Secrecy in Space: a new game mechanic (I hope)

I like the hidden fleets idea.

What you might consider is having a few different colored decks representing the mass of the ship. So a large transport might be similar mass to a destroyer perhaps. And a probe might likewise have roughly the same mass as a fighter. A fleet of ships could be similar to a bunch of space mines etc...

So now in the game it could be assumed that the players have some sort of long range radar that can show masses of some objects (ie. the deck color and number of cards) but not the specifics.

That would allow you to save on blank cards but were left with the problem of them knowing exactly what your purchasing.

The solution for this could be trying to balance all the ships as much as possible so that every red deck ship is the same resource cost. But with that you will need to balance the utility of each card as well.

Then your opponent only knows you purchased a red card for the red card value. But you could have purchased Space Mines, Fighters, Spy Vessels, Diplomatic Transport, mini cargo ship or whatever. Blue cards could perhaps be carriers, destroyers, troop transports etc etc etc.

I like what has already been posted. It sounds great. As a bonus, you can have different masses of ships move at different speeds.

I'd like to suggest secret mission cards as well. For example, you might have a mission to deliver a few big freighters full of goods to another planet (galaxy, station, etc), but the other player's don't know that. They might think you're moving an armada of capital ships across the board.

One of my space fighting games had a rock-paper-scissors like combat system that worked quite well - capital ships beat cruisers, cruisers beat fighter squadrons, fighter squadrons beat capital ships. I don't know if that does anything for you or not, but I thought I'd mention it.

With the face down thing, you can also add some cool reconnossainse (badly, badly spelled) elements. Long range scanners (an event card) might allow you to peek at another player's fleet or mission cards.

You can also have a 'cloaking device' - such as an event card you put into play instead of a ship... which allows you to replace it with a ship from your hand (tricky, eh?).

Your game mechanic sounds very, very cool.

If you can't spell "reconnaissance", you can go to m-w.com, type "recon" into the dictionary field, and it will tell you the correct spelling. :-) To make it even more confusing, the corresponding verb is "reconnoiter".

To take the "single-cost" concept even further, you could have all cards cost the same, but vary the number of ships on the card. So you could buy a card representing one battleship, or a card representing two cruisers, or a card representing ten fighters, or whatever.

Of course, then you have a problem representing the state of a squadron of fighters half of which have been destroyed. You could use an "all-or-nothing" mechanic, or have replacement cards denoting "5 fighters" or "1 cruiser". Maybe this comes back to the "several stacks of same-cost cards" concept.

I had a space video game design that I wanted to try convert as a board game. The biggest problem was hidden stuff. I posted a thread about it. ( I can't find it )

In my case it was even worst because not only I hide the fleet composition, but also the fleet and troops locations. So that it would be possible to hide a fleet or even an army in an ennemy system or planet. The idea was to be able to play also the rebel tactic where you do not have a fixed location.

Various mechanics have been made so far to hide fleet composition(cards) and target destination(cup with tokens. Else you will have to use a pen and paper. I just took a look at "Stellar Conquest" today, and it requires writing many thing on a piece of paper including a copy of the map where they can write stuff on it. The problem is that it makes your game dependend on paper and might make the game more complex.

By the way, I think "Reconnaissance" was imported from french this is why english speaker are should not be familliar with the spelling.

Good grief, I can! Haven't you ever played Twilight Imperium? Your opponents would go NUTS if you could put a big fleet on the move without anyone knowing where they were going! :)

Seriously that would probably not be a good idea in TI3 (which is already an excellently balanced game) but might be very cool in some other space conquest game, or even in a WWII naval-action game. Any theme where warring nations don't have the technical capability to track a fleet on the move, and would be surprised when one showed up in their own neck of the woods.

I'm not designing wargames these days, but if I weren't I would be seriously tempted to build a game around your hyperspace mechanic, Seth!

This is a cute idea. One potential problem that may pop up on the playability side is the "I have to keep checking my fleets to remember what I have where" problem, which won't exactly be a flaw in the game but could be annoying. Having six different fleets with several ships in each could easily lead to player confusion and forgetfulness, so just something to watch out for.

Another question that will pop up is combat resolution. When combat occurs, does everyone get to see the composition of the combatants' fleets, or do you need to develop a method to resolve combat such that only the two involved players get to see the fight?

The foundational question is of course why secrecy is needed in the first place, and what it adds to the overall experience. I can see potential but also lots of potential problems. There's definitely a concern that the game will feel like "multi-player solitaire", with each player just kind of bumping around in the dark until they hit something. It's nice in games like Axis and Allies to be able to see combats resolved even when you're not involved in them. Taking that away will definitely lose something intangible.

Here's a different direction you could go in: Allow a technology upgrade called a "cloaking device", which has the same effect as what you're describing, but it only applies to one of your fleets, and it only works during travel; once you initiate combat, you have to "uncloak". This will have some of the same effects but the overall scope will be more limited so the game as a whole could "work" better.

By all means try out the idea and let us know how it goes; there have been some great ideas suggested how to make it work. I just worry that there will be playability issues that are harder to nail down in advance but that may give problems in live playtesting.

Good luck!

-Jeff

Seems to me the equal-priced, or groups of equal-priced, ship cards idea should work fine. If you're willing to allow some random restrictions on ship purchases, the "hunting through the deck for the ship I want" problem could be solved by giving each player a hand of, maybe, 10 ship cards that are currently available. The player can buy a ship from his hand, and then draw a card to replace it.

As for dummy cards v. keeping track of fleets behind a screen: I think the latter approach is better. Of course, it reduces the number of cards required, and reduces the amount of clutter in the fleet boxes. But it also allows players to keep the ship cards face up, making it much easier to keep track of what's in which fleet.

And now on the topic of full-blown hidden movement ...

My brother once came up with a method for handling hidden movement of a small number of units (such as fleets). We never used it in a game, but it might be interesting to try in a context like the one being discussed here.

To implement this idea, the board is divided into some reasonably large number of regions, each with a unique label. Next, there is a code book that maps these region labels into arbitrary (but still unique) codes. The book might have several pages, each defining a different mapping. This codebook is laid out with the region labels in a systematic order (e.g. if the region labels are numbers, then each page of the codebook would list them in simple numeric order). This makes it easy to look up the code for a given region. But to find the region for a given code, you'd have to hunt all over the whole page.

Players "move" their units by keeping track of the labels for the regions they occupy. This is done off-board and out of sight of the other players. At an appropriate stage in each game turn, a page of the codebook is chosen at random, and everyone looks up the codes for the regions their units occupy. These codes are then displayed to the other players in some fashion. Any two units that have the same code are in the same region and can interact (reconnoiter, fight, etc.). But if nobody bumps into a given unit of mine, other players will have a hard time finding out where it is, because all they know is the coded region label.

'Course, there's a danger that somebody might just happen to glance at the part of the code page that contains the code for my unit, or that some dogged cheater might take the time to hunt through the code page, or some freakishly intelligent player might memorize the whole code book. Some of this could be mitigated by limiting players' access to the book (the book might be passed around while players encode their positions, then closed and set aside before anybody reveals their codes), but only playtesting can reveal whether these are serious problems.

Just thought I'd throw this idea into the soup here and see if anybody likes the taste.

-- Matt

Just a quick idea. Would screens and stand up cards in holders (like LOTR:Confrontation) work? This would cut down on having to check your fleets constantly.

You read my mind.

Someone has a Palantir.

This is a great solution for each player keeping track of his own fleets and will keep things nice and clean without a shield. Also keeps valuable table space clean :D (just watch for damage of cards with some of those card holders - use the softer plastic if you can find them over the hard stuff that'll scrape your cards)

Re: everyone seeing who has what wouldn't be such a big deal if you have a mechanic allowing you to reshield and reorganize fleets eventually. I like watching other players fight - and it gives you an opportunity to check what is what, what is damaged, etc. etc. who you as player 3 or 4 should be targetting next.

Here's one thought though:

The biggest problem that some in my game group have is that they hate games that rely on memory - probably because that's not their strongest suit. Having all these decoys, chasing ships that aren't there, and going into battle blind (without some assurance of a reasonable chance of victory) would frustrate them to the point of giving up on the game. While some players will embrace this hidden stuff, it will also alienate some players who imbibe alot ;) or just weren't good at history.

You need to balance the known with the unknown. And to this end, this is why I like the "mass of ships" idea or the "all ships of this colour cost the same and there's only 4-5 possibilities" - it gives you somewhat grainy resolution information. Enough to know that if I have a fleet of 5 heavies including 1 transport and he has 3 heavies and 2 medium mass ships, I should be able to win the battle, even if all his ships are warships (but judging on his flight vector, he's probably trying to colonize Magna Prime...so one of those heavies will be unarmed...).

You want players to know enough that they can make somewhat informed decisions on their actions and to promote activity/interaction (combat) between players as opposed to escalation and timidity. After all, what's the point of trying to keep everything secret if no one ever attacks each other? That's no fun :D

Games aren't always like life. We need to compress the scale, both in time and distance in order to enjoy it in one night's session (unless you want this to be some epic scale game that lasts over several nights which would make my wife yell at me for not cleaning off the dining table). In reality, yeah, I'd like all my ships to be cloaked a la Romulus, but in a game, having everything unknown could make for one long, boring game with little interplayer activity.

So, to make a long post short, you may eventually need to balance game mechanics with fun. I think the core concept is great, you just need to keep some things in mind. IMO and from experience playing with gamers of all ages and types for years.

a) a lot of memorization does not make for fun
b) a lot of randomness does not make for fun
c) a lot of activity for no payoff does not make for fun
d) a lot of blindness does not make for fun
e) a lot of down-time between your turn and another player's turn does not make for fun
f) a lot of complexity that adds nothing to game play does not make for fun

Of course, this all depends what you're going for, of course - and who you want this game to appeal to...sci-fi geeks? family gamers? war gamers? ages 8 +? Is this game hard core or beer-and-pretzels?

What about a kind of Scrabble like holder, but for cards instead?

In my normal work, I've used them before, for elderly people with arthritis, visual impairments, etc.

http://www.rehabmart.com/onehand.asp

Suggestions? (I previously mentioned tankers and I dont know how they'd fit into this just yet...)Put the card down, count the distance, put the markers on the card, put the fleet on the card, then remove some markers each turn. When the markers are gone, put the fleet back on the board and reveal/discard the card. The problem here is that players can count the markers and guess where you're headed. I don't have an answer for that right off.

Wouldn't it be much smoother to add markers onto the destination cards instead of removing them? That way the other players won't have a clue if you're coming out from hyper space this turn or in five turns.

To keep track of where the jump was made from you can place a jump counter with the fleet's number on it and keep it there until the fleet comes back into normal space. One could then allow other players to send a probe or scout ship to the jump point to determine the jump vector and so on.