BSG Probabilities Calculator ("The Probabilitron")

My pal Billy Motion has designed a complex web application that can determine, based on a number of key situational factors, the chance for human survival in a game of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. It's a pretty sophisticated alogorithm and I'm pretty impressed with its accuracy. It provides you with a percentage and a narrative result.

Check it out here:

http://www.ehti.net/bsg_prob.html

I laughed.

Funny because its true.

The problem with BSG being "unbalanced" is that people aren't playing right. As soon as the Cylon is revealed, you punch him in the stomach until he passes out (in keeping with the theme, this simulates being thrown out the airlock). Then you continue the game.

I've only got three games (two 4-player and one 5-player) under my belt, but the only time the Cylons won was when I was the Cylon. So I'm wondering if there is something that we're doing right that other people haven't tried yet. Our successful human tactics:

1. Try to remember who has which special abilities, and then nag them to use their abilities early and often. If they balk, throw them in the brig.

2. Pay attention to what color cards people are drawing. Also pay attention to who throws in cards and how many when resolving a crisis. If possible, try to maintain some card-counting awareness of the fate deck, to know what colors can still show up. Do all these things, and your chances of detecting Cylons sabotaging crisis resolution will go up.

3. For the really important crisis cards, always try to play that card that makes everybody play face up. That will tend to force even the Cylons to be helpful on that crisis.

4. Do the scouting thing once in a while. It's really important to not have a Cylon as admiral, so having another player second-guess his destinations for jumps is almost as good as making everybody play their cards face-up during a crisis.

5. This should be obvious, but remember to distrust everybody again the moment that the second round of loyalty cards are dealt at mid-game. An otherwise loyal human may suddenly have become a Cylon, and it doesn't matter how loyal they seemed before mid-game.

6. If somebody keeps making excuses for not being extremely helpful, they are probably a Cylon. One easy way to tell is if they are discarding cards often... they should be playing cards frequently, to help with a crisis or to use the actions and modifiers on the cards. Hoarding cards is unhelpful and therefore suspicious.

And on the other side of things... I'm puzzled by comments I've seen at TOS about specific sessions. Specifically, people are talking about when they were discovered to be Cylons. I think that they might be playing wrong. Nobody can ever force a Cylon to out himself, even if another player is permitted to look at their loyalty card through some kind of situation arising from the game play.

Wrong way:

Lee Adama: Gaius Baltar is a Cylon. I just saw his loyalty card and it says Cylon.

Gaius Baltar: Oh no, you have all discovered that I'm a Cylon. I shall now flip over my loyalty card to confirm your suspicions.

Right way:

Lee Adama: Gaius Baltar is a Cylon. I just saw his loyalty card and it says Cylon.

Gaius Baltar: Lee is lying. I'm a human, and he's a Cylon who is trying to cause trouble. Remember that last crisis that we failed? Only Lee could have played so many red cards against us.

Lee Adama: What?!? He's the liar! He's the Cylon! Throw him in the brig before he destroys us all!

Gaius Baltar: Don't let that Cylon trick you.

One problem in my group is all the drunk people. Its hard to tell if someone is being inefficient, dragging feet because they are a cylon or if they are just too drunk to make good decisions.

Maybe the Cylons are drinking less than everybody else. Watch for that the next couple of times that you play.

Yeah, I knew that was coming, but I still had to fill out the form and laugh at the result...

My copy just arrived yesterday... Can't wait to play soon!

Playing again tonight. Very psyched.

Just played another game - 4 player - and even with three noobs and me being human we still got pummelled. Mainly due to all the attack crisis cards that came out close together in the 2nd half when it was 2v2 and our vipers and civvies were just wiped out. We had only made 3 jumps (all 2s) and one of those I went early to avoid the swarm.

I have played 5 games; 3p (1), 4p (1), 5p (2), 6p (1) and the only close losses for the humans were the 3p and 6p, and those were our 1st two games when the cylons were learning and they never revealed until the very end. Not revealing is pretty fun as you piss them all around, but revealing early will just destroy the humans - especially if you lose a or both pilots, or if the attack crisis cards fall for you - as you can pile on the worst crisis cards with fewer humans to win the skill checks and then swarm with the raiders as the cylon fleet appears.

And there is a little anomally with the crisis card pulled by a cylon that helps a bit more, if it's a choice then the cylon current player can make the choice but the cylon current player doesn't have to discard skill cards when instructed to.

I love the game and I'm not too worried about the humans always losing, but I think we may have to increase some of the resources to keep others interested otherwise it mightn't hit the table often enough.

I think there's room for the humans to "learn" to play--I'm sure Corey K could show us a thing or two if he were sitting at the table--but thankfully this is a game that can be made easier (remove the Sympathizer for 4 or 6 players, bump up resources, etc.)


The configuration that feels the most off is 4 player, especially if the Sympathizer goes Cylon. 2 on 2? Ouch.

The game is insanely fun, even if the humans always lose. We are just too damn paranoid, constantly putting humans in the brig. The last game I played was as a cylon (6 players). It ended with 2 humans in the brig, two cylons, and two humans actually doing shit. NOT a recipe for success.

Tides turned for us - Humans are now winning more than they are losing.
We are even talking about starting the game off harder.

Really? Cool. How many games did it take for that to happen?