Re: Piecepack subways

["Benedict" <boycat_oh@...>]

> Hi Phillip, it's looking a lot better.
> 
> Two quick comments:
> 
> 1.  The wording in the real city variants (specifically London is 
worst)
> still imply that building track cost money as part of tunnel 
building.
> You might want to pull the whole discussion of tunnel building 
out as a
> preface to the city variant sections.  A blowup diagram showing 
two
> tiles with a tunnel between would also help.
> 
> 2. Think about making track cost $1 (then a tunnel costs the 
station +
> $2). as it is you may have broken the tradeoff consideration 
between
> building through someone elses station and building around 
it.  This
> is something that probably needs playtesting the figure out.
> 
> BTW, I'm fooling around with a LA map where you have to build 
tunnels
> through the Santa Monica mountians to get the the San 
Fernando Valley.
> It's a pseudo-hex grid all over to get the shape right.


Aaaarrrgghhh!  I always do that - fix one bit then forget it relates to 
something else.  I will have to think about the tunnel stuff, since it 
now is totally murky.  And I know that diagrams will help, but they 
take a lot of effort and I wanted to wait until I knew the rules 
wouldn't change too much before doing them.  So i will be giving 
the tunnel rules some consideration over the weekend.  Perhaps 
the best way (since I have limited tunnels to a max of 1 in any 
given game) they should always be marked (and therefore paid 
for) with the 5 station, making them as expensive as possible.  In 
actual fact I need to do as you suggest - tunnel rules as a 
generic addition under city variants since most of them have 
tunnels.

I think your pseudo-hex idea is an excellent one - I was messing 
about with some different 5x5 shifted hex cities.  They will make 
their way into the rules eventually.  And I used a tiny overlap in 
Amsterdam and Paris.  Can't wait to see your LA!!  There aren't 
really any other cities that I know well enough that are interesting 
enough.... although maybe I should try Cape Town with Table 
Mountain in the middle in some way.

On a side note, I realized that you can play a version of 
Transamerica very easily with a piecepack set.  No doubt 
copyright issues abound there ;)  I'll post my thoughts on 
Transpiecepack later.

Phillip