BGDG Automatown presentation #1

Robin and Lyle form the guild played Automatown with me last night. We used the new goal cards that I just made.

Here is how I modified the game: I removed all points from automa, and gave them up to 3 symbols - bullets, hands, and top hats. they can be tapped either for their ability, or to generate a symbol, but you have to place a worker on them to generate a symbol. This automa generates either a hand or a tophat:

As an action you can place as many workers as you want on an equal number of automa, and then spend the generated symbols to complete a goal. Goals have from 1 to 4 symbols, and are just worth points. (considering adding abilities to some goals). This goal requires two bullets and a hand.

Here is a copy of the notes I made during the game, and a brain dump of thoughts afterward. Most of the notes are comments from the other designers, so they don't necessarily match my thoughts:

• Recycling station: change to generic level 2 cube symbol. (this would be simple to do, and keep it consistent with the other cards.)
• Why do automa abilities activate when you place a worker? It is fiddly to remember to activate them. Would "activate whenever during your turn" work better? (thematically it works worse, but from a gameplay standpoint I think that it works better. I should ask Seth what he thinks)
• Why is the "super upgrader" not better at upgrading than the "upgrader?" It's more like a gold-plated upgrader. (I agree, and I think that I will change that by lowering its scoring potentiality a bit.)
• Basic actions are too lackluster. should be [+2 scrap], [swap 2 parts and swap two adjacent location cards], and [upgrade and discard a public goal card to reveal a new goal] (not sure about this one - they are boring because they are basic. Perhaps you should just grab the strictly better limited-spots on the locations)
• The cube economy is too many things. Brainstorm to reduce it:
• Consider the Sabotage "swagger mechanic" (I can't see how that would help)
• Making one cube type for each category and placing them on a mat with areas that tell how high quality they are. (adds a mat, but makes only one type of red cube. Upgrades are easier because you just move a cube, and don't have to reach over to the bank, or worse, ask the banker. I like this.)
• fewer overall part types (basically the idea that Seth had - will probably try and combine this with the above one.)
• When placing 3 guys on a location you should also "buy" that location. After than (until it falls off) you should gain +1 scrap as a tax when anyone else uses it. (an interesting idea, but I am not ready to try it yet)
• The beginning of the game is too slow. Start with more things so that you can get to the fun part faster. (I agree "get to the part")
• Play basic workers face down, and then flip them over by paying an upgrade fee. (I might try this some day)
• Some things seem too weak: (I will probably try to address these all)
• Get rid of or greatly improve exchanger locations. they suck.
• exchanger robots are also crappy
• Ability on powerhouse is also pretty crappy.
• Triplet, super upgrader, also want to be better
• One player failed to notice that there were only two of the three symbols on the 5 cards that happened to be in the goal pool, and only bought automa of that (missing) type. Have alternate cost on goals. Brainstorm: (this would help with that problem, but it might also help mitigate some randomness)
• Wilds?
• this/this, or this/these
• discard robots
• damage robots
• spend scrap to convert symbols into wilds.
• Robots should still be worth a few points. (I think that might help some of the crappy robots, but don't want to go overboard)
• Make a solid gold robot that is worth tons of points but does nothing useful.
• most robots are worth a few points
• Quests with press your luck elements that offer bigger rewards but require randomness (I don't personally like randomness, but some people do...)
• Player interaction is limited to worker placement. Expand that (I agree, but it has to fit the theme and not slow the game down so much.)
• damage/destroy other player's robots? (this seems way too aggressive to me)
• swap out goals that other players are preparing to work on.
• Deep in the game, more workers meant that we ran out of space to place workers. (Then buy points!)

I won the game with 29 points, the other players had more than 10 points each, but not 20. The game took about an hour and a half.

One player bought only really expensive automa, so his economy was not good. The other player could have won if he had remembered to buy points instead of just focusing on the economy. I took 3 turns to gather all my points, so he basically blinked, and missed the fact that the endgame was occurring right then.

My strategy was to go full bore on my economy, but also make sure to get a lot of high valued hats (1 hat on a goal card is worth 4 points alone. Hands are worth 2, and bullets 1) to score big when I switched over to buying points.

Based on this feedback, the things that I want to do next are:

rehaul the part economy to reduce number of types of parts.

add in more starting resources to make the game get to the fun part faster

I will probably also pick off low hanging gains in the balance department, but with a changing economy the balance is not that valuable to me yet.

Finally, I have started preparing to talk to publishers at SaltCon. I hope to pitch a few games there.