New Decks

This weekend I finished printing, cutting and folding the new decks: Tactical (previously called the Encounter Deck), Engineering (which includes Damage Cards and also the Maintenance mechanic), and the Modules.

Tactical – contains every possible encounter in the game, sorted into 3 groups: ships, creatures and random. Random includes things like Murky Water, Seaquake, Shipwreck, etc. The Tactical Officer will be in charge of creating from this ‘library’ of cards the unique Tactical deck for each region as they enter it. This might seem like a hassle, but it takes very little time and provides an encounter set unique to each region.

Engineering – each card contains 2 sets of info: first, a Maintenance Duty and second a Damage Result. Maintenance is checked each day and requires the Engineers to move around the ship, keeping it running. If they start to slip up, there is a small chance that ship Systems will become damaged. In combat, when your ship takes a hit, Engineers cnsult the second half of this card to see which Modules or System have become damaged, if any crew are hurt in explosions, if there is flooding or fires, and whether or not the entire vessel becomes destabilized.

Modules – this deck contains all the modules that can be attached to the player’s ship. Weapons are also modules. We’ve updated how weapons attack now. It used to use a complicated (but original system) which Matt came up with on the fly and I thought was rather clever. However, in practice we realized that there is so much going on in the rest of the game that a complicated firing mechanic was unnecessary.  So we ditched it in favor of roll 2 dice, one for weapon speed and one for strength. Add weapon modifiers. If both values beat the speed and strength of yor target, you score a hit. Currently all crafts and creatures are defeated after 3 hits, including the player’s ship.