Subject: MN: Token quantity discussions

From: "Wayper, Paul" <WayperP@p...>
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 12:12:57 +1000

People,

I've been wondering if we may be Barking up the wrong Becontree with the
idea of limiting things like Bocks. The way my mind is wandering is that it
might be a better idea to increase the number of tokens people get each turn
(both via a more liberal system of bonuses for moving and more gains in
Actions). The counter side is that Actions take longer, are more exclusive
(i.e. you can only perform a certain number or combination each turn) and
take more tokens to perform.

The reason I think this way is that at the moment it's very common to have
your options limited by having no useful tokens at all. Not only are you
limited in what you can do to other players, but you're also limited by what
you can defend against. Thus, people who can gain a few extra tokens are
immediately at a reasonably large advantage.

I'm wondering if that could be combatted by increasing the general flow of
tokens. If shunts cost three reds, but you pick up three reds from a pass,
then you're not really changing too much. However, if you get two reds and
two blacks for passing through three interchanges, then you're much closer
to playing that shunt (or defence). But if you can only shunt and do one
other thing that turn, then we won't suddenly see mammoth Turns from
everyone.

That's the general idea - comments?

Paul Wayper -- DPI ITS Computer Systems Officer
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From: kevan@d...
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 10:06:04 -0000

>I'm wondering if that could be combatted by increasing the general flow
>of tokens. If shunts cost three reds, but you pick up three reds from a
>pass, then you're not really changing too much. However, if you get two
>reds and two blacks for passing through three interchanges, then you're
>much closer to playing that shunt (or defence).

This seems to be spreading things a little too thin; the thing about
getting Tokens from Interchanges is that you can aim to get the ones you
need (taking a slightly odd route to a Station so that you can claim a
Red and Shunt someone when you get there). Bubbling it down to
(effectively) two-thirds of a Red and two-thirds of a Black would make
this rather less focused, slow the Game down and cause the build-up of
Tokens you might not particularly want. 

I think the current Token levels are fairly reasonable; not large enough
to merit frightening maths, small enough to give a fairly good idea of
what options Players have open to them (if Dead-End Shunting cost seven
Reds, a Suspect Package cost eight and a Detonation six, it'd become
rather unwieldy to keep tabs on such things). The current costs also
seem about right in terms of Token Stacking - if we suddenly trebled
all the Action costs, we'd have thrice as many Token Stacks springing up,
and would have to allow triple-Claimings to balance it. Perhaps not too
bad, but getting handfuls of random loose change (1/3 of an effective
Red, 1/3 of a Blue, 1/3 of a Green) is less than appealing.

I'd say that the issue is ultimately the speed at which you can gather
Tokens; as things stand, you're likely to get one Plastic Token you want
per Turn by Moving in the correct manner, and maybe two if you're lucky.
This means you can afford to Block or Shunt once per Turn, can Bulkhead
every fourth (or second if you're skilful) Turn, can Bonanza for a Gold
every ten (or, again, five if you're deft enough), and so forth. This
seems about right.

The critical issues are, in my opinion, overly cheap Actions (a
second-turn Freem or Bock seems quite powerful) and overly generous
Token-gain methods (maybe some of the Manoeuvres?). Mornomic equivalents
of Ancestral Recall and Black Lotus, I suppose, to the Magic players
amongst you.

>But if you can only
>shunt and do one other thing that turn, then we won't suddenly see
>mammoth Turns from everyone. 

I'm not so sure that this is a bad thing; the Complicated Move is quite
a classic aspect of Crescent, and I'm always very impressed when someone
pulls off an overly complex series of Actions, even if they're all
absolutely horrible and directed solely against me. So long as such
Turns are at least partially predictable ("Hmm, Dunx has got twenty
Reds, and enough Blues to extend eir Turn quite a lot; he's probably
going to go on a mad offensive soon"), which I think they generally are,
I've nothing against them.

Kevan

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