The core mechanic of Star Junkers (recently renamed) can be thought of as a blind bidding mechanic.
Typically when bidding on something without knowing other people’s bid, the goal is to make the lowest possible bid that is higher than all competitor’s bids.
In Star Junkers players secretly choosing which crew to send on a mission is an inverted iteration of this system: players are rewarded for making the highest possible bid that is lower than all competitors bids.
That is to say the optimal strategy is to send the most crew you possibly can, while still having a lower preparation time than your opponents, thereby getting first choice of loot AND grabbing as much as possible.
In practice this has created a sort of Scissors Paper Rock mechanic.
If we consider a player who makes (what we shall call) a “medium bid”; this strategy could be defeated by player making a “small bid”. Thereby collecting the best loot before this place, while collecting nearly as much as the “medium bid”.
However, if the first player instead made a “large bid”, they still forfeit first selection of loot – however by making a large bid they would collect so much more loot they’d likely still get more value than the “small bid”.
Continuing this logic and bringing everything full circle, the “large bid” strategy could be defeated by the originally described “medium bid” (much as the “small bid” defeated “medium bid”).
This system creates three obvious niches, each viable under different circumstances. This creates different dynamics in different games.
In 2 players games players often seek to counter their opponents strategy.
3 player games tend to each player falling into a separate niche.
4 player games are particularly interesting where niches become less defined, with players often competing in similar niches. Fortunately we’ve included several mechanics that allow players to quickly retool their strategy mid-game. But more on that in a future post.
