At its heart, the gameplay of Space Junkers can be distilled to a single core mechanic:
On every salvage (turn) players must choose between sending
a small fast crew – salvaging only a limited amount of goods, but getting first choice of goods; or
a large slow crew – salvaging lots of goods, but rarely getting the best loot and risk missing out on important synergies
As the game evolved, I felt it very important that every card served to to complement this core mechanic.
This complementary design is most evident when comparing fast character to slow characters
Fast characters, such as the /scientist/ (1tech+1alien) and /ace pilot/ (-2speed), can’t collect nearly as much loot as slow characters, but are optimised for helping a player collect synergistic or high value loot.
By comparison, slow characters such as the /cargo drone operator/ (2 Cargo or Tech) collect much more loot, but by slowing a player’s team, reduce the likelihood the player will collect high value loot or collect the synergies they need.
An interesting subversion of this trend to this is the /teleporter tech/ who is a very slow character, which collects 1 item first – this gives slow teams a powerful weapon to snatch up important loot synergies and disrupt their opponent’s strategy… but his 4 prep time to collect only 1 item of loot is the worst cargo to speed ratio in the game.
Next week we talk about how Space Junkers keeps the mechanic interesting by providing players with rewards that cannot easily be reduced to a single metric and thereby creating additional choices for players during the collection phase.
