“Talon Tuesdays” is an article series appearing on InsideGMT periodically on Tuesdays.  It features articles from the Talon development team regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release.

Issue #9

We didn’t add terrain to Talon until about a year into the development cycle. The game offers enough interesting choices and the counters are large enough that the map wasn’t really screaming to be spiced up with terrain, at least initially.

We knew we needed to add it, it was important chrome plus it would help with the Space Empires crossover rules. Naturally, we thought to add Asteroids and Nebulae first since they appear in Space Empires and are decent enough SF tropes.

Our initial brainstorming sessions had some pretty wild terrain effects, some of which may get molded into other terrain pieces for expansions. A number of the effects started out with long reference tables and additional roles when moving into or firing through Asteroids/Nebulae but, like many things in this game, we were able to streamline and refine the concept.

“Talon Tuesdays” is an article series appearing on InsideGMT periodically on Tuesdays.  It features articles from the Talon development team regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release.

Issue #8

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the Weapon Sheet, which we used to objectively calculate a relative point value for each weapon.  That sheet feeds this sheet, the Ship Point Sheet, which assigns a point value for every ship attribute so that a total point value for each ship can be totaled.  Our goal all along has been NOT to just balance scenarios, but to balance ship classes to make it easier for people to design their own scenarios.  Had the ships between the empires been similar, this would have been an easier task and perhaps this sheet would not be needed.  However, we played with just about every aspect of each of the ships and made each empire and each fleet unique.  Here is a look at the main parts of the sheet and the rationale behind them. (To view the Ship Point sheet, you can use this download link.)

“Talon Tuesdays” is an article series appearing on InsideGMT periodically on Tuesdays.  It features articles from the Talon development team regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release.

Issue #6 

Thus far on Talon Tuesday, we have taken a look at an overview of the game, a detailed example of play, and even some fan fiction and back story of the Talonverse.  Today starts a series where we look “under the hood”.  So much work has been done on this system.  It has been refined, refined, and refined.  Some of this work can be seen in the spreadsheets that we have laid out for point values…..and, frankly, I want to show them off.  🙂

The weapon sheet is a good example of this extra work.  There are six major weapon systems in the game and each is COMPLETELY different.  They have different damage, to-hit probabilities, ranges, charging systems, etc.  Originally, point values for weapons were estimated and plugged into a larger spreadsheet on ship points.  The goal was to balance them through playtesting.  However, to balance such different systems proved very difficult, especially as we made changes.  A major change in some ways would invalidate previous playtesting.  We needed a system to rate weapons, and the power of weapons, so that changes would not upset balance.  Extra credit goes to Patrick Barley, one of our playtesters, who really helped immensely with the development of this sheet.  In fact, whereas I was the driving force for the ship point sheet, he was the driving force on the weapon point sheet.

“Talon Tuesdays” is an article series appearing on InsideGMT periodically on Tuesdays.  It features articles from the Talon development team regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release.

Issue #5

…And now the conclusion of Patton’s Story…

SPOILER ALERT:  The following is a SPOILER for the story of the scenarios covering the First Talon War.

“Talon Tuesdays” is an article series appearing on InsideGMT periodically on Tuesdays.  It features articles from the Talon development team regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release.

Issue #4

Early in development we realized we were NOT just riffing on Star Fleet Battles, although (and I’m speaking for Jim Krohn, the designer, here) the system started off as a response to SFB.  The Talon game world picked up flavor from Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, Star Blazers, and other sources too. More importantly, the “Talonverse”, as we came to call it, came into being through our development team. One of our play testers, Robert, has a real talent for writing. Initially, we had him crafting a scenario for us, but the flavor text he wrote was so good we had to tap into that talent.  Over the subsequent two years, we went from backstory flavor text for a few scenarios to an actual story arc with characters…I’ll let Robert introduce this first section of “Patton’s Story,” one of the story arcs within the scripted scenarios that follows the crew of the Terran Cruiser Patton:

Being given the opportunity to write some of the history for the Talonverse was a daunting one, as the only information I had to go from was in drafts of the rulebook.  Because of that, I focused on the point of view of the Terran side.  Initially I only wrote Patton’s Story, to go along with the scenario I wrote.  I was asked to write more, and I tried to weave connections in through the stories to make it less of a series of individual vignettes, and more of a single story.  I’m always conflicted in where I think humanity will end up in the future.  I think the stories I wrote contain some of my belief that for humanity to survive as far into the future as the Talonverse timeline, that we will put aside most of our differences.  But there’s also some pessimism that we will ever completely get past our fear of the ‘other’ and that made its way in too.  I thank Jim Krohn for giving me an opportunity to hopefully bring some texture to his universe, to Bob Seifert for his ideas encouragement, and my wife, Mitra, who I pestered regarding how to write a certain scene involving an older Texan and a young Iranian woman which you can read in the published game.  One last note, other than some minor grammatical editing and some clarifying text which made the stories better, I was only asked to change one word (that appears multiple times in the story in order to make it family friendly).  It’s the second word in the story, and I leave it as an exercise to the reader what word it might have been.

SPOILER ALERT:  The following is a SPOILER for the story of the scenarios covering the First Talon War.