Can we get an option to cooldown less than max heat?

[RazorOz]

Hi,

So I had a situation earlier today where I had 2 cooldown available to me and 2 heat in hand, but I would have preferred to only cooldown 1 heat, so as to know what my + would hit next turn off the bottom of my deck. As far as I can see there is no way with the current interface to cooldown less than the max, you either cooldown or you don't, but it should be a perfectly legal play to choose to cooldown the number of heat you want.

[thoun]

Please write a suggestion in the bug tracker if you want the devs to see it

[RazorOz]

Please write a suggestion in the bug tracker if you want the devs to see it

Thanks, I have done so. I wasn't sure I was meant to, as it's not really a bug, but I see there is an option to say the interface isn't allowing me to take an action that is permitted by the game rules, which is what this is.

[arrie1987]

Hi,

So I had a situation earlier today where I had 2 cooldown available to me and 2 heat in hand, but I would have preferred to only cooldown 1 heat, so as to know what my + would hit next turn off the bottom of my deck. As far as I can see there is no way with the current interface to cooldown less than the max, you either cooldown or you don't, but it should be a perfectly legal play to choose to cooldown the number of heat you want.

Really curious in which situation you was were you want to cooldown less then the heat you have .
I would also say that with the gaspedal (cost 1 heat and 1 cooldown), sometimes you want to save 1 heat in your hand to have this extra boost.

But then the option should be the same as with stress. If you play a card which allows you to discard up to 3 stress, you can choose between 1,2 or 3.

[Phoxtrot]

Really curious in which situation you was were you want to cooldown less then the heat you have .
I would also say that with the gaspedal (cost 1 heat and 1 cooldown), sometimes you want to save 1 heat in your hand to have this extra boost.

But then the option should be the same as with stress. If you play a card which allows you to discard up to 3 stress, you can choose between 1,2 or 3.

I had never thought about it but the situation is relatively straightforward.

Suppose that:
- you played 2 cards this turn and you have a cooldown of 2 for whatever reason ( like 1 for gear 2 + 1 for adrenalin).
- You have 2 Heat in hand and some stress cards in hand.
- You know that you'll almost certainly play on gear 1 or 2 next round so you don't *need* to get rid of all the heat right now
- you have 4 cards left in your deck, all standard speed cards, and you know which card they are because you remember everything (or you took notes...).

If you cooldown by 1, there will be 1 card left in your deck so you'll be able to play a stress card on the next turn knowing what the result is.
(And if you don't cooldown at all, you could play 2 stress cards knowing their sum)

If some of the cards remaining in the deck where not standard speed cards, you couldn't be sure that you would be able to play a stress card knowingly on the following turn but it would still be a possibility that might be worth it.


As a reminder: playing stress cards in a safe manner is good because it statistically reduces the number of stress cards in your hand in the following turns which increases your options. When you can choose between say "playing a 3" or playing a stress card that you know will result into a 3, it is almost always better to play the stress card. You just have to be sure that your memory is golden...


There are other fringe scenarios:
-If you know that you'll play 444+ on the next round at the start of a huge straight line, you probably don't want to shuffle your deck in the middle of that round because of that + or because of a boost. Because a shuffle at that moment would mean that you wouldn't be able to draw any 4 for a long time.
-Because of that, you might might to cooldown less than possible in this round in order to draw less cards at end of this round and thereby ensure that this scenario doesn't happen in the next round.
-This scenario although rare can be valid even if you don't remember what's left in the deck. This scenario is not about knowing the result of the + card, it's about the timing of the shuffle in regard to "good cards" being played.

[Phoxtrot]

I have been thinking about how this could be implemented.

A)
I'm entirely not sure that duplicating the cooldown buttons would be a good idea but it is certainly the most straightforward :

If you do multiply the cooldown buttons, I think the following would be good guidelines:
- if you have a cooldown effect, always shows at least one cooldown option even if you have no heat in hand. (Not very important, but I think it is better that way)
- if you have a cooldown effect but it cannot be used because of the weather, either do not display a button or, better yet, display a greyed-out one with a text upon hovering on the button that explains why. (that last option could reduce the number of erroneous bug reports)
- if player can effectively cooldown for more than 1 Heat card (meaning he has >=2 cooldown effects AND >=2 Heat in hand and there is no weather forbidding it) show multiple buttons a cool 1, cool 2,... As many as needed (would very rarely be more than 3)
- if a player select say "cool 1", this would NOT constitute a decision to cooldown by only 1. Instead, it would cooldown by 1 and the status bar would now show the amount of cooldown the player can still do. This is tricky but it is important, this means that clicking "cool 1" by mistake when you could have done "cool 3" and indeed wanted to do "cool 3" has no bad consequence, you can still do another another "cool 2"
- of course, if a player use says "cool 1" and does a boost (or use adrenalin or any other effect) to moves the car to a new zone with a weather token, the weather must now be applied so that depending on the weather, the player could now be forbidden to do any further cooling or the amount of cooling that he can do could be increased by one (but not reset, if he initially had cool 1, used it then moved to a zone with +1 cooling, he should now have 1 cooling available).This is of course just to respect the rules.
- if a player is in a zone with +1 cooldown and uses some cooldown then uses some effect or boost to enter the next zone which is a normal zone, then BGA should reduce the "max cooldown" by one (and make sure to NOT raise an error if the player already used 1 more cooldown than the new maximum). This being said, at the table, I would allow the player to use all the cooldown he could have used before using that effect or boost; but this could be abused in very rare situations so I think it should not be allowed on BGA.

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B)
Another possibility would be to have a player option "ask how much I want to cooldown" vs "Always cool down as much as possible".
Default would be "as much as possible"
The "ask how much" could either work
- B1) as described above
- B2) or be an actual question raised in the status bar (that would then show only buttons like cool1, cool2,... and "back") when you click on the (single available) cooldown button. ("Back" is needed in part because the rest of the effects normally displayed in the status bar would not be visible in that state so player might want to go back to take all that into consideration)

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To upvote the suggestion:
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=113337

[RazorOz]

Yes, can people please upvote this (https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=113337).

I just lost a race because of this as I should have been able to keep a number at the bottom of my deck for my Tires + to jump 2 corners, but because the interface doesn't allow me to cooldown 1 instead of 2, I was unable to do this.

[RazorOz]

Another example of why this is needed. I was just in a situation where my hand is all high cards at the 2nd corner on Italy with, but I don't want to reshuffle my deck before the last corner because I have Turbo Charger 7 I need to draw heat for. I have 2 cards in deck, and 2 heat in hand, I should be able to gear 1 cooldown 1, but the system doesn't allow me to do this, so I end up having to cripple myself because of this flaw and not cooldown at all. Which likely ultimately cost me the game given I lost by 1 space, but 1 more heat in engine would have given me a boost.