A couple of weeks ago, I got the chance to playtest one of my game mods – Eclipse: Ships of the Line.  The game was pretty good, and I got some ideas for how I might tighten up the gameplay a bit.

First, I noticed that the new technologies had a distinct impact on the game.  Not because everyone was rushing to get them, but because, when they did come up, other things were not.  In a very real and noticeable way, the new technologies diluted the core tech, and made it less common.  One effect of this is that Monoliths never came up and orbitals only came up on the last turn.  I see now why the rare tech don’t count as part of the draw – they effectively don’t dilute the bag.  I haven’t decided yet whether this is good or bad, except in this particular case where, do to cost, it affected gameplay.

The other thing that I noticed is that I think the costs on things is just a bit too high.  Just in terms of where you spend your tech currency, there is a stronger need to incentivize a tech that gives you more ships (when, in lots of cases in eclipse, you may not use all the ones you have).  Especially in the case of destroyers where they really need at least one other tech to make them pop, and, as an early game ship, they may be too easily overshadowed by cruisers.  Because of this, I think I’ll be reducing the cost of these tech, and I may experiment with dropping them as a tech altogether.

The battleships seemed like they were pretty close to being in the right spot.  They were expensive enough that they were a challenge to afford, but they really felt worth it.  If I were to tune these, it would be by making the development cost a bit cheaper and possibly make the build cost a bit higher.  This would make them easier to get, but still not all-over the board.

Overall, I think the game went well, though there was a bit less of the new stuff that I would have liked for a playtest.  That being said, there will be more time…