Designer Diary: Solarius Mission, or Dice for the G*****, or Solar 3X

I still remember the day when I first came up with the idea for Solarius Mission: It was in summer of 2011 and I was working on the facade of a house. I mused about various mechanisms and suddenly an idea came to me: spaceships, which would be represented by dice. The number on top would represent the "class" of the ship, and this could change during the game — but why spaceship dice? That would be a smaller element of a great space game in which you would slowly conquer the universe — like in Twilight Imperium. I spun my idea further and as I had to start somewhere, I invented a simple game step by step, comprised of tableaus, cards and those same dice as spaceships.

I can't remember anymore how exactly I came to this mechanism, but it definitely was inspired by the "dice-building game" Quarriors I wanted a similar theme as in Race for the Galaxy, so at first I named the (dice) game "Dice for the Galaxy" as a working title because it sounds good (although it's an entirely reasonable free title).

Anyway, I wanted to represent different areas of a civilization with different colored dice, so I established the four colors. Then I took a bag of twenty dice in four colors (which, incidentally, were mainly the somewhat larger cubes of the first edition of Agricola) with the sides painted with a different number of points. Thus I had created a "dice-mechanism". The four colors/areas are those now in the finished game.

This was followed by some initial tests and I quickly realized that the mechanism was somehow incomplete. I made cards with actions and a game board in space. In this early stage, the game worked like this: The player drew dice from their bag and rolled them (like in Quarriors!). With the different colored dice/points, you could make different actions. Black dice were spaceships flying in space, with yellow you could draw action cards, with white draw additional dice from the bag, and brown were resource points.

So I had designed a simple system that worked somehow, but there was no progress: Via the action cards you could generate resources, more dice and also victory points, but that was it. I had to bring developement into the game and not static card effects.

Not much later I got the idea that I could represent development with dice on a tableau, and you could use the action dice to turn (upgrade) and slide the display dice. Turning was technology (white) and slide was "number of dice" (brown). Thus, you could make more efficient use of upgraded dice and you could pack more dice in the bag with "number of dice" — an ideal and easy way to show development of a player.

The first tableau was comprised of four rows and five columns. In there, the display dice were placed.

At this point I showed the game to Ode and he really liked it. Anyway, he had time and he read my first rules and commented on them. These rules from October 2011 were already in such a state that you could understand and play the game.

Every player had as many dice in their bag as they had free spots to the left of the display dice on the tableau. You could draw 4-6 dice and roll them, then you had to decide for each color of the dice where you wanted something to do with it: Yellow gave money (which was already used for dice manipulation by the way), white was enhance display dice (turn) and brown was slide display dice. The black dice were placed directly in front. These were the spaceships that attack all the other players at the same time, equally strong (a Quarriors! mechanism). For conquering, there were planets in the form of cards that specified as a "condition" different colored dice with different values. If I want to conquer such a planet, I had to use the specific dice with the appropriate points and voilà!, it was mine. These planets were worth points and whoever had the most points won.

I refined this version even further. At some point I realized that I had packed too much stuff into the game, even including rules for space fights. The game was, for what it was, simply overloaded and it no longer clicked. I sent this version to the Hippodice Competition 2011 as a game called "GalaxyDice", but I got a disappointing rejection. The game remained like this and only after several months was it reincarnated in a different version.

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In the winter of 2011/2012 Ode and I started to discuss the game intensively. Our conversations resulted in Ode starting to develop a game from scratch. This then created a whole new game, which shortly thereafter, also thematically, chose a different path and became "Bauernhof-Bauer" (and later La Granja). There was no satisfying solution for DFTG, so we focused together on the new game.

I still kept working on my version with the space theme. This time it should be a civilization-building game, with players colonizing planets, managing resources, and tracking life points. Via space battles, the planets of other players could be attacked. Having no colonized planets meant your home planet could be destroyed at any moment. Once the entire life points of the home planet fell to 0, it was "game over" for you.

The dice mechanisms had to be revised because each player always used four dice sequentially. This downtime was almost unbearable, so I developed this mechanism, which was quite inspired by La Granja. With this we were very happy for a long time and only in the last year of developing have we again revised and refined it. Also around this time, I experimented with so-called "maneuver" cards through which the players could "level up" their actions and also fight in space combat. These maneuver cards introduced for the first time something similar to conditions through which one could increase their combat strength.

I tested the game for several rounds and kept working on it. On paper, the concept should have worked out, but it didn't. It was too easy for the other players to destroy everything you've accomplished. The game didn't feel balanced at all. On top of that, it took far too long for a game of this type.

At some point I realized that the game has a big "building up" character, so it had to be provided with Euro mechanisms: Instead of players destroying planets, they should colonize them, with the planets providing VP for a fixed number of rounds. (The end of the game was variable at this point.) High dice rolls should be punished, so I introduced pollution (waste).

You should be able to do more than just fight with your spaceships, and that was the birth of "primitive" space. The basic idea was that it includes 25 squares: 20 normal planets and 5 special-function planets, laid out face down in a 5x5 grid. The players started with only one spaceship on their side of the table, moving into space to explore planets with certain conditions. These conditions I split in the four colors and also marked on the backside of the cards as a hint of what you had to expect. As soon you fulfill the condition on a planet, you colonize it and put it next your tableau. In the middle of the space, I put additional planets with special effects and a +1 VP token on each. Every later colonized planet is placed beneath any already colonized planets, so every planet underneath a +1 VP token gives +1 VP. This design choice supported a rush ahead to the valuable planets rather than players just worrying about the planets near them. Soon after, I let all the spaceships start from the same side, but placed the valuable planets on the other side of space. This was a much bigger challenge as the players where in a race for the same planets.

Planet, special-function planet, development, standard planet

In addition to the planets, which were to be discovered in space and colonized, there were standard planets to be settled. These were made as a fixed display and could be "bought" with resources. They have specific effects on the game and they also provide storage space for waste.

Developments that players were able to establish brought various different effects, variety and replayability because each game featured a different selection of developments.

I prepared this version of the game for the Hippodice 2015 competition, I applied for it and sent the rules and game description. This time, a prototype was requested of the game, and in the end it landed on the recommendation list for the year.

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Early in 2015 Spielworxx showed interest in the game. At the end of 2014 Ode and I agreed to join forces again to continue working on the game together. After a short playtesting period from Spielworxx, they agreed to publish the game in 2016, so we all thought about how to tie up the loose ends of the game, to shape and harmonize the big picture. We agreed on Ode taking the lead for this and I would take over the creative part in the further development.

Ode wrote a long report on how to change space and several other elements, and that was our starting point for redesigning half of the game. Many elements stayed, while others were changed or expanded — but the main aspect of change was the space. Before the change, there was only a small display of cards.

Space went from a small display of cards to a big board using a grid of hex spaces

At this point, space became a big grid of hex spaces painted on a board. The planets had fixed places in this grid, but additionally there were bonus tiles giving the players one time advantages when exploring those spaces. The player mat (tableau) was expanded to hold a number of hangars for multiple spaceships so that players would control a whole fleet.

Space now had certain endings, so new to the game were "final frontiers", i.e. frontiers of known space. Thematically this was meant to be the ultimate challenge to the players: Send out their exploring spaceships and find out about the outer limits of the galaxy. When reaching a "final frontier", the ship and contact to the ship was lost. They sacrificed themselves for science on a research trip with unknown dangers. The nation that had to mourn that loss now turned to an even better future, starting a science plan in order to honor the sacrifice of their heroic ship and crew. The player gained a victory point condition that grants a bonus for the end of the game. This victory point condition tile needed to be placed in the now empty hangar to remind the nation of the heroic and brave crew (who obviously went where no man had gone before).

Depending on the time the player gained that VP tile, there was another bonus tile given to the player. The earlier in the game this sacrifice was made, the more points the player could get.

The hangars are full of light-blue research tiles; in the personal display are orange-colored research planets that were once part of the game

The final scoring was expanded so that it would be possible to gain victory points from multiple sources. Back then I called them "sun points". By expanding space and the possibility of building more spaceships, the game got very dynamic. Building spaceships was quite important. The motto was "The more the better!", meaning that in order to win it was not optional to have more than one spaceship. You just had to decide whether to use them to do many things or sacrifice them to have valuable VP conditions. Wouldn't that be thematic? But we felt it was still a flaw in the design that you had to build more ships in order to be able to win.

Splitting the player turn into a die action and a supplementary action was always our idea. Every space flight consisted of up to three movements because you were able to have a maximum of three spaceships, and this raised the downtime. Our reaction was to create a new flight phase at the end of a game round. Thus, instead of having up to three movements with each supplementary action, we reduced that option to only one movement with any one ship per action, followed by a flight phase at the end of the game round in which the players would move every ship they had. (We had six game rounds back then.)

By reducing the maximum number of movements of spaceships, we reduced downtime, but nevertheless it was important to have all your spaceships early in the game to use the ships as much as possible. Another important point connected with this was that in order to colonize planets, the players needed to leave their spaceships on that planet as long as it took to colonize it. Once a player started colonizing a planet — that is, claimed it from the board and added it to their playing area — they needed to have their spaceship connected to the planet's colony as well. The motivation to complete the colonization was high because once the colony was erected, the player gained their spaceship back, ready for their next mission in space.

The small central board then, with a VP track, dice display and the track of power which was responsible for bringing the centers of power to the galaxy

Aside from the personal player components like colony discs, space station octagons, and mission cubes, there was a neutral gaming piece: The centers of power. You would go up the track of power as an action in order to erect one of those centers one day. The centers rewarded all gaming pieces by any player adjacent to this with bonus points in the end, so being able to place them was a huge advantage because you could choose the best place for yourself. In addition to this scoring opportunity, we added a scoring of the dispersal for the players. Depending on so-called "nation cards" there were different scoring conditions in the hand of the players. The cards showed a condition for how to spread in space. Every player had one secret card in their hand. All of them would be scored at the end, so it was important to observe the dispersal of the other players in order to be part of their "nation card' scoring.

Research effects and standard planets were also in a constant change. Not only the effects, but the cost and reward for the elements were always in flow in order to gain a better balance. Standard planets were changed thematically to space stations — partly because there were so many different types of planets in the game, including a phase in which a fifth kind of planet was available: the research planets. The new modular board had no defined sides anymore and no "Final Frontier" spaces. Instead of VP conditions by claiming research tiles, the players could complete the requirements of the orange-colored research planets (gas planets in space that needed to be researched). This fifth kind of planet had no relation to one of the four action-related colors. Instead the players needed to have some shapes or clusters in space consisting of their own gaming pieces, and forming these clusters in space was very valuable.

At some point, the centers of power were renamed to be commercial hubs. Instead of letting the player erect those centers, they now popped up in space randomly and had the additional job of being game round counters. What's more, players could deliver their resources to those commercial hubs to gain VPs. In order to do so, the players needed missions or delivery tasks. These new tasks were printed on the same cards as the research effects, so a card can now be used as research or a mission. The problem with the research effects is that they get more useless when played late in the game — a permanent effect is best played early so it can be used over and over again — so by adding the missions to the progress cards they were balanced for the whole game. The research effects get unattractive, but the VP-giving missions were still important. So again we have a multi-use card in the game; if you know La Granja, you might recognize our enthusiasm for multi-use cards.

Back when we had four phases per game round the player aid looked like this:

A – dice action, B – supplementary action, C – use space stations, D – flight phase

The game was in progress all the time, but it had many too many elements. The feedback from the playtesters also said so. The playing time was 3-4 hours. The downtime was high because of the structure of one game round. Our editor from Spielworxx always lead us in the way we needed to let go, so Ode did a huge cut. Once again players had only one spaceship, which removed the need for the flight phase. Research planets were banished from the board completely. The personal scoring cards from the players hand left as they were a constant distraction. The number of game rounds was six back then, with four turns per player per game round for a total of 24 turns per game. We reduced the number of actions to three and shortened the game by a quarter. Later we went back to four turns per game round but cut two game rounds, making for a total of four rounds with four turns each for a total of 16 turns per player — one-third from the original 24 was gone.

The screaming by the playtesters was loud! They liked the game and Ode had just reduced it by a third — but the anger did not last long since the game feel got better and better. We were down to a playing time of two hours with four players, yet the game was still complex enough to be challenging. The playtesters who knew the game before were still missing some things, but everybody was sure that the changes worked out pretty good for the game. It gained focus and felt well-rounded. The dead freight was gone and nobody really missed the eight (!!!) missing turns. The editor nodded in wise silence.

Modular board and the bonus wheel on an extra board

But the most important change to decrease the downtime was the change of the structure of a game round. Up to this point, in every round a number of dice were drawn from the bag and rolled. Each player chose one of the dice in playing order to perform one turn, with the remaining die being placed on a certain board to indicate the bonus the player would gain if they took the die in later rounds. After four turns, the game round was over. The problem was that the starting player of one turn was the last player in the next turn, so they had to sit through six whole turns of die actions and supplementary actions when playing with four, which was endurable only by reading a good book — even without analysis paralysis at the table.

Thus, we chose to change the structure of a round and introduced a new element. The old side board had a place for the dice display that showed certain bonuses for untaken dice, but what if we played just one turn at a time proceeding clockwise for the entire game without having a change after the game round. To do this, we couldn't have a pool of dice that would empty after a few turns; instead we need a constant pool of dice available each turn — but doing this would disrupt our old bonus system that relied on the unchosen dice being shifted along columns to indicate the appropriate bonus.

The solution to this problem was the first time we were inspired by another designer. Uwe Rosenberg is a friend of Ode, and while Uwe did not invent the wheel, he made it a great element for board games. Games like Ora et Labora, Le Havre: The Inland Port and Glass Road use this wheel wonderfully, and this inspired us to create our new bonus wheel! The wheel was a new, constantly changing pool of four dice. In order to always play in clockwise turn order, the old La Granja-styled dice distribution had to go. The bonus wheel was able to use one turn of the hand in order to change the value of the bonus for all dice at once. A lesson well learned after many playtests and talks with Uwe.

By using this bonus wheel we reduced downtime, and again the feedback from the playtesters about the game feel got better and better.

After balancing the game over a period of six months, we called it quits and stopped development of the game. It was ready. The always stunning Harald Lieske started drawing wonderful pictures, and the publisher started writing a 20-page rulebook and an 8-page glossary for the game. Finally in the middle of 2016, our game took off to space: 10 – 9 – 8 – 7 – 6 – 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 – 0!!!

Thanks very much to Ode for sharing his perspective for this diary and not forget to mention a BIG thank you to Grzegorz Kobiela for (some) translation and proofreading!

Michael Keller