Happy New Year!

 

A challenger!

Lately a regular opponent has established a winning streak with the configuration of Rhea that carries two vulcan guns and two macro guns. It's one of the configurations that screams "I am over-powered" by being a Rhea configuration accompanied by so few habitats. Driving down a low habitat score is hard, so you really have to focus on the Titan. Direct, head-on confrontation is very difficult, either being knocked askew by the vulcan guns, or slammed into buildings by the macro guns. Centered on the board this one doesn't need to chase, instead staggering around in spinning circles constantly firing, which is cool, but shouldn't be a no-brainer, and I don't think it is. I think what I need to do is attack from low angles with this configuration of Tethys:

Rockets to clear shields, digitigrade legs for that mule-kick, and lasers to gut and dismember. She has a movement advantage in both stronger legs and a jump jet system. Without a capacitor, Rhea may have an edge in mobility. Certainly I would want the second initiative position, so that agility is not compounded by being an easy target. I think maybe spending a few rounds charging up is possibly the best policy.

In fact, I expect my opponent to commence hostilities by detecting Tethys, and then activating a macro gun operated by the master crew, to hopefully clock me one first and perhaps into a building. This is where it is important that I set up at a low angle so that Tethys cannot take a direct hit from a macro gun and be crushed back into a building. Between the macro gun's high explosive and the vulcan gun's multiple attacks I want a solid two shield tokens on both arms, the front, and both legs. Load shields first in order to realign shields on the fly. So starting with three extra armour, two shields, a digitigrade leg, jump gets, and a sponson. If I have to set up and get ambushed, then that is going to get me turned around without succumbing to the temptation of a solid kick to open hostilities. Moreover I have these all in hand before I start building up to overwhelm Rhea's shields with high explosive, and with laser shield-breaker weaponry. 

Damage per gun, Tethys edges Rhea out by two points, essentially the shield breaker trait on the lasers. At the top end the guns can do extreme damage if they can impact Tethys hard into a building. So don't get popped into a building. Oddly, the easiest way to do this is to avoid physical attacks, use limbs for moving, and focus crew on operating weapons and maybe damage control. At point blank range the guns can almost always choose a center-mass. Two squares away is still in laser blade range. Senior crew on rocket pods, initiate crew on the lasers.  

Titanomachina Optional Rules

 Here's a list of ideas for optional rules:

(1) Simultaneous activation: All players place a system card (or a 'Pass' card) face-down. Once all players are read, the cards are flipped over and players pay the charge cost of activations and resolve actions in initiative order. 

(2) Shin-kicking. Add 90 degrees of arc to an attack by a leg system if its target stack contains a leg. 

(3) Daisy-cutting. Choose additional target clockwise or anti-clockwise using HE1 trait.

(4) Bottling. Convert a Grappling trait into an Impact trait while destroying a habit adjacent/diagonal to target and in range, arc and LOS of weapon for no cost in cogs.  

(5) Extending shields. Add shield tokens to targets in range 1 and arc of the shields or deflector system being activated to raise shields. 

(6) Naming convention? Something that allows players to spread additional cogs evenly across the secondary targets of their HE1 and HE2 weapons. 

Titanomachina: Pathway to Production

There is a current gap in my push to get Titanomachina out there and in front of people: I don't actually have copies to give to people that they can use to play, or even to buy. This is a big stumbling block because what people mainly like to do with games is to buy them. Currently people can play Titanomachina on Tabletop Simulator, hosted in the workshop of the Steam online store, but in general people who play board games prefer to do so with company (or even alone and without a screen). I don't think I know of any reviewers that would review Titanomachina based on what is available on online, because they review boxes of stuff they're sent. Having boxes of stuff to send to people that want to play this game is clearly something I should be working on. 

Which brings me to the issue of money, mainly that I'm still working on paying off the debts I accumulated paying for the first couple of Kickstarter attempts to bring Titanomachina to market. In those situations I definitely over-estimated the appeal of the game as it was at those times, and the critical importance of marketing (as well as the cost of marketing). My plan in the past few years has been to hone Titanomachina into a really great experience, pay off the debt I accumulated, and use Tabletop Simulator and various social media tools to build an audience. One out of three isn't bad, as my confidence in Titanomachina has grown as it's developed these past few years. I think the addition of the pass card may be what turns a satisfying gaming experience into an exciting gaming experience, given the enthusiastic response players have had to it. 

However, I'm still coughing up cash that could otherwise fund another Kickstarter (or non-KS crowdfunding project) to pay off debt thanks to inflation and a few other factors, and while Titanomachina seems to have a solid audience on Tabletop Simulator, it is also a fairly small audience. I suspect on a fraction of the people subscribed to it on Steam actually play. Certainly feedback on the game via social media or even on the workshop item itself, has been non-existent. There are a million other products people can actually buy out there, and again people are primarily interested in games as products that they can consume rather than experiences they can have. It's certainly discouraging. That said, given the fire-hose of new games, and more importantly new products, out there, it's also kind of neat to see that some people I don't know at all are still enjoying Titanomachina. 

I can't really afford another crowd-funding campaign because the audience is not nearly large enough to support one that isn't selling fewer than 100 copies with somewhat sub-par components. Because there is also a lot of other costs to manufacturing, shipping, and fulfillment that requires those 100 boxes to be bought at roughly 1/3 of the selling price. Traditionally one lowballs the amount required to produce a kind of bare minimum with the hope that funding on day 1 will see a Kickstarter campaign snowball with the excitement of the backers to create a volume of sales that will justify the cost of production and distribution. One of the primary hurdles here is the Titan miniatures, but also the habitat buildings which I would prefer to be hard plastic pieces like those of Santorini. These would require a considerable volume of sales to be feasible, however. Like vastly more the audience would be able to support by a factor of perhaps 100x. The irony that Titanomachina is intended as a mass market game is somewhat sharp here. I can substitute things like blank dice (still expensive, especially in the volume required), or standees with stickers, but the sort of people that buy things from crowd-funding are really in it for the plastic miniatures where standees or cardboard chits would do. One thought was to sell with these basic components in mind, and provide STL files upon request. This minimizes the risk that custom place components raise, and makes it considerably faster to produce and deliver. 

I think a short run of 50 copies of a two-player Titanomachina set for $50 USD would be the right way to start, followed by an expansion for two more Titans (so sans board and board-sized box, etc). This would be a $3,000 ask on KS, which I think is low enough that it would be achievable, but also high enough that it would still be achievable (due to 5% going to KS, ~3% going to fulfillment). As mentioned there is a trick to KS whereby you basically spend way more on advertising than you are asking for to produce and ship a product because that tricks people into Fear Of Missing Out, and then of course you ship a produce with incredible production value that fails as an actual game, or has the re-play value of a month-old pumpkin. Fortunately Titanomachina is a fantastic game, and it's one I'm determined to grow and develop.  

Titanomachina: Hal-con 2023!

 

The second Halcon where I (and my fantastic assistance) was able to run demonstration games of Titanomachina to drum up interest, and I think the improvements (and changes) I have made to the game from last year. The addition of the player mats, the changes to the Capacitor system, the tuning of the Vulcan Gun/Gun Battery/Laser Battery (and its renaming), changes to the card layouts, the development of the board tiles, and even a few un-intended changes like the charge/cogs of the Master crew (1/3 instead of 2/3) have made the game better. 

There's still some changes I would like to implement. I still need to implement the new VPs for systems. However, I think that is best left for production since it affects dashboard cards and I want to put those costs back on the system cards to make scoring more transparent. I just don't want to do that until the numbers are very firmly nailed down. 

There is a question of using a board vs using the board tiles. A pre-printed quick-start board is probably the best idea, given the effort required to set up the board, despite the enjoyment I personally derive from setting up the tiles either as a quick-start or a competitive set-up. Getting players to the meat of the action first, and letting them consider how they would do it differently if they could set up the game tile by tile is probably for the best. Plus there's the round tracker on the board, which makes that more usable and transparent. 

One suggestion that came up, which I think may have come before, is that there should be a scoring bonus for having the highest habitat. Previously I think it may have been the tallest building, but having the highest habitat would encourage players to detect taller buildings rather than widely scattered one-story buildings. At least it would make it less of a no-brainer, which is a good thing.  

There's also the implementation of the Pass cards and simultaneous activation. So far it seems to work. I have yet to see any indication that there are situations in which it might not work. I think it's possible that wear-and-tear on the pass cards could remove their anonymity over time. Perhaps I should think of this like an opportunity to sell more cards, but I think the risk of people simply giving up on product because it wears out easily is worse. Certainly these cards are easy enough to include in packs of 54 cards where each pack doesn't require a full 12 different weapons, especially where the alternate configurations of Titans are essentially a weapon swap. 

There's still the question of how to implement the player mats, given that like the cards above a gloss finish works with dry-erase markers until it doesn't. A laminated version would be perfect, but I'm not yet clear on the cost of doing that. I do think that standees are a valid option until we boot-strap into producing plastic miniatures equivalent to the resin 3D printed Titans. I want to make sure I have the production and fulfillment details worked out before another attempt at crowdfunding in April. 

In terms of procedure, I think a change by which players look through their decks to find the cards for destroyed systems rather than wait until they're drawn is also a good idea from a book-keeping standpoint so they don't get forgotten. The problems I'd foreseen with players doing that just don't really happen, which is another point in favour of development. People are doing that anyways, and a good rule of thumb is to re-design the game to reflect how people enjoy playing it. I might also mention a few things like tracking whether crew have operated systems by turning the card upside down (and not flipping it over, lest it be confused for a card used to charge another system for the purposes of capacitors), and 

There's also a bunch of optional rules that I have in the development queue, pretty far down, to address things like being able to kick other Titans' legs when they're otherwise out of arc, being able to grab habitats with hands or claws and convert grapples to impacts by hitting other Titans with them, extending shields over buildings, and so on. As mentioned at the convention though, I want to make sure the core game play is solid before implementing by vast list of optional extras. 

Hal-con 2023 Deck Presets

 

I'm getting ready for Hal-con 2023 and one of the last things on my To-Do list is making sure I have a list handy of the way decks should be set up when some people interested in becoming players sit down for a demo game. One of the design pillars of Titanomachina is that players have a deck of cards which they can cunningly order before the game as part of their strategy to win. It makes the game interesting for explorers, competitors, socializers and killers alike. The explorers have a massive system to explore thanks to the combinations available with all the systems and their cards. Competitors get a lot of levers to optimize. Socializers have something to discuss, like army-building in other Wargames, and killers have a way of tripping other players up with counter-play.

For beginners, however, it's important that the decks be preset because beginners have neither the time nor the interest nor the context for understanding the deck-building aspect of the game. The idea is that preset decks will give them direction on what they might be able to do in the game, and what they might be able to do with the cards in a different order. In addition, the preset decks need to be recorded so the demo sets can be reset at the end of the demonstrations by the demonstrators that aren't me. Hence the lists, such as in that picture at the topic of this post. 

The general notion is that players have a crew member and a limb in each draw so as least they can keep moving and operating, those being some of the most important actions in the game. I also tried to space out the offensive and defensive options, and to align support systems like sponsors and capacitors with cards that would benefit from their activation. The first draw is intended to maximize the options available to each player without overloading those options, and leaving players with a reserve on round 2. 

I'm definitely going to need to revisit my demo script because I want to also use these decks to do open-handed round 1s, so that players can see how they should be thinking of the cards.

Titanomachina: Simultaneous Activation

In my efforts to figure out an additive way of speeding up the game, a friend and guru of mine suggested that we try activating simultaneously. Usually in Titanomachina we would take turns both activating systems and resolving their actions. I resisted because in order for this to work, at least with the minimal amount of change to the rules, I would need cards for the pass option in each deck; two cards where a 54 card deck contained two Titan decks with their optional weapon loads. 

But having tried it a few times in two-player game, I think it works to both speed up the game, and to perhaps make the game a tad more exciting. I rather like how Titanomachina ratchets up the tension for the players because reactions are limited to parts of a Titan being targeted during attacks, and there's a wonderful economy by which players try to play off combos against combo-breakers. I enjoy how the tension builds and then releases when some manages to pull off a crushing blow or clover combo. 

Where players are activating simultaneously there's additional pressure to play a card quickly, and keeping the actions resolved in initiative order it makes initiative even sharper. There's some tension leading up to players playing cards, which releases when the cards are flipped. It works. However, I feel like these mini-build-ups and releases of tension are more of a side-grade to the overall build-ups and releases. Usually after a game I'm very excited because of the way the tension isn't exhausted by the pay-outs, but in this case the constant release of tension meant I was pretty relaxed when it was over. On the other hand the response from my test-cogs was pretty positive, and I think it's definitely one way Titanomachina could go.

Production-wise, putting two extra cards into a two-player 54 card pack isn't a show-stopper. Where the two Titan configurations available to each player aren't radical changes requiring 12 cards in total, and even just weapon swaps for 6 cards minimum, there's plenty of room. I even have this lovely chibi art by Kristina Amuan showing the crew goofing off that stands out from the regular art and does a good job of punctuating the round. 

Currently I'm not sold on making this a change, but it seems like a great idea for an optional rule, particularly if I can shoe-horn the pass card into the regular rules. Certainly there is some potential for shenanigans where it shares a card back with the other Titan cards and announcing it's available to charge other systems. It might require a specific injunction about not using the card to power systems. The identical card back should make it invisible, but older sets will see these cards used more and wear harder than other cards, making their utility as a blind insufficient. Maybe the cards just need to be made sturdier. It's an option.

If I'm being honest, it also irks me that this is how Marvel Snap works and I didn't enjoy that when I tried it. The point of Titanomachina is that it's the game I want to play, so I'm pretty resistant to removing parts I enjoy, but slightly less for some reason to adding parts I don't hate. 

As mentioned before something not working on play-testing is easy, you simply mark it up as not working and why, and move on. Something working, on the other hand, has this terrible tension of making me wonder when it will stop working, or whether it will do the same thing all the time. Still, that is what play-testing is for, right?

Speeding up the game: Test Results

What's fascinating when introducing a rule to a system is figuring out what has happened to the system when that rule is tested. I tried out the challenge rule in a 3-player game and it didn't work. Or, I should say, it didn't work as I wanted it to work. That is a good thing as a disconfirmation of a hypothesis is much better than the confirmation. The latter yields no new information. The former tells you there is either a flaw in your logic or a problem with your model. 

The challenge rule didn't work because the second player challenged the first player to gain an advantage against the 3rd player without the 3rd player being able to react properly. It felt bad and I saw no significant increase in the speed of play. It didn't work well with a culture of taking ordered turns and waiting for your opponents' best moves.

There was the suggestion that players all activate their systems at once, and resolve in initiative order, which I should also try out. There is some suggestion that this speeds up play. It was made in parallel with the comment that if 'pass' was a card it would be the most popular card to play. There is truth to this as we have seen from the version of capacitors that let players draw additional cards from their decks.  I'm okay with pass being popular, and have considered it making it a card draw, although having a time-out end condition seems important and testing it out as a draw meant the first round did not end. 

Of course the players can voluntarily play faster, to the point of abandoning the mental math entirely, as calculating optimal choices each turn and again at the end of the round, but I really would like some way to put time-pressure on players that isn't a timer or liable to cause arguments.

Titanomachina: Speeding up the Game

Not too long ago Titanomachina games invariably lasted about 75 minutes. It was weird. That stopped happening a few years ago, and since then games have tended to take longer. The 9-round introductory games I've run at Hal-con 2022 and plan to run this year can take up to 120 minutes, which is too much. I have been racking my brain trying to think of a way to speed up the game that isn't unfriendly to beginners, disabled players, and involves incentivizing players rather than punishing them for being slow since some parts of the game are actually kind of slow. Some players could probably smash out a game in as little as 30 minutes, and maybe even faster with some predatory first-round action. But I'm not really worried about them. I want players to enjoy a brisk game, or a tense game, and play at a pace that is good for them. 

Of course, the trick to any creative endeavor is first to figure out all the things that you can break and all the radical changes you could make. Once all the brainstorming is done, then you can analyze these solutions in terms of the requirements, and narrow it down a bit. Then, once something looks promising you can play-test it and find out that it doesn't work, but also find out what does work given the alternative. It's kind of funny that way. 

I think I have narrowed it down to a +1 cog bonus to the player that activates a system before a player preceding them in the turn order. So a bonus for declaring an action before a player has to declare it, and resolving it after someone else's action. 

Often times the player with the highest initiative may want to hold off activating a system, passing instead of activating, in the hopes of being able to react to what the other player(s) might do. This is kind of slow and sometimes backfires as it the other player(s) may then pass as well, ending the round. Now, if a player is unsure of what they are going to do next, that can also be aggravating to a player with something all cued up and ready to go. This gives players an incentive to (a) get cards on the table ASAP, and to (b) narrow the problem-space for those with the first shot (and the most uncertainty). It might also encourage players to egg each other along, which I think is healthy within the code of conduct. 

Titanomachina: What is in a board?

Part of the specifications for Titanomachina as a game is the emphasis on position and terrain. It is designed so that players can build the board before the game, essentially defining the battle they are going to have. Despite that, I have implemented quick-start set ups in Tabletop Simulator because I think that people playing for the first time (or the umpteenth time, so as myself) might appreciate getting straight to the action. I do like the idea of choosing the board at such a finely-grained level, but it virtually doubles the time spent on the game, which can stretch pretty long if a player is indecisive or simply slowly counting up all math which might determine move A rather than move B. The variable board is essentially for players that have excelled themselves at card management, and what to increase the difficulty level and add content to the experience. Which brings me back to the quickstart setup. 

Previous setups interfered with Titans' ability to smash themselves and each other through buildings. The latest is intended to reverse that, putting rows of buildings offset to each other so that Titans with Impact and Grapple weaponry can be extra smashy, as collateral damage is definitely a player favourite. An offset grid pattern drastically increases the opportunities to inflict another player's Titan on nearby buildings. Hopefully this hooks people's attention and kindles their imaginations. Hopefully this increases engagement during demo games, as the carrot to the stick of all the game mechanics. 

In addition here are a couple of highly specific rules I thought I might add before Hal-con 2023, and that would be:

(1) the ability to kick other Titans in the shin, which is to say allow Titans to attack other Titans directly in front of them with their legs, while limiting the available targets to the other Titan's legs. Essentially players are dis-satisfied with Titans' inability to kick directly forward without the aid of sponsons. Sponsons and the vivacious personality both exist, but apparently it's an issue. 

(2) the ability for Titans with a Hand or Claw to bottle another Titan with a nearby habitat. Which honestly is really specific but also hilarious. Also, it harkens back to the Gypsy Danger using shipping containers to loads its fists, which is so silly but also hilarious. With hilarity in mind, it would be neat to allow a Titan to convert the Grapple trait of its weapon to Impact if they destroy a habitat in range, arc, and line of sight. 

Which brings to me to a couple of outstanding problems with the game: 

The first is that play can be very slow when players pay close attention, and even slower when they don't. There's no punishment, except boredom, when the game takes too long, and no real incentive to play faster. I'm inclined to figure out a reward for players that play faster. I'm not sure how to do this, however. I'm not even sure it should be done. 

The second problem is communicating the granularity of the game. Players are generally used to bouncing across the board in a very loose abstraction of combat, usually a matter of moving into position to roll dice rather than more gradually developing a position and attack/defense strategies. I think a pre-amble about how the Titans are very big and have a lot of momentum, and how combos are built up over time helps somewhat but doesn't really prepare players for how to set things up and the violence of contact. 

The third problem is that having bits getting ripped off your Titan can be a psychological blow as much as it seems to disadvantage a player that can't use that card anymore. While a Titan missing systems will act faster, the reduction in both options and charge for systems will see it at a disadvantage, as well as giving them a vulnerable point: Getting through enemy shields and then enemy armour can be a turning point in a game. I'm personally very very pleased with how it works, but I get that it can be a bit much for other people. Not everyone wants to be Raleigh Beckett. 

The fourth problem is when someone uses a laser weapon for the first time, as they're pretty underwhelming when faced with shields, and there is also something somewhat innately cruel about them being used on unshielded opponents. To a degree they're meant to be cruel, both as a brake to heavily armoured opponents, and to have a particular character whereby the player feels like their Titan has been stabbed. It is a problem to the degree that players using lasers for opening shots are going to feel like they're at a disadvantage, particularly compared to guns. Plasma weapons have the dual advantages of hitting really hard and knocking a card out of an opponent's hand. Laser weapons, except maybe the laser blade, aren't really all that great for a player's first shot. Not a huge problem, but these things can add up. 

Refining the HR / VP System

Lately, as I've made changes to the rules I've realized that I should also make changes to the points system, the Human Resources for customizing a Titan and its buildings, and the Victory Points for scoring the game. The notion is that these are the same points. Specifically the changes are those to the multiple attacks rule, whereby you resolve them sequentially, and the stream-lining of the Impact and Grapple traits into the collision rules: the cogs used to move a Titan into a tile full of habitats are the same whether it's an attack or the Titan walking or jumping. A Titan can go diagonally through an 8-habitat cube of buildings under its own power, walking or jumping, or because it was attacked with an Impact or Grapple weapon, so long as the system doing so has 6 cogs. An Impact or Grapple weapon will do 12 points of damage, 6 to the target, and 6 to whatever location on the Titan hits the buildings on the tile. 

This is based on the notion that the Effect (cogs) and the Traits (extra actions, traits, etc) multiply out, but are divided by the opportunity cost of doing to, which is the Charge+1 (charge cost), and have an additional range bonus over the 4 of the baseline weapon, the Gun Battery. 

That cranks the Vulcan gun back up to a full 4 HR/VP, the Claw to 2 HR/VP. Interestingly the Adherent and Initiate crew members go down to 2 HR, and the Plasma Shotgun goes up to 3 HR. I'll need to redo the habitat numbers on the cards, but I also have some ideas about that I want to explore before I update the Tabletop Simulator demo version. 

Titanomachina: Beat with Styxx

Out of all the Titans I think Styxx is both the most powerful and the most difficult to use. Styxx retains Her vestigial layout from several iterations ago. When I first had cards printed out, Styxx's system diagram had three sensors, a jump jet, and a capacitor. Her three extra armour are considered sub-standard and Her deflectors impress no one now. Of course, the jump jet has been downgraded to a thrusters system, and the deflectors are a downgrade of the original shields system. Her turret no longer affords 360 degree fire upon activation, but even un-operated it expands Her systems from 90 to 270 degrees, and gives Her the ability to jump sideways. But the limbs, Styxx's arms and legs continue to be Charge 2, which is inefficient, but still fast and powerful. I think the limbs lie at the crux of the matter, as walking and changing direction are difficult for this Titan. Big arms, as well as any two cog system, feel underpowered for three cards including the Big Arm itself. Mind you, a Big Arm can cause four points of damage by punching a Titan into another Titan or into a sufficiently large building. 

But that's maybe one punch for perhaps two actions on the part of another player. Could be in response to three actions by another player. You'd need a master-crew operated gun battery to do four damage, potentially eight if you had a block of buildings to push it through. Certainly I have given some thought to this. 

But even the configurations available on Tabletop Simulator have similar profiles. The rocket pod and the laser battery both cost Charge 1, while a gun battery doing 3 or 4 damage like a laser blade or plasma shotgun may cost crew and their charging cards without the entertaining HE or AP effects. An adherent-operated arm may destroy an exposed system, but how over is a system truly exposed? The laser blade pierces shields and armour. The plasma shotgun does an efficient 4 damage and shocks a card out of an opponent's hand. 

The real advantage is the three sensors. The ability to detect 3/4 or even 4/4 rounds is a massive offset in both gaining habitats on the board, and the ability to engage a Titan outside of line of sight. Where the Titan's turret increases the arc of its three sensor systems to 270 each, Styxx can match a sensor to each weapon, and shoot nearly anything on the board from a 3x3 square of tiles in the center of the board. Moreover one can have crew operate and then either sensors or a weapon should an opponent decide to seek cover. Sensors can also be used to manipulate the initiate as efficiently as extra armour. 

Controlling the initiative is great, especially when you're trying to use cover to avoid attack. But consider also that you can also deny a Titan line of sight using habitats detected by those sensors as well. 

Titanomachina: July 2023 Rule Book Update

I've updated the rule book. My favorite vendor, BoardGameMaker.com, sells booklets in A5 size with a minimum of 24 pages as I understand it, so I'm trying to build a version of the rule book to fit that. I have something like five pages left, which seems like a good excuse to recycle some material from the Tech Manual, or otherwise think of stuff to add. In the meantime, while it is still something of a work in progress, I'm happy to put it out there in case someone might want to read it before a friend puts them through the ringer.

I'll update again in August as I get things sussed out. Obviously I'm not a graphic designer, but I have a toolbox of technical writing heuristics I've been working to apply, with one of them being to print out the in-progress book and manually mark it up before returning to electronic editing and updates. Maybe I should make some TTS stand-in images. 

In general I'm trying to go from the general, basic information people need, to the specific, arcane information that ironically needs the most explanation: the Impact and Grapple rules are on the last two page spread of the 18 page document before a 19th page for the code of conduct. Along with trying to state rules using a title and only 8 words (or hyphenated words), I want each rule to have a diagram explaining it visually. Obviously I'm not a graphic designer, but I think I'm figuring some concepts out. 

Here's the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n6BxaqQhdCD73YDMOz0diF56vTRwVg6X/view?usp=sharing

Edit, updated the google drive link.

Titanomachina: The View From Here

It's June 2023 and it's also National Pride Month in Canada, meaning that I can gather up the LGBTIA+ flag colour schemes I have and put them together in a group shot! Insofar as Titanomachina has a canon, Eos is non-binary, Tethys is bisexual, Rhea is lesbian, and Styxx is trans. There's a set of jokes and whatnot in there, and some serious things. One of the serious things is that giant robots are typically presented as masculine and are overtly sexualized when presented as feminine. I wanted to represent something a little different and perhaps a bit more butch. This ties into the weird giant robot trope where the giant robots represent, in some form, the inner emotions and self-representation of the people inside of them. Here the Titans aren't psycho-sexual puppets, but their own persons acting with their own agency, and that agency is shared by the crews of people inside of them. Instead of it being people building giant robots to fight some third-party antagonist, it's giant robots including people inside of themselves because of their own internal squabbles and politics have reached conflict. It's my attempt to apply Luce Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman to the giant robot genre, to both satirize it and to use it to say something about identity, mind, and community. 

It's also hilarious to me that Tethys, the Titan that emerges from the oceans to try and take her crown back from Rhea, is a literal disaster bisexual. The politics, relationships, and conflicts of Titanomachina certainly need more development, and this is something I want to address at the outset. There's themes and whatnot, but it isn't written in stone, it's not canon, and no doubt my own limited perspective will require changes in the future as I learn and develop as a person myself. 

Currently the game, as hosted on Steam using Tabletop Simulator, has mainly seen changes regarding usability. I've tried to make it easier for players to understand and use the dashboards by making a player mat to help them organize play, and to separate out the layers of the dashboard. The latest version of the rule book is 16 pages of rules whereby each rule is ~8 words or less, and has a title or name and usually a diagram where it explains some spatial state of the game. I'm hoping this aids in comprehension and uptake for new players by chunking the rules into more digestible and flavourful bits. 

Some parts of the design have been rolled back, such as the four different shapes for each player habitat. Having a different shape habitat block for each player is perfectly feasible for a product selling hundreds of thousands of copies, and considerably less so for something that is still a collection of prototyped components in several totes. Another aspect is the culling of darlings such as the telemetry rule, something that usually improves the game-play by removing 'un-necessary' complication. I've changed the twist rule to simply adding 90° to the arc of all systems, changing the balance of sponsons and turrets, and requiring crew intervention to benefit from them rather than being a no-brainer. 

Similarly I've set capacitors to drawing more cards, although I'm beginning to wonder if that actually makes the game more fun because I've noted the player(s) with the capacitor certainly play more cards, but there disparity is a rough edge and playing cards to gain more cards isn't a great feeling in terms of a game where cards are supposed to change the state of the board. I feel, however, that simplifying the collision rule to enable Titans to hammer each other through entire blocks of buildings and effectively double the amount of damage done is a fantastic and impactful change that better balanced Titans' ability to destroy buildings vs their ability to return them to the board. 

I have an idea for a change to capacitors though, and not one that requires changing the round/turn mechanism, or the Capacitor cards themselves. Here's the idea: Players can return that number of cards played face-down to their hand. This avoids the issue that drawing extra cards from the deck caused, that of Titans both accelerating through their decks and potentially playing with a full hand of 22 cards every round as a result. Instead, you have things like Plasma Howitzers and Digitigrade Legs being played at essentially a discount, and not preventing a Titan from utilizing those other cards. Where a previous couple of attempts failed I think I'll test this (several times...) before implementing it, but it seems promising...

Titanomachina: Always room for improvement

Since removing the Telemetry trait from the Extra Armour systems and giving them the Scan action instead I've found a number of other things that needed tightening up, including the question of number in the total Effect of systems. In most systems with anything beyond walking and attacking I had added words to the effect that the extra trait thingy required a total Effect of 1, so I broadened that out and stuck it at the beginning of the action rules as it covers all actions, and explicitly stated that you cannot choose to activate a card that is not going to do anything, that has total Effect 0. I figured why just lay down a blanket prohibition? 

That segued nicely into a discussion of how personality actions work, which is to say they're like an extra action by a system: you're going to need at least one leg to take advantage of the Pugnacious personality, for example. And that leg will need to be either relatively un-damaged or relatively well-crewed. Likewise the Detect action's combination with a weapon to remove the requirement of a line of sight when attacking is therefore limited having a total Effect of at least 1 because otherwise the sensor can't be activated. When it is activated, the combination only works for that sensor system's arc and line of sight. This also opens up space to key personalities to various body parts. It might be something to key Sagacious-ness to Extra Armour, but maybe in the next go-round. 

I also inserted some of the diagrams that I created for the outgoing target card, the one explaining the arcs and that needs fancy artwork. As well there is the player mat, which isn't something I am terribly thrilled with, but it provides something for new players to focus on and to bootstrap some of the concepts: it's not necessary for players, but it solves problems around marking up the cards directly. Concurrent to this I figured out that in Tabletop Simulator I could de-couple the shield tokens from the snap-to grid in place to help with placing the Titans and the habitats. So those are easier to use, for the value of that in Tabletop Simulator. 

Further changes that I have planned continue to be things like the addition of weapon systems held by hands, further types of buildings that affect play, and more psychological cards (things like mood, trauma, and whatnot to allow players to push the envelop of the basic game. Something I'm also going to try is writing an annotated rule book, explaining some stuff about the rules because I think it's worth going with the old 'maybe the author's inane rambling will explain stuff' but better. The rules, after all, have a purpose. Sometimes that purpose is to represent the world of the Titanomachina game, and sometimes that purpose is to define what kind of game is being played and why. 

Titanomachina is a game of inches. Each habitat is 25mm in each dimension, or at least the cubical blue ones are. Your job as a player is to draw the right cards at the right time, held in tension with your job as player to play the right cards at the right time. Instead of the player handling a shuffled deck, however, it's about planning ahead. Players are being asked to plan and execute a strategy, which is resolved in a combinatorial fashion. Each combination of cards and positions should be variable, depending on the conditions on the board and on the dashboards. Even the value of the initiative varies.

In the two-player game, there's less attacker and defender than there are hunter and hunted. The hunter or chaser is ideally the player with the lower initiative, as that gives them the opportunity to react to an opponent attempting to move out of the range, line of sight, or arc of an attack. Likewise if you need to escape a situation, having the higher initiative is good because you may be able to move where they can't follow, and you can do so before getting hit. But where an opponent can't evade, having the initiative means you get to hit first, possibly shutting down an attack or knocking them out entirely. Likewise where no contact has been made, going second allows a player the opportunity to move into position to pounce. Players can sacrifice their sensors' ability to detect habitats and ignore line of sight, or their extra armours' protection as an active defense, to change that order. 

Who goes first can be good or bad. Likewise the various combinations of weapons, shields, limbs, and so on are trade-offs in terms of everything having a cost-benefit and an opportunity cost. Doing one thing prevents you from doing another. But in terms of going first or second, and in what position, there are basically those four situations. There's chasing, evading, trading punches, and stalking. Stalking and damage control, raising shields and repairing damage, are pretty much the same position of relative safety. But whether you are in these positions is a matter of the cards available as much as the relative positions of Titans on the board and shields/damage on the player mats. You need to make sure that you are not left with a hand of cards leaving you vulnerable for a turn. 

The Eos and Styxx Titans, for example, having only three extra armour systems when it would take them both four rounds to rotate entirely through their Titan decks. Fortunately their capacitor systems enable them to fast-track 11 cards ahead (at, it must be said, the cost of eight cards and the focus of the entire crew). That's more than enough to get a plasma howitzer or macro laser back into a hand in the next round though, but that will require using that extra armour system to charge the weapon system. Maybe a macro gun or rocket pod is the safer weapon for that choice. But only three extra armour systems will succumb to damage faster, and still won't cover vital systems like deflectors and capacitors. Capacitors allow a Titan to do more, but that Titan will have to do it with fewer systems and less capacity to absorb damage. They're great for chasing, but less so for trading punches, and while stalking is definitely their strong suite, evading is less so because there is far less opportunity, time-wise, to get those capacitors firing. Conversely, evading with four or five extra armour systems is less productive because you're so much better protected and should use the charge spent evading on trading blows. Chasing is less ideal because you're spending time moving that you could be aiming and hitting with the extra armour, but that's also about the weapon mix chosen. 

My point being? It's time to cash out those strategic and tactical puzzles as representing certain idealized situations of giant robot combat. 

Titanomachina: Initiative Issues

Lately I've received feedback about how initiative works in Titanomachina. In case you don't know how it works, every player gets 25 habitat blocks at the beginning of the game with their Titan figurine. Of those 25 habitat blocks, 24 are available to be placed on the board and 1 goes into the initiative stack. Players stack the initiative stack in the order of their personality cards, from highest to lowest. Going from the top downwards and looping around is the order in which players take turns. Playes can change their position in the stack by activating sensor systems for the Scan action or by activating extra armour systems for the Block action and taking damage to that system in order to trigger the Telemetry trait of that system. 

If that last part seems really kludgy it probably is, as I've received feedback that makes me come back to why that was implemented, and how it could be changed without disrupting how the game works too much. The first problem is that when you're at the top of the stack another player can knock you down to the bottom of the stack if you activate an extra armour system to defend yourself. Apparently it feels bad to have that happen on top of all the other results of being attacked (damage, positional change, losing cards in hand). The second problem is that an attacker can essentially earn themselves a free consecutive turn if they're shooting another player directly below them in the initiative stack. I'm kind of okay with this, but apparently again it feels bad to some players. 

Part of the reason for this is the telemetry rule, and part of this is that the initiative stack works by the person with the next block in the initiative stack takes the next turn regardless of whether the initiative changes that turn. Having chewed on it for a bit, I think this can be resolved without radically changing the core of the design. 

Firstly, I think it's a matter of changing the rule about who goes next in the initiative stack: the player that would have gone next if the initiative hadn't changed. It kind of kicks the problem down the road, because there is a purpose to mixing up the initiative and creating that imbalance in the number and order of actions. But it prevents weird effects depending on the number of players, and prevents increasing a player's position in the initiative stack from giving the previous player a 'free shot' so to speak, meaning that the Scan action doesn't double its time-cost. It's also about the minimum that can be changed in the rules. 

Secondly, I think changing the extra armour system is a good idea, and removing 'telemetry' from the game. Much like how I changed 'ablative armour' to 'extra armour' because 'ablative' is apparently obscure (and it is) I think telemetry is un-necessarily confusing and difficult for players to grok as they learn, and outweighs the benefit to the experienced players to have. Yes, it can be used to reverse the initiative, rewards aggression, and so on, but most of that might be retained if extra armour exchanges the telemetry trait for a scan action, giving it a pro-active purpose as well as a reactive purpose. Which also ties into the aforementioned problem with giving the previous player another immediate turn by increasing your own initiative, as giving up an extra armour card to give them another shot on you seems like a strong disincentive to play the card. Giving up extra armour to attack them first seems like a better structure of incentives and choices, at least from the perspective of dealing with these 'problems.'

Titanomachina: Updated Table and Cards

 Most recently I've updated the table and the dashboard cards for Tabletop Simulator, and prior to that I updated the rules (and cards) for capacitors, turning them from doubling a prior action to tempo-increasing card. So far Titans that lack capacitors don't seem to be at a disadvantage for not having them, and Rhea's armour doesn't seem over-built. What I haven't done recently, however, is take Rhea's secondary configuration out for a spin. The last rationalization of Human Resource (HR) / Victory Point (VP) costs fixed this configuration's cost at 41 HR, the lowest of any Titan configuration on option in Tabletop Simulator. 

Looking very close to Titanomachina's cover art of Rhea being ambushed by Tethys, and swapping out the macro gun for a plasma shotgun, this configuration is all High Explosive. Moreover it'll start with 24 habitats on the board, and essentially starting in the lead by sacrificing expensive equipment like capacitors, lasers, and guns in favour of armour, high explosives, and a head start. The obvious strategy seems to be engaging enemy Titans as soon as possible, so that they don't immediately tank that lead by destroying a few yellow habitats. However, that plasma shotgun is both expensive in terms of charge, and relatively slow-loading compared to an equivalent plasma shotgun on a Titan with capacitors. 

Consider that nearly all of Rhea's systems require charge 1, except for the shields and plasma shotgun. That means that Rhea can engage in four actions in the first round, and two in the second round if one of them is raise shields or attack with the plasma shotgun. By comparison Eos' primary configuration if They get a capacitor off operated by Their master crew, gets about five if they stick to charge 1 systems. Of course, Eos will also get some of those systems back earlier, like the fourth round or even third. Both Titans are probably going to want to use crew members to buff their actions, at the cost of 1-2 cards. 

Now it's kind of interesting that if Eos gets hit with the plasma shotgun in the first round, that full power with the capacitor nets Eos +1 card and essentially swaps the master crew, capacitor, and another card for four others. That's also at the cost of pausing to activate the master crew and then the capacitor, leaving Eos a sitting duck for two turns. If Eos goes the route of just activating two capacitors for full power without crew operation, that's again netting +1 card after being hit by the plasma shotgun. Certainly that might enable a further master-operated plasma howitzer shot, but that would be two more turns and five cards. Rhea might be able to tank the shot, with clever enough shield placement over the frontal extra armours 3 & 5. 

What could Rhea do though, during those four turns? And over the course of four rounds? Certainly with two arms, two legs, and two thrusters a player can keep Rhea moving more than once a round. Out of twenty-three cards though that would be twelve. Then there's one for the sponson, because that agility is important. The four crew would be six cards. That leaves four cards for the three weapons, the two shields, the sensor, and the personality. Of course the arms and legs can attack, and bolstered by the crew can do some work, but that is one card short for the plasma shotgun. That's not counting any incidental blocking that might happen over the course of those four rounds. Where Rhea has five extra armour packs as standard, then one or even two a round is possible. I think keeping the plasma shotgun for blocking purposes might work best with the occasional opportunity shot might work best. 

For preference I think it would be better for this configuration of Rhea to have either the Vivacious or the Pugnacious personalities. Audacious and Gracious don't add much to the heaviest defensive posture in the game, while the extra speed and agility helps middling speed and agility. Controlling the initiative with Sagacious is great, but I think it would work better with a Titan that's trying to scout and scoot, rather than a stand-up brawler like Rhea, and while Rapacious works for everyone where this configuration starts with 24 habitats it might not be as useful as enhancing Rhea's actual performance.      

With Vivacious, I think I would set up in the middle of the board, with one shield token over each front, back, and right/left leg, and then three for each arm. The idea is to tank weak hits with the plasma shotgun or arms, so that any incoming HE gets the extra armour, and then to play for a time-out while threatening a ring-out to keep opponents focused on the threat to their Titan. With Pugnacious it would be straight into an ambush situation and then just keep hammering an opponent for a knock-out. With other personalities I think I would choose a different Titan, or at least a different configuration. 

I haven't played Tethys in a while, and Tethys tertiary configuration just calls to me. Maybe it's the double gun batteries, or maybe it's the macro laser. There's always Styxx's quaternary configuration... Of course, Titanomachina is designed for this kind of rotation of strategies. In theory we would be designing the optimal mix of systems, crew, and habitats, but the available Titan configurations on TTS gives players some opportunity to anticipate or react to their opponent(s) choices. Eos is the knock-out fighter, while Styxx is going to be best at pushing a time-out thanks to their sensors. Tethys is also a knock-out fighter with some grappling ability, while Rhea is intended to maximize that board control with some knock-out ability. 

Titanomachina: The High Cost of Charging

Titans in Titanomachina are composed of systems, represented positionally by the dashboard card, and in the direction of time by the Titan deck of system cards. Players work through these Titan decks, drawing 23 cards in the first four rounds of play at a minimum, from a 23 card deck. Of these decks the default configuration 1 of each Titan has the following:

• 1 or 3 Sensors
• 2 Arms
• 2 Legs)
• 1 Sponsons or Turret
• 2 Deflectors or Shields
• 2 Thrusters or Jump Jets
• 0, 1, or 2 Capacitors
• 3, 4, or 5 Extra Armour
• 3 Weapons
• 4 Crew
• 1 Personality

Sensors have Scan and Detect actions, either increasing position in the initiative stack or placing at least one habitat back on the board (and ignoring LOS for a turn). Scan is charge 0, Detect is charge 1. 

Limbs, arms and legs in general, enable combined Walk and Attack actions. Arms and Plantigrade Legs are charge 1, while Big Arms and Digitigrade Legs are charge 2. 

Sponsons and Turrets can Twist and Block. Capacitors can have Full Power. Extra Armour has the Block action. Personalities have Walk, Repair, Scan, Detect, Twist, and Raise Shields. Sponsons, Turrets, Capacitors, Extra Armour, and Personalities have charge 0. 

Deflectors and Shields can Raise Shields or Intercept. While Deflectors have a charge of 1, Shields have a charge of 2

Likewise Thrusters and Jump Jets both enable Jump actions. Thrusters have a charge of 1. Jump Jets have a charge of 2. 

Crew can either Operate or Repair. Initiate crew have a charge of 0, Adherent and Master crew have a charge of 1. 

Weapons can Attack or Block. Attack actions range from charge 0 in the case of the Gun Battery to charge 2 in the case of the Macro Laser, Plasma Howitzer, Plasma Shotgun, Laser Blade, and Claw. The Macro Gun, Vulcan Gun, Hand, Buzz Saw, Rocket Pod, and Laser Battery are all charge 1. 

Now, the Sponsons, Turret, Crew, Capacitors, and even Limbs can change the outcome of actions down the line. The Twist action increases the arcs of a Titan's systems, allowing them to Attack even when otherwise out of the narrower arc, and change the direction of Jump actions. Capacitors add cards that can add new actions and enable combos as well as pay for otherwise unavailable actions. Using Sensors to take the Initiative may likewise enable Attacks that would otherwise no longer have a target when it came time to their turn. Crew simply add a bonus to the Effect of next Action, enabling all systems to work better. 

Notably in each case the cost of the chain of action means Titanomachina is a game of momentum; you don't want to waste cards on actions that don't score points or don't lead to scoring points. There's certainly value in psychologically goading an opponent into predicting a chain of events predicated on a particular card and taking the cost of play it as not outweighing the opportunity cost of not using it to play other cards. 

Playing a crew member for the operate bonus telegraphs a certain level of danger to the other players, and gives them time to move out of line of sight, arc of fire, or range of any potential attack. It might give an opponent time to land an attack destroying the weapon before the crew can operate it, or simply to play their own crew card in preparation for a devastating counter-attack.

Generally there is a certain rhythm that you want to be able to deliver attacks with to maximize both the damage those attacks do, and the number of victory points they score. Because shooting at habitats is easier than destroying systems on a Titan. It takes as much damage to destroy three habitats as it takes to destroy an Extra Armour system on a Titan. Once you're through the armour, and that can be exceedingly easy using Armor Piercing weapons like lasers that are relatively underpowered against a well-shielded Titan. 

The depth and penetration of weapons is particularly important when solving for the optimal geometry of a Titan's shields, as a Titan can block and intercept incoming attacks, redirecting attacks from their original high-value targets to low-value targets with heavy shield coverage. The High Explosive trait causes damage to additional targets beside the original target, and multiplies out the Shield Breaker trait, enabling these weapons to spread damage shallowly across several targets. These are also handy in the late game when shields are down and Titans have lots of heavy damage spread across their systems to defeat effectively blocking. Impact and Grapple weapons can likewise be used to spread the hurt across the target Titan and to nearby habitats and Titans, but depend pretty heavily on positioning to make sure the attack bounces the Titan off the right nearby building rather than the wrong one, or simply slapping them, and potentially helping them achieve a good angle rather than putting them at bad angle. The Shock trait attacks a Titan's ability to act and spend cards to pay for actions, effectively decreasing the tempo of the target's deck. Where a crew's operate bonus applies to whatever stack in a target's dashboard card ends up as the target after blocks, sometimes the easiest way to defeat a block is simply to use the power of friendship to combine crew bonuses on a single attack: whatever it hits is going to get hurt. Getting an opponent dead to rights for an Effect +7 attack is a holy grail of Titanomachina. On a Laser Blade it will hit a stack, remove one shield marker, do light damage to the top system going in, and then destroy three (!) further systems. If that armour is already heavily damaged it could make it four. Eos configuration 2 would see Their Extra Armour 3 suffer light damage, but then lose the Howitzer 1, Sensor 3, and Master Crew 1 (+8 VPs) in one fell swoop. That is, if it allows another Titan four turns in a single round activating all four crew cards for six cards in total and then the three cards for the Laser Blade and its charge of 2. That's nine cards, disregarding any other cards for position or having anything left over the next round except the basic 5 card draw. 

You know what? Styxx configurations 1 & 3 could do this, though more easily the configuration 3 with two capacitors, on the first round. The first 8 card draw for Styxx would need to be Laser Blade, Initiate Crew 1, Initiate Crew 2, Adherent Crew 1, Master Crew 2, Extra Armour 3, Capacitor 1, Capacitor 2. The player plays the two capacitors first, the first capacitor yielding a Deflector and a Sensor, with the second capacitor yielding a Sponson and a Thruster. Those last four combined with the Extra Armour gives a range of options for surviving until round 2. If completely out of position Styxx can activate the Sensor instead of the Laser Blade, giving them up to 8 more habitats on the board. Or the ability to move into range for a round 2 shanking, if they have the initiative (or even moving into position and then scanning to grab the initiative and stab in round 2). Although then that round two would see the Titan attacking on their fifth turn of that round 2, which is slightly ridiculous. 

Where you have five cards entering your hand at the beginning of every new round, and that enables up that many actions a round, and more likely 2.5 actions, building and maintaining a reserve of cards in your hand to take advantage of any opportunity becomes more likely to be done, at the expense of a second or third action that round. Capacitors, in replacing one card with two cards, accelerating the rate at which players go through their decks can open that up a bit at the expense of being a sitting duck and giving opponents additional time to react. But having five extra armour in hand, conversely, means the ability to control incoming fire: as mentioned earlier every three points of damage that scores an extra armour system could have destroyed 3x that number of Victory points in habitats, presuming it could be spread efficiently. 

Notably the Rhea configuration one has the cost of attacking with each of its weapons operated by a crew member or two as 12 cards. Add in 5 Extra Armour cards, and that leaves five cards for moving, and twisting. There's going to be no Raise Shields until round 5. On the other hand, Rhea can take it where shield tokens are two on front, sides, and back, and one each on the weapons. The tokens on the weapons absorb any high explosive effect, while the the armour blocks incoming attacks (so why worry about being attacked?). Ideally the Hand would attack, then the Macro gun, and then the Laser Battery, to break through shields and then through armour. More likely the hand will be out of range, and the Macro Gun will be blocked, leading to the Laser Battery just draining shield tokens in another block or simply not doing more than light damage to armour and its underlying system. However, if the Hand is disregarded (or traded for the Macro Gun depending on range) and the Macro Gun gains the +2 from the Adherent crew then that could be three attacks with 4, 3, and 3 damage, and potentially 5, 4, and 4 counting HE and AP damage. Either the target is going to lose a system or two, or they're going to lose all of their shields. 

Titanomachina on Tabletop Simulator: New Dashboards

 I've updated the dashboard cards on Tabletop Simulator, to put the habitat buildings available to each Titan to set up at the beginning of the game to match the current cost of systems. I've also attempted to make some improvement in terms of the system diagram, trying to uncovered some of the original Loic Billiau artwork, and explicate the 3x3 grid. I've had comments about how the system diagrams should include the 90 degree arcs described in the rules, and I've implemented a card describing how the system diagram maps onto the board, which I think is an acceptable solution instead. This would be instead of the Audacious and Vivacious cards in the basic card packs, with the Audacious and Vivacious cards added in an upgrade pack, and hopefully have their art upgraded one day when I find $200USD a card and Loic is still in business. Where the game is 2-4 players it works out, although I have been working on building out the team game. 

Ive also swapped the weapons on the Styxx Titan configuration 2 & 4 and the Eos Titan configuration 1 & 3 because a physical copy Titanomachina would include 24 weapon cards including left and right-handed versions of each weapon systems and this would reflect that.