Spaceship customization minigames (Xia Drift System & others

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OgreBattle
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Spaceship customization minigames (Xia Drift System & others

Post by OgreBattle »

So I had a gay old time playing Xia: Legends of a Drift System the other night, it's an exploration game where you lay down tiles with planets and dangerous debris to complete missions like trading, assassination, delivering passengers, etc.
http://www.faroffgames.com/xia/

One of the things that stood out is the ship outfitting minigame. Your basic ship has a grid that you tetris block shaped upgrades inside like engines (movement), weapons (blasters n missiles), shields (defense), and the leftover space is used for transporting goods.

The octagon on the engine and blaster tiles tell you how many times you can use them to move/shoot a turn, I like how all this gameplay information is presented in a visual format.
Image
So in that above datacard you can see the ship has a blaster and engine fitted inside of it. The jagged translucent orange marker indicates this ship has suffered two damage, the marker being placed on the engine and blaster means that when those parts are used they'll suffer a -1 penalty. If orange damage markers fill every grid in the ship then the ship is destroyed. The teal and purple cubes are cargo, if a damage marker was placed there it means the cargo is jettisoned.

What other games (board, RPG, vidya) use this kind of "fit the pieces in a grid" minigame for vehicle customization? I've played Valkyria Chronicles and it uses a similar system for customizing your tanks. I think Battletech does something similar with the hitpoints assigned to each body segment and weapons being destroyed when the limb is destroyed, but they don't have the tetris block element. Star Wars Edge of the Empire just has "you have X customization slots, and Y customization elements will only work on Y sized vehicles or smaller"
Last edited by OgreBattle on Thu Oct 05, 2017 6:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
Mord
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Post by Mord »

I don't know if Galaxy Trucker will precisely scratch that itch for you, but it's the only board game I'm familiar with that has an even vaguely similar mechanic.
Username17
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Post by Username17 »

Galaxy Trucker is an awesome game. All games should have a "make fun of other peoples' ship layout" phase.

-Username17
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Whipstitch
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Post by Whipstitch »

If you're into the flavor of the whole thing as much as the mechanics then you might like Steampunk Rally. It's basically a board game version of Wacky Races. You play an inventor building your ride on the fly by drafting part cards and placing them as you go. Mind you, the tetris aspect of the game is actually dead simple and more of a limiting factor than a real puzzle. Placement can bite you in the ass but overally it isn't very complicated compared to drafting parts that work well together in the first place.
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