Post by half-a.press in Conflicting Claims... in game, at least - itch.io

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half-a.press166 days ago

You only place claims for Earthside missions, which are missions for delivering refineries to existing claims from low Earth orbit. You can get missions other ways, in which case you don't place the claim token. You can also get claims appearing on the map in a variety of ways that don't require prospecting: for instance, every space encounter you have may end up placing a claim on a location.

This Space Intentionally allows you to make claims "the hard way" -- which you need to do if you're not originating in LEO. I should probably state that Earthside missions are only available in the Upported era and later.

half-a.press166 days ago

I'll clarify this in the next update - LEO is only mentioned on the Crew Actions table and should be in the main text as well.

Cliffypancake18166 days ago

Ah okay, thank you! I guess it does make sense that you wouldn't want to be able to completely botch a site on your first mission at the very least lol.

half-a.press166 days ago

Yep. Baseline starts are intended for players who want to experience the game without that kind of safety net.

Cliffypancake18164 days ago

After spending 2 hours creating a character? No thank you LOL. While here though, I did have another smaller question: if a missions is overridden by another mission (most commonly gaining a political mission), is said original mission gone for good? Can you have multiple missions at once? In a similar vein, it would be cool to see most (if not all) missions be timed-missions so that your incentive to get places quickly goes beyond 'I just want to do as much as I can before the last era', which from what I've read/seen is the only real time incentive other than interceptions. I'd imagine determining time would be similar to determining modifiers for rolled destinations.

half-a.press164 days ago

You’re free to have multiple missions if you want, but many of them are cargo delivery and you can’t carry that much cargo and be fuel efficient. There’s also already timers on many missions because encounters will place counters that will stop you from completing the mission yourself. See the Common destination rule in the Encounters chapter.

Cliffypancake18164 days ago

I'll take a look, thanks for the response!

Cliffypancake18160 days ago (2 edits)

Back with more questions (is there an official discord? that might be good for people with questions, though I guess im not sure how much use it would get).

1. I'm reading through building my first base (Venus Aerostat-Xity, painful lol) with the current purpose of building a factory so I can factory refuel my rocket and get back home- and other commodities for long term. I have encountered a problem though in the fact that I'm not sure what would be considered a Factory for the purposes of factory refueling operations- or if I'd even really need one. A-Base D-Landing has 'Factory' as a building function, but under that definition I could technically use a Room-level factory to refuel a 1500 tonne rocket which doesn't make much sense (unless it does? I haven't exactly ran the numbers. But if that was the case, wouldn't larger scale factories make it take less than a year?). Blue-counter Industrial functions perform "fuel liquefication to allow rockets on the card to be refueled using water tanks (WT) created by the crew" which seems like the second half of a puzzle given I can't seem to find where water tanks would be created on-site. I'm aware this could all be avoided by simply staying at the Site scale and doing an Industrialization operation, but where's the fun in that?

2. Building buildings at the facility scale with only 1 person gives 3 penalty to the building action. However, there doesn't seem to be any rolls involved for building bases that I could find. Clarification would be appreciated.

3. Regarding the venus aerostat, I place the 9 Of Diamonds at the complex scale. When I zoom into that card, do I still create a structured map via the Crewed Rules, even though there really shouldn't be much there? I'm aware that my character isn't the first to be here, so it doesn't exactly not make sense, but I thought I'd ask just in case. Also regarding the structured map, I couldn't find anywhere as to what happens if you try to expand beyond the maps borders, for- for example- bootstrapping. The structured map fills up a majority of the map, so it doesn't leave much to build off of. Finally regarding the aerostat specifically, it says they must be bilaterally structured, but via the structured map rules, thats not always entirely possible.

4. The mission plan list in This Space Intentionally confuses me a little bit in terms of when what happens. I've been resolving it where they trigger at the start of every year (which I assume is correct), with the planning phase happening before the players can do anything. Once it gets to the execution phase, I get a bit confused. The interception/combat ops part makes sense, but movement and operations are where it gets weird. It reads like it assumes that the players will never go to a timescale 'below' 1 year turns, therefore assuming the only real action they can do is HF map movement and Operation actions. Although this is obviously not the case as smaller timescales exist. So where within the mission plan are players allowed to actually do stuff? And at these smaller time scales, do you always start on January 1st of the year? Does HF map movement take up any amount of time of the year? What if you start an operation midway through a year? Can you even? Just seems like the mission plan structure conflicts with the rest of the game.

half-a.press144 days ago

Wow sorry completely missed this reply. Let me have a read and get back to you.

half-a.press144 days ago (2 edits)

> A-Base D-Landing has 'Factory' as a building function, but under that definition I could technically use a Room-level factory to refuel a 1500 tonne rocket

Looks like I need to clarify the entry: a Factory building function (and 3D printer function) only acts like a factory cube for operations at the Complex and larger scale (that's what I mean by factory printer). At smaller scales, it acts like a 3D printer -- at the Room scale a workshop printer, and a freighter printer at the Facility scale, but it allows you to manufacture stuff (like wire and fabric) instead of printing objects.

> I can't seem to find where water tanks would be created on-site

Either using the Refueling rules in the Site Actions chapter, or the Employment subsection under the Migration & Trade section in the Encounters chapter in the Crewed Rules.

This is actually quite a bit more complicated than it looks like and has a lot of abstractions that I really want to write up as an entire "economics of colonies" essay at some point. Essentially, while the crew administers the site, they don't own all the proceeds from it: usually because they're working for a Mission Control, but maybe also because the site has its own independent economic activity. So the amount of water tanks they get from factory refueling because they helped build the factory is actually a reflection of the value of their labour, and not the actual amount of water that the factory can produce. However, for anything that contributes to the site, the "taps open" as it were and the full output of the site can be directed to it. That's why refineries, printers and factory buildings scale up their output as the map scale increases for the purposes of making other buildings, but the amount of water that the crew gets from a factory does not.

> When I zoom into that card, do I still create a structured map via the Crewed Rules

Yes. Whether this is a structured map actually depends on the site population (see the Civil Maps chapter of A Facility with Words) but for the purposes of zooming into a card this doesn't matter that much and I still don't think I have the way this works right in AFwW. The idea with a structure map is it is sometimes the interesting "slice" of a larger map and so is the default map type for many things, instead of being a complete map of the site at that scale.

For aerostats, I would recommend creating a floor plan when you zoom in rather than a structured map as floor plans should be symmetric. I should probably write that down somewhere in the rules...

Mixing maps that you create and build is going to be supported better in the next update of (A)-Base (D)-Landing, where you'll have the ability to infiltrate existing colonies. But generally once you've placed a card, you shouldn't really have to zoom into it to build on the zoomed in card as far as I can tell, because you've done the hard work of printing it, and upgrading it should be easier than trying to zoom in to do the same. I had thought I'd said that you can't build beyond the edges of the map but it looks like I missed that.

> The mission plan list in This Space Intentionally confuses me a little bit

It is only intended for year long turns. At smaller scales, spacecraft are essentially stationary on the HF map for the entire turn length -- although they will move if you get into trouble (and have to resolve a year long turn as a result) but only once per year. I'll have to clarify that. Operations are also year long and will "resolve" with trouble, but also that could be potentially be abusable in ways I haven't thought of. I've experimented with ways of subdividing operations and events into month long turns, and it plays ok but just adds complexity for not much pay off.

Hope that all helps and apologies for missing this.

Cliffypancake18143 days ago

First of all thank you for all the in depth replies! A lot of stuff is cleared up but I have a couple small things:

> But generally once you've placed a card, you shouldn't really have to zoom into it to build on the zoomed in card as far as I can tell

The landing site goes from the rocket token to a card at the complex scale if there is a factory or colony present. I must've read it as just changing it to a card no matter what, so that was on me. A structure shouldn't have been created.

> Operations are also year long and will "resolve" with trouble

So a couple things with this whole paragraph: So basically, at smaller scales, triggering Trouble makes you resolve the Mission Plan, including an operations? If the trouble triggers in June 2055, does the resolution end in June 2056, or January 1st 2056? Same question if I purposefully go to year-scale and decide to do an operation.

This leads into my final point. Trouble occurs from rolling for actions, however rolling for actions at any scale except Yearly seems pretty rare from what I've seen/played. Things like the base building actions reference penalties for a lack of workers which seem to infer rolls but I couldn't find anything more on what would be rolled? I could just be missing something in the Crewed Rules?

Anyways thank you again for replying to my tsunami of questions!

half-a.press143 days ago (1 edit)

Trouble is intended to allow you to trigger things that only otherwise happen at a longer time scale than the one you’re working at. In the current update, that doesn’t explicitly include year long operations and moves, but there’s no exception made for them either (there is one for 3D printing).

The operation and move resolves when you make the trouble roll that results in the year long action. You make the decision what you’re going to do and where you’re moving and the total sequence resolves instantaneously. For operations it is assumed you started a year ago. For movement — well. What is completely abstracted away in the High Frontier rules is the fact you actually decided where you were going at the point you launched the rocket; and map movement is just a convenience that allows you to plot out this movement over the time it actually takes rather than pre calculate the entire path. It’s really not clear that’s how the game works until you start to look under the hood.

As for how often you should roll; you should do it for any action which consumes resources that are not easy to replace (top of page 23 in the Crewed Rules). This includes any actions that happen at a time scale where you’re using up oxygen or power without a good way of replacing these (eg you’re not carrying enough solar panels to last a full day/night cycle).

For base construction, this should be any action that is long enough to trigger an event that puts your population at risk. This is normally annually but might be every week if the base is starving.

However you’re correct in noting that if you’re working at a small enough a time scale, you never have to roll, which means you never trigger trouble and therefore never use up resources. I don’t have a solution I’m happy with here yet — I need to force a minimum number of rolls per turn at these smaller scales but I don’t have a clean way of doing so.

half-a.press143 days ago (1 edit)

It’s entirely possible that the correct answer is just you have to roll for every action.

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Cliffypancake18143 days ago

It makes sense that you roll, but roll what? Crewed Rules says 3d6 for ability and 2d6 for skill, but does the required skill/ability entirely depend on what the player thinks fits the best? I'm not entirely against that seeing how there's so many different actions the game offers, but I guess this leads into the response I posted to your recent action post.

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Cliffypancake1847 days ago(+1)

highjacking this post because i dont wanna make an entirely new post for a single comment, but it would be nice to see some example or table or something that tells you where to 'determine' each aspect of a record sheet. For example, with the Mission Control Folio, the MCSU can be found on page 37 of the Crewed Rules, and perhaps a small blurb about its importance in the folio.

basically, while the sheets are referenced multiple times, theres no 'rundown' which can be confusing when you dont know where you should put something, or even if you should put something down. the biggest offender of this imo is the Faction Record Sheet. whats the 'notes' for? why is 'spectral types' there? (i know the answer to that one but a new player wouldnt). Whats a 'component' and how is it different than a doctrine? these are all things explained independently throughout the rules, but their interactions and hierarchy are not, which leads to confusion.

half-a.press46 days ago

This is the sort of thing that’s quite hard to do using the current development pipeline I use. I’ll investigate what options there are.

Cliffypancake1846 days ago

100% agreed, but I think the difficulty is worth it for how much it helps players learn the game. I feel like a solid 70% of my time playing this game is scouring the rulebooks for singular keywords that I see in one place but am unsure how important it is. This game would be impossible without ctrl+f haha.

I think though, if you want to future proof it due to the dev pipeline, just leave out the page numbers. Keep it to just the chapter/section name and the blurb/sentence of why its important. that way while yes you'll occasionally need to go back and change them, its a lot less than every time info changes pages. plus, its most important for the sheets found in the crewed rules and this space intentionally only, so that could cut down on development time a lot.

though of course with all this said, you are the developer and if you think other things need more priority then so be it, the game is still very much playable, just takes longer :p

half-a.press46 days ago

If I’m going to do it, I’d rather use eg PDF layers to allow you to toggle the notes on/off and at that point page references are the least complex of part of what I’m trying to do

Cliffypancake1845 days ago

I think you might be misinterpreting/overcomplicating my initial point. What I'm proposing is basically a section near the placement (or maybe not, depends) of the sheet its reference. This section has the little "title three to four sentences" layout found in table result explanations throughout the rulebooks, with the title being the section of the sheet, and the explanation telling you its importance/where to look for it. for example(s):

(Mission Record Sheet)
Faction Events Events- triggered in the Mission Plan chapter of This Space Intentionally or through Trouble- that relate to changes in the factions of 60 Years In Space.

(Faction Record Sheet)
Doctrines Major and minor ideological concepts that make up the ideology of a colonist faction, found in the Primary Colonist chapter of the Crewed Rules.

It wouldn't be as much of a digital player aid as it would be part of the book itself. They really only need to be a sentence long. I'd do them all myself if I could, but this whole thing is being brought up cause there's some stuff on the record sheets that I have no idea what they are used for even after countless searches and over a year of learning this game.

Tbh, I feel stuff like this is the biggest thing holding the game back right now. Its such a massive plethora of rules, that it has to be written in a way where you can navigate the rules instead of learning them. But it currently doesn't have all the infrastructure it needs to do that. There are things are referenced, shown, etc etc, with no 'address' (though obviously this is not the case for everything, I'd say around 35% of the rules/mechanics have this problem, so not a ton, but enough to impact the quality of the game) and the reader is then left wandering around hoping to come across the answer, which could be in another book entirely!

I was creating an earthside colonist faction earlier for my latest game (since I've been bored out of my mind and want to try out the new exoglobalization stuff- though still starting in upported) and when I got to the part of generating the name for the colony (the independent guys, forget their 'full' name), it talked about how you roll on the table on the next page. But then it started talking about generating nationalities, and religions, etc etc. And i was like 'huh, where do I put all this stuff on the faction record sheet? its in the same paragraph as the name, so surely it goes on the same sheet' and it took me a long while to realize that it doesnt go on any sheet and is really only brought up if another mechanic asks for those pieces of data. I had quickly ctrl+f'd through all six books to see if i recorded them anywhere else and found nothing. which was fine, took me maybe a minute. but if someone was using these books physically, or didnt have access to something like ctrl+f, thats now 2,000 pages that they have to look through manually. now of course there is the appendix but ive found thats not always super helpful either.

another example, is that me and my tiny niche group of like two friends that also like this game, are constantly bickering over what qualifies as Chrome, because the rulebook constantly switches between rules and fluff, and its hard to tell which is which. so when the rulebook says that equipment you own is chrome, my brain sees the crunchy-ness of the rulebook and thinks 'oh there must be some list of equipment and how its used so that chrome-usage is balanced. but nah, you just gotta logic your way through if you should have chrome or not half the time. which id imagine can be pretty unhelpful when the person trying to decide is someone who is not well versed in what the action they are doing actually is. like sure i know that i get chrome on my raygun prospect op because im using analytical data from the sat to determine potential useful chemicals and minerals in the regolith. cause im literally majoring in that! but if thats stated anywhere in the rulebook, its buried in fluff and not clear, and anyone who isnt me (and doesnt have a general knowledge of how space industrialization works) is not gonna know whats going on.

so to an extent, i feel like reference aids like pitched above go beyond simply just making the game 'easier' to learn, and are more of a crucial aspect of the rulebook that is (partially, 35%) missing. though of course im aware that this is just you doing all this, 2000 pages is absolutely mindboggling to do alone, so im not trying to say its your fault or that you are being lazy or something, cause its apparent by how quick (relative to the content itself) you put out massive updates that you are indeed the least laziest ttrpg designer lol. instead, i say this all because i desperately want this game to grow and succeed, and as your target audience, this is what i think needs to happen to open up the system to more people.

half-a.press45 days ago

OK. I’ll prioritise this and see how much I can get done for the next update. The work I’m doing on Colony: Sub/title touches so much of the rules that I’ll have to do an update for all the Sixty Years in Space rule books anyway.