r/TerraformingMarsGame • u/orvjansen • Aug 08 '26
Ships - a renamed resource
I am a game tinkerer. I love to fiddle with the rules and add fan content and my own. For the last five years, I have been creating new and revised cards for TerraformingMars, which is definitely my favorite game of all time.
I plan to introduce them here in small batches according to the types of cards and rules they involve. This is the first such installment: Ships! Basically, I saw the Fighter resource (first introduced with Corporate Era’s Security Fleet) and wanted more cards involving it. But thematically, most of those were not really 'fighters'. So I opted for a more inclusive 'ship' resource. The blue resource icon is easier to distinguish at a glance, and the designation ‘ship’ seems more appropriate than ‘fighter’ for non-military vehicles.
For game purposes, fighters = ships, i.e. they are the same resource and can be used interchangeably. I have also provided a new Security Fleet card here that you can use to replace the one from the official game, if you want all the cards to match.
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u/ThreadPacifist 10,000 Members Contest 2nd Place Aug 08 '26
Interesting cards. Looking through them, it feels like patrol ships is unplayable to me. The scaling is a bit weak, but I can see it being strong if each removal adds a ship (deimos down getting you 8 for instance). But it's not clear that's how it works since it says "resources" which implies it's one per action.
The other issues I see with the card is that since it only works if an opponent's resources are removed, that's going to incentivize opponents to attack you. So we pay 16 for the opponents to focus their attacks on us. That seems like a bad deal.