S1E4 - Stellar Horizons (Space Exploration) - Gaming with Science

Episode Transcript
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Brian (00:06):
Hello and welcome to the gaming with science podcast
where we talked about thescience behind some of your
favorite games.

Jason (00:11):
Today, we'll be talking about Stellar Horizons by
compass games.
All right, welcome back togaming with science. This is
Jason.

Brian (00:22):
This is Brian.

Christoph (00:23):
This is Christoph

Jason (00:24):
So yes, we have our very first special guest host here.
Christopher Wagner. Wagner orWagner?

Christoph (00:29):
Wagner is the German way to say it and Wagner here in
the States, that's fine.

Jason (00:33):
For those of you who know the game, this is a game about
near Earth space exploration.Brian and I are plant biologists
we have no expertise here. So wewanted to get someone on who
actually knew what they weretalking about. So Christoph,
tell us about yourself.

Christoph (00:44):
Sure. So I am I have a degree in physics and master's
degree in mechanical engineeringand aerospace engineering. I'm
originally come from Germany anddid my mechanical engineering in
physics in Germany, and thenstudied aerospace engineering at
Purdue University with a majorin astrodynamics control and
guidance, navigation and controltheory. Unfortunately, after I

(01:07):
got done with that degree, Icould not get a job in that
field here in the US because ofmy German citizenship. And most
of those jobs do require ahigher levels of security
clearances. And so I ended upworking Caterpillar for 10
years,

Jason (01:19):
not involved in space exploration

Christoph (01:21):
not involved in space at all, unfortunately, but then
through some, I got let go fromCaterpillar in 2016 ended up in
a company, a hydraulics companyup in Minnesota, but that got
way cold for me. So I onlylasted two years. And I took a
job at Walt Disney Imagineeringdown here in Orlando. So I

(01:41):
designed or I was part of theride team that designed the
Guardians of the Galaxy cosmicrewind roller coaster at Epcot
Center.

Brian (01:49):
I just rode that. That's so much fun.

Christoph (01:51):
Yes, yes, it is a lot of fun. And it was a lot of fun
designing it too. But I was onlya contractor. So when COVID hit,
they let me go. And I wasunemployed for a few months, and
obviously started looking and Ifound this job that was
essentially almost tailored forme at Kennedy Space Center,
which is fluid design engineer.So I applied it took a while but

(02:13):
in October 2020, I started myposition as a fluid design
engineer at Kennedy SpaceCenter, I worked for a
contractor for NASA contractorcalled Jacobs. And my main
responsibility these days isthat I'm the lead contract
engineer for the hydraulicsystems on the mobile launch
tower ordinance.

Brian (02:33):
That's very cool.

Christoph (02:34):
It's very cool to say that I am actually part of the
Artemis team. And I have mylittle pin to prove it right
here.

Brian (02:43):
That's awesome.

Christoph (02:43):
So yeah, so my biggest dream was always working
in the space related field. Andit took a while. But now I'm
finally here. And I've been I'mhaving a good time.

Brian (02:52):
It sounds like you are super overqualified to talk
about this game.

Christoph (02:59):
Well, I'll try not to use any fancy language here.
Because the game does the samething. I thought they did a
fantastic job with how theytried to relate progression and
space development and spaceengineering to somebody who you
know, like you guys have nothingto do with space. So I thought
they did a wonderful job andI'll try and keep it at the same
level.

Jason (03:19):
All right,sounds good. So before we dive into the game, I
always like doing this funscience fact first and
Christophe as our guest, you getfirst priority. Have you picked
up any fun science facts lately?

Christoph (03:29):
Well, one fight since we're talking about space, do
you guys know why the white Marsis red?

Brian (03:35):
Iron oxide?

Jason (03:36):
Yeah, rust iron oxide in the regolith.

Christoph (03:39):
That's My mind science. Fun fact. Most people
don't know that it's a rustyplanet.

Brian (03:44):
So where did all the oxygen come from that rusted out
all the iron?

Christoph (03:47):
Yee, good question. I'm not a geologist. That is, I
mean, most of these planets, youknow, they were formed many many
many, many billion years agofrom solar dust. I'm, I'm just
gonna say I don't know.

Jason (04:00):
Yet right? We have to respect the specialties of the
people. He's a fluid engineer.And there are currently no
fluids on Mars. So that's allright little area.

Christoph (04:09):
As far as we know. We haven't found any. We have some
found some evidence, but we havenot found any actual water or
fluids yet.

Brian (04:15):
Well, I found a science fact too but now I want to talk
about something different. Iwant to talk about how
photosynthesis almost destroyedthe world.

Jason (04:23):
Photosynthesis was three episodes ago, Brian.

Brian (04:26):
No, no, no, no, not the game, not the game, the chemical
process. So when photosynthesisdeveloped there was not a lot of
free oxygen in the atmosphere.And as oxygen was poisonous to
the majority of life andbasically started to slowly
build up and actually you cansee there's these layers in the
geological record of rusted outiron that happens periodically.

(04:46):
And as oxygen builds up in theatmosphere, it caused climate
change that plunged the entireplanet into like a giant
snowball almost presumablykilled all life on Earth. But
when eventually it came out theother side now we have complex
eukaryotic life. So somethingabout the process like yes,
photosynthesis almost destroyedlife on the planet and
completely rewired theecosystem.

Jason (05:08):
I'm trying to come up with a witty response to that
and I'm having trouble. I don'tthink we're gonna be quite so
lucky if we almost destroy theplanet this way. But But yes,
I've heard of the greatoxygenation event and all the
the iron bands and everything.

Brian (05:21):
My other thing was going to be the methane plumes on
Mars, but I think we're good.Okay.

Jason (05:26):
All right. Well, let's go into this game. So Stellar
Can I ask did you time yourselfwhen you were popping out all
Horizons by compass games,designed by Andrew Rader, who is
also overqualified to designthis game, so I looked him up.
He has his PhD from MIT in likehuman space exploration. He
works for SpaceX. He's publishedmultiple children's books about
space exploration. So this guydefinitely has it down. The game
the tokens and how long itactually took?

(05:46):
itself, It's for one for one toseven players ages 14 up which I
I did not because I was justdoing it while watching my wife
will say that's probablyaccurate. This is a very
play video games. So it was justkind of taking advantage of
complicated game. Play time.Some of the scenarios claimed to
be able to be played in 30minutes, I have my doubts. The
other side it took a while therewere literally like 25 sheets of
full campaign for experiencedplayers is supposed to last
it is a very, very complex game.And I also felt that you can
eight or more hours, this is agame this is not a let's break
chipboard now they're highquality chipboard, very good
it out during party time. Thisis something that you devote at

(06:08):
game components. When I boughtthis, I said it was the most
least half of your Saturday tosometimes even the whole
weekend, depending on if you'vegot the full seven players
expensive and heaviest boardgame I've ever bought was like
spread going. As far as the gameitself, it's very high quality.
$130 at my local game store.Like I said 11 pounds. Most of
There's all sorts of pieces inthere, there is so much game in
this game, there is been a 11pound box with about 5 billion
those bits are resources orother bookkeeping things. So
little components inside it,which is only a little bit of an

(06:28):
like you got your fuel yourmoney, your ore you've got
exaggeration. I actually lookedat the parts list. And slight
little faction markers to markthings up. So a lot of it is
aside, this is the only partslist for a game I've ever seen
that included the box as one ofthe components. So it's very
just bookkeeping stuff, which isjust incidental to the game. The
thorough, and there are justover 1700 individual components
to this game.
real core of the game is youhave your planet tiles, which

(06:49):
there's a dozen of those. Sothere's the eight planets.
There's also the asteroid belt,the Kuiper Belt, even Alpha
Centauri, there's 24 satellitesslash Moon Slash dwarf planets,
there's seven differentfactions. Each of them has their

(07:10):
board and about 30 individualunits they have, they're all
slightly different from eachother. There's a big tech tree
board, there's a policy board,there's player aids, there are
mini rule books for each playerto reference during the time

(07:31):
there is a lot of game in thisgame. There's a lot of
components, there's a lot ofmoving parts. The impression I
got while reading is that it hasthe potential of being a very
deep game. Like if you reallysink the time into understand

(07:51):
this well, there's all sorts ofdifferent strategies and ways
make it as complex as you wantto, you can simplify it if you
you can play it and such there'sa lot going on, but is a lot It
want to. There's options there.I think I felt that just the
is not for the faint of heart toget in. It is a very complicated
game. Christoph, you said youlooked over the rules you didn't

(08:13):
have a chance to play, what wereyour thoughts on that
base mechanics are not thathard. But the problem is you can
put layers and layers and layerson top of that, that can make

(08:34):
the game extremely complicated.And for people that like that,
it's you know, like me, it wasreally well designed. I have to
say the way he did that, butyes, you do need I don't even
know if you can get a an averageteenager to play this game.
Because it is it does take somethought and patience and time to
get into it.

Brian (08:54):
We were talking about that and trying to figure out
like who is this game forspecifically, and it seems to be
just in terms of space, you needan enormous table to lay out to
play the whole campaign. Youneed to leave it there all day.
I think there's a tradition ofpeople playing Risk where they
will show up in the morning andthey will play all day long.
This is that game this is I candedicate a huge amount of space

(09:14):
and time and have a group offriends that will that will play
this ridiculous game with meover the entirety of the
campaign. That's monopoly forwith densely more complication.

Jason (09:25):
Yeah so the the genre this falls into it's a 4X
Strategy game or the 4X is ourexplore, expand, exploit and
exterminate where basically youare exploring things you are
expanding your territory, youare extracting resources,
exploiting resources, and youare exterminated or combating
other factions to try to takeover this is more famous in
computer games. Civilization isprobably the quintessential 4X

(09:47):
game. There are some board gamesTwilight Imperium is probably
the most famous board game inthis area. And so there's
definitely people who reallyliked this Twilight Imperium is
somewhere in the top 50 Maybethe top 30 of Board Game Geek so
there's definitely a strong andfollowing for it, it's not
necessarily what Brian and Itend to play a lot. But there's
definitely a big market outthere for and it's, as far as I

(10:07):
can tell, this is a welldesigned one speaking as someone
who's not super experienced inthis area, but it seems very
well put together for that. Asfar as how playing the game
works, you lay out the planetsand all the satellites and
everything, you lay out yourfaction board and your tech tree
and things like that. And thenthere's different scenarios you
can go through. So the defaultcampaign is you basically start
in 2030, and you play 150 years,which is literally 150 turns of

(10:31):
near future space exploration,exploring worlds and launching
probes and developing newtechnologies, and eventually
moving on to colonizing outerspace and mining it and possibly
fighting wars in it. And the endgoal is that after that in 2170,
I think is when it ends, thenyou end and you count up all
your victory points, and whoeverhas the most victory points

(10:52):
wins. There's also a bunch ofother scenarios out there. So
Brian and I played a muchshorter scenario where there's
an asteroid headed to Earth andyou have 20 years to try to
deflect it or shoot it to bitsor whatever. So the Earth does
not get blown up. We playedreally poorly the first time and
so we just stopped halfwaythrough because we knew the
Earth was just gonna getobliterated. So we started over
again, and did much better thesecond time because we realized

(11:14):
we could not explore theasteroid to death, it was not
going to work. We just took gunsup there and blew it apart and
then towed it with some otherstuff. And it worked much better
at that time.

Brian (11:22):
We also realized that some of the resources that we
were dependent on and say, Well,wait a second, look more
carefully. You can only makefuel on Earth. If you're not
able to shuttle or make it whereyou're going like it was we
didn't understand the game thatfirst time like in terms of that
explore part we were we were notexploiting correctly.

Jason (11:37):
Yeah. And part of this is just there's a lot of rules to
keep track of I kept wishing Ihad a computer to keep track of
all the little bookkeeping,things like how much money I
have, which level of the techtree I'm at. So do my robots
fail at a 27% rate? Or at a 24%rate? How often do my engines
fail? These little things thatare built in there? I mean, this
is really, Brian, you liketalking about the metaphor of

(11:59):
the game? This game has nometaphor. It's a simulation
game, you are playing a gameabout exploring space, and you
do it by exploring space. Likethat's it. Like there's no
metaphor here at all.

Brian (12:10):
Yeah, blue, the entire Russian space budget of $40
billion in two turns.

Jason (12:15):
Yes, there's that you only get money every 10 turns.
So it does mean that you're kindof strapped by the end of it. So
but it does include all thelittle bits of space exploration
like your engines can fail, yourrobots can just blow up at some
point when you try to use them.If you have a crewed vehicle,
there's a 50% chance they'regonna have to come back every
time you use them becausesomething went wrong. Now what I

(12:35):
like is that every timesomething like that goes wrong,
you actually get tech pointsrepresenting that you're
learning from your mistakes,like, Oh, our robot blew up.
Well, now we know how to buildbetter robots. So I get some
tech points toward my nexttechnology, or oh, we had to get
our crew back. Because who knowswhat happened? It's like, well,
now I get some biology points.Because now we know better how
to keep people alive in space.Like I liked that. That was a

(12:56):
it's a nice consolation forthings always blowing up, I did
a little bit of solo play, totry to figure out the rules. And
the poor European Union couldnot get a satellite into space
for the life of them. I rolledso many engine failures for
those poor people. Like everysingle satellite, they took
spent 10s of billions of dollarson these telescopes and probes
and stuff. And they just blew upon the launchpad one after

(13:17):
another after another.

Brian (13:18):
I was so sad when the one ship I had just blew up, blew
up. Yeah.

Christoph (13:22):
And you know, that's very realistic, right there. I
mean, if you look at thedevelopment of the APOLLO PRO of
the Apollo program, you know,going from Germany and joining
with Gemini program and how manyrockets, they blew up before
they were able to launch itsuccessfully for the first time.
You know, if you look in anymore younger history, we look
Yep. I think the percentage forfailure is about 5% On launch
SpaceX and Blue Origin. Thoseguys keep blowing up stuff. You

(13:43):
may not always hear it in thenews, but I mean, it took it
took a while for them to havetheir first successful flight.
And while in flight, for now,it's SpaceX. I think it hasn't
has a pretty stellar record. Sothey have to see what happens to
Blue Origin. I mean, they havethey've had one failure with a
human flight right, but they gotthe humans back to Earth no

(14:03):
problem. I thought that thatwhole scenario and how they do
how that was integrated into thegame was really well done. The
presented I mean, they theyworked with percentages on how
likely it is for your engine yetand you have to go for it. I
tried to look into thosepercentages if that it's really
hard to put a realistic numberon that. If you look at human
spaceflight, you know, if youlook at the Apollo program, and

(14:25):
there's only during the entireApollo program, there was only
one one set of astronauts thatdied Grissom Chaffin White with
Apollo I, but they only had notthat many missions. So overall,
I still think it was a massivelysuccessful program, obviously.
and slightly lower if you you'relaunching a crewed vehicle

(14:45):
because presumably we take morecare when there's people
involved would probably wouldactually about fit with Apollo,
to be honest, right?
That you know, it also dependson the launch vehicle that kind
of launch vehicle the Soyuz isincredibly reliable, that launch
that failure percentage justhave to be really, really,
really low probably even below5%. But they had to come, they
had to put some number on it.And my feeling is that they just

(15:08):
looked at a few differentprograms of failure of the
rockets and came up with theused a big thumb. And well, this
looks good. And let's go downthis way,

Jason (15:17):
and probably balance it with, we don't want to make this
so high that it becomes unfun.

Christoph (15:21):
right, because that's still the most important part of
the game and has to be fun toplay.

Jason (15:25):
Yep, so let's move on to some science stuff. So I was
looking through this. Andthere's obviously a lot of
science potentially in here. Sospace exploration, vehicle
design, near Earth astronomy,there is an actual deep space
astronomy, you can explore butonly with telescopes doesn't
come in hugely. Most of it iswithin the solar system,
engineering, orbital mechanics.So they actually, there's

(15:46):
different transit times to gofrom one planet to another to
another that are roughly on parwith how far they are apart in
the solar system, running aspace program, a little bit of
the economics of it, it is funnythat the unit of currency is
billions, you cannot have lessthan a billion dollars and
nothing cost less than a billiondollars. So yeah, so you've
already talked about this alittle bit, Christoph. But how
does this reflect as someonewho's in the space program, and

(16:09):
probably one of the premierspace programs on the planet
right now? How does this feel toyou? Does it feel like an
accurate representation?

Christoph (16:16):
Well, it's, I would say, it's very idealized. I
mean, in real reality, anyspacecraft program, you look
like they run over budget, soyou can put a budget on it? You
know, I don't I don't think Isaw anything where we have that
mechanic in there where youoverrun the budget, you always
meet it, or you have to go underit, right?

Brian (16:35):
I think they do. You can overrun your support limit, you
can have more vehicles outthere, then you can pay for and
then you don't get all of yourbudget, you have to use some to
support your ships. I don't knowif that's exactly the same as
what you mean. But yeah, you canbe in debt based on the number
of vehicles you have out there.

Jason (16:52):
But only if they're you're there when the decade
turns so you could have them uptill year nine. Oh, and then you
just scrap them all. And youdon't have to pay for them come
year 10.

Christoph (17:01):
Yeah, For non reusable rockets, that may be
true. But these days, everythingis going to reusable rockets.
Right. So you have a maintenancefee maintenance cost. If you
look at SpaceX, they have awhole science now devoted to
looking at how to refurbish therockets, the most optimal, most

(17:22):
quickest and most cheapest way.And it's it's very, very
interesting to see all that backin the day. They didn't even
think of that stuff.

Jason (17:29):
Yeah. Which is actually an interesting part. So the part
of the game is they have thisbig tech tree of all the near
future technologies you candevelop. And some of them are
way out there like antimatterreactors and fusion drives. But
some of the early ones are someof them we already have one of
the very first ones is reusablelaunch vehicles, which I think
only the United States startsoff with it technically is North

(17:49):
America, the United States andCanada, but I'm pretty sure it's
meant to be just the US. Anyway,North America starts off with
reusable launch rockets and thefull campaign I don't think
anyone else does. And the gameimplies that's one of the first
ones most people are going to gofor so that you stop just
burning money every time you getsomething into space. One thing
I'm curious about those launchrockets have a 75% chance of

(18:11):
recovery, but a 25% chance offailure is that about on par
with what we see with realreusable launch rockets.

Christoph (18:17):
I would have to dig a little deeper into this. But my
first instinct is absolutelynot. They will be there. SpaceX
has recovered all their rocketsso far, as far as I can tell.

Jason (18:26):
OK, so they don't blow up on the launchpad, they actually
get up into space. And we have avery good ability to get them
back.

Christoph (18:31):
Right, it lands, right, some of them land way out
on the ocean on a re designedoil platform. And then the
sometimes even land back atKennedy Space Center. So you can
see them come back. Yeah, but25% Failure seems awfully high.

Jason (18:47):
OK, So that may be one of the game mechanics they put in
and just so you don't get freelaunch vehicles from then on
out, right. So probably to evenup because I mean, looking at
the full campaign, you shouldnot start the full campaign and
then just play 20 or 30 yearsbecause North America has a huge
advantage to start with theother factions are usually in
there for the long game likethat. That's why most of the

(19:07):
other scenarios, they start witha more even tech tree, but I
think the campaign is meant tosimulate roughly where we're
going to be in about 10 yearswith some some exceptions. So
actually, it's probably goodtime to talk about the factions.
And you'd probably know a lotbetter how the various space
programs around the world are.So there's seven factions.
There's North America, which isthe US and Canada. There's the

(19:27):
European Union, there's China,Russia, Japan, Asia, which is
sort of India, Pakistan, and afew other of the Middle East,
Southern Asian countries. Andthen South America and Africa,
which is essentially just theentire global south glommed
together. And I was doing someresearch on this. I know some of
these places have space programscurrently U.S., Russia and

(19:48):
China being the most advancedthat I'm aware of Europe has a
bunch of satellite work, JAXA,in Japan. How big are these
players in the global scheme ofthings?

Christoph (19:56):
Well, right now obviously the biggest player's
NASA there's nothing Bigger thanthat right now, some people like
to use like using old word wordsagain, like space race with
Russia and China, because youcan see that there seems to be
some I don't think it's beenreally confirmed yet but that
China and Russia are workingtogether now on the space
program and launching rockets.One thing you have to make clear

(20:20):
these days, no country can do arun space program all on its own
anymore. Just not possible notfeasible. If you look at the
NASA and you know, I can look atour Artemis program, there's the
Artemis Accords, where I once Iwant to see there's like 60 or
70 countries that signed on toit. And so they're all working
together to land people back onthe moon.

Jason (20:41):
So what drives that? Is it? Is it the technologies like
you just need different aspectsof technology? Is it the price
like no one nation can actuallyafford this level of
engineering? What is it thatdrives that level of
collaboration.

Christoph (20:53):
Technology and sharing technology is definitely
a small part of it. But big partis the cost. You want to share
the cost of planning the firstman on world not the first but
the first man after Apollo backon the moon, the economy
involved is unbelievable. Nocountry would would want to
carry all that burden on its ownanymore these days. So So you

(21:15):
have these days, you have theobviously, as I just mentioned,
China and Russia that seem to beworking together, obviously,
it's really hard to tell rightnow. But then on on the western
civilization side, you have, youknow, China, JAXA, NASA, ISA
that are working together, Indiais coming up really fast. They
just landed the first probe onthe moon not too long ago, that

(21:38):
was also a story where they had,you know, four or five failures.
And finally, it worked out. Sothat's the next. I think the
next biggest player on thefield, South America, you don't
really hear too much about them.And I'm not sure they but they
I'm sure. We obviously haveLatin American engineers that
work at NASA. So while I waslooking, thinking about this

(21:59):
game, it's I realized somethingis somehow the people that
originally were all involved inastronomy, the Egyptians, the
Mexican that makes it of theAztec culture. None of those are
really spacefaring anymore. Theystarted it somehow looking up
into the stars, but these dayshave very little influence on
what's going on anymore.Hopefully, that will change. I'd

(22:21):
love to see it change. I knowthat Mexico has its own space
agency. See, for example,

Jason (22:25):
Yeah, oddly, Mexico does not belong to any of the
factions. So if you look at thelaunch trailer for the game,
there's one spot where they showthe world and they outline
countries, according to thefaction and Mexico just got left
out in the cold, unfortunately,

Brian (22:38):
It didn't even get included in North America for
some reason.

Jason (22:41):
Yeah. The global south when it based on the flag, it
looks like it's basically Braziland friends. And I did look,
Brazil has some sort of spaceagency, they obviously don't
have their own launch capacity.But I think they do have they do
put up some satellites,

Christoph (22:52):
they have launched satellites in the past.

Jason (22:54):
OK, That's about the extent I know of that

Brian (22:56):
When we when Jason and I played our scenario, we worked
as China and Russia, we workedtogether.

Jason (23:01):
The time we won, we worked as China and Russia
because I realized that Chineseships in the game had more
weaponry than the global southships that I was trying the
first time around. There's onlyone ship of the global south
that actually has armaments toshoot an asteroid,
unfortunately, and China had twoor three, so I switched to them
instead, I didn't check part ofme suspect that the North

(23:21):
American may have the most gunsof them all. But maybe that's
just my own impression of howour country works.

Christoph (23:26):
Now, let me let me make one more comment here. If
us space cadets that all work atthe these various space agencies
around the world had our choice,we would get politics out of the
way completely just all worktogether.

Jason (23:38):
I imagine I met most of the people in the rank and file
probably care more about thescience and the the goal of
getting there then which countrygets credit and who's jockeying
with whom. Absolutely. Okay, solet's get into the Astronomy
Part of this now. So there's alot of not just engineering, but
also the astronomy, there's allthese different world cards, the
planets of the entire solarsystem, and there's actually

(24:00):
some nice science facts on them.So if you start if you look on
the fine print on each of thecards, it tells you its gravity
rating, it'll tell you if it's arocky or icy planet, a gas
giant, it may have itsastronomical distance from the
sun. If not, I know the playerinserts actually have a to scale
showing of here's all theplanets and the thing and they
actually have a little scale barunderneath. So they show you how

(24:22):
much how far apart things are. Iam not a I don't even know what
the word for it is an extraplanetary geologist. What does
that EXO geologist is, you know,geologist,

Christoph (24:31):
yeah, planetary geologist,

Jason (24:33):
planetary geologist, not a planetary geologist. I don't
know how accurate these areother than they look kind of
like what I understand. What'syour thought about the game? So
they have these different littlebits of pieces. How, how
accurate are they? Are theysimplified? I'm trying to go I
don't know how to phrase thisquestion.

Christoph (24:49):
Yeah, I looked into it a little bit. And obviously,
I'm an engineer not a geologisteither, but from the little I
could tell, It's obviously it'svery simplified at To make it
accessible to everybody, theyalso had to make some guesses,
you know, because some of thiswas you have to have resources
on certain planets to, that youneed to be able to get to for

(25:10):
your, if you want to build abase and things like that. So I
have a feeling they had to takesome liberties here. But they
can actually mined and get fromthe planet. But a few years ago,
we had that it's also a greatbook, where they settled for the
sent a human to Mars. I can'tremember who was in it. The
Martian, The Martian? Yes, yes,exactly. If you read that book

(25:33):
and look at it and watch themovie, it is really well very
accurately done. There's someminor mistakes, I'm not gonna go
there right now. But you canjust see what kind of effort it
is to put somebody on Mars andmake it habitable. So you need
resources that the planet has tooffer. So as I said, it looks
like they may have taken someliberties there, just my broad

(25:54):
sense.

Brian (25:54):
So maybe there is a little bit of metaphor here.
It's not a full simulation. Itdid. There are approximations.

Christoph (26:00):
Yeah. I mean, ya know, you we haven't talked
about it, but that you havespace combat, I hope there's
never going to be space combat,

Jason (26:08):
yet, but they put it in there is an altarnate rule where
you can actually take that outof the game, where you you
remove the combat, you live inthe utopia rule set, I think it
was, but I do like with spacecombat, the very first step of
combat is you have to search forwho you're trying to shoot, like
space is big, and you may notfind them. So you actually have
to roll to see if you can evenfind who you're trying to engage
with. And then if you do, thenyou get to do this whole system

(26:31):
of tactics, points. And do youshoot from a distance? Or do we
get close enough to actuallyshoot directly? Bases are easier
to find. I was a little worriedwhen I saw Oh, if you do this
thing, this is orbitalbombardment. It's like, I really
don't want that to be a realthing. But I can understand why
they put it in the game.

Christoph (26:48):
Yeah space combat is fun right, but only in fantasy.

Jason (26:52):
Yeah, I do wonder about it, though, because there's some
pretty harsh limits in terms ofhow many ships you can support
at once. Most factions start bybeing able to support three at
most, usually, only two crewedvehicles. And even if you invest
all your politics points intoit, you only get like two or
three more than that. And sowe're talking fleets that
consist of like five shipstrying to attack each other

(27:13):
across the solar system. Soagain, we never got to this
point in the campaign, we didn'thave the eight to 12 hours to
get that far into it. I justwonder how that would work in
practice? Or if it's basicallylike, well, I'm claiming
Jupiter, and you're claimingSaturn, and we're just going to
let each other do our thing,because it's not worth wasting
chips on this.

Christoph (27:31):
Yeah, I mean, if you just look at what's happening
now on Earth, if you're SpaceXhas like four or five rockets
that they can launch that arerefurbished will you know, and
then if he add Blue Origin toit, I would probably say there's
a good dozen reusable rocketsout there right now that can be
used and launched on a regularbasis. So five is a very small

(27:51):
number.

Jason (27:52):
Yeah, I think the five limit is more for the crewed
vehicles. So that would betheoretical manned missions
going somewhere,

Christoph (27:58):
even for manned. You know, right now. The Falcon
Heavy, I think there's like twoor three of them out there.
There'll be more in again, ifyou want new Glenn is ready to
launch, you know, they'll doublethat capacity at least. Okay.

Brian (28:11):
What about space pirates? Are we? gonna have space
pirates?

Jason (28:16):
Yes, there's a part of the game that after a certain
point of development, SpacePirates just spontaneously
appear on the board.

Brian (28:22):
They just spawn into existence

Jason (28:24):
Yes, they just appear, like no one creates them, they
just start happening. They'relike rats, or yeast or mold or
something. They just kind ofcome out of the woodwork or the
space work as your economy getssufficiently developed.

Christoph (28:36):
Who knows? I mean, it I guess you can pose the
question, is that a naturalprogression of we saw that
happen here on Earth? And whywould it happen in space as well
that you'll get some Freebootersout there that got start
invading other ships?

Brian (28:53):
Because if you if the economics of it makes sense,
then it Yeah, we will happen?

Christoph (28:57):
Yeah, I'm not sure if there's one faction that will be
able to finance that. But youknow, there's other Elon Musk's
out there that have a boatloadof money hidden away somewhere.

Jason (29:07):
They're probably spin off from the various bases. You're
Why not?
supposed to be building thisdisgruntled employees and such
as like, I'm tired of workingfor the EU or for China or
whatever. I'm just gonna go offon my own and become a pirate.
Sounds like a legitimate careermove.

Brian (29:21):
We'll have a black market, sugar beet wine.

Jason (29:25):
Now what about near future? So one thing, there's
another technology that onlyNorth America I think starts
with in the campaign is theability to get ships to Mars,
like manned crewed vehicles toMars. And I know I've heard
about the efforts to get peopleto Mars, but I haven't heard a
lot about it recently. What'sthe status of that right now?

Christoph (29:43):
So right now it's all the purpose of the Artemis
program at the end of theArtemis program is landing the
first man on on Mars, butgetting there you know, they
they claim they can do it in the2030s not sure if that's going
to happen because there's a lotof things that have to be
engineered. and designed first.So the plan right now is to get

(30:03):
to the moon first start buildinga base on the moon, and
especially in a space stationthat will be going around the
moon called Gateway, and thenthey will launch to Mars from
Gateway. So the plan is probablyto assemble the rocket that's
going to go to Mars on Gateway,and then it will launch from
Gateway from orbit around themoon.

Brian (30:22):
That's so cool.

Christoph (30:24):
Which, by the way, one of the things I missed in
this game is that these days,there's a lot of missions that
go to the ligrange points. Sothe there's five equilibrium
points in a three body system,where you can, in theory, put a
mass satellite there to nevermove, you know, so between Sun
earth, earth, moon, so on and soforth. We always have these five
points. So Gateway, one of theproposals is to put it at Earth

(30:47):
Moon L1,

Jason (30:47):
Okay, that's the one that's in between the Earth and
the Moon?

Christoph (30:50):
The between Earth and Moon, yes, L2 is on the other
side of the moon. And then youhave L3, which is on the other
side of Earth. And then you haveL4 and 5, which are an
equilateral triangle betweenEarth and Moon.

Jason (31:02):
And the benefit of these places, you can put something
there and then he doesn'trequire any fuel to stay there.
It just is sort of held there bythe gravitational interactions
of the multiple bodies.

Christoph (31:12):
Correct. So it's our, the orbit, so you can't really
reach those points in apractice, but you can orbit them
so that's what they do more withthese points called ligrational
orbits, lagrange orbits,whatever, you want to lose a few
names for the there's been somesuccessful missions. Like for
example, this, the James WebbTelescope is at L2. So.

Brian (31:34):
interesting. So how would we how would we do that in
Stellar Horizons, you'd have tohave like places where you could
send a mission or build a base,but it wouldn't be able to, like
generate resources the way otherthings can in Stellar Horizons,
because there's nothing there.It's just a stable.

Christoph (31:47):
Yeah, you Jupiter's space station that would be
supplied by whatever moon orplanet you're, it's, it's
orbiting.

Jason (31:55):
probably the abstractions that anytime something is in
orbit around a planet, you couldjust hand wave that say it's
actually at one of the Lagrangepoints, the game has enough
bookkeeping, I don't want tokeep track of multiple stable
orbit locations, in addition toall the planets and moons and
everything else.

Christoph (32:10):
Yeah. And by the way, it doesn't mean that you need no
fuel to stay around Lagrangepoints, because L1, L2, L3 are
considered unstable. So you doneed some station keeping fuel
on board.

Jason (32:21):
Okay, got it. So you need to like minor adjustments,
basically, just to kind of nudgeit back and forth.

Christoph (32:25):
Minor adjustments, Yes.

Jason (32:26):
Okay. All right. So kind of getting down to the end of
the game discussion. If youcould change something about
this game that you think like,would you are there things that
you think we could make thismaybe a bit more accurate? Or
maybe things that they tried toohard on? Like, what would you
try to adjust to the game tomake it fit your vision of space
exploration better?

Christoph (32:44):
Oh, good point. Good question. You know, I'm a little
bit of an idealist, I willprobably try it and take some of
the politics little out of itand not be so heavily on
diplomacy and, and have thecountries work together better,
but you have to roll for it. Sothat kind of that bothered me a
little bit. And then it just youstill have to roll for engine

(33:06):
failures and stuff like that. Soyou have a probability effect
there that, yes, you have it inreal life, too. But it's not a
it's not a gamble if a rocketexplodes in that it explodes
because there are failures inthe system. It'd be better to
maybe add a mechanic that thereis, you know, some people saw
something on during assemblywent wrong or something like

(33:27):
that.

Jason (33:28):
Yeah, that sounds like one of those abstractions. I do
know some of the technology canreduce your failure rate, some
that may represent superiorengineering capacity.

Christoph (33:36):
That sort of bugged me a little bit, but I know the
way they did I think it's stillfine. It's still, you know, it's
not game ruining or anything.It's I think this I'm eager to
played with my group here. Andstill think it's should be a
fantastic game to play for SpaceCadets like me.

Jason (33:51):
And imagine part of that is that you're an engineer. And
so you don't want your hard wonengineering to just blow up due
to a bad dice rolls that thatkind of a fair assessment,
right?

Brian (33:59):
Yes. Or to have the politics get in the way of what
you're trying to do.

Christoph (34:02):
That explosion was preceded by 1000s of 1000s of
people dedicating a lot of time,effort and love into designing
this engine, and then havingthis random effect, there, I
don't like it maybe just becauseI am an engineer. But yeah,

Brian (34:18):
I suppose if you just decide we don't want to do that.
You just don't do it. Right.That's the joy of a board game.
If you don't like a rule, don'tuse it.

Christoph (34:25):
You know, that's what I said in the beginning. This
game has lots of lots of levels.And I think you can add and
delete levels any any way youwant to. I feel it's pretty
flexible. Um, so.

Jason (34:34):
What were your thoughts, Brian, so we played this, we did
a three hour play session, whichis longer than normal. We
basically got the world creamedby an asteroid the first time
but then saved it the secondtime, we got to know the rules.

Brian (34:46):
We went back in time we did that never happened. We
Gosh, what do I think? I thinkthat the I've never played a
game where you're rolling thatpercentile dice so many times
and so often does it not matter.So I do agree that those very
low percentage events like dotake a lot Like efforts to
maintain this seems like thekind of game where if you're
willing to dedicate the time andreally learn it, it probably
would be a lot of fun. But thatthat eight hour play time,

(35:08):
that's hard. That's a hardcommit. I used to play tabletop
war games. This is this is oneof those. This is spend two
hours setting up and six hoursplaying.

Jason (35:17):
Yeah, my feeling I kept getting while playing is "I wish
I had a computer to handle allthe bookkeeping", because
there's really two kinds ofrolls and stuff you're doing.
There's the bookkeeping ones,like, Okay, how much money do I
get this turn? What percentiledo I need to roll under? Oh, I'm
moving this ship from here. Howlong does that take with my
current technology, etc. Ireally wish I had a computer to
handle all of that littleniggling detail so that I could

(35:38):
focus on the important things ofwhich planet do I want to
explore? This probe is going toget there next turn, but I can
explore it a penalty this turn,do I want to risk losing it and
get it now? Or do I want to waitbut have a less time in the
future? Those decisions that Iconsider be the important
decisions and offload to acomputer all the little things?
I think this would make a greatcomputer game. So I didn't play
civilization that much. But Iplayed it see, it's sort of sci

(36:01):
fi spin off Alpha Centauri, itreminded me a lot of that
probably because there was a lotof similar technologies, some
space exploration, the tech treeeverything. I've heard some
people when I was doingresearch, some people said that
particular game Alpha Centauriis considered by some people to
be one of the best 4X games madefor computers. And so I found a
lot of similarities between thatand this game is I was playing

(36:23):
it and wishing that I couldoffload to a computer, the same
thing that I offloaded to thecomputer when I was playing the
computer game.

Brian (36:28):
One thing I would say is that that price points for this,
you said it was 120 at yourfriendly local game store?

Jason (36:34):
130. Although I did see at some point, compass games was
running the sale at 99. But Ithink it's back up to 130. Now,

Brian (36:41):
so that's about two times the cost of your average
designer board game. But if youthink about it, in terms of time
played, I mean, there are plentyof board games that have sat on
my shelf that have maybe beenplayed three or four times. If
you play Stellar Horizons, thewhole campaign twice, you've
probably gotten more value foryour money than your average
designer board game for mostpeople. Of course, you know,

(37:02):
there are some games, you'regoing to bust out all the time
and play a lot. But I think mostof us have to admit that a lot
of our games, we don't play thatoften.

Jason (37:09):
Yeah, that's fair.

Christoph (37:10):
Did, there's a lot of replay value of this one, they
have a bunch of scenarios thatyou can play and you know, you
can come up with yours. I thinkthere's, it's well worth the
money.

Jason (37:20):
Yeah, those scenarios I think are a good touch. So
there's the the defend from anasteroid one we played, there's
the full campaign, there's onewhere one player is playing like
a rogue AI that is basicallyversus all the other human
players. There's one where, it'sthe shortest one, it's 30
minutes, it's literally, there'san alien spaceship, you have
this much money, figure out howto build some ships and go blow

(37:41):
it up before it blows you up.That's it, it's a 30 minute
scenario, the only world tile isEarth, and you get a pile of
money. And that's it. So like,there's a whole range of things
you can do here, I do wish therewas like a quickstart, like a
little Quickstart for like,here's how you ease into the
game and play or maybe like aYouTube how to play video,
because the rules are very welllaid out. And they're obviously
laid out by an engineer, everyrule has a number, this is

(38:03):
2.6.5. This is rule 3.4.7. Andthey're logical, they're logical
in one way, but I thinklogically in a different way. So
they're all logically all themovement rules are together, all
the exploration rules aretogether, all the combat rules
are together, which is great forlooking up when you're in that
phase. But I think in terms ofwhat's doing the action, so I
want all the crewed vehiclerules to be in one spot, and

(38:24):
then all the robot vehicle rulesto be in one spot. And I kept
having to flip back and forth tofind it, I actually made little
cheat cards on the on three byfive index cards to give the
rules for oh, this is a crewedvehicle, it can do this and this
and this and this and this. Andif I were to be playing this a
bunch, I would actually printthose out and make them nice and
neat. So I had these quickreference, because that's how I
think but I mean, there's a lotof stuff in this already, I can

(38:46):
perfectly understand why theydidn't do that. From what I read
online. I'm not the only personwho wishes things were maybe
laid out a bit differently.

Christoph (38:51):
Yeah, I missed it. So they have the index, but there's
no page numbers. Oh,

Jason (38:56):
but they're all numbered, though.

Christoph (38:58):
So they are numbered. So you can go through and find
it. But I sometimes want to dowell, but what page, you have to
leave through it and find theright number.

Brian (39:05):
This does come with a PDF version that you could search

Jason (39:08):
So it's not that easy to find. But yes, you can actually
through?
download the PDFs from theKickstarter page of all places.
I don't think it's linked fromthe main compass games website.
But the Kickstarter still has afull PDF that you can download.
And I actually did that while wewere playing. You may have seen
I had my laptop open. I wassearching for some of the rules
we were trying to figure outbecause sometimes like okay, I
read this rule somewhere, but Idon't remember where and there's

(39:29):
10 pages of rules to go throughso that that searchability was
very useful there.

Christoph (39:34):
About but Yeah I'd like to see a computer game for
this one.

Brian (39:37):
Yeah, this would make a fun app.

Jason (39:38):
Actually, this would be a great app. I would love to see
that.

Brian (39:41):
So we've been doing these report cards for the games that
we've been reviewing that reviewlike the science how well the
science is represented as wellas the fun and honestly I was
trying to decide if I feelqualified to grade the science
in this game, but I guess I'llI'll give it my best guess. I
think this is definitely a gamewhere the science was at the
front and it was trying its verybest to represent the science

(40:03):
the best that it could. And Ithink that it feels like it's
probably an A like just foreffort.

Jason (40:08):
I probably do like A-. It's not quite as at the
forefront as wingspan, which ismy personal bar currently for
what a high science game is.There's a lot there. There's
also like Christoph said somesimplifications and some places
where there could have beenmore, but there's not, there is
a lot there. And so yeah, A/A-range seems good to me.

Brian (40:27):
Our actual qualified person. What how do you grade
it?

Christoph (40:30):
No, I would I would have to agree i would give it an
A-does vary. And the way theysimplified it, or you know, took
took some edges off that now itto me, it makes total sense. You
can't go into all the detail andnitty gritty in a game like this
that's supposed to be forbroader audience. So yeah, A-
for sure.

Brian (40:49):
It's so funny hearing that this game is not detailed
and complicated enough.

Jason (40:52):
No, no, that's a good thing. It's the science part of
it. Next part is gameplay. I wasthinking about this. And this is
one where I'm split, becauselike I said, this is not my
genre of game. So for me, Iwould give this like a B- just
because of how complicated itis, and how much I wish I had a

(41:12):
computer keep track of thebookkeeping. However, for
someone who really likes thistype of game, I imagine it would
probably be more on the A-/Arange, I did do some looking
online. Sounds like there aresome very loyal fans of it. Some
of them have kind of the samequibbles about the rulebook or a
combat being a littlecomplicated. So it seems like
for the people who really lovethis game, it falls again, in
that kind of A- range.

Brian (41:31):
I think I'm gonna give it a B just because it's I think
it's probably one of those gamesthat is fun if you put in the
work. And I don't know if I can,I don't literally don't know if
my life accommodates a game likethis. Really, it was fun to
play. I like playing the shortscenario. I'm just trying to
imagine the day that we wouldplay the whole campaign.

Jason (41:50):
Well, it's hard now that we have jobs and kids and other
responsibilities like that, likeif I was in college, this would
be much more likely I could seejust taking my friends groups
like hey, we're just gonnadevote this Saturday to Stellar
Horizons and just make a day ofit. order some pizza, take some
breaks in the game. I coulddefinitely see that happening.
But in our current lifesituation, yeah, probably not.

Christoph (42:09):
I don't have a family here except the people that I
play games with every once in awhile. So but I would, I would
rate it a B. It's massive. It'svery complicated. It's not a not
a game. I prefer games that youcan pick up and set up in 15-10
minutes and start playing it.This is not that game. That's
why I'm giving it a B. But funwise, I haven't played it yet,

(42:30):
unfortunately. But I willdefinitely I'm definitely
looking forward to doing it withmy gaming group here at some
point. So that's just because ofthe massive just takes a long
time to play is what I say Iwould give it a B.

Jason (42:41):
Yeah, you said you were but you got sick. So
unfortunately, that wasn't theplan, but hopefully not COVID
But something

Christoph (42:47):
Oh, no, no, not COVID Just just a little bit of a Con
crud.

Brian (42:50):
Oh, did you go to a con?

Christoph (42:51):
Yeah, we I went to Megacon here in Orlando.

Brian (42:54):
Oh, is that a gamer? Con? No, it

Christoph (42:56):
is a pop culture con.

Brian (42:57):
Awesome. That's fun. I know Jason goes to Dragon Con
all the time.

Christoph (43:00):
Yeah Dragon Con is so it's just like Dragon Con but
except much bigger.

Jason (43:04):
All right. Well, I think that's we're gonna wrap up again
with the grades. Remember, theseare just our opinions. So you
are welcome to disagree, and weare welcome to be wrong about
it. If you dislike it, weactually have a discord you can
come in and you can tell us howwrong we are or if we got
anything incorrect, butotherwise, I think we'll sign
off. Christoph, thank you somuch for coming. It was great
having you on here. I'm glad wewere able to meet. If we do any
other engineering based stuff wemight get back in touch.

Christoph (43:27):
Absolutely. It'd be my pleasure. It's been a lot of
fun.

Jason (43:29):
All right, so that's we're gonna wrap it so thank you
everyone for listening and takecare have fun happy gaming.

Brian (43:35):
Yep, have fun playing dice with the universe See Ya!.

Jason (43:44):
This has been the Gaming with Science Podcast copyright
2024. listeners are free toreuse this recording for any non
commercial purpose as long ascredit is given to gaming with
science. This podcast isproduced with support from the
University of Georgia. Allopinions are those of the hosts
and do not imply endorsement bythe sponsors. If you wish to
purchase any of the games wetalked about, we encourage you
to do so through your friendlylocal game store. Thank you and

(44:05):
have fun playing dice with theuniverse.

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S1E4 - Stellar Horizons (Space Exploration)

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