Arkopolis Engines - Crew Member Roles

From Mojo's early prototypes all characters are going to have 5 base skills that are the same, some people will be better at some things, and so on. Those skills are:
Navigation: used operate the Engine and other vessels
Invention: used to build or scrap normal items and equipment for resources
Engineering: Is used to attach items and artefacts to Engine Hard point or to operate certain items
Scavenging: Used to locate items in the ruins of cities
Combat: Used to operate items and for combat

But roles also have 2 specials to make them a little different. The original idea with the special skils is that they were going to be used against the Grounders, but as Grounders have been removed from the base game, we're now trying to figure out how to utilize those skills differently. I want to keep them in, in case we return Grounders to the game, whether later in the design or as a possible expansion. I'm opening this up to all who wish to come up with ideas as to how these can be used in game with forcing the player to do this. These skills are:
Command:
Diplomacy:
Scholarship
Targeting: Used to fire an Engine’s ranged weapons (this skill is already sorted)
Espionage/Assassination: Needs a new name - Stealth/CovertOps has been mentioned already.

What I want is ideas for this skills. How could they be used in game.

Currently, players are given 4 base roles at the start of the game - Navigator, Gearsmith, Armsman, + Engineer. After this, players then have a chance, one at a time to choose extra roles until they have a crew of 8. Choices would be Navigator, Gearsmith, Armsman, Engineer, Professor, Scavenger, + any others that I've missed.

My question with this is that since players can freely choose the last four roles, depending on how they play the game how many of each role to we have. Theoretically players could all take an extra 4 Armsman and some probably will ( I doubt it'd be a great strategy though). Do we have enough roles for 6 players to take 4 of each or limit it. Currently with those roles we would need 24 base roles + 144 extras. Most of which won't get used during a game. That's a lot of cards - well over a hundred that aren't being used.

do we assume that 2 of each is a better number so that we have 24 base roles + 72 extras to choose from. This way players have a much tougher choice and they really need to make their choices count. or even go hard with it and have 1 extra role apiece (24 base + 36 extras).

Actually, as I finished typing that I kinda like the last. It really makes you think what your strategy will be as you can't afford to mess up a pick - you could even scale it to the number of players. Thoughts?

I hadn't thought about a standard deck, but yeah that'll work. No matter the number of players it's easy to create the right numbers. i guess we just need to work out the balance of roles.

The cards get their title based on the most prominent skill of the character, so an armsman have a high weapons skill for example, backed by lesser but still useful abilities in other areas.
I'm not sure what extra skills are needed to be considered a Commando, are Specialists characters with a higher-than-average skill set?

And are there skills in use (can't find the skills list...) that are not matched to a role?

Commandos tend to be pretty good at firing Engine weapons and are the folks you want to use to infiltrate another Engine to steal resources/blueprints/sabotage hard point attachments etc.

Maybe Command and Diplomacy need to be replaced for the time being. Tanner is a new skill that could easily replace one of these two. I think I said in another post (or maybe to Mojo in a PM) that if/when we do go ahead with this and there is the opportunity for an expansion it could be an idea to keep these skills in the game, though they may not have a lot of use in the base game. I have played other board games where this has been the case.

I like the idea of the remainder get place into a Sanctuary to be 'rescued' later in the game. Another option could be to draw 3 extra and once you rescue a character you can then use them as part of your crew. First there, gets first pick - etc.

I think the idea is that you enter the land with a fully crewed Engine, but you aren't the first out into the wilds, so there is a chance for find the sanctuary and rescue someone who has managed to survive, rather than using them to crew your engine.

They're an extra VP value in essence, if you want it.

Just read the various threads on this game, and first I want to say that I would love to play this game, it looks like it will be fun.

Here are my thoughts on the characters:
The variety of characters and skills looks like it might be a little too complex. Could one crew member who maintains the inner workings of the engine just be assumed? I can certainly imagine a Boilerman/Engineer being under orders to simply return to the Ark should his crew get eaten. I would think the engine is more valuable than the crew.

Aside from Combat, could the other skills just reduce the time/resources needed for their related actions? Doing so would allow some of the skills to be binary qualities rather than a skill with another number attached.

For example:
A character with the Scavenger quality could search through an appropriate hex and gain a resource in one turn while a character without the Scavenger quality needs two turns to collect the resource. A character with the Scholar quality can collect blueprints or artificats from an appropriate hex much faster than a character without that quality. Or they could collect more resources in the same time period.

This idea of keyword qualities could be expanded to include combat. Maybe instead of a generic combat rating, characters can have qualities related to specific conflicts. An Armsman might be good at using on-ship weapons, where-as a Commando is good for person vs. person combat, and a Hunter might be good at fighting (and tanning?) critters.

Following this idea a little farther, the player dashboard could include slots for the crew (beyond the first who is not playable as such, really more a part of the engine) and the cards could be the Qualities instead of the characters themselves. Each player could build their own crew by getting a starting hand of Qualities and assigning them to their crew (maybe a max of 3 Quality cards to a crew member?).

Anyway, just letting my thoughts run a bit. Feel free to disregard, use, or riff on whatever you like.

J

I saw the posts with information about choosing the characters and allowing players to customize for different strategies (which I dig), but I was approaching the characters more from a game mechanics angle, trying to figure out exactly how the player will use them during the game.

The idea of simplifying the stats occured to me because keeping track of 6 characters, each with 6 or more stats seemed like a lot to me, given that there are many types of resources to gather and use, plus the engine add-ons, hull integrity, and steam pressure.

I like having multiple crew members with different specialties, and I like having the different phases of the day. How does the player actually assign the characters to tasks on the game board and how are their stats used?

So does each character have a figure or meeple to show what they are doing, or do you use the character card? Can the characters venture onto different hexes than the engine, or can the characters only take actions within the hex currently occupied by their engine?

Based on my reading of other threads for this game, steam is a resource necessary for many basic actions (like movement). Assuming that is correct, requiring a roll to generate steam risks denying a player their choices in a given turn (or phase). I could see that becoming a frustration.

I think it will be clear during the initial playtests whether or not the players have too much to keep track of at a time.

For the games I'm developing I tend to get a central mechanic and a game theme, then I sit down and visualize play: what the players would literally be doing at the table. I say that just to say I am not trying to pick apart the game before you've even played it once, just thinking ahead about the actual play and trying to consider what might cause problems.

This might be the wrong thread for this question, but your previous answer left me wondering, what is the game effect of the phases? Does performing particular actions become easier or harder during the different phases? Do some actions require multiple phases while others only need one? Do the players map out there actions for all of the phases at one time or do they play each phase as a separate turn?

When you say "there are times when you can play 2 crew to the same action slot" does that mean you can assign multiple crew members to the same action, or just that you can assign multiple crew members to different actions during the same phase? In the case of multiple crew members on the same task, what is the benefit?

I assume you put the crew card above the phase they will act in. How do you distinguish what action each crew member is assigned to?

you could send out a professor to do a bit of research - trying to find a blueprint (though after playing Dead Space and collecting a trophy for gathering schematics, I wonder if that is a cooler word than blueprint) you might send out an Armsman to protect the professor if you discover a critter instead.

If you do it in the morning, that's your Armsman out for the whole day, especially if he is not needed with the professor, but is needed in the evening to defend the Engine.

Yeah, while it doesn't look like it, there is a consistant dice mechanic - our trouble is getting to fit into the combat system at the moment. We'll get there though.

This'll all be dependent upon the final combat system - skill vs skill which'd require 2 rolls, skill vs target diff.; equal to or less than skill with +/- modifiers.

This was my initial thought - each stat was the number of d6 rolled, and you needed a number of successes to make a skill check. So to scavenge you would roll the number of dice if you got a success you nabbed that resource, no successes you have an enounter (might luck out and grab a resource anyway), or if you hit 3 succcesses, you get 2 resources etc.

Maybe with custom die this could be a good answer to something I've been working on. Perhaps on the die there is a encounter icon, and however many come up is how many enounter cards are drawn. Maybe 1 enounter icon, 2 success icons, 3 blank to indicate no success.

It does mean lots of dice rolling though, probably the only con to this system.

Yeah, the first is the current idea of the game. Players only take one action in a time period, most of those actions are going to take a long period of time - moving your engine through ruins is going to take a few hours to creep through without serious damage, seeking our resources is going to take hours etc. The second isn't a bad idea though - it does open up a wide range of opportunities for the observant player.

Yeah, my thought on using multiple dice wasn't to inject realism or complexity into the game. I thought rolling 1, 2 , or 3 dice for a skill check would make things simpler and allow for increments of success so that more resources could be generated by an action.

But, going with a skill check system using the stat as a target number, the combat question comes down to whether or not you want attacking to risk a negative outcome. If the attacker's possibilities are successful attack or miss, then the attack only needs to roll their combat to see if they hit the opposing crew member. If the possibility should exist that the attacker can be hurt or removed by his own attack, then the "cowboy" method above would be my vote.

Which opposing crew members can be target for an attack? Does the targeted crew member have to be acting in that Day Phase, or can the attacking player select a crew member still in an opponent's hand? Or can they target crew members who acted in a previous Day Phase?

Of the two methods I mentioned for assigning actions for the Day Phases, I like the one suggested above. That leaves crew members committed to a Day Phase but able to take different actions that players can change if needed.

You could have an item that allows sniping. The reward for attacking will need to be worth the risk of the attack backfiring. Is the consequence of losing the combat the same for the attacker and defender?

Will there be other cards that are assigned to Day Phases other than Crew?

As much as I love a dice pool system, we've got a mechanic that works and unless it fails, which I doubt since it looks like a fairly solid, simple system to use right across the board. Granted combat is where things are complicated.

The concept of sniping is an interesting one. I'd say you'd know that another Engine is nearby, they're not small after all (loved the images Mojo, especially the buzzsaw digger one) and you'd be able fidure out that something large is nearby. It is only 500 meters away after all.

If there is an item, that could allow for a sniper shot - maybe using targeting as the skill to beat, rather than a combat roll, whereas the cowboy shootout situation could result in either being removed from play. We could assume that players outside the safety of their Engines are armed with small caliber arms, nothing spectacular.

For most things you'll need the blueprint/schematic for it and you can't lose that. So for your example, you intended to build a Continuous Saw and played the Blueprint card with your Engineer. During your turn you decide against it and do another action instead. That blueprint card remains on the morning phase until you clear the day and start afresh.

Actually I guess the option could be there to move it to the next phase and play another character to try and build it. You've already taken the blueprint/schematic down to the workshop and it's just sitting there not being used.

I'm tempted to say, that if you play it to a phase, then it is stuck in that phase until the day is cleared, rather than move it to the next day phase and play it then. If everything else follows that rule, it'll simplify what can and can't be done during a phase sequence.

Simply yes. Once you have acquired a schematic you can build from it multiple times. In a phase, you might play an your engineer plus a schematic for a IronSkin suit. During his turn he pays x resources (being the resources) required to build the suit.

To represent the object there will be a card with all the stats/resources gained if scrapped for that card. It will be in a separate deck called the Library. Most Schematics will have multiple copies in the Library. Once the whole day ends, any Schematic cards played during the day get returned to the player's hand.

Once you acquire a schematic, you might not build it straight away, not having the resources or no hard point slots free, etc, so the idea is to keep it secret, until it is built.

So whole items will not be scavenged, only the resources to build them, right? And when schematics are researched does the player draw a random schematic card or can he pick one?

While artifacts can be found there will only be a very limited number in a game as well. While they will confer great benefits to the lucky player/s who find these wondrous items there will be downsides to having these attached to your Engine- such as requiring multiple hard points, requiring a high steam pressure cost, or even multiple characters required to operate.