtesting?

tikey
tikey's picture
Offline
Joined: 03/31/2017
I've ran a few playtests but

I've ran a few playtests but certainly not enough.
I've still got to see if I can get torpedoes to be fun and usefull. Floating mines seems like a great idea and they would make the board more interesting. And boarding could work well, maybe a high risk - high reward manouvre.
I've got ideas about adding more ship types to allow 2vs2 and 2vs1 play and maybe bonus objectives but for now I want to really nail the core mechanics. I have to playest a lot, but sadly I don't have much time and neither do my friends so it's going slow.

larienna
larienna's picture
Offline
Joined: 07/28/2008
It reminds me of "Conquest at

It reminds me of "Conquest at Kismet" + Star Fleet battles

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/181197/conquest-kismet

Except kismet has no board, only cards, but it could be a good source of inspiration. As for star fleet battles it is a very complex and convoluted game, but since you just manage 1 ship, you could allow yourself to manage certain details.

It seems you place damage marker on ships. Another option is to have a ship blue print and put the marker. There is much more limitations when placed on the ship, but the opposing player can clearly see where are the hits. (Especially since pieces are getting moved and rotated.)

entwater
Offline
Joined: 10/12/2013
I really like the look of the

I really like the look of the cards. Seem very informative without being cluttered. Big fan of picture over text!!

How long do you expect a game to last? What are the six subsystems?

tikey
tikey's picture
Offline
Joined: 03/31/2017
larienna wrote:It reminds me

larienna wrote:
It reminds me of "Conquest at Kismet" + Star Fleet battles

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/181197/conquest-kismet

Except kismet has no board, only cards, but it could be a good source of inspiration. As for star fleet battles it is a very complex and convoluted game, but since you just manage 1 ship, you could allow yourself to manage certain details.

That's great, thanks for the heads up. I've checked a few videos and review and it has some very interesting mechanics (I loved the way cooldowns work) and I can see that game and mine come form a similar place. So again thanks for mentioning it.

larienna wrote:
It seems you place damage marker on ships. Another option is to have a ship blue print and put the marker. There is much more limitations when placed on the ship, but the opposing player can clearly see where are the hits. (Especially since pieces are getting moved and rotated.)

I tried the board and I found that since the ships keep rotating it was hard to keep track of which system was in sight and people kept getting confused, making an attack on the wrong system.
It a more complex piece but I like how it looks.

entwater wrote:
I really like the look of the cards. Seem very informative without being cluttered. Big fan of picture over text!!

How long do you expect a game to last? What are the six subsystems?

Thanks! I'm still new at this so I don't know how to manage game times. From my latest playtest a game can last around 45 minutes. But I haven't played it enough to verify it.

Each ship has six subsystems:
•Weapons control
•Shields
•Communications
•Engineering
•Engines
•Torpedo control

I wanted to include a penalty for getting a subsystem destroyed but I didn't want to be absolutely crippling, so I came up with the idea that if your Engine subsystem is destroyed you can't play tactics associated with that subsystem, but you can still use the cards for orders like moving or attacking.

While most subsystems functions are quite obvious tactic cards from Engineering are focused on repairs and armour while communications are focus on effects on cards like making the opponent discard or canceling another tactic card.

As soon as I get the rules translated I'll post them here.

tikey
tikey's picture
Offline
Joined: 03/31/2017
Rules

Mines were such a good idea that was the final piece that I needed to improve the Torpedo system.
I've been slowly balancing some cards and testing a few changes in the mechanics.
Also I've finally finished this version's preliminary rulebook!
I'd love if you could give me feedback on it. I'm not looking at proofreading or a in depth view yet as there is stuff that's likely to change but I'm interested in knowing if it's clear enough on the rules and the structure.
It was funny how many times I realized that I didn't explain some basic concept.

Anyway, here it is: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzfbiUKkw0_lZVZ3YWJfYThHZWc

Thank you all for your feedback and ideas.

Rick L
Rick L's picture
Offline
Joined: 08/22/2016
Looking pretty good so far!

Looking pretty good so far! I've only glanced over it, since I'm doing a fair bit of rule reading on some games that have piqued my interest. I'm also working on some touch ups to my own game rules, so hopefully I'll have some better feedback later this week.

But the page layouts look nice, and the game pieces are awesome! Are they 3D printed?

tikey
tikey's picture
Offline
Joined: 03/31/2017
Thanks for taking a

Thanks for taking a look!
Everything on the manual is a 3D rendering but I'm using 3D printed pieces for physical playtest.

BHFuturist
BHFuturist's picture
Offline
Joined: 11/01/2008
Looks Great

I love a good sci-fi game, but what you have here is looking very good and I am interested in seeing more about it as you develop it.

I love the idea of capitol starships going head to head!

When I first saw it I thought of Battleship Galaxies only done well! But after a closer look I see that you have a lot more interesting things going on.

Mostly I just wanted to say that I like it and hope you are successful in bringing this game to market someday.

@BHFuturist

tikey
tikey's picture
Offline
Joined: 03/31/2017
BHFuturist wrote:I love a

BHFuturist wrote:
I love a good sci-fi game, but what you have here is looking very good and I am interested in seeing more about it as you develop it.

I love the idea of capitol starships going head to head!

When I first saw it I thought of Battleship Galaxies only done well! But after a closer look I see that you have a lot more interesting things going on.

Mostly I just wanted to say that I like it and hope you are successful in bringing this game to market someday.

@BHFuturist

Wow, thanks! That's high praise.

I'm slowly improving and polishing it. There are a few different things I want to try and add.
Right now I'm toying with the idea of adding "profiles" that players select at the beggining of the game that gives them certain bonifications and penalizations along with some special abilities.
Something like more energy for attacks but reduced range as an agressive profile.
I think it could improve the game for people once they're familiar with the core game.

tikey
tikey's picture
Offline
Joined: 03/31/2017
Small update: I've done

Small update: I've done several fixes and I've balanced some of the cards. This is as far as I can get on a solo playtest routine.
I've finished the current version of the rules: both spread and single page versions.
(single page can be printed at home in A4 paper to make a booklet).

I guess I'm at the point that I can print a decent version of the game, so I'll do that and I'll run a few playtests.

There are only two things I want to check out:
First is the addition of a ruler to measure weapon range and line of sight. The very first version of the game used a ruler and it was a bit cumbersome but this is a very different game from the one I've started with so maybe it works better now.
The other is adjusting Torpedoes to see if they're ok right now or if they need a bit more of a buff.

Also I've made a Tabletopia version in case anyone is interested enough in give it a try. You can access from here

Rick L
Rick L's picture
Offline
Joined: 08/22/2016
Tabletopia looking good!

I checked it out briefly on Tabletopia but wasn't able to spend much time messing around with it. But looks great - I like how you altered the shape of the ships a bit to fit the 4 hexes - helps keep the position clear for all parts of the ship.

Hopefully I can get back to it soon & try it out a bit more!

Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut