A straightforward pick up and deliver game. Another well written game entry, Just one read through and I had a good handle on this game. Sometimes it takes a few! Central board, Check, Route planning. Certainly you need to plan ahead with your fuel resources so you can make it out and back again, check. Deduction, I see what is going on with the 3 types of resources, so you can figure out which asteroids are more likely to have what you are looking for, if you see what has been found and sold already. But the deduction aspect seems weak to me, still subject to the whims of the tile distribution, and the information you are tracking isn't super intuitive, it would be hard to remember the distributions without a cheat sheet.

I like that you can turn energon into fuel on the fly, gives you some room for clever plays perhaps.Nice effort on this one.

Decent idea. I feel like you could have done a better job of tying things to the contest goals, although I guess I could see where it ties in. I’m not exactly sure what to say, I don’t know what was wrong, but this game just grab me and make me go “Ooh! This would be really great to play.” Although that might just be my taste in games that are this economic.

First, I really like the game conceptually, but I think that the math needs work.

Specifically, money/fuel needs to be tighter – there needs to be more resources per asteroid, fewer fuel cells and/or either fewer actions per turn or more things need to count as one of your actions – as it is right now, turn order is VERY IMPORTANT (see NOTE 1).

Also, there needs to be clarification/rework of some of the rules governing ships (see NOTE 2).

Also, the energite rule needs to be clarified (see NOTE 3)

NOTE 1 – The rules do not say definitively whether you can spend $1 for more fuel during the Exploration phase of your turn. Even assuming you can’t, you can see the top 3 resources of EVERY asteroid in the first round, and what set the other two are from (spending all 10 fuel - $1 per asteroid to look at the top 3 resource cards). With some quick pencil/paper work (or in your head if you’re good enough), you should have approximately an 85% chance of knowing EXACTLY what all of the hidden resources are, and which asteroids to send your 2 ships to. Given this, you should then DEFINITELY buy water-diamond ships (you don’t even have to pass – 9/10 are water or diamond, and 6/10 are water – you are GUARANTEED to get a water ship if you want one).

The rules do not limit how many of a resource each ship can carry, and so, since you get 20 fuel points and 1) no asteroid is more than 2 legs away, and 2) mining an entire asteroid takes only 6 fuel points (5 resources – 2 for the first 3, 2 for the next 1 and 2 for the last one – 2+2+2=6), EACH PLAYER can mine 2 complete asteroids and get back to base in 2 turns EVERY TIME!!

Turn 1 – Actions 1,2,3 listed below: 1) take 1 ship out, at most 2 fuel (2 fuel total) 2) take other ship out, at most 2 fuel (4 fuel total) 3) mine one of the asteroids completely, 6 fuel (10 fuel total) Turn 2 – Actions 1,2,3 listed below: 1) mine the other asteroid completely, 6 fuel (16 fuel total) 2) bring one ship back, at most 2 fuel (18 fuel total) 3) bring the other ship back (20 fuel total)

This means (and the rules don’t say that you CAN’T do this, but they don’t say that you CAN, either) that unless a player goes to the same asteroid that you are going to and pulls the same trick, in a 5-player game, the game is over in 2 rounds, with no one ever losing a ship or needing the energite conversion rule, because no one will run out of fuel.

This presents a very serious game-breaking dynamic fault – WHOEVER GOES FIRST WILL BE ABLE TO MAXIMIZE THEIR RESOURCE ACQUISITION. This means that among 5 highly skilled players, the turn order will mirror the ending rank of the players (whoever goes 1st will win, whoever goes 2nd will place 2nd, 3rd will place 3rd, etc…). Since there is only $425 available to be won, at a MAXIMUM of $100 for two asteroids if they’re ALL WATER, the chance that each player will be able to calculate a maximum available per asteroid is extremely high (since you have about an 85% chance of predicting exactly what the hidden resources are).

Now, if you are able to mine the same asteroid as someone else, getting there first is KEY, and you don’t want to have a ship at an asteroid without mining it.
You can instead amend your turns to be two rounds of: 1) take 1 ship out, at most 2 fuel (2 fuel total) 2) mine one of the asteroids completely, 6 fuel (8 fuel total) 3) bring the other ship back, at most 2 fuel (10 fuel total)

The only difference in the second situation is that before you send your second ship out, you will have come back to Base and cashed out your resources.
Not only does this NEGATE THE NEED FOR 2 SHIPS (except to open your options, but a single 3-resource ship should do well enough in most combinations), but you now have an extra Exploration phase to look at all of the remaining asteroids, and can balance based upon what everyone else has earned (assuming they’ve done the same thing as you – mining one asteroid and returning) how much you should spend looking in order to guarantee a win. And if they haven’t done the same thing, you might want to go and mine what they’re mining out from under them. But either way, you will NEVER need to convert energite to fuel, making it less valuable than the other resources since it is less plentiful than iron, but pays out just as little.

***This could be fixed through any or a combination of the following: 1) allow multiple players to mine the same planet (and if this is already a rule, then simply state it clearly in the rule book) 2) allow more things to be counted as an action, such as each leg traveled, cashing in resources, energite-to-fuel conversion, etc… 3) alter the routes on the gameboard to allow spaces BETWEEN Base and asteroids that count as 1 fuel spent, or so that certain asteroids are 3 asteroids away from Base, not just 1 or 2 4) allow players to block other players’ travel to force ships to run out of fuel or not return to base (essentially hampering their monetary gain) by not allowing players to occupy the same space 5) put more resources on each asteroid 6) increase the cost to look at resources and/or mine them 7) changing the payout matrix for energite, or making certain things cost more fuel.

NOTE 2 – Some “What if”s about the Hiring Ships part…

What if, in a 2-player game, all 4 $10 ships are flipped first in the Hiring Ships phase? Players will have two ships available after the first buy (with each player buying a $10 ship and flipping in a new $10 ship), but each ship available will cost $10, and each player will be left with $5.

What if, in a 5-player game, 3 of the players wish to buy two $5 ships to save some money for mining? Then, there are only 4 $10 ships left for the remaining 2 players - $40 in expense for 2 players with $30 total between them – 2 players will end up 1 ship short. This could happen if the ship deck is $5, $5, $5, $10, $10, $10, $5, $5, $5, $10 – the first 3 players buy up the $5 ships, and there are 2 $10 ships flipped up for BOTH the 4th and 5th players – they won’t even have an option to buy a $5 ship. Then, when it gets around to them, if the other 3 players again buy the cheap ships, there are 2 $10 ships left at the end, AGAIN giving them no option for a $5 ship. What if, in a 5 player game, no one wants the ships available to them? If no one wants those two ships, and all players pass, what is the recourse for gameplay? In a 5-player game, EVERY ship must be purchased before gameplay can begin.

In less than a 5-player game, some ships will never be available to the game. This means that in a 2-player game, it is possible for players to get to a situation where both players pass because none of the ships flipped allow IRON as a cargo. (if w-d, w-e, d-e, then w-d-e are flipped). Both players SHOULD pass at this point, because being the player that bought a second non-iron-cargo ship would bar you from mining 40% of the resources in the game, and the other player (who would be mathematically guaranteed an iron-cargo ship, since there would be visibility on 5 ships, but only 4 of the total ships are non-iron-cargo) would be able to collect on all of your mining expense where you mined iron, but couldn’t collect it. It seems that the only recourse for this would be for that player to run one of their ships out of fuel out in the asteroid belt in order to sacrifice it so they could spend $5 (or possibly $10) on another ship, essentially wasting their initial ship investment.
At this point, the other player would be at least 1 turn and $5 ahead, simply through the chance, though rare, that no iron-cargo ships were flipped in the first 4.

***This could be fixed through any or a combination of the following: 1) allowing visibility on 3 ships per turn instead of 2, 2) allowing both ships up for sale to be shuffled back into the deck of ships if all players pass, only forcing the last 2 players to buy the last 2 ships 3) bidding on the ships with a minimum cost 4) calculating a matrix that weighs the net value of resources against how difficult they are to find and giving each ship a different scaled monetary value (give each player $50, and make w-d-e ships $45, and i-e ships $10 for example, making it VERY possible for players to use strategy to keep money around for later phases, but have to weigh the potential for getting 3 resources per ship against what other ship they could buy) 5) not requiring each player to end up with 2 ships before gameplay begins 6) allowing more different types of ship, including 1-resource ships (combined with revision 4, this could make starting with a disadvantage a given, and force players to guide their strategy toward WHICH weakness they wanted to start with)

NOTE 3 – If you can convert energite to fuel (without spending an action), which you can use to mine (spending as much fuel as you want in one mining action), can you convert energite you just mined into fuel to keep mining? If so, you could mine any asteroid on a single turn for a potential GAIN in fuel if the asteroid contains any energite at all. This is not only likely, since there is more energite than there are asteroids, but as shown above, is mathematically PROVEN to be able to be found given that the minimum number of resources not visible to you on your first phase is 10, and there are 15 energite in the game. In all likelihood, unless your turn is 3rd or later, there will be 3 asteroids containing energite that you could get to on your first turn (since NO asteroid is more than 2 legs away from Base). There will DEFINITELY be 2 that you could get to (given that, assuming that ALL 10 of the hidden resources are energite, there are 3 possible resources per asteroid that you have looked at and there are 5 energite NOT hidden).

Also, the rules do not state whether your ship must be able to hold energite as cargo if you are to convert it to fuel. If you must, then the above situation for non-iron-cargo ships will apply to non-energite-cargo ships. If you are able to convert energite mid-mining, people will not want to be without an energite-cargo ship because their ships will not be able to mine an entire asteroid in a single turn for a gain in fuel, which will be a major disadvantage.

I did give your entry points, but not as many as I could have – It was lacking in the route planning, as none of the asteroids are far enough away to make route planning necessary (since you can reach any of them, mine it completely and return to base without impact on your fuel) and no player can block you from this (since the rules do not state as such). It was also lacking in the deduction, as you are given enough fuel to gain a nearly complete picture of what resources are on each asteroid during the Exploration phase.

I do, however, think that this game has potential, and as this contest is just a prelim for a game’s design, I think further development of this game’s concept wouldn’t be a waste of time.

#2 Asteroid Mining - (2 Votes) I thought this one was one of the two that captured the heart of the GDS along with providing an interesting theme. The three phases idea is interesting. The hiring ships phases may need need reworking for smaller player games, as they will hold out for the larger capacity ships. This might be mediated by allowing players to enter into phase 3 before other players have finished. Phase 3 seems interesting as players will need to make some decisions about saving or spending Energite. I wonder if some type of market mechanic might make this phase even more interesting (eg, the first water delivered gets paid $15, the second gets $20, the third $25, then back to $15 on the fourth delivery). This might add a new tension based on timing the deliveries. Great entry.