by Petri
chrisib wrote:
It's an interesting idea, but as you said, it does seem to hit Draco harder than any of the others. Sure, Draco can defend the ancients in their immediate vicinity, but there are a lot of ancient ships that will wind up on the other end of the galaxy, giving those players access to guaranteed ancient ship parts and/or cruisers, while Draco is stuck with resources and *maybe* the GCDS.
I personally like the randomness with the ancient discoveries. Finding an empty sector with a derelict ancient ship (aka free cruiser) drifting in space seems cool. And finding ship parts in undefended sectors I always chalked up to ancient, abandoned outposts, debris from battles centuries ago, and the like.
That said, the ancient discoveries are rarely game-breakers. A few of them are really good if you find them early (shard hull, ion missiles), but most of them are on-par or worse than the normal research equivalents by the mid-to-late game, so it may not make a huge difference in the end.
I personally like the randomness with the ancient discoveries. Finding an empty sector with a derelict ancient ship (aka free cruiser) drifting in space seems cool. And finding ship parts in undefended sectors I always chalked up to ancient, abandoned outposts, debris from battles centuries ago, and the like.
That said, the ancient discoveries are rarely game-breakers. A few of them are really good if you find them early (shard hull, ion missiles), but most of them are on-par or worse than the normal research equivalents by the mid-to-late game, so it may not make a huge difference in the end.
If ancient ship parts would always be guarded by an ancient, they would very seldom be selected and people would just almost always take 2 vp, which would be a bit boring. Usually you take the ancient ship parts on turns 1-2 to be able to attack ancients earlier. If you have to beat an ancient to get the part, you no longer need it anyway because you already have the fleet.