Lately I've been trying to put some cogs into figuring out how to speed up the game. Most of the ways I brainstormed didn't work, so I identified other stuff to work on. One of those things was problem of wear-and-tear on components. Part of the game is putting down cards that your opponent doesn't expect, so they're placed face-down and then everyone all flips them over together, for the cards to be charged & activated in initiative order. This also involved a pass card that would result in end-round condition if every player put one down. The pass card would then be pulled back to the player's hand. The capacitor system allows cards to be pulled back to the player's hand, so that wasn't some weird kludge. It would result in extra wear-and-tear though, enabling players to identify if their opponent was passing (and essentially going nowhere and doing nothing pro-active).
So I thought, why not allow players to charge the pass card like they do system cards, and these cards could then go back to the player's hand with the pass card. Instead of playing the pass card and retrieving it, the players would draw all the cards back at the end of the round. This was developed so that players could play cards, but didn't have to charge & activate them, and all those un-activated systems (and the pass card) would return to the player's hand.
This also seems to speed up the game, so I made a couple of other changes like simplifying the shin-kicking optional rule, made the simultaneous card play the core rule, and make knock-outs based on a 5VP difference in destroyed systems during 9-round games. I've also been experimenting with limiting players to 12 habitats instead of 24, just because it would make it so much cheaper to produce and sell copies of Titanomachina games where sourcing 25mm cubes is an incredible hassle. So far it doesn't seem to negatively affect games. Certainly the table looks emptier, but it also opens up the board a bit, and that is something of a dead-heat.
I'm going to be implementing a change freeze then, until Hal-con 2024 is over. This will be something of a fair-well, as I wasn't able to get Titanomachina produced this year and hit something of a financial wall. On the bright side, now the game grabs you with both metal claws and doesn't let go!
Here's the rule book:
