Basically, the new changes to the bone market are great, and the laboratory could really use a similar overhaul. Even though the lab avoids the problem of limited card draws, the current mechanic of cycling through cards is very tedious. The core issue is that at any given time, you’re generally going to be interested in drawing only one card for a given project, namely whichever gives you the most research progress, or otherwise suits whatever you want to do. This means cycling through the deck in your limited hand size in search of whichever card you want dozens, hundreds, thousands of times as you work your way through project after project.
I understand the mechanic of filling up your hand as things like menaces or student displeasure accumulate, but it’s by no means an interesting enough system to justify the endless drawing and redrawing of cards we have now. I’d really love to see a research storylet in the base screen with each of the current cards as a sub-option, so we can use the "try again" button to keep repeating the research option we actually want to do. Excessive menaces, angry students etc could simply lock out research until they’re dealt with, or something along those lines. edited by Tsar Koschei on 7/6/2020
Hear, hear! I would rather have menace cards just lock further research than deal with the card cycle. Yes, even if that means sacrificing the easy deck refresh.
Would this re-work also end up killing the deck-refresh trick?
I wouldn’t entirely mind–I used it a lot, but it’s kinda cheesy. But if we ditch the deck there, then the refresh feature might disappear. On the other hand, getting access to London cards (and social actions!) when spending all day in the lab might be nice.
[quote=genesis]Emily has confirmed that a usability rework is forthcoming[/quote]Fantastic.
[quote=PSGarak]Would this re-work also end up killing the deck-refresh trick?
I wouldn’t entirely mind–I used it a lot, but it’s kinda cheesy. But if we ditch the deck there, then the refresh feature might disappear. On the other hand, getting access to London cards (and social actions!) when spending all day in the lab might be nice.[/quote]There’s always Parabola, I guess. Bit pricy, but at least you get the cards.
Parabola has no deck and therefore no deck refresh. The next best options are the finishing school, which is finicky to use and fate-locked, and taking the rail out of London proper, which isn’t a true reset, just 4x cards for two actions. Also much more difficult to get access to than the lab.
Yeah, flash lays with scandal items. It’sa 2-action deck refresh that requires exactly 2 scandal and +3 scandal from items, which is doable without Fate.
I was thinking of flash lay, not the finishing school, and got the two conflated. The finishing school is fate-locked and has too high a cost for premature exit, so it’s not useful.
Flash lay is the easiest, but managing scandal to be just right isn’t a fun minigame. edited by Tyrconnell on 7/7/2020
If I know exactly which option I want to do repeatedly until the project is finished, then the only randomness is how many times I have to click the “discard” button between actions. How was that not obvious even in the initial design phase?
Emily has recently been gathering feedback in the Discord and floating possible changes. I don’t expect to see a revamp immediately, what with the Election, but it will happen.
Not quite. While Parabola has no deck, the game counts it as a separate area such that entering and exiting both double your cards. (But with the honey cost, it’s definitely inefficient.)
Not better.
Switching between Upper River and London (but not within UR) doubles your current deck, up to your maximum. edited by Aro Saren on 8/27/2020
[quote=Aro Saren]Not better.
Switching between Upper River and London (but not within UR) doubles your current deck, up to your maximum. edited by Aro Saren on 8/27/2020[/quote]
Okay, that’s interesting but means for me, that I’ll have to keep some cards in order to make use of this. So I prefere the university option.
About the "make cards not discardable" idea, I think this could be somewhat more viable if we get card slots fitting to our lodgings in stead of 3 fixed. In best case this would mean 2 more cards you can hold in order to minimize your deck. even with non-discardable cards this should minimize the need to play useless cards.
About the "make cards not discardable" idea, I think this could be somewhat more viable if we get card slots fitting to our lodgings in stead of 3 fixed. In best case this would mean 2 more cards you can hold in order to minimize your deck. even with non-discardable cards this should minimize the need to play useless cards.[/quote]
It was a sarcasm. OP meant that instead of trying to actually alleviate problem with shitty mechanic, they’ll (possibly deliberately) make it worse and call it an improvement we just don’t get, because no way this mechanic can be shitty, by definition.
Even if they just made all the cards non-discardable, that would be a game mechanic. The “click discard until the option you want comes up” thing just makes it seem like they didn’t think it through before they published it.
I think the lab could work with all the cards being non-discardable, but it would require some other significant mechanical changes as well. Hand-size affected by lodgings for one. Rebalancing all the research amounts, and the cards. Perhaps a change to how assistants work.
If assistant cards were non-discardable, I wouldn’t have anyone in my lab but Visionary and Profound students. (And Cora Bagley when I needed Parabola research, since I haven’t actually unlocked Visionary students yet.)