Is there still a need for space opera board games?

Have you played Tiny Epic Galaxies?
I think that perfectly hits the sweet spot you're talking about.

In my opinion a theme is somewhat arbitrary when your going with something as broad as "space opera." A lot of people will say there are too many, but it really comes down to "Are there too many GREAT space opera games."

No one would say there are too many great games, irregardless of what the theme is.

Like I've read often here- make a good game, and if a certain theme inspires you to keep at it, by all means make a game with that theme.

We're going on KS around September with this: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/209641/warpgate

It's sort of a very streamlined 4X. 2 player game takes 30-60 minutes. 4 players is around 90. Card-based action selection, card-based combat, randomized board, plastic ships, yada-yada.

I must admit, it proved to be a major headache to design this one. I've started working on the initial concept like 4 years ago.
I had to re-build it from scratch 8 times at least just the last year. Maybe more, I've lost count.

I've learned that the main issue is to keep that 4X vibe after all the streamlining. Twilight Imperium, being the hot mess of mechanisms that it is, somehow still wins you over with its 'epicness', provided you have a spare weekend to play it. Most of my earlier versions were either quick, but felt dry, or became too bloated. So i had to keep trying.

TLDR: this genre is a bitch to get right. So no wonder that people keep trying to dethrone TI and Eclipse. While many have tried it, few succeeded.

We're gonna demo the latest version at UKGE. So I guess I`ll know if I've succeeded or not in a week from now.

Since I do all design and testing in Tabletopia where I`m present anyway, I normally don't start writing rules until it's time for blind testing.

I'll probably have time to finish writing them after I`m done finalizing the prototype. So ask me again around Tuesday :)

The core mechanism is card-based action selection.
Each player has a hand of four cards drawn from a deck of 12, with two mutually exclusive actions on each card. The trick is that the "power" of the action depends on the turn when you use it.

For example, if you play your "Build" action on turn 2, you will be able to build 2 ships. If you instead use the same action on turn 4, you will be able to build 4 ships, but that means that some other action will have to be "weaker".

There are 4 turns in a round with each player playing one card each turn. Once everyone have played 4 cards, the round ends, everybody re-draw up to 4 cards and continue. It's really really quick, though each turn is a puzzle of optimizing your card play.

Haven't seen attack of the giants before. Probably should play it before I wrap up development on Warpgate, thanks! I've sort of build up to this idea from the round sequence of my previous game.

There's certain similarity in a sense that the later you use an action, the better it gets, but there are a few differences.
- there's no "rest" action in Warp-gate. You play 4 cards, then redraw the new 4.
- which means that you don't get all your cards in hand every round. So sometimes you have to make the best you can with what you've got. Likewise, your opponent doesn't know what you can and can't do this round.
- the choice is made a bit more complex because of the multiple actions on the same card as opposed to "do both" in Giants.

"Space Opera" is so broad it can include management games like Twilight Imperium, and to a lesser extent Eclipse, and actual wargames. (Those two are what I call "fake wargames".)

Most 4X is about management more than about warfare and glory. I wouldn't even call those games Space Opera, personally.

Part 1:

This stuck out to me. I've read a number of your posts (appreciating your contributions to the community) and could try to extrapolate some answers,but will ask--in terms of skills even tangentially relevant--what are:
1. Your natural gifts?
2. Things you can do with some effort?
3. Things you can do passably with a great deal of effort?
4. Things with such diminishing returns (including learning) that it's better to let someone else handle them?

Part 2:
Thinking of the posts on the definition of space opera, you mentioned social,
and yes, you also mentioned solo, but my reading is that you're thinking--especially given your focus on components--about the question, "What are the players doing, i.e. physically on the board?" instead of "Who are the players and what are they doing in the story of the game?" It seems you're consciously avoiding that second question, and if so, why and what does the answer to that "why" tell you?

Part 3:
Take the answers to part one and two, hold them in your head as you think of atmospheres (acknowledgement to Lewpuls for providing the term in his book) that you want to emulate or stay away from. That may provide some guidance

Or, do you want the game to celebrate its universality (i.e. think generic) making it work almost as an abstract game, avoiding any whiff of even the most tactical RPG? (I've played a number of prototypes where I find the more crude components work better because I can fill in the atmosphere in my head.)

Hope this helps.

(O.k., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap87QgZKTNw and the lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/paulmccartney/sillylovesongs.html)

I have about a dozen designs in mind... I find writing in Text Documents or Physical Notebooks to be very useful. When I discover a "valuable" component to a design, I write it down.

My notes are cryptic and mostly chicken scratch... So useless to anyone else but myself. Usually once I "re-read" my notes, the design comes back into focus and I am refreshed with the design in question.

But I don't write extensive rules - just pieces here and there about important aspects of the game.

I normally work on the design first - before moving on to a prototype. If the ideas "crystallize" well then I may move into prototype territory... But this happens not very often unless I am working on TWHW or some expansion for it... That seems to go much faster since it's pieces of a greater whole.

Cheers!

This sounds like you want to maintain each faction's reputation at the system level. That sounds fantastic for a computer game, but requires a lot of counters for a board game.

This reputation can interact with the events as well. For example, the Rebellion card could be seeking to join one of the other factions. Something like "Arrange all factions from highest to lowest in order of reputation in this system, excluding the faction that currently rules the system, breaking ties by using turn order. Roll one die. On 1-2, rebels seek to join the highest-reputation faction; on 3-4, the second-highest faction; on 5, the third-highest faction; on 6, the system seeks independence." Note that some factions might not be player-controlled (pirates, other independent systems, etc.).

I always jot down my rules as they develop as notes to myself.

Later, I organize them.

Then I see if other people can understand them and rewrite for clarity and brevity.

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Who else has tried to make a space game use 3 dimensions?

I ended up digital for this reason more than hidden information and paperwork contributed to that choice - the only way I could see to represent a true multilevel board was a top down view using flip between transparent overlays and level summaries to the side --- or reduce the scope and have fleet markers hold "what vertical layer am I on" tags (vs reduced scope and make players keep asking each other what level is that on and checking paperwork to answer which was used in my ancient 1978 game).

Point is, multilayered chess is just a gimmick. It doesn't improve the original game, while making it less accessible.

You can toy around with real 3D as a gimmick, but i doubt that one can make a good space-themed game around it.