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.