Board Game Arena

The next bit of news will be when we go to alpha. Expect to see something in 2026.

I appreciate that the excitment for the expansion leads people to ask repeatedly for updates. Unfortunately, it doesn't speed us up and we really don't have more to share than, "We're still working on it." Which I suppose is good news by itself.

Hope that helps!

Amazing! Thank you for your hard work.

Any way we could get some QOL fixes with this expansion? Like being able to undo things that have not had any other effects yet?
Like doing conversions, selecting build Academy but then realizing you are not at Level 4 yet to take advanced tech, etc.
Dumb mistakes that have note affected anyone else yet, and were just due to you not remembering exactly where in your plan you were, because async play can get confusing sometimes.

CantWakeJake wrote: ↑26 April 2026, 04:38 Any way we could get some QOL fixes with this expansion?

Sure! What do you have in mind besides undo?

CantWakeJake wrote: ↑26 April 2026, 04:38Like being able to undo things that have not had any other effects yet?

<incoming rant warning>

Oh. This again. Nope. Please see the extensive discussions around why this would take me an extra dozen hours and would still elicit complaints. The summary is that (a) it takes a huge amount of time to implement, (b) it's very bug-prone and will take a huge amount of time to maintain and fix, and (c) it's a thankless job.

I fielded a question from an angry player just last week who chewed me out for not having the system to his satisfaction in another game where the undo allowed simulataneous players taking simultaneous actions to still undo without affecting others' turns. Still wasn't good enough for him. He filed bugs and IMed me directly. This happens often enough that I'm not interested in volunteering my time for more of it.

</rant>

I actually did take some time to see how feasible it would be for GP when I started on the expansion. The undo system I wrote is not compatible with the way the data is stored in GP. GP was written long before we had standardized data in the way that my undo module expects.

Your question is somewhat reasonable, but it's the difficulty in implementing it combined with the repeated questions (already answered!) and beratings that elicit this sort of response.

Kayvon wrote: ↑28 April 2026, 15:57 Sure! What do you have in mind besides undo?

I have a suggestion which is not an undo action.

When you finish your turn as a Baltaks player with unused gaiaformers show a warning message about that.
That's super painfull for new players to remember about that, and even experienced players sometimes forget to convert gaiaformer to QIC.

You mean when you're passing, not just finishing a turn, right?

Sure, toss the suggestion up using the link in the pink banner. I can't make promises on what the UI designer will do, but it sounds reasonable to me, especially given the relative ease of implementation.

Kayvon wrote: ↑28 April 2026, 17:05 You mean when you're passing, not just finishing a turn, right?

Yes, correct.

Created a suggestion report: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=218052
Let me know if you need any other additional information.
For any other BGA player reading this who experienced same problem with Baltaks - please upvote

Another suggestion is to allow players to defer accepting power charge until it comes back around to them. This can greatly speed up play, especially for async games (even if it is technically slightly different from the rules as written).

Deferred power gain is a good suggestion, but an absolute headache to set up.

Instead, we received, accepted, and implemented a suggestion to add auto-charge options. You can choose which charges you want to accept in advance, which keeps the game moving without becoming a coding nightmare. It's a good compromise between what's feasible for developers and what's ideal for players and it does so without circumventing the rules of the game, which would require publisher buy-in.

I'm sure you'll need to make tweaks to the random map algorithm in the expansion to deal with the ship and interspace/deep space tile placement. Would you consider changing it so that printed gaia planets can't be adjacent to home planets as in the board game? I feel it somewhat breaks the balance for factions that can snag one of these with a single qic and no navigation round 1.