Races Special Abilities

[Big Head Zach]

Agree with Jaradakar - roles shouldn't be a single access point to an important part of the game; they should make an important part of the game more attractive or more rewarding in some fashion.

In Puerto Rico terms, everyone gets to do everything, but the roles let someone do a certain thing better/cheaper/faster/first.

[data2008]

My game plan is to put a mule with smithore on it.  Now you get the Bonzid and I can't equip that plot with the mule type I want.

Where is the fun in that?

Well, you cant always do what you want in one round in most boardgames.
So you have to wait and built a strategy over several rounds.
Its very rewarding when it gets finally working or executed.

I could ask: Where is the fun after having got a plot of mountains in doing development at all when its clear you'll get to put smithore on it anyway (provided you have enough food)?

I think the development currently is the weakest phase of original Mule... the original added some non-tactical "excitement" with mule placement on the house and spot a pixel aka Wampus hunting... but thats imho not core to the game...

to me, it's limited choices in boardgames that makes me really excited and anticipating each round...

The key to the roles in Puerto Rico is that if a player picks the role, Everyone does that action, the role picker just gets a bonus.

Not quite, i would argue that the last person to choose land in a Settlers phase could end with something nearly worthless landtile like second sugar or indigo, while the others snatch corn, tobacco or coffee...

Or you cant ship because the ships are full or you cant trade because the trade house is blocked...

So picking a role in PR is _the_ key strategy and ruins / benefits deeply if played out in a certain order... thats why if euqally good players play the game and 1 player is a newbie, he could ruin the whole game by just one wrongly picked role, as frequent PR players could attest.


As for Mule, imho selecting species as a phase in-game should justify the additional time needed to spent picking the roles.
Otherwise it wouldnt matter to the players and could be viewed as a nuisance.
So players would need to anticipate that phase enough.
Maybe we have a specialist (the robot mechtron) that can outfit any mule type as backup but cost 100 on top of the highest bid and we the have the other species with their different abilities.
Maybe have all species be able to outfit food and energy, and only have specialists in smithore/crystite?

Just brainstorming here how something like this could work, as many new (old) players seem to feel species abilities would fit as part of the (original) game.

[Jaradakar]

True in PR if a phase was chosen and activated prior to when you planned for, you could be screwed. 

(All your examples data2008, are good ones of that happening).

But there is a huge difference between getting screwed every round due to super limited role choices or getting screwed every once in a while, due to poor planning on your part (not correctly guessing when a player is going to pick X, Y or Z role).

So overall I still think the parity of the roles is very important as it's less about getting screwed every turn/phase but more about possibility getting less options due to when a role is picked.

For example, if hiring a Leggite let you pick a plot of land giving you first pick and then afterward, everyone else gets to pick a land.  Versus, just the leggite hirer gaining a plot. One is infinitely more powerful than the other.  In PR you may or may not get the plot of land you want, but by always getting a plot of land it keeps you from falling too far behind.

[Jaradakar]

I think the development currently is the weakest phase of original Mule...

That's interesting.  I've never really see MULE in that light.  I need to think more on it, but you could be totally right....

Maybe we have a specialist (the robot mechtron) that can outfit any mule type as backup

I like where you're going with this! :-)

Maybe have all species be able to outfit food and energy, and only have specialists in smithore/crystite?

This might also be a good way to go...  I'm going to try to come up with an idea for the species and abilities tied to roles and post it soon-ish.

[data2008]

For example, if hiring a Leggite let you pick a plot of land giving you first pick and then afterward, everyone else gets to pick a land.  Versus, just the leggite hirer gaining a plot. One is infinitely more powerful than the other.

Yes, no doubt thats too powerful!
Getting a land is a special phase which all parties should participate and able to get going, so its probably too powerful to be tied exlusively to an alien/role.

So coming up with adequate, yet _powerful enough_ roles to make the whole specialization worthwhile is the key.

In PR there are weak roles: The Producer for example. Also the roles values change with time: Towards the end, Settler and Major become less favorable.

There is a mechansim in PR to counter this: The money adding to a role not chosen.
In Mule, we would have an even more balancing factor: Money bid on the roles.

So the combination of good and powerful roles in combination with an auction or bidding to hire them could be fun... as always, it would need testing and adjustements and even could turn out the opposite, so for now its all brainstorming how this could work in theory.

[Jaradakar]

Okay so I'm trying to go bigger.   For this exercise lets assume at the start of a round we have a new phase -- Race Phase.

In the race phase every player selects which race they'd like to hire for the round.  In the first round, a player is randomly selected to choose first.

So at the start of each round each player would pick one of the races to represent them that round -- it's a free action but on any given turn, only 1 race could be selected by a player no two players can pick the same race.

I think that by making it free and having it just be a selection would be much faster than doing it via an auction.  Also decoupling it from money lets you keep money for things like actually building mules, buying land and of course just buying/selling in auctions.   I guess I question the need for a money sink.

Mechtron:
Gets first pick first in the next race phase (who to hired), previous order is kept (so if you were 1st before you're now 2nd) players just slide downward in the turn order (think Caylus).

Gollumer:
Queues up an land grant phase.  All players will gain a plot of land -- the hirer gets first pick.

Bonzoid:
Queues up a production phase in which Smithore and Crystite are produced -- hirer gets a bonus to production.

Packer:
Queues up a production phase in which Food and Energy are produced --- hirer gets a bonus to production.

Humanoid:
Queues up an Auction phase -- hirer chooses the order of Auctions.

Spheroid:
Queues up a Development phase -- hirer gets a bonus to time limit.

Flapper:
Grants you good luck at the pub! -- hirer only gets a bonus to cash.

Leggite:
I'd remove this race.  In a 5 player game you'd only want 2 roles/races not chosen, so you want a total of 7 races/roles.

After each player has chosen a role, the phases of the round would be played out based on the order the races were chosen in.  So for example in a 5 player game we have:

1) Mark
2) Aimee
3) Josh
4) Chad
5) Ethan

Mark is randomly chosen as first and he selects Gollumer.
Aimee then picks, Spheriod.
Josh then picks, Packer.
Chad then picks, Bonzoid.
Ethan then picks, Flapper.

For that round we'd see each player controlled as the race they chose -- Player colors would become very very important!!! (I'm still not convinced Races/Roles should be together).

The round would then consist of the following phases, in the following order:

-Land Grand
-Development
-Produce Food & Energy
-Produce Smithore and Crystite
-Ethan gains bonus cash.

In this case no Auctions would happen as no one picked to be a Humanoid.

Next round:

Mark picks Gollumer again.
Aimee picks Packer.
Josh picks Mechtron.
Chad picks Spheriod.
Ethan picks Bonzoid.

So then you'd have the following phases:

-Land grand
-Produce Food & Energy
-Josh gets to pick his role first next round.
-Development
-Produce Smithore and Crystite

I'm also assuming any role not chosen in a give round would give a bonus in cash and each turn it's not chosen that bonus increases.

Anyway just a thought/idea I had...

[Jaradakar]

Alternatively instead of choose auction order (which I fear might take too long) you could have:

Humanoid:
Queues up an Auction phase -- hirer gets a N% Reduction/Bonus in all purchases and sales.

or

Humanoid:
Queues up an Auction phase -- hirer wins all ties on the auction line.

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Anyway any feedback? on this idea overall?

Some of the things I like about it is that in any give round you might not do all phases.  So for example early game you might skip the auction phase for a few rounds.

Not a 100% sure about splitting up the production phase into two parts -- might be better to have just a single role that activates production.

[data2008]

Very interesting idea to tie the phase itself to a character (classic PR mechansim).

Alternatively, all phases get played anyway each round,
but each character picked enabled a powerful ability, so not all options are available for all players within each phase.

Anyone else have an opinion or more ideas here?