New auction system

The auction system has been changed.

The reasoning is that it was easy for someone to pick an unviable faction as a troll:

Following that a discussion in #feedback in the Discord server ensued and the current system was suggested and is now live.

It seems however that it has a drawback - it forces players to choose only viable factions:

I'm not sure how to go about this. There are multiple possible solutions:

• Propose both auction systems, but it can be confusing and code-wise it's not good to have too many configurations
• Add an option to enforce random factions, in auctions the pool of available factions would be randomly generated at the beginning
• Add an option to allow players or the game creator to ban factions
• Make weaker factions more viable: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2324994/more-balanced-factions
• Another solution ?

Please give your opinions !

Hey, not sure if they new auction system is a solution here, but what I really like is the Dave C "Current Balance changes (as of 8/17/2020)"

I think Dave C made a lot of thoughts on them.

To my mind we could atleast test them out, if its possible. They sound great!

Regards

I think the new system creates more issues than it solves. It bias players towards picking stronger races because otherwise you might end up forced to play a tier 2 race when everyone else gets a tier1 race for 0. There is a huge gulf between a troll pick and just picking an average race because you don't want to see the same 4 most powerful races over and over.

So what problem does the auction system try to solve?

If people want more variety in the factions that are chosen, I would propose to let the system randomly choose the factions at the start of the game and let people bid for them in n-1 rounds when there are n players.

So suppose there are 3 players. The players will bid until everybody but one player has passed. That player can choose one of the three factions and a player position (or the system can tie the factions and player positions beforehand). Then the two remaining players start a new bidding round (so they start bidding again from 1 victory point) for the two remaining factions. The last player gets the remaining faction for free.

Mind that in this system the auction can still take a lot of time since if there is one very weak or very strong faction, the bids can still well be over 40 points.

Or does the auction system try to solve imbalance in player position and win rate? In that case, are there actually statistics available that proof that this is indeed the case? How does rotating the board by the last player affect the win rates? How about the old 'balanced board' system?

I think there are at least two big arguments against this decision:

• as sti said, weaker or even average factions will never see the light of day anymore. Always Itars in play, always Ambas or Taklons. Is that really more fun?
• the information about other factions in play is important to determine a proper bid. GP is intended as a game with perfect information, now the auction system adds unwanted uncertainty

Also I would argue that playing a faction under less than perfect circumstances, or simply playing a weaker faction sometimes (but with proper balancing bids) is much more interesting than playing only factions for which all stars are aligned.

If people don't like the effect of auctions bringing variety to the game, they should just play without auction. It does not mean the auction system should suddenly be changed for everyone.

By the way, I would very much like the option of random faction setup (before auction) but it won't solve the 'problem' of 'unviable' factions and high bids.

(ftr I'm "oedipusSkywalker" on discord) As it stands, the new auction system tanks the replayability of the game for me, as fewer factions are viable in each game.

Random factions with either auction system should help solve the main problem I'm looking for auctions to solve, which is enabling more factions to be competitive in more setups. Without auctions to balance the faction picks, the replayability plummets and it just gets boring seeing Ivits, Itar, Ambas/Taklons again and again.

I think some form of auction is necessary to play competitively, because otherwise you're relying on one player correctly analyzing every faction's possible paths and map position when rotating sectors, which is effectively impossible. And that's if they even bother to rotate at all.

I'm very hesitant about changes to the factions themselves without ample playtesting, because it's far easier to break it more than it is to fix it. And some of the "common sense" changes I've heard (letting gleen use qic from the start, changing Ambas income, etc) go too far in my opinion.

And for what it's worth, there was a long involved conversation on auction formats in this thread - I was advocating for a closed bid, optimized payment system which is apparently what they'll be using in the app - https://forum.boardgamers.space/topic/148/improvement-to-the-auction

The change strongly biases faction selection towards those that play OK even when hemmed in. It is now very dangerous for first player to select a faction that plays badly when other factions are in play.

It also makes it near impossible for 4th player to choose a weaker faction, since the other factions won't have been bid up to take account of it.

On a more general point, I don't think changes that markedly alter things should be implemented without play testing. At least make both options available, and then revisit after the new version has been properly road-tested.

My preference (at least partly to speed the auction stage) would be for the option where factions are selected as at present, then everyone submits their maximum (relative) bid for each faction. The auction then proceeds as at present, but automatically. In turn, each player's bid is determined as maximising the difference between bid and the player's valuation.

I really like the TM faction rules where the pool of available factions is random, and then you have to bid among those factions. It forces the "worse" factions to see play but with the VP handicap resulting from the bidding

I'm also really disappointed about the disappearance of the previous style of bidding.

Really like the idea of bidding on randomly selected factions.

@lucasrrr said in New auction system:

I'm also really disappointed about the disappearance of the previous style of bidding.

Really like the idea of bidding on randomly selected factions.

Due to the feedback we've received, this week-end the option will be given between the two styles of bidding :).

The randomly selected factions will also be introduced.

Cool! That's great news :)

@coyotte508 I am really happy about that. I think it's the best choice!

Thanks a lot for your work!

@linsson Bringing back both auction modes is the work of @Zevenberge :)

Hi there, this is my furst post so bare with me I will make this suggestion for the auction mode "choose while bidding" So this works only with 4 players. My point is when u do this auction the last player has somewhat good advantage over rest of the players since he has all the information he needs for his pick so after he picks his chosen race the rest of the players could make a vote each gets one vote with y/n ,y=he keeps his race , n=this race is banned and since they are 3 players u cant have a draw its eather that race is banned or he will play it.Idk if that will help but thats what i come up with. There can be added option to last player to pay 5 victory points for each "n" he gets, to keep his race so about -15 points at most but i am not sure about this :)