There are sectors of the galaxy where mining is a major industry, where highly-trained space marines escort luxury liners and priceless cargo ships between gleaming space metropolises.
This is not one of those sectors.
Here, around the hindquarters side of the Dog Star, mineral deposits are so poor that none of the major mining companies bother. The local marshals won't pay for proper soldiers, and the tourists will settle for a random local with a ship to fly them around.
You're a random local, and you have a ship, so I guess you'll have to do.
Design Aims
Provide a range of different strategic options for players
Provide a feel of space exploration
Players should be able to choose their ship upgrades to focus on one of a number of possible strategies, or a mixture of them:
Dedicated mining ship with lots of cargo space
Speedy runabout for quick delivery of urgent missions
Dedicated fighter defending miners from pirates
Collect VPs from day 1
Neglect early VPs and amass technologies to get lots of VPs later
Work towards getting ongoing sources of VPs and defending them
Rules
Setup
Shuffle the 5 green ("Civilised") space tiles, 10 yellow ("Frontier") space tiles and 10 red ("Wild") space tiles. Lay out the 5 green tiles face up in a line. Then deal the 10 yellow tiles face up alongside them to form a 3x5 board. Finally deal the 10 red tiles face down to make a 5x5 board.
Each player takes a ship board of one colour and the corresponding ship token and reputation markers. Place all players' ships on the Galactic Bank Civilised space. Each player takes a Bank screen behind which to conceal the cash in their bank account.
Place a Pirate Raider on top of the (face down) top centre Wild space.
Shuffle the deck of Mission cards. Put all yellow resources tiles into the yellow bag and all red resource tiles into the red bag. Then put cards, tiles and cash onto the face up spaces: deal one Mission card onto each purple card shape, one yellow resource tile onto each yellow square, one red resource tile onto each red square, and put 1 cash onto each circle marked with "$1".
Randomly determine a start player. The other players take cash according to their position: second player takes $2, third player takes $4, and fourth player takes $6. Players may put this initial cash either on their ship or in their bank.
Randomly deal each player one of the initial Upgrade tiles (light green). That player puts the upgrade in one of their Upgrade slots on their ship board.
Place the Reputation board beside the board, and have the supply of cash, the deck of Mission cards, the Upgrade tiles, and the two bags of resource tiles within easy reach.
Aim & Game End
The aim of the game is to have the most money (space dollars, $) at the end of the game.
There are two ways the game can end:
When a player has $40 or more on board their ship, that player finishes their turn and then the game ends.
On their turn, any player may reveal the cash in their bank account. If that player has a total of $40 or more between their ship and their bank account, that player finishes their turn and then the game ends.
At the end of the game, all players total up their money between onboard cash and their bank account. The player with the most money wins!
Turn Structure
A player's turn consists of three steps:
1. Pirate movement 2. Take (up to) 3 actions 3. Collect income from tourists and advertising
(1): At the start of each player's turn, each Pirate Raider considers whether to move:
If it's in a space with a player ship, this pirate is happy and doesn't move.
Otherwise, it chooses the nearest player ship, ignoring any that are already in the same space as another Pirate Raider; then it moves one space towards the chosen player. They prefer the orthogonal direction with further to travel; e.g. if the closest player is 2 spaces east and 1 space north (3 steps total distance), the pirate moves east, not north.
In cases where there's a tie over which player to choose and/or which orthogonal direction to go, the current player chooses. The current player also chooses which order the pirates move in, in cases where it matters. Raiders do not turn Wild spaces face up.
(2): Players take (up to) 3 actions on their turn. Actions may be:
a) Moving your ship from one space to an orthogonally adjacent space b) Taking an action provided by the space your ship is in c) Taking an action provided by an Upgrade tile on your ship board
For a), note that:
Moving onto a face-down wild space turns it permanently face up.
To move away from a space containing a Pirate Raider, you must roll the die. On a 1-5, you must pay the pirates either any one resource tile, or one-tenth of your onboard cash rounded up. If you have no onboard cash, a pirate raider demands a resource tile instead. If you have no onboard cash or resource tiles, the pirates scowl at you and let you fly away. On a roll of 6, you escape without having to pay. Note that you roll the die before choosing which space to move to.
If you have a Laser, instead you only have to pay if you roll a 1; any roll from 2-6 lets you escape. If you have two Lasers, you don't even need to roll.
To move away from a Vortex space, you must leave $4 or a resource tile on the Vortex. If you have less than $4, you must leave a resource tile. If you have no resource tiles, you must leave $4 (or all your onboard cash if that's less than $4).
Most spaces indicate on them what the available actions are with a bold word preceded by a blue arrow, such as |>UPGRADE. Fulfilling/delivering a Mission card is an action even if the card doesn't say so; so is collecting a Mission card.
(3): After you have taken your (up to) 3 actions for your turn, if you have any Tourists on board or any Advertising Space sold on your ship, you collect the income from those:
Each Advertising Space upgrade gives you $1.
Each Tourist gives you $1 if they're sleeping in a Spare Bed, or $2 if they're sleeping in a Luxury Cabin.
Each Tourist also has a condition under which they'll give you some additional income:
The Geek gives you an additional $3 if you installed one or more new Upgrades this turn.
The Consumerist gives you an additional $2 if you took at least one Buy or Sell action this turn.
The Thrill-Seeker gives you an additional $2 if you destroyed a Pirate Raider or the Pirate Lair this turn.
The Curious tourist gives you an additional $1 if you explored a face-down space this turn. If all the face-down spaces were already turned face up at the start of your turn, instead he gives you an additional $1 if you took a Warp action at a Warpgate this turn.
Resources, Cargo and Passengers
Players can carry resource tiles in the cargo holds on their ship boards. Initially ships have 3 cargo holds, each of which can hold 1 resource tile. Each Cargo Bay upgrade has 2 more cargo holds.
The game includes five kinds of resource: Cylium, Cubon, Isolene, Starbon and Diamantium. These are spent on Upgrades, sold at the Mineral Wholesale, and delivered for Missions. There are two bags of resource tiles: the bag of yellow tiles is 40% Cylium, 40% Cubon, 20% Isolene, and the bag of red tiles is 20% Isolene, 40% Starbon, 40% Diamantium.
When a space is turned face up with outlines of red or yellow resource tiles on it, place resource tiles face up from the appropriate bag onto the space.
Some missions ask you to transport a Package or Passenger. Packages and Passengers also require cargo space in the same way as resource tiles. Tourist missions ask you to transport a Tourist (a special kind of Passenger) around with you.
Passengers (including Tourists) may only be transported if you have a Spare Bed upgrade or a Luxury Cabin upgrade. A Spare Bed lets you accommodate one Passenger in a cargo hold. A Luxury Cabin provides its own space which can only be used for transporting a Passenger. When you build a Luxury Cabin, you may move a Passenger into it from a cargo hold.
Whenever a player is taking an action that gives them a resource tile, such as Mine or Loot, the player may discard the previous contents of a cargo hold if they wish, before putting the new resource tile(s) into their hold. The same applies for packages and passengers. If you discard a package or passenger, also discard the mission card associated with them.
Ship Upgrades
Each player's ship board has room for two Upgrades. Upgrades are obtained at one of the five Station spaces on the board, by spending resources of the kinds printed on the Station space (also on the reminder card). No player may ever have more than two of the same kind of Upgrade on their ship.
When building an upgrade, if your ship does not have room for it, you may sacrifice one of your ship's existing upgrades. (Exception: You may not sacrifice Engineering Bays.)
The Engineering Bay upgrade occupies one upgrade slot but provides slots for two more upgrades. So the maximum number of upgrades a ship can have is six (two Engineering Bays and four others). When building an Engineering Bay, you don't have to have a free upgrade slot; you can slot it in "underneath" one of the existing upgrades on your ship.
The available upgrades are:
Cargo Bay: Adds 2 cargo holds.
Engineering Bay: Adds 2 Upgrade spaces.
Drill: Lets you take 2 resource tiles rather than one when taking the Mine action in asteroid belts.
Spare Bed: Lets you transport a Passenger (e.g. a Tourist) in a cargo hold.
Booster: Lets you move one additional space in any one movement action per turn. If you take two or more movement actions in a given turn, you may only apply the Booster to one of them, but it doesn't have to be the first one.
Laser: Lets you escape pirates on a roll of 2-6 rather than just 6. Two lasers let you take the |>DESTROY action to destroy a pirate - see below.
Advertising Space: Gives you an income of $1 per turn.
Business Cards: Give you an extra $2 when fulfilling missions.
Double Laser: Counts as two Lasers in every way except it only occupies one Upgrade slot. A ship may have a maximum of two Lasers total: i.e. when building the Double Laser you must sacrifice all existing Lasers from your ship.
Luxury Cabin: Can hold one Passenger or Tourist. Increases the amount the hosted Tourist pays by $1 per turn.
Advertising Deal: Gives you $4 right now.
Jolly Roger: Lets you take the |>STEAL action: when in the same space as another player who has fewer Lasers than you, you can steal one resource tile from their ship or $3 of their onboard cash.
Reputation
The Reputation board provides a major extra source of cash. It has four advancement tracks which record players' reputation in the sector, in each of four roles, and gives players rewards for reaching certain reputation levels.
The Reputation board sits beside the Space Map. When a player takes an action that increases their reputation in a new role, they place a marker of their colour on the appropriate space.
The four tracks are:
Sheriff: Whenever you destroy a pirate, advance one space.
Merchant: Whenever you sell one or more resource tiles to the Mineral Wholesale, advance that many spaces.
Freelancer: Whenever you fulfill a mission, advance one space.
Hacker: Whenever you install an Upgrade, advance one space.
When you advance a reputation marker onto or beyond a highlighted space, take the amount of cash shown. Some highlighted spaces give an extra bonus for the first player to reach that reputation on that track.
E.g: The red player just took a Sell action and sold 2 resources. She advances her Merchant reputation marker 2 steps, from 4 to 6. She reaches the highlighted 6 space, so she takes an extra $5; and because she is the first player to reach point 6 on the Merchant track, she gets another $5.
Once a play has hit all three highlighted spaces on a given Reputation track, there are no more rewards available to that player on that track.
Space Tile Details
To follow.
Discussion
Looks fun. Rather than having a fixed price mined stuff sells at, and a fixed price upgrades cost, this game might be a good candidate for a market mechanic - the scarcer something is, the more it costs, with each vendor being a different market, so you have a motivation to travel to the place where you'll get the best current price. --Pallando
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