Leaving Earth?

Anyone have any experience playing Leaving Earth?

Space Corp turns out has about zero material in it for a science nerd, so I'm left with an itch unscratched. I'm wondering if Leaving Earth will do a better job.

I've heard it's pretty good? I think its distribution is kinda weird.

This game.

So I bought this somewhere around 2 years ago. Lumenaris is a mom and pop shop and takes forever to assemble and fulfill an order. It took like 4 months at the time.

I got the game and was excited to try it. Opened it a few weeks later when I had some gaming time to explore it, realized the rulebook was missing. Shit.

I email them shortly thereafter. No reply. Try again a few weeks later. Nothing.

Joe Fatula, the designer, posts on BGG so I geekmailed him. No response despite daily activity on BGG.

I realized there was a PDF on their site but I don't want to reference a PDF on a device while playing. I paid $90 for this thing with the first expansion and I simply wanted a rulebook. I was fine with waiting a few weeks for it as long as I could get it eventually.

I shoot another email to the company. Finally get a response a few days later and they apologize and say they will ship a rulebook out soon.

Six weeks later I check in. Nothing. Two weeks later another email. More apologies, shipping soon. Nothing.

Another six weeks or so and I contact them. They say they're moving facilities so they can fulfill demand faster, but they will ship me out a rulebook after they move.

It was something like four months later I check back in. No response. Another email a month later, response. Lots of apologies and they promise they'll send one out. Finally get it about a month later.

At this point I'm kind of dejected, but I persevere. I read the rules (pretty straightforward), and played a solo game. It was pretty damn good and lots of neat concepts. I shelve it, and haven't made it back since. I need to though and I want to try it with other people.

The game has a real strong loop of accruing money, buying components, and testing them under real-world conditions. There's a very neat risk/reward mechanic. My first manned spacecraft blew up in orbit. It hurt, bad. I felt that poor dude under my tutelage giving his life for what would amount to very little as I could never quite muster a successful journey in the time limit.

The game is math heavy, although it's simple addition. The complexities come in with sort of reverse engineering your flight path.

So if you need to make it to the moon your bare minimum payload is X, which means you'll need X amount of thrust. Then you map back to the previous position where you have more weight, because now you have those rockets on, and you need X more thrust, etc. Long journeys require a ton of napkin arithmetic and this really wobbled back and forth for me between super fucking tedious and super fucking cool when it all paid off. I'm not sure how I feel overall with the level of math because it does feel like work, but it also makes me feel like I'm actually plotting a course and sitting in a NASA conference room with a team of engineers trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

The game is very sandboxy in that it gives you some objectives and lets you try and hit whichever you want. In multiplayer, only the first person to accomplish them gets the points which adds to the space race atmosphere. There's quite a bit to explore from a mechanical and content perspective, although the solutions are mostly static.

What I mean by that is that the distance to venus or whatever is always the same. There are some random effects seeded every game (such as what will happen when you land on Mars and how hostile the environment is), but it's mostly the same set of problems. The complexity of strategic and breadth of play however means it will still stand up to many, many plays. Expansions eventually fill things out and provide new challenges.

While I'd like the experience of playing this with others, they don't directly interact with you and only affect that race element. The length of the game is substantial unfortunately. I think this means my chances to table this with a group will be very limited and I'd rather push for something else and play this solo. We'll see when I get back to it. Still have a bit of a bad taste in my mouth due to the rulebook situation.

So this is turn-based, where you wait, or does everybody work on the same turn at the same time? I suppose I could have a look at the rulebook to answer that.

I don't mind the math, and I don't mind the length. I think I have some like-minded players on that too, so there's a chance that this will come to the table. I've sort of declared my independence from the main gaming table on Monday nights and often I get a couple of people looking to follow me out to the kitchen table for Option 2.

I was hoping to have it for my May Gaming Getaway in Dewey Beach though. I've contacted the publisher to see if it's in-stock, as they seem to indicate it may not be available right away by the questions they ask for shipping options. There's some copies for sale second-hand for $50 on the web.

It's turn based. You can plan your turn ahead of time and turns can be quite lengthy as you get money and buy a bunch of components, then build spacecraft and decide what to launch. A turn is roughly a year so all of your launches are completely resolved, although certain actions require you place time tokens which can delay them to subsequent turns.

I used to have this game and the first expansion. I liked the idea of plotting the ideal course and working out what to equip given that your craft get lighter as they progress. I also liked the failure mechanism as it introduced a little risk taking into what is otherwise a very functional and procedural affair, especially as you are guaranteed not to have enough time and resource to do all the things you want. It can be heart-stopping at times when you decide to send up a manned flight knowing that their life support isn’t 100% tested but you’re under pressure to beat the other nations or dwindling time and have to be the first to do it.

There is a big problem with multiplayer though in that for many turns you will simply take cash and buy rockets while you’re opponents are scratching out potential rocket trajectories for seemingly forever, as it is very high on complexity. Downtime and disassociation go into a whole new paradigm as a result. Plus it’s only competitive in the sense that you are racing to be the first to achieve a limited number of goals. There is something where you can hire the use of someone else’s rockets which can add a bit more interest, but this is really better for solo play in my opinion. High Frontier might be the better direction for a competitive game of similar complexity and style.

If you do decide to seek out a copy I really believe that the Outer Planets expansion is absolutely necessary as it adds interesting challenges such as slingshot manoeuvres, searching for life, and the opportunity to recreate the Voyager mission. Fortunately you can try it out on Tabletopia first for free if you have access.

The thing is though, once you figure out the optimal routes there really isn’t much game left beyond seeing what mix of goals will come out, and most often you can win just by cherry picking the few that have synergy and you know that you can complete - run program and score points. It’s better if you give yourself hand picked targets such as putting a manned station around Jupiter.

I almost went in on the Stations expansion but realised that I would just be dumping money into trying to defibrillate something that had just become a big maths exercise, so sold it instead. I occasionally miss it. Just thinking about it makes me want to play it again, but I know it’ll be a mistake to buy another copy.

Sounds like this would be ideal for PBEM, or as a slow-burn on a gaming weekend.

I wonder if I could weasel it to work with simultaneous turns, or just not care who wins so much (or be comfortable with ties). Would keep everyone a little more industrious.

You can play simultaneously, just use player order to resolve any clashes. The bigger issue is that you will have occasions where your next four or five turns are pre-planned and with the lack of interaction you could just walk away from the table for half an hour or so. There is a collaborative mode where you work together but it’s really just a team based take on the solo game. I just don’t think that it works multiplayer but PBEM could be better.

So what's the consensus? Is this game worth fifty dollar?

I enjoyed it while I had it and was later grateful that there was a robust aftermarket which allowed me to sell it on for little to no loss. It was fun to fiddle about with for a bit but I felt that the repetition and lack of any real game meant that it ran out of steam fairly quickly.

I get the impression that you’re going to get a copy anyway and I wouldn’t discourage you just as long as you go in eyes open that this might entertain for a while but equally is not likely to be the big sciencey multiplayer space game you are searching for.

If you have access to Tabletopia then I strongly recommend trying it there first.