Board Game Arena

Hello Kayvon. Thank you for your work; I really appreciate it. I'd like to touch on the topic of auctions. Is it possible to add an open auction variant, similar to the one in Terra Mystica, but with victory points deducted at the end of the game? The current closed auction certainly has its advantages, for example, it's fast, but it also has its drawbacks, for example, it's very difficult to understand. I constantly encounter questions about this auction. Moreover, and most importantly, the current closed auction is not suitable for the expansion. In the expansion, it is very important for all players to start with 10 victory points. This creates an interesting tension and forces players to decide how many points to spend on recharges and how many on ships. If players start with, for example, 25 points as a result of the auction, this will be a very significant advantage, since one of the goals for advanced technology can be 25 points. Such players will also have no problems with ships and rechargers. The open auction, in turn, is very simple to understand and implement. It's ideal for an expansion i think. All players will start with 10 victory points, and negative points will be deducted at the end of the game as a bid. (The bid can be indicated in parentheses next to the current victory points.) Of course, the closed auction can also be adapted so that the bid is deducted at the end, but please allow players a choice of which auction to use, as not everyone likes the current closed auction. Thank you.

I agree with the TM open auction. It just feels much more like being properly involved in the game from the start. I do not mind the extra time/turns, after all I'm here to play the game not skip as much as possible due to automation ideas. It's a really nice tension build up and some good inner turmoil of phycological mind-games.

However the start at fixed 10VP might not really be needed, if it is a determent to start much lower impacting your ability to buy ships / recharges, then you need to take that into account during the auction, much the same as other factors.

For the full auction discussion, see https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=52587

For the summary...

Kayvon wrote:Happy Saturday morning. We've completed the implementation of new features that include banning, drafting, and auctions. We've also been in touch with the publisher to receive approval of these optional features.

Months of planning and volunteer hours have gone into making these a top-notch experience. Having said that, we also recognize that no single solution will please everyone. Fortunately, these optional experiences don't replace the core game experience. If you discover this particular implementation isn't for you, we would invite you to continue to enjoy the existing experience supported by the official ruleset.

A lengthy update for those who are eagerly awaiting the expansion. Don't take anything here as commitments or promises, but rather insight into our current plans, subject to change.

tl;dr: On track for alpha/beta in 2026, probably sooner than later

Firstly, thank you to everyone who is patiently waiting. I know the temptation to poke developers for updates is strong and we appretiate that most players have allowed us to focus on development uninterrupted. The expansion is a lot of fun! I just played another Gaia+LostFleet game with my gaming group two days ago. I like it!

Development is going strong. It may not feel like it when you're playing in person, but there are a lot of changes and additions to get everything working. The backend logic is implemented, but untested. Our primary focus is the UI now.

After some internal discussion last week, I spent a couple hours this morning adding the ability to undo a conversion if no other action has been taken. This is experimental and may not make the final cut if it's too buggy or if it players decide that they'd rather not be able to undo at all if they can't undo anything besides conversions. Time will tell. As discussed earlier in this thread, we've also added a new auto-charge option to always decline a charge.

I expect alpha testing to start in the next couple months. If you're interested in qualifying to be a full alpha tester, just visit this link:
Reviewer page

There's a strong possibility we'll manually add players who don't automatically qualify to be full alpha testers. When that happens, we'll start a new thread for it and manually add players who are interested in testing (not just playing) and providing quality bug reports. You can see our Ahoy expansion thread for an example of what that entails, including players who were added and a couple less detail-oriented players who weren't. Alpha games are all turn-based, no time limits, and (especially at first) filled with bugs. It's different than the "early access" badge that some people are accustomed to on the major video game platform.

That's everything for now. A lot of words with no real update? Maybe . I'll post another update by mid-July.

Thanks for the update, it is very much appreciated! Looking forward to play PG seriously on BGA once the expansion is released (hard to go back to vanilla once you played a dozen games with the expansion IRL) and in the meantime there are a lot of great games to play!

Kayvon wrote: ↑25 May 2026, 17:05 Firstly, thank you to everyone who is patiently waiting. I know the temptation to poke developers for updates is strong and we appretiate that most players have allowed us to focus on development uninterrupted. The expansion is a lot of fun! I just played another Gaia+LostFleet game with my gaming group two days ago. I like it!

Thank you for the update! Understood this is general insight/updates, not specific commitments, but it’s nice to have a sense of what’s happening behind the scenes - makes it easier to wait patiently for the next update

Any news about update?

Daaru1993 wrote: ↑04 June 2026, 21:53 Any news about update?

Seriously?

Daaru1993 wrote: ↑04 June 2026, 21:53 Any news about update?

dude, Kayvon just posted a pretty thorough update 10 days ago, with thanks for people being patient in not flooding this thread with additional requests for news plus a plan for when the next update will be (July)

RicardoRix wrote: ↑12 May 2026, 09:57 I agree with the TM open auction. It just feels much more like being properly involved in the game from the start. I do not mind the extra time/turns, after all I'm here to play the game not skip as much as possible due to automation ideas. It's a really nice tension build up and some good inner turmoil of phycological mind-games.

However the start at fixed 10VP might not really be needed, if it is a determent to start much lower impacting your ability to buy ships / recharges, then you need to take that into account during the auction, much the same as other factors.

Actually no you can’t take just take into account extra VPs in auction because of the snowball potential an extra ship has in the first round so a 1 point difference in auction can translate in much more different as a result.
The game has been balanced around 10 points as a resource to enter the ships and for example baltaks are balanced around having to spend 2 extra VPs than other factions to do it, if they start with 6 extra point they are effectively losing their nerf.
Also your capability of accepting power after entering a ship changes if you start with more VPs and just a couple extra rotations in round 1 have very high snowball potential as well.