itschowda said:

We usually let things move along too unless the production is going to affect how someone uses the secondary, which is pretty rare.  However, for new players we usually stop and help them with it for a few rounds.  Understanding all the elements of production (production capacity, fleet supply restriction, fighter capacity, resource cost/management, and handling the techs that modify these things) is probably the most difficult mechanics of the game to learn.

Cheaters suck big time, especially with games like this where everyone has plenty to concentrate on within their own prerogatives.  For simple games like Monopoly it can be fun to try a cheating-is-okay-unless-you-get-caught rule, but only if everybody agrees on it beforehand.

Hello gents. Unfortunately I live too far to join in any of your games but I just wanted to chime in on the Prelim's. I think that they are hugely unbalanced. And therefore unfair. Having to build 25 resources and pray that the stars align and you get a related SO is ridiculous IMO. Even a 12 resource PDS Prelim sucks compared to break a TA or Destroy 2 cruisers.  We have removed the 5 Dread one as a start but are unsure where to go from there.

Kootenay_Kid said:

25 resources? I'm assuming you mean the Dreadnought one which I agree can be pretty rough. 12 resources for having all of your PDS on the board isn't all that bad, seeing as how some races are very defensive and tend to almost always have all of their PDS on the board anyways. Destroy 2 cruisers, I've seen that one become near impossible, it mostly depends on the players. In a recent game, (not sure if it was our last game or the game before) someone got the cruisers PO and thought it would be cake, but it turned out to be harder than he thought because I was one of his "neighbors" and didn't really build cruisers and neither did his "neighbor" on the other side. We both built Carrier/Fighter/Destroyer fleets.

The thing about POs and SOs is that they should be considered bonus points and not your only objective in the game, which is probably why you're allowed to claim a PO or an SO on the same status phase in which you claim a public objective. Just like some SOs, some POs can be fairly difficult, especially early game, which is why in our group for the POs (used to be the SOs before I bought SotT) we allow one "veto." We look at the PO we're dealt, the tiles/systems that we're dealt, and the race we randomed then we decide whether or not to keep the PO. If not, we draw the next PO from the POs left over.

TI has HUGE luck factor associated with it, somewhat depending on what options you're using. The political and action cards alone are things where a player can get extremely lucky or unlucky. Sometimes your PO or SO works perfectly with your race, sometimes it doesn't i.e. 5 Dreadnoughts and the Lizix Mindnet. Luck is just something you have to deal with when playing TI, the combat dice alone have made me lose battles when statistically I should have won. 1 Hostile Local beating 2 invaders, then beating 2 invaders again with Gen Synthesis, sounds improbably right? Didn't make it impossible.

The things that may seem "unbalanced" are actually what make TI fun, when randomness sometimes beats out common strategy, there's a fun factor to it. I've won with "In the silence of space" and I've lost to political cards that either wipe my fleets or just give my opponents free points. Just accept that it's part of the game and have fun. If you don't like the option, don't play with it. If you don't like the game, don't play it. We've had a player quit because TI isn't oriented enough towards combat, so we told him "It's TI, not A&A. If you don't wanna play a point game, we're ok with you not playing."

I've gotten many a "thumbs up" with my Magic Online profile: "It's not the shuffler, it's just bad luck. Quit crying or start playing chess." If you aren't playing with a similar "veto" system like we do, try it, might work out better. It gives the players a little more control about their fate in TI. Just like the tiles I've been dealt, I've won with a seemingly ridiculously bad hand and I've lost with a seemingly ridiculously good hand. The objectives are randomized and it tests your ability to adjust strategy on the fly. That's what I love about TI, strategy starts before the board is even assembled and sometimes there's those random cards that make a perfect strategy player just say, "oh crap, I think I just lost this fight."

The Preliminary Objectives topic deserves its own topic in these forums so that everyone interested can find it easily.  I'm going to start that and continue this thread there.