LogFAQs > #985843848

The scan action is very upgradable, you can get up to doing 4 markers with one scan action, and allowing to do a sector adjacent to earth instead of just earth as well to give you more flexibility. It's definitely you can focus on and pump out. Do note that the larger bonus for being the highest contributor fills up, and while you still get a bonus for being largest contributor the second time and after, it's a smaller bonus so there are some diminishing returns.

Once you have data can spend it on the computer track. This is another highly upgradable track that by default is pretty barren. You are basically spending data to fill up circles left to right (6 circles) until its full. By default four of these circles are empty and give you nothing and one gives you an income and one a publicity. You can upgrade each of the empty circles to give you 2 vp and an additional optional circle under it to give you an additional resource. Once the top circles are all full you can spend an energy and remove all the data to analyze it and get a blue alien trace.

So I never talked about alien traces before but there are three kinds, blue which you generally get from computer actions, pink which you generally get for winning a sector and yellow which you generally get from landing on planets. Whenever you ear one of these you put it on one of the alien spaces on that part of the board and take the appropriate reward. Like most things, the earlier you do it the general better rewards you get. I will go over the aliens some more after the rest of the actions.

The final group of actions are what I would call the other actions. Playing a card, discarding a card for it's free action, trading resources I've all talked about before but I haven't mentioned publicity yet. You start the game with 4 publicity and it caps out at 10. You can use a free action to spend 3 publicity to draw a card, or you can use a main action to spend 6 publicity to research a tech. This is main way to get technologies.

Technologies also give you a bonus for being first, techs are grouped into stacks based on what they do (every tech in a stack upgrades the same spot for the same effect) but the back give a slightly different small reward for researching them, usually 1 resource such as an energy. And at the top of each stack is a 2 point victory tile, so if you are the first to research a specific tech you get 2 VP, whatever is on the back of the top tech and the corresponding upgrade. So you are incentivized to pick techs not already picked, but remember this is a game where 200 points isn't a crazy amount so don't take something suboptimal just for the 2 VPs.

So the last main thing to talk about is aliens. I mentioned the three kind of life traces you can earn and when you earn them you put them in an corresponding space in the alien section. At the start of the game there will be three discovery spaces (one of each color) under each of the two face down aliens. Once all three are filled the alien will flip over revealing the unique alien card will flip over revealing more spaces to place traces on and the unique alien stuff will occur depending on what was flipped. You can then place on those new spaces (or on the other alien).

I'm not going to go super in depth on the aliens because I've only seen 2, but they seem fairly different from each other. The main thing to mention is that each alien has its own smaller deck of cards. They cards are like the normal cards you get, albeit stronger. The "discoverers" of an alien get a card each (if you are on more than one discovery space you get more than one card) and you can get more cards by playing on the tracks. These cards are usually better but usually deal with the aliens gimmick.

Overall I will say I enjoyed this game. There's a lot of rules but its not that hard to parse, the symbols are pretty symbol, you board tells you what you can do on your turn, along with a player aid. The stuff flows together and interacts well and the theme is good in this game.

I like that it rewards you for being first to do a lot of different things, because in this game there are a lot of different things you can do. It also gives you a lot of avenues to score so you can somewhat specialize (maybe you decide to go to Neptune or Uranus you likely wont have too many people there) but a general approach also works well. I'd have to play more to see how balanced each approach is.

The scanning and the aliens both are interesting because they feel somewhat cooperative. I may be rooting for another player to scan the third one of an alien that I'm nowhere near so it flips and I get a card. The one complaint I heard from the people were playing was its a little hard to fill up sectors with only 2 players though, and bgg lists 3 as ideal probably because of this. Although unlike other games I think this probably works fine at any player count, although ideally 3 or 4.

The cards work well, I like the quad use they have it makes them very flexible to where they can always do something for you. And I enjoy that the missions on cards are decently common to give you some direction in what you want to work on. The techs feel good and I feel come at a good pace where you will probably end the game with approximately 6-8 of the 12 so you get a decent number but don't have everything. I do appreciate that the game starts you with 4 publicity so you are close to getting your first tech pretty early on.

I'm also a fan of the board, I just like the concept of everything rotating and making it hard to plan, it's also fairly easy to cause a rotation so you can definitely try to screw someone and put an asteroid in their path but it is predictable. I do think it gives an advantage to players who know what the spaces that are hidden (that only reveal when a gap is above them) are but I don't think that's a huge deal in this case.

I think the income system is smart since a bulk of your income is there at the beginning and you are augmenting it, but you probably aren't doubling it until late or anything. It incentivizes you to go for it early, but you aren't going to be crippled if you get less than everyone else since it might be a difference of getting 4 credits a round instead of the starting 3.

But yea, I'd like to play this more and see how balanced it is on more playthroughs and how each of the aliens feel. I will note that while this is my lowest rated 8.0 they are all pretty interchangeable and it depends on my mood that day. I don't have any major downsides about this game other than maybe some of the techs feel a good deal stronger than the other ones (do not site on the cheaper asteroid movement tech). But this is really something I'd need to play more to see where it ultimately sits

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Likely to Trend: unsure, I could see it rising after a few more plays
Future: Would like to play again, might possibly buy/get in future
Next Game Hint: A game with a lot of push/pull mechanics and you accidentally (or purposefully) bankrupt the state