This week's session questions:

As it currently exists, the space combat system allows you to spend unused AP for a bonus to actions (+2 per AP). This seems powerful, and gives a major incentive to declare actions in the final phase–thus actions both use less AP and get a major of a bonus.

Do you think things would be more balanced if unused AP gave a +1 bonus rather than +2?

As currently written, wounds give a penalty to your next carded action. It was simplified to this after the first chapter, because it used to be “a penalty to actions until the end of the next turn” and keeping track of turns proved weird and cumbersome with the way phases worked. At the same time, with the way wound penalties work now, it gives a weird incentive to declare an action you don't care about so that you burn through the penalty, and then declare an action you care about the next phase. This is also kind of weird.

A fix I'm considering is allow the “End Consequence” action to discharge wound penalties. This doesn't fix the incentive to declare an action to discharge them before taking the action you care about - but it does at least make doing this more explicit, rather than having to think of things to do that you don't care about.

If the “End Consequence” action explicitly discharged wound penalties, would this be an improvement in your mind, or not?

Do you think things would be more balanced if unused AP gave a +1 bonus rather than +2?

I could go either way on this. Jamming and other penalties do stack up pretty quickly, so having an option to focus on a single ordinance roll rather than make two at penalties is nice. Aiming does give a +2 per AP, but requires committing to the action ahead of time. However, with engineering, extra AP can be moved around and used to stack up some pretty crazy bonuses.

Looking at the odds in most situations, I'd probably want prefer to shoot twice if the bonus is only +1 and shoot once on Phase 1 if +2, though there are situations in both where I could go either way. I didn't do a very rigorous look at probabilities, but I can explain more if you are interested.


If the “End Consequence” action explicitly discharged wound penalties, would this be an improvement in your mind, or not?

I think it would be an improvement. It makes sense that someone can take a moment to put a hand against a wound and focus past the pain.

Do you think things would be more balanced if unused AP gave a +1 bonus rather than +2?


I have done absolutely no statistics on this at all, but my gut instinct is that it's not unbalanced as it currently stands. My impression of space combat is that whoever scores the first big offensive action (a Moderate or better Jam or a Moderate or better hit) is likely to win the day, because they have put the opponent at a penalty for the rest of that turn and then forced the opponent to spend actions doing damage control (unjamming or repairing) rather than trying to effectively return fire while penalized. This suggests to me that tempo (spending all 3 AP to declare first) is sufficiently important that surrendering that option should confer a good-sized advantage, and +4 doesn't feel like too much to me.

If the “End Consequence” action explicitly discharged wound penalties, would this be an improvement in your mind, or not?

I actually think this is a great idea. It still creates a cost to getting wounded beyond the loss of health, and as Micah points out, pausing to moan and grab your bleeding wound in order to push past it feels very in-genre for horror.