Space Theme Card Game

[r0cknes]

Galaxy Conquering Game

Cards
Races: Each has a racial advantage, name, Home world, turn order, and base income. Each player will have one Race for the whole of the game.

Planets: There is one Home world for each race + X number of worlds ready to be conquered. Each world has one of the following effects: Immediate income, Permanent Income, Draw card, or victory points. Some rare planets may have more than one effect. When a Home World is controlled by a different race than it original owner a special bonus will occur. Many Planets will also have a settling requirements based on three categories: Military, Science, and Diplomacy.

Ships: Each ship will have a name, race, cost, Hull Integrity, and values in the categories of Military, Science, and Diplomacy. Some rare ships may even give advantages like planets do. (There will be more neutral ships than race ships.)
Strategies: These cards include: Attachments, which enhance the ship or planet of which it is attached; Actions, which can change the outcome of a battle; and events, which can change the game in general. Some of these cards may require a cost or the use of a ship.

Tokens

Damage: These are placed on ships which have received damage during a conflict.

Currency: These are used to purchase various cards within the game. They may be collected and spent as the player seems fit.

Getting Started
1. Give each player a random race card and the Home World to corresponds with that race.
2. Deal 5 strategy cards to each player.
3. Give 3 currencies to each player.
4. Resolve any game start effects of races.
5. For ease of play you may reorder your seating to match the turn order.
6. Place the Planet, Ship, and Strategies on the table face down in separate decks.
7. Flip one planet and place it next to the planet deck.
8. Flip one ship card for every player in the game, and place it next to the ship deck.

Turns
Each Player may choose to do one of the following actions. Once that action is completed and any other resulting actions then that player?s turn is over. A player may also use any amount of strategies at appropriate times during his turn.

1. Discover
To discover a planet you must draw a card from the planet deck and place it face up next to the deck. There may not be any more discovered planets than there are players. If there is no change with the discovered planets in 3 turns then all undiscovered decks may be reshuffled into the planet deck. All planets in the discovered zone are attainable by any player.

2. Build
To Build a Ship a player may chose one of the face-up ships in the blueprint zone. The player must pay the cost that is shown on the card. If a player chooses to purchase a ship that is not a neutral or ship of his race, then he may pay 1.5 times the cost of the card rounded down.

Ex: If a ship of the human race is purchased by an alien race with a cost of 3 on the card, then the alien race would need to build it for 4. If the same player chose a human ship with the cost of 5, then they would have to pay 7 to build it.
Once a ship is build it is immediately place face up in front of the player and is ready to be used. Once a ship is removed from the blueprint zone a new ship will take its place from the top of the blueprint deck.
(Play testing will determine if a reshuffle mechanism is required for the ship deck.)

3. Strategize
If a player chooses to Strategize he may draw 2 strategy cards from the strategy deck and place them in his hand.

4. Conquer
This phase will produce 90% of player interaction during the game.
The current player may choose one of the discovered planets or one of the planets controlled by another player. In order to conquer a planet a player must meet or exceed the requirements on the planet card. In order to reach this goal a player must exhaust (turn a ship card 90 degrees) ships with the appropriate skills to conquer the planet.

Ex.  A planet requires 3 Science to conquer it. The player may chose to exhaust 1 ship that has 2 Military and 1 Science, and another ship with 3 Science.
Then, based on turn order, each player has the option to try to stop a player from conquering a planet. Only one player may try to hinder. To do this he may exhaust any number of ships. The Military skills of each exhausted card are added together. The conquering player may chose to defend with any unexhausted ship at his disposal. The Military skills are compared, and the player with the most Military should then choose one enemy ship either engaged in the battle or attempting to conquer the planet and place damage tokens equal to the difference of the Military points.

Ex. Player A chooses to conquer Xoeva which requires 2 Science and 1 Diplomacy. Player A Chooses to send 2 Colony Ships each with 1 Science and an Ambassador with a Diplomacy of 2. Player B chooses to hinder with a Ceb which has a Military of 2 with an attachment that adds 1 to that total. Player one chooses to defend with Regulus with a Military of 1, making the difference in military 2. Because Player B has more Military then he may choose which ship to place all of the damage. He may select from any ship conquering or defending. (2 Colony Ships, Ambassador, and Regulus) Player B Chooses to place his 2 damage on one of the Colony Ships. Since a Colony Ship only has a Hull of 1, the ship is destroyed and placed in the discard pile next to the Ship Deck.

Now with the conflict over, Player A?s ship attributes are compared with the planets requirements. In our example, Player A only has 1 Colony Ship and an Ambassador making his total 1 Science and 2 Diplomacy. Xoeva?s requires 2 Science and 1 Diplomacy which means that Player A cannot conquer Xoeva and the planet is placed back into the discovered planet zone. ( I may have them just discarded to cycle through more planets per game.)

Game End
The game ends when a player starts his turn equal to or over the required victory points. The player with the most vp at this point wins the game. If there is a tie then currency is the tie-breaker. If there is still a tie then you add all the attributes of all the ships and compare.

I see this as a 2-6 player game.

[r0cknes]

This is not a CCG because you don't have to collect cards. There may be expansions though. Races/ Planets/ Ships/ Strategies. Your base set would have enough to play at the max player limit. For example if the game has a limit of 6 players then the base set would include 6 races and the other cards that match.

[r0cknes]

I guess I am just talking to myself, but here is a Race card with a description. Obviously I know the artwork is very crude. If someone wanted to help me out and show me some template ideas I would be fine with that. I am not very artsy. Anyway here is the description. At the moment every card type will have the same template and I know that is generally a bad idea, but that is fixable after play testing and I want to be able to do that by the end of the month. I am almost willing to just write these out on 3x5 cards to test the rules.

Starting from the top left moving to the right and then down.

1. Race Icon (Also seen on Home Worlds and ships of this same race.)
2. Race Name
3. Turn Order
4. Picture
5,6,7. Military, Science, and Diplomacy attributes of the race. A + or - with a number will appear if a value is greater than 0.
8. Text (I know it is not necessary, but it looked really dumb without anything there, and I think flavor text adds to game universe. Although with good artwork I could get rid of the text and just have the icons and player imagination develop the Race characteristics.
9,10,11,12. Immediate Credits, Permanent Income, Drawing Bonus, (I think this would be an immediate bonus.) and Victory Point Bonus (A more thematic term other than victory point idea would be helpful.)

[r0cknes]

Oops I forgot the file 



[attachment deleted by admin due to age]

[r0cknes]

Wow business is slow around this site. anyway I have made an update on the rules. I noticed that exhausting ships never had a time to refresh, and refreshing at the beginning of every turn gives to much of an advantage to the defender of a planet, and refreshing at the beginning of each round gives too much to the player with the lowest turn order race. My solution as to allow refreshing all ships during the strategize phase. If a player chooses to draw cards he may also refresh and his turn is over.

Also income is added at the beginning of each players turn.

[Malagar]

hey r0cknes! sorry, saw your post a few days ago - but im so busy with real life and other stuff.

now that you are replying to your own post, i just had to write something ;-)

have not read it all, but: sounds good! reminds me of the community space-game we thought about a good while ago. i will read all your posts now, maybe i add some feedback later on.

sadly my computer crashed some month's ago - taking the community space-game templates with it. But if I can recover some of the files I will send them over!

[r0cknes]

That would be a great help. I have been thinking of that project since it ended. I have simplified things a great deal however. For instance, less attributes, no deck creation. This game will hopefully match the simple yet fun And strategic games that you would see made by fantasy flight games. More of a ero style game play if you will. It would be very easy to develop this based on the mass effect universe too, but for the sake of copy write issues I would rather chose to make all new stuff. Not to say I can't base some of my races on theirs.

[Malagar]

yeah, its sad that the project ended. but for me alone it was just too much work and i wanted something that really feeled like its my creation. hope you understand: creating a game where everyone contributed but where the "hard work" is left to (more or less) one person - is no fun.

besides that, we just lacked the dyanmic community we required to make something like this coming true. I just wrote a thread on boardgamegeek.com about that "games need a single designer to suceed". well, we can argue that point - but there is a lot of truth in it!

here, i found the old rules and uploaded them. cant find anymore templates though (still searching!)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/283mgratun98k9v/galaxian-rulebook.txt
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m5417lx07lhkxfv/galaxian-rulebook-newer.txt

[r0cknes]

Thanks, I am not as interested in the rules, but they may be helpful in some way. I am pretty sure my core set of rules is done, but as every game goes, play testing will reveal plenty of flaws. Let me know if you ever find those templates though, because I remember them being pretty sweet.

[Gargoyle]

The style of this reminds me of Killer Bunnies, which isn't customisable in the same sense as a CCG but has several expansion sets to play(you can choose a coloured starter deck and a coloured booster to accompany it, but all players share a deck so it's just for the sake of variety).

I'm a little confused about the Conquering function: can you defend with any category or just Military? Good if it's just Military, but you didn't state whether or not this is the case.

Also noticing a few flaws in the names of things, and function when compared to reality. The main issue is that ships become 'exhausted'. How does that make sense? A ship doesn't have a respiratory system; it's a machine, so it doesn't become tired. It may run out of fuel, or have to recharge sub-space engines or something like that, but it doesn't get exhuasted.
Also not sure how a ship can have a certain Diplomacy rating; does the design of the ship somehow affect how well its occupants can negotiate? I think it would be cool if there were Captain cards, which determine Diplomacy and may increase other stats. Perhaps certain Captains could even get bonus effects on certain Strategies. Just a thought 

I really like the idea of the Planet deck; it suits the space frontier genre perfectly. If I ever make a space-themed CCG I may have to copy that idea; with adaptations and your permission of course. 

[r0cknes]

Go ahead and take the planet idea, I don't mind.

This game is very much still in the thinking stage of development, so excuse some of the poor terminology. For instance, by exhausted I  don't mean the ship didn't get enough sleep. LOL I just knew exhausted was a very commonly understood term, obviously I would need to theme the terms better later on.

Yes only the military skills are compared among ship battles. That means not only are there more ships with military values, but they will be more coveted.

I see your point with the diplomatic skill issue. My goal is to not have a CCG so captains would be too difficult to implement because you are using a shared deck. Although I am sure that most of the game concepts may change, I am not willing to switch to a deck building game with this concept. My original thought was that not the ship but the crew of the ships are more designed for certain mission. I wouldn't send a dreadnaught out to make intergalactic negotiations. And if a dreadnaught was in my system I would not assume they were there for a social visit.

That categories have this flavor to them.

Military - A planet that is very protective of its planet, and is not kind to visitors no matter what advantages they may bring will have a military capture requirement.

Science - These planets are most often the non colonized planets. Planets that would require personnel with knowledge of the sciences and supplies to start a new life on this world. Military Ships may be helpful in some cases because you never know what type of alien creatures may be lurking in the darkness.

Diplomatic - These are worlds of peaceful people who love the idea of sharing their resources and trade goods. In some cases a strong military may be required, not to scare them or destroy them, but to show that you have something to offer to them.

If anyone else has any thoughts I would love to hear them. Thanks.

[Dabem]

Exhausted does apply to ships. Their resources can be exhausted. Particularly in the second definition although all the first 3 of the second dictionary referenced apply. There may be something more thematic, but exhausted isn't missapplied in this case.

1. Discover
To discover a planet you must draw a card from the planet deck and place it face up next to the deck. There may not be any more discovered planets than there are players. If there is no change with the discovered planets in 3 turns then all undiscovered decks may be reshuffled into the planet deck.

I didn't understand what this meant.

How is the income and currency governed? Is there any way to win a 'battle' through diplomatic means? (like the enterprise often did)

I like this concept especially if military was not the way to an easy victory like it is in most card games.
Please change the 'player one' to 'player C' in your battle example. I was kinda confused by having 2 different example naming conventions.

[r0cknes]

When a planet is conquered as of right now a player must use an action to flip a new planet face up thus discovering it. I am still not sure if this is the direction I would like to go with this game yet.

I am looking for ways to win conflicts other than through military. I have never played it but I have read the rules and I know game of thorns allows for non military conflict with much success and I believe that could fit this theme very well. Stargate tcg has an interesting way to deal with conflicts as well.

I am not sold with some of the mechanics I have chosen for this game yet. All I am sure of is that I want this to be a all in the box type of game. I don't want a CCG. I may allow for a lcg format, but I would prefer a game with shared decks if possible. I also want this to be a very strong multi player game.

One idea I am toying with in my mind is objectives. It seems lots of games are now using them now and I like it.

One more thing I am sure of is that I am not trying to reinvent the wheel here. I know I am bound to hear things like, "it sounds too much like this game" or "that doesn't sound original." My ultimate goal is to make this game fun for my friends and me. Yes I will be "stealing" mechanics from other games, because I like those other games. I am not trying to make millions. I am trying to make a game I feel is fun and if it makes someone else happy so be it.

Again thanks for your thought. I will be adding things shortly. I am playing lots of card games and reading lot of rulebooks to strengthen my imagination.

[Dabem]

I will be watching this to see what brews. A conflict system that does not make military 'the king of all conflicts' sounds very interesting to me.

[r0cknes]

I am currently leaning toward winning certain conflict leads to a particular action. Like if a "diplomatic victory" conflict is won then a random card is discarded from the loser or a card is drawn by the winner. Here is what I can think of for conflicts:

Diplomacy or Intrigue or a speech skill - Incompacitate an opponents card. Incompacitate means to flip the card so it does not completely refresh before the next round. This is kind of close to military so I am unsure if I like it or not.

Military - Destroy a unit. I think I don't want to have "HP" for cards. I would rather just have dead or alive, so if there is a military battle, then the winner can destroy a unit.

Science - Draw a card or make opponent discard a random card.

Another thought I have had is how to structure the turns to allow for strategy while allowing for a good amount of multiplayer player interaction. I don't want people to have to sit there and wait for their turn. I would be combining two mechanics I have seen in other games. Every player has a base number of actions he may perform during a round. Lets just say that number is 3 to start with. Sometimes you may use those actions outside of your turn to block another player. Example of that would be to use an action to play an event card to disallow an action of the current player. That will leave you with only 2 turns on your turn however, so you must consider if that is the best action for you to take.

Also as the game moves on, each player will have more actions to use each round. The number is determined by how many "points" the leader has. Therefore the closer he is to winning, the harder it will be to finishing the game. I am not sure how this will work entirely yet, but we will see where it goes.

I am also leaning toward an objection card mechanic. If you complete an objective, then you get "points" and also the card itself may help you through an effect, however if you do not complete an objective (ie an opponent destroyed it) then there is a penalty against you; maybe an effect or a loss of "points".

I could attach this to the military conflict or come up with another skill all together. If a military conflict is unopposed then damage could be placed on the objective, or have any "extra" military strength of the winner damage the objective card. So if I win a conflict 6 to 5 then I deal one damage to the objective, but if I win 8 to 5 then I deal 3 damage to the objective. With this then military becomes the main thing which I don't want. I think I want another skill for that reason.

So some actions you may use during your turn. Each one uses an action

1. Earn credit
2. Start Conflict
3. Put a card into play

Some actions you may use outside of your turn.

1. Engage conflict
2. Put an "event" card into play

So obviously after reading this you may realize this will end up being a deck building game.

Some problems I am seeing. How can I get rid of cards not used in military conflicts. Like a science vessel that is just making a killing, Yes there is the option to incapacitate it, I want some way to keep those cards from just hanging around. Maybe the attacker engages a specific card and the defender may chose to protect it? I don't know about that one yet.

Also, I think I am going to use a tactics card type, which will work much like the "jutsu" card in naruto, or "Fate" card in the new SW lcg. I think that will add much to the conflict aspect to the game. Things like if you lose a conflict deal one damage to an objective or the "increase stats" effects or even destroy or incompacitate card effects.

As always, please add your thoughts.