Empires of Steel and Steam

[mgb519]

Might be difficult to implement that flooding card. Also, I feel that cards should have a fixed purchase cost but no activation cost. I'm not sure why, I just do.

[jmatthew]

Might be difficult to implement that flooding card.

I mean, this is all still in the idea phase, and I'm sure some of these will play-test really well, and some won't. As for that particular one, I was planning on having it play that each player chooses 3 hexes or so, one at a time, in turn order, and converts them to water hexes, having to choose only unoccupied hexes if they exist.

I feel that cards should have a fixed purchase cost but no activation cost. I'm not sure why, I just do.

The problem with that is that some of the cards will have extremely overpowered effects compared to others, and some of them will only make sense if you spend resources of one type or another. The cost for each card will be pretty low, but to play them is another matter. Most defensive cards or cards that boost your economy will be free, while the ones designed to fuck another player's arse with something hard and sand-papery will be more pricey.

[edit]
Obviously, since you're forced to play an Omen as soon as you draw it, it won't have an activation fee, and then you'll get to draw another Headline card to replace it for free.

[mgb519]

My point was that news in real life is sort of a random thing, so it should be left to chance in the game. The guy who draws an ubercard just gets lucky.

[jmatthew]

News isn't random ever. If there's a headline of snuggle and murder it's because some bastard went out and took the time and expended the effort to do some snuggling and murdering. If the headlines don't read about some political scandal, it's because the politician manipulated the media and spent money to do so.
Also, I want this game to be very much more strategy than chance; the headline cards are a very minor aspect to it and I don't want the luck of the draw to factor into how much time and effort players spend focusing on it.

[jmatthew]

Headline card back and a couple of Omens:





These are printed on 2.5" x 3.5" poker style playing cards with rounded corners.

[IVhorseman]

Is 3 rounds long enough for a matching cataclysm to actually get drawn?

[jmatthew]

Now that school has started for everyone around me, including my girlfriend, I've been devoting a lot more of my free time to working on this game. Here are some of the things I've gotten done recently:

The emblems for three of the eight factions (Nautilites, Pirates, and Coven):



I also finished the format for the Technology cards. Here are a couple example tech cards:



Both of the above techs are a type that are equipped directly to the faction's capitol city. They apply a passive benefit to the faction, and upgrade automatically as the player reaches certain thresholds (namely 1, 3 and 5) of their civilization. (See updated main post for more information about civilization levels.)
Below is a blank tech card that would be a standard "equippable" technology--one that would be equipped to one of a faction's six types of military units. The yellow orb shows the cost to research the technology, green is a symbol denoting what type of unit the technology will benefit (the star on the cards above shows that they are capitol city technologies), and the purple orb will display the minimum civilization level their faction needs to be at in order to research the technology. The large copper box will detail what the tech does and the gray sidebar will show an image displaying what tech slot on the affected unit that tech will use (weapon, armour, utility, etc.).



Lastly, the reverse side of the game-board hexes:



What do you guys think?

[IVhorseman]

So far it's looking great! I'm really digging for some criticism, but my only suggestion would be a different font for easier readability. As it is now, the 8 and 0 look the same, and the roman numeral V kinda looks like a U. It looks super cool now, but play around to see if you can find one just as cool that's a bit clearer.

[knolli]

General advise: Do the illustrations last. Rules and gameplay should be the priority until nearly finished. You don't want to have to redo the pictures over and over again because the rules behind them change. Use place holder until then. You will encounter many problems until it is fun to play. The devil is in the details, so to say. Only after extensive play testing when everything else is ready to go you can start to think about graphic design. Maybe you decide to drop one of the factions all together. Then everything you desinged for it would be in vain.

Some weeks ago I had the opportunity to test a board game that will be for sale at the end of the year. We could play the game, but we had to use simple plastic cones instead of character models and the crude, unfinished cards where printed on cheap paper. Some of the notes were even in handwriting. We had fun nevertheless. And found two flaws in the rules the designers had missed.

[jmatthew]

Thanks for the input guys. I'm still playing around with different fonts and whatnot. I want it to have a somewhat art deco feel, but definitely still be easily legible.
As far as illustrations and things, everything I've made so far is set in a way that's really easy to change and manipulate if need be. I know I'm going to have to print it more than once, making changes and tweaks, which is why I'll be using cheap playing pieces for the test runs. However, I wanted to get a lot of the background art finished beforehand. I'm not going to need to change anything on those cards other than wording or costs or things like that. Whenever I'm working on a project, I tend to jump around a lot to different areas of it, rather than pounding one aspect out at a time--if I were to focus only on the rules and text, I'd never finish it. The art is the most fun, and is what inspires me to work on the rest of it, so even if I do have to re-do or eliminate pieces altogether, I won't see it as a waste.

[jmatthew]

Now with 100% more Facebook page!
https://www.facebook.com/EmpiresOfSteelAndSteam

[Quantumsurfer]

I have an acquaintance who runs a local Steampunk Society, so I passed on your page (and this thread) to her. I hope you don't mind. She's posted about it here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cognoscenti-SteamPunk-Society/253811107992193. I'd be happy to make a post about it on my own, much smaller, page as well if you like, for whatever good that will do you.

[jmatthew]

Thanks a lot! I liked her page in return... Looks like some cool stuff. I wish there was a local steampunk society around here.
In way of updates, soooo much balancing going on.....