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Some thoughts on #boardgames I played this weekend: High Frontier by @IonGameDesign and SpaceCorp by @gmtgames. I played both games solo.
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I played both games with variants. HF4a, I played with an unofficial variant to smooth out the economy. The best part of the game is rocket building and mission planning, and generating the cash to do these things is a drag. Easily the weakest part of an ambitious design. 2/25
SpaceCorp, I played with the solo era situations variant that comes in the box. Right off the bat, it threw me a curveball when I drew the Strife on Earth situation. The Mariners board (I have found) is there to allow you to ramp up for the Planeteers board. 3/25
Strife on Earth prevents upgrades, meaning you hit the second board as weak as the first board. Some bad Edges from the competition meant that I didnāt have have a head start on genetics.
It sounds like Iām complaining, but the challenge was fun to tackle. 4/25
It sounds like Iām complaining, but the challenge was fun to tackle. 4/25
These games are easy to compare: big near-future space games with exploration and factory/base building on various planets, moons, and asteroids in the solar system. There are some critical differences, though. 5/25
SpaceCorp is at its core a tableau builder and a racing game. Doing things first often matters more than doing things the best. Leveraging your tableau and hand (as well as your opponentsā tableau in multiplayer) is the main thrust of the game. 6/25
Hight Frontier, on the other hand, is a quest game held together by a high variance economic system that oppresses you more than any opponent will. Acquiring patents as well as the cash to pay for, boost, and fuel them is the main hurdle of the game. 7/25
But to take it down to brass tacks, the biggest difference is that SpaceCorp is designed as a game first and High Frontier is designed as a competitive simulation first. Letās look at how. 8/25
In SpaceCorp, you see all kinds of crazy technologies, from Closed Gas Core Nuclear Drives to Mega Structures. You see genetic adaptations like Low Body Mass and Enviro Tolerance. But at the end of the day, these cards just pay out a resource, usually as a one-time thing. 9/25
The fun card name and cool art are distilled into usually a choice of two resources. An Antimatter Lifter is neat, but youāre often not looking at that. Youāre looking at the choice of Move points and Build points. 10/25
This isnāt to say SpaceCorp isnāt thematic. Itās highly thematic, but it also has clear game mechanisms that allow you to easily assess a situation and your choices. You know your path to most goals: move to place, explore it, build a base. Repeat. 11/25
The challenge of the game is reacting to the unexpected details (discovery tiles from exploration, as well as opponent/competition actions). Choosing what bases to build where, how to upgrade your HQ tableau, and when to use an opponentās HQ are constant and major choices. 12/25
In contrast, High Frontier is a competitive simulation first. I would use the same description for many grognars or complex wargames. Itās goal is to portray space flight with accuracy first, and then give the player mechanisms to interact with this system second. 13/25
This means building a rocket with a thruster and supporting generator, reactor, and radiators has not just a functional rationale but a likelihood of actually working in the real world with existing or speculative technology. 14/25
The same goes for building a factory out of a refinery, robonaut, and all of their respective supports. In theory, all of this works or will work. So will the bernals, freighters, and GW/TW thrusters. The science is fairly sound. 15/25
This is why the mechanism that allow you to interact with this system are so problematic. First, because simulation is king, there are several rules or exceptions that just arenāt streamlined. 16/25
A recent BGG discussion, for example, revealed that there are two types of dirt, one of which is used by a single thruster in the game and cannot be interchanged with other dirt, with no ready visual indications of what flavor dirt you might have. 17/25
(The other fuel/propellant types, water and isotopes, have their own color designation. Both dirts use the same components. I cannot over-emphasize how rarely these dirt distinctions will come up.) 18/25
Another example is the die rolls. Rolling low is bad, except for when youāre prospecting to establish a claim, and a couple other places. Just making dice work differently in various situations is a small but critical design choice. 19/25
Second (this goes back to #16), the economy is anything but a simulation. Itās sluggish, random, and bland. And itās your entry point to all of the cool stuff in the game, like the customizable rockets and crazy quests. The economy just sucks. 20/25
To compare these games in a different way, High Frontier has a high ceiling but low floor. SpaceCorp has a high floor but also a high ceiling. SpaceCorp is always fun and always functions well as an actual game. It plays easily and directly, and has a well-defined ending. 21/25
High Frontier has a higher ceiling than SpaceCorp. It has so much potential, especially with all the modules added for colonists, terewatt thrusters, and a system-wide ware for independence. But it also has the chance to absolutely fail as a game. 22/25
Thematically, I get the same hit from both games. Mechanically, Iām more likely to have fun in SpaceCorp. In as far as ease of play, Iām definitely going to find SpaceCorp more satisfying. Plus, SpaceCorp has an expansion coming in a couple months. 23/25
Itās easy for me to be hard on High Frontier (I didnāt even get into the questionable politics and ideology), but if you want an amazingly detailed simulation of space flight and realistic near-future technology, it basically has no equal. 24/25
But you need to also be prepared for what it offers (or doesnāt offer) as an actual game that you sit down to play.
And given the choice, Iāll usually choose SpaceCorp.
25/25
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And given the choice, Iāll usually choose SpaceCorp.
25/25
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