Cepheida: The Exploration Game - First Test

[Jubal]

Courtesy of Tar-Palantir, this game got its first test run. The rulebook is only partly written still and we were referring back to the similar Hetairos rules at times, but nonetheless it was an interesting experience.

I played as the Tangalak, he played as the Lexihad. The planet was barren and atmosphere-less, which reduced the possibilities a lot, but the result was interesting all the same. The difficult terrain not being directed (unlike in Hetairos) did make the map feel a bit more open, though there's work to be done there. We had a fun time bumbling around the map, discovering mostly science sites. There was surprisingly little real threat: I definitely think some tweaks to make the landscape more genuinely problematic/challenging would help, perhaps making difficult terrain occasionally generate hazard/crew difficulties if you don't have an atmosphere to simulate that being more difficult for life including you. The fact we ended up playing "destroy the enemy vessel" may not have helped with that, I don't want this to end up being a build and destroy game most of the time.

Other important things I discovered: the action economy of having a bunch of followers makes some tasks trivial for the Lexihad. I think that's fine: not everything will be trivial, and I'm going to redesign the shooting rules such that it's more of a disadvantage being shot at if you have more followers. The potential for science & engineering locations (equivalents to Hetairos' Library and Forge) to really make a player OP is very much there, but I think with some balancing that can be tweaked into viability as well. There's probably a need for caps on crew, inventories, etc.

Much more to be done!