Expansions?

[XxXGhostlyGamer68XxX]

I wonder if there is any plan for adding existing/future expansions to this implementation, or if there's any official statement confirming or denying this possibility.

This has been discussed before in the context of other games and it seems that a common approach for publishers is to only add the base version of their games to BGA. Usually there are two reasons for doing so: (1) the implementation cost and (2) the potential negative impact on sales for the physical production.

(1) is likely less prohibitive for Terraforming Mars. The complexity overhead required by some expansions is trivial compared to the effort already invested in implementing the base game, for example:

• Hellas & Elysium only changes the board layout (artwork, tile rewards, new logic for awards and milestones)
• Prelude adds <50 new cards compared to the hundreds in the base game

(2) I can understand, but I still wonder to what extent this factor applies. The game has been in print for ~8 years now, the expansions are already implemented in other digital versions, and there is new Kickstarter content coming up which can be held back from the digital platform in order to encourage physical sales.

Overall I'm very happy with this game being added to BGA and with the quality of the implementation. I'm just hoping we could get some of the additional content which makes it an even more enjoyable experience.

[Ehrine]

While prelude only adds a limited number of cards, it also brings in a whole new deck of cards, the wild tag (which is potentially harder to implement correctly than you think), and new corps with interesting interactions. The boards bring in new rules (notably removing placement restrictions on some cards) as well as new mechanics (south pole placement cost) which are again potentially harder than you might think to correctly implement. Beyond that, Venus Next and Colonies (not to mention Turmoil) had a whole host of extra mechanics/tags/complexities.

The other consideration that often restricts expansions being added to BGA is existing licences to other people. There is a full digital implementation of TM with expansions and the licence they have might be exclusive for those expansions. As another example, Wingspan is fully licensed to Monster Couch who agreed to allow BGA to publish a version (with Stonemaier giving Monster Couch a share of the proceeds), but only for the base game at last count. TM might be in a similar place.

I'm not saying I don't want expansions here (I'd love to see more options), but it's rarely as simple as it seems at first glance.

[BlackHatGuy]

No idea how much this impacts your second point.

But Asmodee Digital (who made the Steam version and I presume own the rights to the digital implementation) and BoardGameArena are both owned by the same parent company. So that might make getting the expansion rights easier.

[coyotemoon722]

While prelude only adds a limited number of cards, it also brings in a whole new deck of cards, the wild tag (which is potentially harder to implement correctly than you think), and new corps with interesting interactions. The boards bring in new rules (notably removing placement restrictions on some cards) as well as new mechanics (south pole placement cost) which are again potentially harder than you might think to correctly implement. Beyond that, Venus Next and Colonies (not to mention Turmoil) had a whole host of extra mechanics/tags/complexities.

The other consideration that often restricts expansions being added to BGA is existing licences to other people. There is a full digital implementation of TM with expansions and the licence they have might be exclusive for those expansions. As another example, Wingspan is fully licensed to Monster Couch who agreed to allow BGA to publish a version (with Stonemaier giving Monster Couch a share of the proceeds), but only for the base game at last count. TM might be in a similar place.

I'm not saying I don't want expansions here (I'd love to see more options), but it's rarely as simple as it seems at first glance.

Wild tags don't seem hard to code. It would just raise the number of tags you have of every type by 1 (behind the scenes). For display purposes, you would just count the tags for a specific type and subtract wilds for the "true tag" total as well as add wilds to their own object.

I've never coded on here though but the logic itself is pretty straightforward.

That being said, I can't play the game anymore without Prelude. No Prelude, no play, dude.

Seems like a pretty easy expansion to implement. I would definitely do that before any maps or anything.

[MasterMystery]

It's not one of every Tag in the background with wild Tag. Cause it only counts for you actions not for end game jovian multipliers not for turmoil take over bonus not for opponents counting your tags. Not for awards but for milestones

[Ehrine]

As said above. Wild tags are conditional and only apply at certain points. In addition, you cannot increase _all_ tags by the number of wild as some things could two different tags at the same time and the wild tag can only be one of them. This just shows it's more complicated that it at first appears. Now hopefully a lot of these issues were already being thought about during the base game development (as they were already known about) which simplifies things, but there's no guarantee.
I've seen games have the issue before that trying to implement an expansion ended up needing almost a full rewrite of some of the base game code due to it not being easy to add in.

[ufm]

(1) It's not trivial or easy at all. Other users already explained why. One of the most common traps.

https://www.reddit.com/r/programminghum ... ogramming/

(2) A parent company cannot fully control their subsidiaries. Also, they have their own reasons.
For example, currently there are 0 FFG games on BGA (Twilight Imperium is announced but hasn't been released even as alpha yet).

[HappyMeaI]

As said above. Wild tags are conditional and only apply at certain points. In addition, you cannot increase _all_ tags by the number of wild as some things could two different tags at the same time and the wild tag can only be one of them. This just shows it's more complicated that it at first appears. Now hopefully a lot of these issues were already being thought about during the base game development (as they were already known about) which simplifies things, but there's no guarantee.
I've seen games have the issue before that trying to implement an expansion ended up needing almost a full rewrite of some of the base game code due to it not being easy to add in.

I do have coding experience and logically this would be easy to implement. You’d just increase the tag value of chosen tag for the purpose of the action taken. Once the action is complete, the tag value for selected tag reverts and the wilds have never counted for end game scoring AFAIK.

The main reason why the expansions can’t be implemented imo is due to licensing restrictions.