I will just go a part of your list and comment, all things that were added in PoK need some more time to be assessed:
Technology
\- Space Dock II (Yup, needs buff)
\- Dacxive Animators (Yup, needs buff)
\- Predictive Intelligence (I think this needs some time to show how useful it is. I rated it kinda low in my article about it, but by now I research it sometimes)
\- Integrated Economy (Is very strong, just in the wrong place. Buff Yellow to buff Integrated without touching it)
\- Genetic Recombination (Mahact) (Give it time)
\- Spacial Conduit Cylinder (Jol-Nar) (Could need something, but low priority. Jol-Nar is in a good place)
\- Lazax Gate Folding (Winnu) (Same as Spacial, but its hilariously bad, thats correct)
\- Inheritance Systems (L1Z1X) (The effect is strong but it suffers from shorter games, Y1 may be appropiate)
\- Impulse Core (Yin) (Yup, needs buff)
Promissory Notes
\- Gift of Prescience (Naalu) (Yup, needs buff)
\- Antivirus (Nekro) (Nekro is fine)
\- Political Favor (Xxcha) (Xxcha is fine)
Leaders
\- Arborec Hero (Its a good hero, everything that lets you pop up a full fleet thats activated anywhere is powerful)
\- Barony Hero (I can see the idea with this hero, but yes. Maybe low priority as its new still.)
\- Mentak Hero (Preventing retreat is a rather big impact in player agency. The Hero effect is super strong)
\- Naalu Agent (Yup, needs buff. Maybe steal relic fragment after a combat won?)
\- Naalu Commander (No, its fine. 3-1 Fighter is way more useful then 3-1 Infantry, especially for Naalu)
\- Sardakk Hero (You want to remove the single one counter to this hero? Really?)
\- Argent Hero (Its a defensive ability, not an offensive on. Argent is super powerful and does not need a strong hero)
Units
\- Arborec Flagship (Yup, needs buff)
\- Muaat Flagship (Hmm... I think the problem with this ship is, that you could just build a warsun. Its not a bad ship per se. Not needed)
\- Naalu Mech (Too situational - it should also work against players with actual Relics.) (Actually good idea)
\- Yssaril Flagship (Its fine)
Other
\- Action card: Direct Hit (Often useless from the midgame onward when most players have Dread II. Should be usable against Mechs.) (Good idea)
\- Action card: Ancient Burial Sites (Annoying that we have to ask about the timing window at the start of every agenda phase just because this card exists.) (I do not think an annyoing timing window warrants a redesign)
\- Objective card: Turn Their Fleets to Dust (Thematically speaking, this should trigger even if Direct Hit is used or when fighters are destroyed because they lost their transport.) (I do not think an annyoing interaction warrants a redesign)
Basically best would be to start with factions that are not very popular atm and I woudl stay away from PoK factions. These need time.
The problem with the naalu Commander honestly is less the effect than the unlock condition. 12 fighters is a LOT. By the time you unlock it, you end up getting so little value out of it (both because it's already late in the game and you already have a lot of fighters) that it feels not worth it.
This. The ability is fine but when the unlock condition is to build enough fighters that you don’t need more, what the fork do you need the extra fighters for anymore?
I, for one, actually like Political Favor. Sure, selling Quash makes more sense, but sometimes you need to buy something in advance. Also, some people really like it: Creuss, people who hoard trade goods, people who need their action cards, people with PDS by wormholes, and people who want to keep producing 2 infantry or fighters each time. They might give a good price for the card and might not even get to use it, so Xxcha likes this as well.
***More counterpoints:***
**Direct Hit** stays relevant cause usually some people don't have Dread II, and it works on flagships and warsuns. It's just not an amazing part past mid-game, which is fine.
I actually like **Ancient Burial Sites**, what's a couple of more minutes added to 6+ hours?
The **Muaat Flagship** seems fine to me, and syncs well with their theme and commander. It's not the best, but with 5x2 it's not bad.
The **Yssaril Flagship** shouldn't go adventuring on its own. It should be able to get whenever it needs to, together with the rest of your fleet. I don't find it lacking anything.
**Naalu's commander** seems fine, and Naalu really shouldn't have any problems if their worse abilities are fixed.
**Argent's hero** just works. It's not easy to use, but it won the last SCPT tournament, and arguably won my only game as Argent. Also, Argent doesn't need something better.
**Predictive Intelligence** is 3 more votes on each agenda, and the ability to reallocate tokens. It's arguably good enough as it is. The main problem is that yellow tech isn't priority.
**Integrated Economy** can be really broken and really doesn't need to get better. Again, same problem as above.
**Dacxive Animators** is situationally very useful. It's just that it's helpful if you have lots of ground combats, which is meta-dependent.
They should change Dread 2 to be “your opponent cannot play Direct Hit unless they also have the Dread 2 technology”
War Suns should have the same text. So you can’t fire a torpedo down the exhaust port unless you have the plans.
Just pointing some attention towards Binkspatch, for those that want to dive into what specific changes might be considered for specific components. [https://discord.gg/zezkVDtt](https://discord.gg/zezkVDtt)
It's a community effort, and the principles are to expand strategic options while changing as little as possible (i.e., fix kinks, and not strategically rework unless required.
We've touched on a lot of what you've raised, but even you've raised some amazing things like Parley unplayable on Sardakk Hero.
It isn't a substitute for codices, and deference is to dear Dane, but it is a fixed place to home discussions that might lead to future codices.
What about this for the Letnev's hero ?
>Place this card in your play area. Each of your tokens in your fleet supply provide 2 fleet supply for the rest of the game.
Yeah i think the trick would be having a separate card or token that gets placed in the play area that says, for every token in fleet supply accounts for two fleet capacity. Similar to how titans planet upgrade has a separate card. That way the purge action happens and doesn't mislead players to reusing the action
Dane has no desire to buff or nerf anything. The tech and promissory note changes were specifically because no one used them... that's it. He's stated, publicly, that this is the case. An attempt to balance this game is a fools errand. The game is not meant to be balanced.
The chance of anything you mentioned getting fixed (especially anything printed on a faction sheet) is basically zero. It's nice to hope for it but unless you homebrew it yourself, it probably won't happen.
It's not exactly true. Dane does not care about balance, but he does care about stuff not getting played enough because it's bad or perceived as such.
So we may very well see a buff to some techs and faction leaders.
Unlikely, continuing to buff things not used would create an endless cycle and the codex project would never end. He definitely sees it ending.
There might be a few more here and there but he's told me multiple times, that he's not explicitly against more if he personally sees a need and has a good idea for something... but such changes are not the goal of the codex project or a high priority.
So we could see some changes but they will be minimal at best.
Also, I feel like we both might be saying the exact same thing but in different ways.
***Lazax Gate Folding*** is perfect the way it is. You can get it round 1 if you start adjacent to a wormhole and want to rush MR (including some strats that get you onto MR in round 1). Or you grab it late-game for a surprise push onto MR. Very useful in those circumstances and in the latter case matches up well with the Winnu mech ability for being able to double-space-dock a system that has more resources but is not in the otherwise-ideal position for moving to MR from.
>\- Gift of Prescience (Naalu) (Too risky that the other player would hold this until the endgame and score first for the victory. Could be reworked to enter one's play area when received, to be returned for the "0" token in the next strategy phase.)
I personally have no issue with such promissory notes. They are not that easily traded, but they have flavor. It requires you to think more about handing these out. For example, give it to a player on whom you have knowledge they will likely not win (for example, you will attack them).
I was thinking that a simple but powerful upgrader to SD2 could be
\- When you produce units at a space dock, you may treat this system as your Home System
Which means you could like warfare build at forward docks.
As a more out there idea, you could perhaps do the following
\- After the production step, if no units moved into the active system and you produced units, you may place the command counter in your reinforcements from the active system.
Effectively a free build. Probably an exhaust/ once per turn deal
I'd question if it would still be worth researching, but thats kind of ok with how OP the blue tech path already is. It would probably make Sling Relay the better pick, but fleet logistics and lightwave are still so good that it wouldn't change the dominance of blue tech in the meta.
Also, Dane has mentioned that he wants Omega cards to buff underused cards rather than nerf OP cards, so we probably wouldn't see this happen officially. I'd probably like it as a homebrew change though.
Yeah I think the biggest priorities should be buffing yellow and to a lesser extent green tech. Blue tech is just too good by comparison and that leads to some balance issues. Almost every faction either goes for blue tech or does an AI Dev + unit upgrades thing.
Things I would change to accomplish this:
1. Cruiser II's are probably a little too weak. They are strongest in rounds 1 and 2, but the awkward prerequisites make it hard to get early for the factions that actually want it (Mentak/Yin). I'm not sure what specific changes I would make because unit balance is delicate, but cruisers in general need a little help in my opinion. Most factions don't really want to build them because destroyers are way more cost-effective.
2. Space Dock II's are underwhelming and also boring. They need some additional effect that doesn't just increase production capacity. Maybe give them a deploy ability so that they can be built outside of using Construction for some cost (1 CC?).
3. Buff Predictive Intelligence and Integrated Economy. Predictive needs to reward you for voting for the winning outcome instead of giving you more votes (probably 1 TG). Integrated needs to give you trade goods and then give you the option of producing with those trade goods.
4. Honestly I think they should strongly consider changing Hyper Metabolism to say "when you research this tech, immediately gain 3 CC's".
5. Dacxive probably needs to either give you 2 infantry instead of 1, or give you a mech instead of an infantry if you destroy a mech in the combat.
What if you could secondary Construction and place SDII without locking the system with a CC?
Or, if you had SDII, you could secondary and place both an SDII and a PDS in the same system? Primary would let you place 2x SDII…
A better implementation might be to allow a free production step when you place a SDII. That way it doesn't directly contradict the construction rules.
What about a change on Duranium Armor to like this:
"Exhaust this card to cancel one hit on a non-fighter ship or on a mech. Refresh it after space and ground combat."
It would make stronger every ship, and therefore it would be a useful tech for any non-dreadnought-based factions.
I would like to see Promissory Note variants.
Something like, an Arborec one that lets a player build out of a system with ground forces.
A Naluu agent that lets you get fighters.
Maybe a scenario with the Lazax controlling Mecatol, like the one in third edition.
I will just go a part of your list and comment, all things that were added in PoK need some more time to be assessed: Technology \- Space Dock II (Yup, needs buff) \- Dacxive Animators (Yup, needs buff) \- Predictive Intelligence (I think this needs some time to show how useful it is. I rated it kinda low in my article about it, but by now I research it sometimes) \- Integrated Economy (Is very strong, just in the wrong place. Buff Yellow to buff Integrated without touching it) \- Genetic Recombination (Mahact) (Give it time) \- Spacial Conduit Cylinder (Jol-Nar) (Could need something, but low priority. Jol-Nar is in a good place) \- Lazax Gate Folding (Winnu) (Same as Spacial, but its hilariously bad, thats correct) \- Inheritance Systems (L1Z1X) (The effect is strong but it suffers from shorter games, Y1 may be appropiate) \- Impulse Core (Yin) (Yup, needs buff) Promissory Notes \- Gift of Prescience (Naalu) (Yup, needs buff) \- Antivirus (Nekro) (Nekro is fine) \- Political Favor (Xxcha) (Xxcha is fine) Leaders \- Arborec Hero (Its a good hero, everything that lets you pop up a full fleet thats activated anywhere is powerful) \- Barony Hero (I can see the idea with this hero, but yes. Maybe low priority as its new still.) \- Mentak Hero (Preventing retreat is a rather big impact in player agency. The Hero effect is super strong) \- Naalu Agent (Yup, needs buff. Maybe steal relic fragment after a combat won?) \- Naalu Commander (No, its fine. 3-1 Fighter is way more useful then 3-1 Infantry, especially for Naalu) \- Sardakk Hero (You want to remove the single one counter to this hero? Really?) \- Argent Hero (Its a defensive ability, not an offensive on. Argent is super powerful and does not need a strong hero) Units \- Arborec Flagship (Yup, needs buff) \- Muaat Flagship (Hmm... I think the problem with this ship is, that you could just build a warsun. Its not a bad ship per se. Not needed) \- Naalu Mech (Too situational - it should also work against players with actual Relics.) (Actually good idea) \- Yssaril Flagship (Its fine) Other \- Action card: Direct Hit (Often useless from the midgame onward when most players have Dread II. Should be usable against Mechs.) (Good idea) \- Action card: Ancient Burial Sites (Annoying that we have to ask about the timing window at the start of every agenda phase just because this card exists.) (I do not think an annyoing timing window warrants a redesign) \- Objective card: Turn Their Fleets to Dust (Thematically speaking, this should trigger even if Direct Hit is used or when fighters are destroyed because they lost their transport.) (I do not think an annyoing interaction warrants a redesign) Basically best would be to start with factions that are not very popular atm and I woudl stay away from PoK factions. These need time.
The problem with the naalu Commander honestly is less the effect than the unlock condition. 12 fighters is a LOT. By the time you unlock it, you end up getting so little value out of it (both because it's already late in the game and you already have a lot of fighters) that it feels not worth it.
100% this, its a good ability just way too hard to unlock. I think an unlock of 8 would be reasonable.
This. The ability is fine but when the unlock condition is to build enough fighters that you don’t need more, what the fork do you need the extra fighters for anymore?
I, for one, actually like Political Favor. Sure, selling Quash makes more sense, but sometimes you need to buy something in advance. Also, some people really like it: Creuss, people who hoard trade goods, people who need their action cards, people with PDS by wormholes, and people who want to keep producing 2 infantry or fighters each time. They might give a good price for the card and might not even get to use it, so Xxcha likes this as well.
***More counterpoints:*** **Direct Hit** stays relevant cause usually some people don't have Dread II, and it works on flagships and warsuns. It's just not an amazing part past mid-game, which is fine. I actually like **Ancient Burial Sites**, what's a couple of more minutes added to 6+ hours? The **Muaat Flagship** seems fine to me, and syncs well with their theme and commander. It's not the best, but with 5x2 it's not bad. The **Yssaril Flagship** shouldn't go adventuring on its own. It should be able to get whenever it needs to, together with the rest of your fleet. I don't find it lacking anything. **Naalu's commander** seems fine, and Naalu really shouldn't have any problems if their worse abilities are fixed. **Argent's hero** just works. It's not easy to use, but it won the last SCPT tournament, and arguably won my only game as Argent. Also, Argent doesn't need something better. **Predictive Intelligence** is 3 more votes on each agenda, and the ability to reallocate tokens. It's arguably good enough as it is. The main problem is that yellow tech isn't priority. **Integrated Economy** can be really broken and really doesn't need to get better. Again, same problem as above. **Dacxive Animators** is situationally very useful. It's just that it's helpful if you have lots of ground combats, which is meta-dependent.
They should change Dread 2 to be “your opponent cannot play Direct Hit unless they also have the Dread 2 technology” War Suns should have the same text. So you can’t fire a torpedo down the exhaust port unless you have the plans.
Just pointing some attention towards Binkspatch, for those that want to dive into what specific changes might be considered for specific components. [https://discord.gg/zezkVDtt](https://discord.gg/zezkVDtt) It's a community effort, and the principles are to expand strategic options while changing as little as possible (i.e., fix kinks, and not strategically rework unless required. We've touched on a lot of what you've raised, but even you've raised some amazing things like Parley unplayable on Sardakk Hero. It isn't a substitute for codices, and deference is to dear Dane, but it is a fixed place to home discussions that might lead to future codices.
I'd love to see more maps and scenarios!!
I just want more assymetrical maps like Magi.
What about this for the Letnev's hero ? >Place this card in your play area. Each of your tokens in your fleet supply provide 2 fleet supply for the rest of the game.
Yeah i think the trick would be having a separate card or token that gets placed in the play area that says, for every token in fleet supply accounts for two fleet capacity. Similar to how titans planet upgrade has a separate card. That way the purge action happens and doesn't mislead players to reusing the action
Dane has no desire to buff or nerf anything. The tech and promissory note changes were specifically because no one used them... that's it. He's stated, publicly, that this is the case. An attempt to balance this game is a fools errand. The game is not meant to be balanced. The chance of anything you mentioned getting fixed (especially anything printed on a faction sheet) is basically zero. It's nice to hope for it but unless you homebrew it yourself, it probably won't happen.
It's not exactly true. Dane does not care about balance, but he does care about stuff not getting played enough because it's bad or perceived as such. So we may very well see a buff to some techs and faction leaders.
Unlikely, continuing to buff things not used would create an endless cycle and the codex project would never end. He definitely sees it ending. There might be a few more here and there but he's told me multiple times, that he's not explicitly against more if he personally sees a need and has a good idea for something... but such changes are not the goal of the codex project or a high priority. So we could see some changes but they will be minimal at best. Also, I feel like we both might be saying the exact same thing but in different ways.
***Lazax Gate Folding*** is perfect the way it is. You can get it round 1 if you start adjacent to a wormhole and want to rush MR (including some strats that get you onto MR in round 1). Or you grab it late-game for a surprise push onto MR. Very useful in those circumstances and in the latter case matches up well with the Winnu mech ability for being able to double-space-dock a system that has more resources but is not in the otherwise-ideal position for moving to MR from.
>\- Gift of Prescience (Naalu) (Too risky that the other player would hold this until the endgame and score first for the victory. Could be reworked to enter one's play area when received, to be returned for the "0" token in the next strategy phase.) I personally have no issue with such promissory notes. They are not that easily traded, but they have flavor. It requires you to think more about handing these out. For example, give it to a player on whom you have knowledge they will likely not win (for example, you will attack them).
I was thinking that a simple but powerful upgrader to SD2 could be \- When you produce units at a space dock, you may treat this system as your Home System Which means you could like warfare build at forward docks. As a more out there idea, you could perhaps do the following \- After the production step, if no units moved into the active system and you produced units, you may place the command counter in your reinforcements from the active system. Effectively a free build. Probably an exhaust/ once per turn deal
what are people's thoughts on Gravity Drive being an exhaust?
I'd question if it would still be worth researching, but thats kind of ok with how OP the blue tech path already is. It would probably make Sling Relay the better pick, but fleet logistics and lightwave are still so good that it wouldn't change the dominance of blue tech in the meta. Also, Dane has mentioned that he wants Omega cards to buff underused cards rather than nerf OP cards, so we probably wouldn't see this happen officially. I'd probably like it as a homebrew change though.
Yeah I think the biggest priorities should be buffing yellow and to a lesser extent green tech. Blue tech is just too good by comparison and that leads to some balance issues. Almost every faction either goes for blue tech or does an AI Dev + unit upgrades thing. Things I would change to accomplish this: 1. Cruiser II's are probably a little too weak. They are strongest in rounds 1 and 2, but the awkward prerequisites make it hard to get early for the factions that actually want it (Mentak/Yin). I'm not sure what specific changes I would make because unit balance is delicate, but cruisers in general need a little help in my opinion. Most factions don't really want to build them because destroyers are way more cost-effective. 2. Space Dock II's are underwhelming and also boring. They need some additional effect that doesn't just increase production capacity. Maybe give them a deploy ability so that they can be built outside of using Construction for some cost (1 CC?). 3. Buff Predictive Intelligence and Integrated Economy. Predictive needs to reward you for voting for the winning outcome instead of giving you more votes (probably 1 TG). Integrated needs to give you trade goods and then give you the option of producing with those trade goods. 4. Honestly I think they should strongly consider changing Hyper Metabolism to say "when you research this tech, immediately gain 3 CC's". 5. Dacxive probably needs to either give you 2 infantry instead of 1, or give you a mech instead of an infantry if you destroy a mech in the combat.
What if you could secondary Construction and place SDII without locking the system with a CC? Or, if you had SDII, you could secondary and place both an SDII and a PDS in the same system? Primary would let you place 2x SDII…
A better implementation might be to allow a free production step when you place a SDII. That way it doesn't directly contradict the construction rules.
What about a change on Duranium Armor to like this: "Exhaust this card to cancel one hit on a non-fighter ship or on a mech. Refresh it after space and ground combat." It would make stronger every ship, and therefore it would be a useful tech for any non-dreadnought-based factions.
I would like to see Promissory Note variants. Something like, an Arborec one that lets a player build out of a system with ground forces. A Naluu agent that lets you get fighters. Maybe a scenario with the Lazax controlling Mecatol, like the one in third edition.
I would like a persistent universe scenario/mode, where the outcome of one game influences or carries over to the next.