So I recently picked up a set of the planetary empires tiles for an absolute steal, but thumbing through the rules I was dissappointed to find that the mechanics were less involving of the tiles than I was hoping. There seems to be very little relation to battles fought and interactions between the tiles, you could get away with simply flipping a coin for the majority of takeovers and interactions.
Not only that but the rules are based around sixth/seventh edition and are now outdated for the current ruleset, one of the more funny examples is that you can use extra points given by the games to bring in "allies and mercenaries" from other teams to mix into your own army.
So, I was hoping we could bring this back up to date, expand upon and attempt to standardise these rules as a collective. If you aren't fortunate enough to have gotten the tiles before they stopped making them, feel free to use an excel spreadsheet or a hexgrid from the internet.
For reference, here are the rules (which are out of print along with the majority of the tiles) as they stand.
http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Planetary-Empires-Rules.pdf
I don't see a problem with the tile setup, it seems to work well enough. As well as the number of tiles per player, that seems to work as well. but if someone can come up with something better then i'll be all for it.
I don't like how the extra building setup works with it being setup beforehand. I would much prefer that there be some sort of expenditure for a player to build them within their own territory. Perhaps each tile owned gives one resource or energy (it's not a proper board game until it involves tiny wooden cubes) with modifiers from the buildings to adjust it.
Speaking of the buildings, planetary empires has five by default, one of which is a tile rather than a building.
-Spaceport (the tile)
-Power Generator
-Manufactorum
-Shield Generator
-Command Bunker
I'll run through them one at a time
Spaceport
By default, the spaceport allows you to count as adjacent to other spaceports for the purposes of doing the coinflip to conquer tiles. Which is OK i suppose. Would it be better if the tiles were sparse and allowed direct attacking of other tiles using the planetstrike rules.
Power Generator
By default power stations gives a +1 for rolling for first turn, reserves, and deployment if you own more than your opponent. with +2 for if you own double the number of generators than your opponent and +3 if you own triple. which given the power of alpha strikes in the current game would be powerful boon for monopolising generators
These could instead tie in to the resources mentioned above, giving +2 resources to the tile it occupies and +1 resources to the surrounding tiles. Or instead perhaps +1 strength to energy weapons, with +2 and +3 for double and triple respectively. or perhaps it can power autoloaders and give rerolls to misses if you own more but only in tiles surrounding the generator.
Manufactorum
The default manufactorum gives +50 points to your army if you own more than your opponent, +100 if you own double, and +150 if you own triple. This is pretty powerful but isn't particularly fun, it does combine nicely with the "if you own less tiles you get more points" rule that exists in the base game, and adjusting one without the other might create large imbalances.
But otherwise i'm open for suggestions and don't have many ideas, maybe additional detatchments, maybe some area of effect to the tiles around it. It does have a lot of overlap with the power generator in terms of fluffy functionality with one being energy and the other being materials.
Shield Generator
The shield generator gives an increasing increase in the dice roll required to conquer the tile it sits on or the tiles surrounding it, given that i want to remove this part of the game it needs new rules
I was thinking of a +5 invulnerable save for all units if the battle takes place on the tile with the generator and a +6 invulnerable save for battles in the surrounding tiles, but this might be too powerful a bonus for owning a generator. Perhaps the generator could be replaced with a "fortress" instead which gives access to the rules of those "attack/defend" missions that are in the rulebook
Command Bunker
The command bunker gave one unit a rule from the special rules section, which no longer exists. The best thing for this would be an increase in the command points you get per battle, maybe in the surrounding terrain, maybe a universal increase based on who owns more.
A hive city should remain as one of every construction, capturing one should be done in cities of death rules
A standard game round would be "gather resources" then "build constructions" then "choose a target" once each player has gone around this round the battles are fought, the board is adjusted accordingly based on the results and a new round begins until boredom sets in or someone conquers all tiles.
How much each building should cost, whether armies should roam the board and needs to be bought and maintained, and whether the different tiles (which are placed randomly) should have different battle rules are the nitty gritty that don't need worked out yet. I can already forsee difficulty with the resources not having much to do in the later game when a player has all he or she needs, which will need solving.
Whilst the old rules suggest that different factions get different bonuses to different buildings, this is probably a deep rabbit hole that one can easily get lost in balancing that i have no interest in plumbing.
Additionally I would like a battle that takes place with a building to have that battle be part of the map, maybe even give the buildings stats so that they can be destroyed or captured by players on the board, maybe even bonuses if players can produce an appropriate piece of scenery. However this is better suited to an "expansion" down the line
So i reach out to the wider community for help in tightening these rules, maybe coming up with balanced values, perhaps even creating a document and hosting it online for others. Hoefully we can prove that we can create a balanced and/or fun experience.
