A Billion Suns, Designing a Sci-fi Fleet Game

Ep 09/02, in which the guys continue to bang on about how very clever they are and how splendid the game they wrote is. They also talk a bit about why they made the choices they made and where ideas came from, which might well be useful to folk. But mainly its just a bunch of awful back slapping and such like.
Check out A Billion Suns at abillionsuns.space
Mike mentions the early version of A Billion Suns in the video, Leviathans, to follow along you can take a look at it here: 1drv.ms/u/s!Ak821k-rhLdkqXPad...
Check out Man O' Kent Games here: www.manokentgames.com
Check out Planet Smasher Games here: planetsmasher.games

[@dominicparker6124]

Also Avorion is an amazing little space sandbox game. Highly recommended

[@philiphawtin3402]

YES! I made it into the podcast!

[@RuleofCarnage]

Your sacrifice is appreciated. Oh no wait, that's a different game...

[@crikeymiles]

I miss playing together. We should all play some ABS in my shed soon.

[@Goulmy86]

Good point about "double dipping". Makes total sense how you put it.
Quickly adjusted a mission 🙂.
I do have a suggestion "Points" for ships. If there's a tie in a campaign game, only then does it matter. So not during the game but only after.

[@RuleofCarnage]

The thing is that what some fans are looking for from A Billion Suns is a version where blowing up the other fleet is the primary method of picking up points rather than a secondary or deciding element and that's extremely tough to figure out in a game where you have essentially infinite ships available.

[@Goulmy86]

@@RuleofCarnage I understood that. But as a tie breaker it might serve, in a campaign. Because everyone is trying to win each game. So no actual points are picked up. It would make a 5th option to the 4 listed now.
""Equal credits earned, but less ships lost." *Acceptable, we will remain ahead of the competition at least in ships*
So they sort of get it, in a campaign.

[@patpaints9813]

Also, now that the 'game on a round table' problem has been posed, it needs a solution. My mind immediately turns to space ships around a black hole, trying to knock each other into it. Movement is measured in radians.... 😜

[@RuleofCarnage]

You can totally play A Billion Suns on a round table (which was one of its big issues) the problem was a looping round table, and the big issue with that was that figuring out where you looped to and how you then entered based on your angle of exit was, frankly, insane.

[@patpaints9813]

Interesting side discussion on 'grinding' in games, and can it work in a tabletop game. It occurs to me that Bloodbowl and similar played in ongoing leagues could count. You start with a sub optimal squad, and have to grind through several games to unlock new aspects of the game, be it new players on the roster or new skills. I guess the key point is that the 'grind' action is playing out a (more or less) balanced game that is a challenge in its own right, instead of just spending time going through tasks with a foregone conclusion (as is my understanding of the online game side of things....grumble grumble kids these days). So rather than having a grind phase in the game, the game is the grind.

[@RuleofCarnage]

Campaign systems "locking up the sweet shop" is a constant concern and one that Mike and I have had tons of conversations/discussions/arguments/knock down drag out brawls over in the past. Certainly most campaigns have a grind element to them, and its one of the reasons that they can sort of suck. Even then though its a world apart from the process in computer games of doing something that is manifestly not fun for hours at a time in return for "progress". That's the weird thing about true grinding, in a campaign game you play to unlock something more fun and play with that and so on, in a grind you often unlock putting on a little hat or such that isn't even any actual fun in the end. Its weird.

[@patpaints9813]

@@RuleofCarnage so which one of you is the stern parent saying "the players need to EARN their sweets"? 😄 The phone app grind games are just a manipulation of human psychology, offering a reward (even just a bunch of pixels) to give the player a brief dopamine rush, motivating them to keep pushing the buttons like so many rats in cages. I don't judge, I just know I need to never play them after I wasted a good part of my youth on Tetris! I think miniatures games, even without a campaign system, have an element of 'generating a narrative' that is what attracts players. Now that I really think about it, a good campaign system offers not just a longer/richer narrative than a one shot game, but also an out of game 'puzzle phase' where the player chooses their development path to optimise their squad based on the current state of the gaming group... Trying to outwit the evolutionary pressure of gamers "red in tooth and claw". The growth options need to be interactive with your choices and your opponents so that the next game can potentially unlock new game states, not just 'play again but now you miss less often'. And of course, there's the "journey not the destination" argument... If Frostgrave were pitched to me as 'create the ultimate wizard and his elite band of warriors with no constraints, now battle to the death/victory condition' I'd probably manage 2 games before tiring of it. But maybe that's just me. After all this rambling, I think I'm on the side of "players should earn their sweets" and anyone who wants all the things from the start can just choose to play that way. But if your target market is people willing to build and paint miniatures before they can even play a game, you probably don't need to go for the instant gratification angle!

[@RuleofCarnage]

@@patpaints9813 Usually I'm pro locking things behind a series of intricate and winding paths and nested tables and Mike insists that people should get, if anything, more than they would usually get than normal during a campaign. The thing about grinding is that while its quite manipulative a lot of the time, we're basically jealous of people who get to write for a platform where pretty second rate experiences can still get people to put in multiple hours on them. The things we could do with that sort of presumed level of commitment...