Titanomachina: Possible Production Plan

While I produce (design, develop, run demos, etc) Titanomachina as a hobby, part of that hobby is making sure I can pivot to production. Currently that production would need to be boutique, priced-at-cost, and preferably from the same people I've sourced parts of the prototypes because they've earned my repeat business with their professional behaviour and patience with me (BoardGamesMaker.com). So far I can source from the following: 

Two-Player starter box:

• 48 board tiles (25 road-roundabout tiles, 12 bend-junction tiles, 11 foundation tiles. 
• 50 coloured dice (25 per player)
• 2 plastic standees with stickers
• 55 cards including two complete Titan decks (reaper-configurations) including 12 weapons, 2 personalities, and double-sided dashboard cards. 
• 30 Bingo Tokens (10 per player with 5 spare each)
• White Board Marker (Dry-erase marker)
• Rules booklet (24 pages A5-size)
• Box (9.5"x9.5"x2") 

The box may need to be slightly different proportions, likewise the rules booklet. It's unclear whether the players will need covers for their dashboard cards, although perhaps not with plastic cards? But, I need something for the Titan figurines. One part of me wants to license out the production of miniatures to one of the 3D Printing houses out there producing 3D printed products. First though, I need something to put in the box, and probably something that is perfectly good for the task but improvable. I'm considering finding some 2" meeples. I already got some a while ago, but I haven't been confident of pulling them out to play with people when I have these lovely miniatures to whom I am emotionally attached. I think they would need stickers to help players remember which side is the front and where are the weapons. That would be five stickers per Titan as well as each meeple which I've sourced at $4.25USD at retail, but not at my preferred vendor (although I suppose I could ask). Making those stickers may require paying an artist...

On the other hand, I do believe that all that can be done for under $100CAD per box. That's a pretty expensive proposition for many people, I think, especially when you think of the amount of components. However, the set would have several features that would make their value additive, so that buying extra sets would be good: It's within the budget to produce two boxes, one with each set of Titans, essentially costing the same to produce at a box with just one set. Players can add like with like boxes together for 2-on-2 games, and with antagonist boxes for the full free-for-all four. Which means I could produce a third box, with the expanded cards for regent and raptor configurations, system cards and dashboards, two more personalities, and perhaps utility buildings, finials, and extra tiles? But the value in being able to expand the experience with players as you expand the number of boxes involve means you can scale up to 6 players. 

Certainly I've love to cough up for extra personality cards beyond 6, and maybe buy some new art (at around 200 euros per to match the art...), but in the meantime this is something I could produce so that people could try the game. Because that is what people want to do, they buy games. You could play a game all day, but at the end of the day people want to own a game as well as play it. That's kind of why Titanomachina exists because I wanted to create a game that I really enjoyed and that also was mine to collect, expand, and describe in fan-fiction. If other people treat it like a palimpsest and imagine their own stories for it, all the better. But I do want to share this with other people, because I think there are people that would really like it. 

Titanomachina: Some Improvements and Visual Design and More Changes In Progress

 At the outset I should explain that I am not a graphic designer. I don't really get graphic design per se, but in the spirit of the modern era and perhaps a heaping spoonful of caucasity I'm not going to let that bother me as I re-invent the wheel. People say "Why re-invent the wheel?" Firstly, because it is educational, and secondly the skills and machinery required to makes wheels is non-obvious. Anything can be done, but only some things can be done at the cost available, and that's certainly a mindset I feel that 11 years of Titanomachina have ingrained in me. 

That said I've noticed a design inconsistency with Extra Armour and Shields/Deflectors, in that they have an Effect cog under their Block/Intercept action and Weapons/Arms/Legs do not. I feel like this is un-necessarily confusing for players, and slightly confusing for me as well. Originally it was a reminder that Something Ticks Up One (or Down One) when the reaction is triggered, a shield token or initiative place changed, but that's slightly confusing when one considers the Operate action. The Operate action adds its Effect, its cogs, to the total Effect of the action, and it has a neat little serendipitous cue wherein you can visually show this if you stagger your cards slightly when you place them face-up on the table. Additionally, any Effect on the bottom-right of the hand of cards is usually obscured if you're holding the cards in a fan so that you can read the left-hand side of the cards. Operate doesn't interact with Block, Intercept, or Full Power actions so these don't strictly need an Effect value. Likewise damage penalties don't affect Block or Intercept actions. As long as the system isn't destroyed the reaction works. Full Power is affected by damage, with light damage knocking the system out of use (although now I feel like crew should be able to Operate it if only that the activation of the system requires Effect to be greater than 0 but won't change anything if it is greater than 1). So I'm going to take out Effect for reactions. This should have no effect on game-play, and should make learning the game easier. 

Given that, I would like to make a couple of changes.

The first change would be adding a reaction to Capacitors whereby they can be used to re-activate a Block or Intercept system that has already been activated that turn to Block or Intercept. It would involve creating a new icon and adding it to five cards currently in play in Tabletop Simulator.

The second change would be adding an attack to the vulcan gun, the gun battery, and the laser battery. Otherwise these weapon systems would not change, and where combined attacks (like other combined actions) share the same pool of total Effect these systems would need to be operated to get these full 2/3 attacks because they are Effect 1/2 otherwise. It would be like how Arms have Effect 1, but can combined Walk and Attack; they need to be operated to do more than Walk or Attack with Effect 1.

Going back to the Full Power Effect 1 issue, the problem is that Effect 2 or more is pretty harsh. Almost game-breaking unless the system being re-activated is Effect 1. But it does feel cool to have a crew operate the capacitor to make it work if it is damaged. I think I'd have to be pretty clever re-writing the rules to cover this because part of the crew-capacitor issue is that it either bogs down in a loop, or breaks the order of operations. Maybe crew members can be sacrificed to make it work or something. I'll keep chewing on it. 

Speaking of chewing, I'm not quite ready to implement these changes in production yet, which is why I'm putting this out here for comment. I also need to come up with a name for the Capacitor reaction (Emergency Power? Reserve Power?) and perhaps a better icon. 

Titanomachina: Incidental Change?

In the weeks following a change I get to see how the change affects me and my opponents. It's always fun to see what the change will entail because play-testing can be all sorts of different testing in one. Some of the recent changes have been for, essentially, ease of play considerations and so it has been interesting to see how they're used on the board. More to the point it was interesting to see how an inadvertent change has been absorbed. I accidentally reverted a Master Crew's charge cost of operating a system to 1 extra card. That's what an Adherent Crew had been rated for 2/3s of the Effect. It puts the Master Crew over the card power-curve that generally fixes the cost of effect equal to the effect plus traits and trade-offs. Effect 1 is 1 with the extra bonuses figured into its additionals like 1 for the high explosive trait and 1 for the armour piercing trait and trade-offs of 1 for having an additional action (block, intercept) for a total of 4/charge for its human resource cost. 

In other words I have inadvertently changed the game balance by over-powering the Master Card. This means that it should perhaps have its human resources points change to reflect the cost of such a component, and hence the victory points for destroying it. But I think it enhances the game rather than distracting from a flat power curve. It feels good for players to get that +3 bonus. That's going to be an effective move. Being plainly better than the other crew members means that players may attempt to have a crew entirely of masters, but so far like habitats themselves that would be limited by the number of cards available; there are two playable Master Crew cards in the game. 

Now this reaction is moderated by how effective the ease-of-play and other balancing changes figured into the games. So far I'm not really drawing an opinion on holding operating crew members over rounds as it's not really my habit of play. One of my regular opponents makes it their default strategy to, when in doubt, put a crew member on standby to operate whatever system loads next. Too many times I've done this and found myself with a lack of quality targets when it comes time to operate a weapon or generally the wrong system at the wrong time. Maybe I should consider it more when I'm playing next, but especially after Hal-con I'm finding some interesting things out about the cards.

Firstly, it turns that that there's an ideal mix of cards in your hand, and it's not actually the combination that leads to the perfect round-one ring out. The ideal mix of cards in your hand, by my consideration is the combination that lets you engage with your opponent and do something constructive whether it is maximizing the damage you inflict or minimize the damage they do, or simply to dodge out of the way when about to be targeted, or blocking the target. So you need a mixture of defensive and aggressive posture which you can change as the situation changes. For example, you get an enemy in the arc of your Titan's right arm, and then get slewed right by blocking an incoming impact or grapple with your right extra armour , now you have the target in the arc of your Titan's left arm and enough cards to attack with that instead. Alternately you have a healthy 3+ bonus to your next action so that an enemy elects to move behind cover, and when they do you detect a handful of habitat building blocks and perhaps even shoot over the cover after that detect action. There's also stuff like blocking with a weapon and then re-activating that weapon with a capacitor, but mainly being able to take a hit and even use it to your advantage, like using an impact or grapple to get a free turn, or extra armour to capture the initiative. 

The second thing is that reducing a Master Crew's cost doesn't just put them above a rather-flat charge/effect curve, but it increases the number of other cards that may be played and accelerates the game. A master crew operated gun battery is going to hit really hard at the prior charge-cost of just activating the master crew or a macro gun. There's more defensive options at 0 charge these days as well, and it's not just the low-charge cards, but other cards in every deck will now have an extra card floating around that can be used to activate a system that would otherwise want for cards to be played face-down to charge them. This will accelerate the rate of play a decent fraction, but also has a nice crunchy feeling for the players. I may still increase the human resources value of Master Crew, but it's a new addition to the issue list. I'll cross-list it on the fix-list as well, since it is technically a reversion to a previous valuation of the operate action. 

Titanomachina: Performance Envelopes

Lately it has occurred to me to chart the relative performance envelopes of the Titans and put development on a more mathematically clear foundation. To this end I've whipped up the following chart describing the relative maximums available to each Titan. Damage-wise, this is the total of the Titan's weapons and limbs, and does not include bonuses from crew or any specifics related to concentrating that damage on any particular targets, just raw output. Likewise this does not include damage from collisions, except where those collisions are caused by Impact weapons, which are assumed for the purposes of describing the maximum damage out to have pushed the target back for an additional point of damage. Note then that this means Impact and Grapple weapons are assumed to do one more point of damage than their Effect plus any High Explosive, Armour Piercing, Shield Breaker. This ignores that the weapons actually do +2 points of damage upon successfully smashing another Titan into a building or another Titan as not all pushes or pulls successfully do that. Shock is not assessed as damage. 

Similarly in each case where Capacitors are available they are assumed to give Full Power to whatever weapon has the greatest damage potential (so like a Buzz Saw or Vulcan Gun instead of a Plasma Howitzer in the cause of Eos' configurations 1 & 3). A further assumption is that this is the amount of damage a Titan can inflict in four rounds, although notably Eos Configuration 3 uses more cards than would be available in its deck. If we leave off activating one of Their arms then it's 27/22 in terms of damage/card-cost. 

What is the utility of doing this? Well, for one thing it indicates how the +7 Operate bonus available to each Titan (at a commensurate card cost of 7, including cards played face-up) can be employed. The Styxx Configuration1 can put out a staggering 25 points of damage provided She does nothing else except lash out around Herself at a minimum of three targets. Conversely, Rhea Configuration 1 can direct Her entire crew to boosting Her damage output to 21 and still have four cards left over for Her sponson, and a thruster to get into a better position, and an extra armour system for defense. Notably the Detect action includes the entire bonus that a Titan might allocate, including cost, since this is an easy way to score victory points, or to make up a dearth of them. 

It's interesting to see the ratios that various configurations get, especially for some configurations that are experientially really good. Tethys Configuration 4, for example, seems really under-sold for the horrific amount of damage She can do on a consistent basis, particularly where crew can be used to Operate those laser blades. In particular this seems to under-value armour-piercing weapon despite AP adding one point of damage to any weapon's Effect. I think this is because this is agnostic about the value of damage, with three damage destroying a system or causing light damage to three damage, or even just removing three shield tokens. Lasers, for example, are weak against well-shielded targets because they do not get their armour penetration damage. Against unshielded targets they are somewhat effect in that they also affect multiple systems. When operated, however, they can remove vital systems long before a weapon without the Armour Piercing trait has ground through any protective armour. Combined with weaponry that removes shields efficiently, particularly weapons with the High Explosive trait, they hit harder than their raw damage potential might suggest. 

Furthermore this is agnostic about range, with longer range being a massive advantage because it not only allows a Titan to attack with less commitment to defense, but it allows a Titan to counter any attempts to detect buildings by shooting them from across the board. The maximum range is, after all, 8 squares. 

More sophisticated analysis as I develop it, but as it stands I think these numbers suggest which configurations are preferable for which end-game conditions such as ring-out, knock-out, and time-out.

Titanomachina: Card Updates

Once again I have made a systematic change to all the cards and dialed a few cards in. The systematic change is that cards that can be played face-up without a cost in other cards paid face-down now have a hexagon icon containing no lightning bolts. I've also spaced out the symbols vertically to allow five in each column. You could say I'm future-proofing the layout somewhat. 

Specifically now Shields and Deflectors are changed from the option of two power levels of the same action to having an action and then a Block-liker reaction called Intercept. You could block and intercept a single attack.

Crew are changed from two actions (Operate & Repair) of the same power level to one Operate as 1-3 and Repair always at 1 for Charge 0.

Sensors similarly no longer have a Charge cost to be paid with cards face-down for the Scan action. It needs to be on par with Extra Armour.

 Speaking of, the Block reactions and Telemetry traits have been relocated to the right-hand side of the cards where all the other Blocks are found (and now Interceptor). 

Mega Guns have been renamed Vulcan Guns so that they don't get confused with Macro Guns. 

Titanomachina: Hal-con 2022!

Running demo-games of Titanomachina at Hal-con this year was fantastic. I managed to mainline more Titanomachina in one long weekend than in two months of play. I take back several of the comments I have made over the years about this being methadone for Warhammer. Mostly what I want now is more. There is something fantastic about introducing people to a game and watching as they begin to engage with it, and with each other through it. It certainly revealed things I personally need to work on when interacting with people, and I hope that my carelessness didn't irk people too much. 

Interestingly I received some feedback that rather nicely validates some ideas that I've been having about where and what to improve. I had planned, for example, to implement the change that the crew members that have their Operate bonus in play would not be sorted back into the bottom of the Titan deck. Doing so helped the players remember the bonus, and perhaps it provides a sort of break to the advantage of being able to hold over a bonus. Players also expressed an interest in Deflectors and Shields having a pro-active option and a reactive option, rather than two variations on a pro-active option. This is something else I had considered, giving these systems the ability to put a shield token on a target before the attack is resolved. Like blocking, it affects the target of an attack, and makes for some economic tension as the player decides whether soaking the hit is better or worse than giving up a card that could charge some other, pro-active action. It also helps with their implied defensive function...

I do feel like I need to re-visit collisions, yet again, to clarify them. This sort of thing is kind of why I resisted the concept from the outset, because it's hard to explain. Rather than changing collisions, along with the Impact and Grapple traits, I think it's just something to clarify how it works. Specifically that each point of Effect spent entering a square causes one point of damage to the closest target(s) in the square, and that Impact and Grapple both move a Titan with Effect 1. I don't feel like I was clear or consistent on collisions during the games, particularly in the last one where I believe I had sold the idea that moving through a building merely had a cost in damage and not in the effort required to move through that much building. In my defense it was hilarious to see a player zig-zag through buildings. 

This brings me to jumping collisions. There's a certain fore-sightedness that's required to resolve a jump into a tile full of buildings or into another Titan. You need to be able to either destroy all the buildings, or push the Titan off the tile. Building-wise I think it's more of a matter of emphasizing that not smashing completely through the building is like smashing the Titan into a building. The problem being that jumping Titans can go over intervening buildings and Titans. It might be something to disallow being able to jump over things if you're going to jump into them instead; different flight-path and all that. 

Right now I'm going through the copies of the October 2022 rule book that I brought to Halcon to check the notes and then I'll update Tabletop Simulator with the November 2022 rule book.