Piece Packing Pirates

["Mike Schoessow" <mikeschoessow@...>]

After playing Piece Packing Pirates, I have a comment on the scoring. The final score is composed of the sum of three terms. The first term is the product of ship type number and crew size. The second term is the product of buried booty, booty on-board ship, and notoriety. The third term is quantity of turns completed. It looks like the middle term is usually MUCH bigger than the other two terms, and in a successful game, this must always be the case because the biggest the first term can ever get is 50 (20-35 looks more typical) and the biggest the third term can get is 24 (15-20 looks more typical). By contrast the middle term can get over 1000. My comment then is that it seems like the first and third terms are unnecessary, and in fact that often, the middle term is 5-15 times as high as the sum of the other two terms; leaving those two terms out would have only a small effect on the score, and would simplify scoring.

I should also mention that I agree this was the best game and deserved to win! The theme is rich and well integrated, and the mechanics are innovative and elegant.

-Mike