This may be spoilery, but my strategy is usually I don’t fix events that are too difficult to fix, or I leave events alive that don’t do too much damage, like -1 die all, I usually don’t fix SysFails since they only disable the module function, I try to increase the HP of the ship to the max. In the early stage I gather food, try to fill up the crews with dice and HP…
I had to use cannibalism unfortunately, but I try to stay away from it as long as I can… I use research a lot, sometimes I shuffle if I have a die left and so on… I don’t do too much with stress, I just can’t afford it, sometimes there is a sideproject to reduce stress, then I might use it etc…
but in week 10 usually all ship modules have an event … if I can have the ship in a somewhat stable state with no new events coming, I usually can make it …
At first I thought the folks complaining about the difficulty of this game were a bunch of wusses, that it was just a matter of finding the right strategy or two to survive.
Sigh.
Nearly ready to give up. I love a challenge. I don’t love beating my head against the wall.
That is enough for me to take this off the list. I do not get enough gaming time to want to play a game where losing 19 in a row is something that happens.
I’m 0 for 3, but at least I got through six or seven turns on my most recent attempt. 750 points or so. It took me a couple games just to understand some basic mechanics. E.g., your research points are equal to the number of dice you’ve put in the research pool – not the sum of the pips on those dice!
I’ll be game for a few more failed efforts, but yeah, if I get to oh-for-nineteen, I’ll probably be done. Still don’t regret the purchase, though; it’s a spiffy little game.
I’m 2 for 35 (both wins on Normal, but probably about half the games on Hard). I’m still enjoying it. I guess I don’t find losing to be that frustrating. You’re supposed to lose most of the time. And it’s kind of amusing to me the ways that I end up failing.
The one piece of advice I might give is, don’t ignore the module abilities. Some of them are quite powerful. Like, for one 5+ die, you can completely heal a crew member. For one die of any value, you can get two dice back. For two equal dice of any value, you can get +2 ship. On the other hand, spending two equal dice to get one food (in the greenhouse) doesn’t seem that great to me (although I suppose 2 food for 3 dice is good, but kind of hard to get).
Hmm, I got sorta hooked on the greenhouse when I used it in my first play and rolled 3 x 1 – an otherwise useless roll that generated lots of food. But yeah, maybe I’m overvaluing, since obviously snake eyes won’t happen a lot. In general I don’t think I use the modules enough, especially the one you mentioned, the Lab (get back dice).
I’m 0-for-4 and counting. Highest score is still 740 or so.
Yeah, I think I remember the guy Tom interviewed saying that the greenhouse was important, so maybe I’m not valuing it correctly.
Oh, the other piece of non-obvious advice I might give is, if you have useless dice, you can use a research option to clear up some spaces on the research track. It always clears them from low to high. So that might clear up a space to put your otherwise useless dice.
getting all four into the greenhouse in turn 1 or 2, particularly if there’s an event there. Fix the event, get food for more dice, and activate Captain’s +1 dice for everyone in the module. Then you got lots’o’dice.
This has allowed me to consistently get to turn 7 or 8. Problem is, I need to combine this with some health-related strategy to get beyond turn 8.
I don’t think it matters? Imagine you roll the three dice consecutively instead of all at once (just to make things clearer, it doesn’t affect the odds). Whatever you roll on the 1st die doesn’t matter. When you roll the 2nd die, you have a 1/6 chance of matching the first die (no matter what it was). You have a 5/6 chance of not matching; if that happens, the third die now has a 1/3 chance of matching, because the first two dice are different, so two different numbers will give you a match. That works out to 1/6 + (1/3 * 5/6), or 1/6 + 5/18, or 3/6 + 5/18, or 8/18, or 4/9, or 44%
Since the value of the first die doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter if you re-roll it or just keep it.
Any mathematicians out there?
edit: a quick simulation seems to verify my calculation.
I’m out of practice with probability theory, but yeah, they are independent trials. And re-rolling the die has no effect on the next result (this isn’t the prisoner’s dilemma or Let’s make a deal where you are explicitly changing one result to another, which does have an effect on things). You might want to lock a die because it has a value that is useful for that room or research, in case you don’t get the pair, but that it would not change the odds of a pair itself. And if I’m not mistaken, your computation doesn’t include the probability of all three dice matching, so the chance of a pair or better would be slightly higher.
