I found about this game a few weeks ago, and to be honest I've been pretty obsessed by it since. It scratches exactly my itch for a solo game. I played through the AIDA 'launch pad' mission, and I started another solitaire campaign since. The link to my writeup for the AIDA mission is here: https://open.substack.com/pub/avianworldbuilder/p/60-years-in-space?r=dssub&utm_...

I have some general thoughts at the end of that post, but I also have a few more specific errors/editing issues. Here they are:

Computer damage, p. 236 - ‘Interface Artifacts’ Entry says if you roll 6, roll on the Malware table. I can't find a malware table anywhere

This Space Intentionally - P. 34 - ‘Interception’ entry and p. 70, ‘interception designer’ description both say ‘on a roll less than or equal to twice the heliocentric distance,' an interception occurs. Heliocentric distance, according to p. 107, is the ‘absolute solar power modifier,’ i.e., 1 for Venus, 2 for Mercury, etc. (in fact, A Facility with Words says exactly that on page 44 in the average wind speed box). However, the p.70 interception table sets the encounter chance as if the modifier is 1 higher than that, which is the only way that an interception could occur in the Earth heliocentric zone in the Baseline era. I'd recommend just saying ‘refer to the table’ instead.

This Space Intentionally - p. 83 - NEO Infrastructure table, Ground to Orbit entry should have 5 in ‘Roll 1’ column, not 3.

 This Space Intentionally - The Research Operation says “Completing a Research operation gives the crew patents and licenses for 1D6 ET produced components and grants each crew member the same number of patents and licenses for other ET Produced technologies, or Advanced technologies.” That implies you can research 1D6 technologies, but in the AIDA mission description, it says “Components which require generators and possibly radiators will need more research operations, and delay the mission. You need to decide which is more important: short term success with the mission or longer term progress for the ESA space program.” Those two descriptions slightly contradict, or at least imply a contradiction. In addition, there's the problem that the Research Operation refers specifically to Extra-terrestrial produced or Advanced technologies, while all of the technologies that would be researched for the AIDA mission would be Earthside. I recommend changing it to "1 component or grants each crew member patents and licenses for 1D6 technologies." Also, I recommend clarifying the difference between 'components' and 'technologies' -- it's pretty clear that components means spacecraft parts and technologies means anything smaller, but I don't think that's mentioned anywhere.

This Space Intentionally -- p. 13 in the AIDA mission it says "Boost complications are described on p. 260 in the core rules. Research complications are described in the core rules." However, those are both in the appendices of TSI, not in the core rules.

This Space Intentionally -- the AIDA mission, p. 15 -- using WT (water tanks) as currency in this sample mission doesn't make sense, don't make special rules for a sample mission that don't apply to a regular mission. I recommend just putting in a constraint that the AIDA mission cannot boost more than 10 tons of material for the mission, and leave it at that. 

This Space Intentionally – p. 30 says: “The execution phase must be performed in order: 1. Perform either the move then the operation; or the operation then the move. 2. Roll for and resolve an encounter prompt before you perform the operation for the year. See the Encounter Prompts section on page 150 of the Encounters chapter for details.” The problem is that it says the phase must be performed in order, then immediately afterwards says “perform the operation” then “before the operation do an encounter.” Now, I get the issue – you're trying to say you can do the move or the operation first, and either way you need to do the encounter first (i.e., if you move then do an operation, it's move, encounter, operation, while if you do the operation first, it's encounter, operation, move). But it's confusing and there are several different ways you could phrase it to make it more obvious. 

In my house rules, I've rewritten it as follows:

1. Perform your move. You may hold the move until after you perform the operation for the year.
2. Roll for and resolve an encounter prompt. See the Encounter Prompts section for details.
3. Perform the operation for the year.
4. If you held your move, perform it now.

More generally, I strongly recommend moving the 'Mission Diary' and 'Launch Pad' chapters to the core rules, as they're basically essential to being able to play the game. Alternatively, if you want the core rules to focus on moving around sites, rather than around the solar system (as suggested by the 'crew module missions' section in the 'mission control' chapter), I recommend adding a 'launch pad' in the core rules of a crew exploring a site. 

I have lots of other thoughts, and probably will have more as I continue playing. Just to be perfectly clear again, I love this game, despite how flawed it is in some ways. 

Firstly, thanks for the great feedback. This is a game I've written for people to obsess over, and it's always wonderful to hear when people do.

I'd generally recommend emailing me edits rather than posting them here, simply because they are "time sensitive" and I'll usually incorporate them in a future minor or major update.

As for your suggestion to move the Mission and Launch Pad chapters to the core rules -- if I did I'd need to add roughly half of all This Space Intentionally to the core rules (Spacecraft designer, operations, infrastructure etc).

Instead I'm already planning on adding an equivalent "Landing" chapter, for travelling around sites; with more game play examples. I've shied away from providing too many examples to date, simply because the rules have been (somewhat) in flux -- specifically, I'm still not happy with the damage over time rules and I've only just solved load to my satisfaction (which will be included in the next update -- the rules change is relatively minor).

Finally, I'm planning a lot more support for solitaire for major update 2. I've not a fan of playing this game solitaire, but since the majority of players play that way, it makes sense to steer into what people are doing. A lot of solitaire will be rules for "just-in-time" creation. Instead of creating crew ahead of time you'll start the game and eg create crew capable of achieving FINAO when you need to perform an operation.

Quick addendum: After reading through your write up, I'm going to amend the contact generation process so that contact names should be determined through the Nominative Determinism rule and not require rolling a call sign for to be rolled for each contact. I've incorporated your edits into the rules for the next release.

I appreciate your willingness to make changes! As I mentioned, I have been entirely captured by this game, and have been possibly too obsessed with it recently. I just sent you an email with a few more edits I've found as I've continued to play, as well as requesting the Third Wave supplement.

On the topic of the organization of the rules -- I get that you don't want to move too much of This Space Intentionally (TSI) to the core rules, but to be honest as it is now, the core rules are much harder to play (if not impossible) without TSI. I just think that generally you should consider a major rework of the organization of those first two books -- if you decide to focus on the rules for exploring a site in the core rules and save solar system travel and Operations for TSI, then you should probably move Encounter Designer and Site Designer to the core rules and move Observations, spacecraft movement (from Travel) and Service Risks (from Risks) out. Alternatively, move Map Designer, most of Travel, and Observations out of the core rules and replace them with Missions, Mission Designer, and Operations from TSI. I don't want to make it seem like I'm telling you what's best with your own game, by the way, but I do really think that some sort of reorganization would be worthwhile.

On the topic of names, to be honest on my current playthrough, I've just dropped the Call Signs and Normative Determinism entirely. I've just been using online name generators to come up with names. I totally agreed with your sentiments on why to use call signs instead of names, until I tried actually doing it. I just found that using a random name generator to come up with a real name (i.e. Mission Commander Sandra Romero, vice 'Vacuum Flight') massively increased my investment in the characters and ability to visualize them.