Learning High Frontier 4 All

Jul 11 2021

Overview and rationale

Why play High Frontier solitaire?

Many reasons, but the main one for me is that finding opponents can be quite challenging. I've introduced three different people to game through cooperative play, and all have (politely) declined to continue playing. The alternative becomes play solitaire or do not play at all. Since I enjoy the game immensely, most of my plays have been solitaire.

More reasons for solitaire:

Really learn the game inside out. Get all the analysis paralysis induced from rules reading and inexperience out of the way. Future opponents will be grateful.
Develop your own variants or scenarios and play test them. Always good to sanity check such things before inflicting upon the world.
Play intermittently, over a period of time. When there is not enough time in a single session, spread the game play over several sessions. The game sets up and tears down quickly, and it's easy to save a current hand or patent stack. There's never very much on the actual board anyway, makes setting up a game in progress easy. Intermittent play is not limited to solitaire, a 7 cycle game could be played in 2 or more shorter sessions.

I'm sure there are more reasons solitaire makes sense, add some of your own.

Playing solitaire misses out on auctions, which is an important aspect of the competitive game. In the solitaire rules-as-printed, the patent decks move a lot slower, and the patents end up being more expensive. This can make actually building a viable prospecting rocket excruciatingly slow (boring) as it is so deck-dependent. One way to remediate the boredom is use the Politics module with solitaire play. The placard with the box game is perfectly adequate for this, and there is a solitaire-specific Political Assembly placard available online. Another option is using the Werner's Star variant (Module 1F). Making it easier (but not too easy) to cycle patents allows one's attention to focus on other parts of the game play.

For the competitive game, I'm sure many of the mechanisms frustrating a solitaire player balance out, and how better play exploits risk to prevail. Which - prevailing - is a relative thing, like running from bears. You don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than your buddy. Likewise in High Frontier, best score wins regardless of magnitude of score. All good.

For the solitaire game, the score matters, a lot.

For example, at the time of writing I'm in 5th cycle (Turn 53) of a CEO Futures game. I have 43 points, and need a total of 60 to pass the next board meeting in 7 turns. I'm not seeing it. My experience in 4-5 previous Futures games is that the Futures cycle faster than my plans come to fruition. I find it takes me quite a lot of planning to achieve a future, and without planning it's just hoping to get lucky on Colonist/Freighter/GW Thruster purchase. I'm willing to believe this game may be in trouble due to starting the Bernals towards the end of the 3rd cycle. Earlier Bernals might be better. But it still feels like a mighty thin line to walk. Should game play be that sensitive to Bernal timing?

I'm playing Rules as Printed with Justin Grey's original Module 0 placard which shipped in Module 4. I do keep up with Living Rules changes, but I do not believe there would be material difference using the latest rules or latest Module 0.

This is not a complaint! Just an observations. I'm going to play this game out regardless of whether I pass the next board meeting. I'll retcon the game to "Altruism Solo," no worries there. I do like the notion of the CEO game quite a bit, however. Shareholders prefer smoothly delivered regular dividends. I prefer smoothly delivered regular paychecks. Totally get it.

To end on a positive note: my game play has improved a lot over the last couple of dozen plays! Insights and suggestions welcome.

The Rules

Yes, the rules have a fair bit of errata, which is indistinguishable (to me) from the actively developed "Living Rules." I just accept it for what it is, too many words have already been spilled. I largely play "Rules As Printed" with a few house rules to smooth out solitaire play. Here are a couple more observations:

The rules organization is fine. The numbering scheme is outre. The font family is unfortunate, light grey text on glossy paper make rules reading physically unpleasant, for me.
Many rule clarifications (or even rules) seem to be in the glossary. This seems unique and bizarre to me. You will need to read the glossary very carefully.

Consider using the Rules-As-Printed for learning. There is a lot going on in High Frontier, and the rules which came in the box work fine for learning. The alternative is learning the game while trying to keep up with the "living rules" posted online. Referring directly to the printed rules can be really, really convenient.

There have thousands and thousands of words expended over the state of the rules, and there is no need to expend any more here.

Components and mechanics

High Frontier has a deceptively small number of compoenents, which turns out to be a design constraint on game play. Managing which components are used when and where is an important part of good game play.

Get to know the map

The High Frontier map is what initially attracted me to the game. It's unique among all the games I've ever played, seen pictures of, or even heard of. Cursory examination will reveal some obvious routes, with the most obvious routes being color coded.

However, the map rewards some study. Sometimes the most obvious way to get somewhere might not be the "best" way in terms of game play.

Understanding how locations work is really important. In the following picture, the circled Hohmanns will allow raygun prospecting for the Karin cluster, but not the Korolis cluster. Spending a burn or moving through hazards to the barycenter of both clusters (B) allows raygun prospecting for both.

Raygun prospecting in the asteroid
belt

The game attempts to simulate actual activity in space wherever possible. When in doubt about a rule or activity, try to visualize it actually happening. For example, Cargo Transfer requires components to be physically co-located. This makes sense given there is a Delivery operation to handle non-colocated components. The mental picture here is astronaut (or robots or whatever) physically moving stuff around. For another example, consider Raygun prospecting, which shoots beam of energy. This beam will attenuate in an atmosphere, hence, Rayguns don't work from space on atmospheric sites. You have to land them.

Just one rocket

Just one rocket. This seems arbitrary and dumb, and perhaps if the game were limited to the Core rules and the 4 cycle game, it might well be. However, adding Freighters, Terawatt thrusters, Bernals, and Colonists, the decision gets really, really large, really fast. In other words, rolling in all the modules provides many more than one rocket. If you simply have to have another rocket, just grab another fuel strip and faction card and have at it.

For managing the thrust nomograph, the game provides tiny cardboard chits for wet mass and dry mass. These are fiddly for me so I use wooden pawns of appropriate colors, as shown in the picture below.

Custom mass markers

I use black for dry mass, blue is of course aqua as fuel, brown for dirt, and yellow for isotope. Very convenient!

Planning & Strategy

A typical, modern approach for planning, for getting from "here" to "there" employs a technique called "working backwards." Amazon for example has made billions of dollars working backwards. Leaving Earth allows working backwards brilliantly. In Leaving Earth, one starts at mission completion, then works backwards through every step to determine what kind and how much technology, and when it should be played. Once at the beginning, replay the steps forward to complete the mission.

In High Frontier, working backwards is much more subtle. Because of how the patent cards are acquired, it's not always clear what the mission will be. And random events such as pad explosions and budget cuts can easily destroy plans. High Frontier requires (in my opinion) an extraordinary amount of flexibility as well as understanding what missions are possible with any given set of cards.

As an example, attempting to plan futures with colonists is fraught. It's well and good to acquire colonists by Exomigration, and to promote them once a bernal is promoted, but they appear randomly on Exomigration. So it's hard to know where to go and what to do when you get a promoted colonist, because unanchoring your bernal to pursue that colonist's future, decommissions the colonist rendering that future moot.

However, working backwards can work well in High Frontier once several criteria are in place:

Funding engine: there needs to be a reliable way of generating sufficient Aqua for the outcome. In the best case, a simple Fund Raise of 1 Aqua per turn might suffice. Getting dirtsides in the outer system will likely require more than that. Without a way to mitigate risk (FINAO), failure is most certainly an option.
The correct types and amount of patents. The black cards are like a whole new game. Try to arrange it that your black thruster ends up on a site where it can be ET produced along with its support chain. This allows you to fly the thruster directly from the site.

Above all be flexible. Do what you can with what you have as soon as you can. Depending on a certain patent to appear is a fast way to get way behind the clock.

Patent deck management

C thruster black sides aren't usually very impressive. A strategy using these will need to consider Factory Assists, and ensure there is enough thrust to land on sites for industrializing. On the other hand, black C thrusters are typically pretty efficient.
Discarding cards is a Free Action. Depending on how you frame your auctions or patent draw or academia hand limit, if you need patent which is available, and your hand is full, take the Free Action and discard a patent of lesser value. You will lose the Free Market value, but remember, Free Market is an Operation, which costs a turn. And every other turn, you have a 1/3 chance of losing that patent to an inspiration event.
There was a brief mention above of adjusting the scoring system for solitaire. I'm really interested in this, and I believe the right scoring system could trigger a lot more interest in the game. I've taken notes intermittently over the last year about to how to score games along a progression to mastery rather than win/lose.
More scenarios. The game could support a lot more, even if many were variants of current scenarios. For example, there is a published Race to Titan where the winner is the first person to land humans on Titan and bring them back. Additional variants for Jupiter's moons, Triton, Pluto, or other places in the Solar System could be devised. To make it more interesting, each of these missions could have its own twist.
More technology. There are thousands and thousands of asteroids, nearly all of which are too small to name. What would an asteroid "scooper" look like? This would be a factory in maybe one of the clusters which flies around slurping up small asteroids. Maybe a promoted factory on a barycenter/lagrange which could produce from any claim in the cluster?

Recent rules call for splitting the patent deck for solitaire play. The notion is that it will better simulate competitive play, where the other players control critical patents. Splitting decks has advantages and disadvantages. An advantage is the decks are smaller and will cycle faster. The main disadvantage is the non-trivial chance that the resulting decks contain few combos. Some patents work better together than others, and it's possible that split decks have very few combos which work well together. While this purports to simulate the patent constraints imposed in competitive play, it falls very flat without auctions in solitaire play.

In a long, futures game, the full decks cycle at least once, with the smaller freighter and GW thruster decks cycling even more often. I house rule to use full patent decks in solitaire games.

Getting better, getting good

With the experience I've developed playing many short games, the early game seems relatively easy to master. With the solitaire system, I can usually get a colony established within 18 turns.

Something I've found difficult is managing the start of the middle game. This is after a first factory or colony, where the goal changes to getting ET Production ramped up. As of August 1, 2022, I have not found an easy way to practice this.

It's not just losing which is such as an issue, it's getting so badly spanked over and over again with little progress to mastery is the issue. Especially with the chance factor involved in the patent decks. What follows is an attempt to help create a sense of progress for new players, especially solo players. For players in opposition, it might not be so bad. With two new players, one has the opportunity to do "less bad" and still win, or, learn new techniques from a more skilled player.

Challenges & Frustrations

The first and most important thing to understand is that High Frontier, in its 4th edition, has been designed and developed over the course of decades to be a fast playing, multiplayer competitive game. Even though most of the scenarios are races against time or material, straight application of multiplayer rules to solitaire play are liable to be frustrating. Extremely frustrating. Events which provide epic stories and tense game play in competitive games seem pointless and punishing in solitaire play.

When a single die roll apparently destroys your game state, it feels really bad because it feels like everything is starting from the beginning again. Cards go back to hand, stacks decommissioned, you need to boost everything again, which can be hideously expensive. It often feels like playing half way through a game and having to restart the game all over again, from the beginning, except it's already half over. This is a psychological hurdle for at least me, which probably means others experience it as well.

Some observations from dozens of solitaire plays:

By the time there is enough tech on the board (black side), inner system prospecting seems pointless, at least in 4 cycle games.
In 4 cycle games, getting a system together for pure ET production seems really hard. It's less complex, and probably less expensive in Aqua and time to just decommission everything and reboost.
For the competitive game, I have no beef with any of it. I can see how everything balances out, and how better play exploits risk to prevail. Which - prevailing - is a relative thing, like running from bears. You don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than your buddy. Likewise in High Frontier, best score wins regardless of magnitude of score. All good. And the competitive game can go fast.
For the solitaire game, there are so many dice rolls which are potentially catastrophic it makes the game not fun.
Exomigration puts colonists at the Home Bernal, which seems spectacularly inconvenient. Again, might be important for play balance in a competitive game, but in solitaire, it feels annoying.

I am quite sure at least some of these reflect either misunderstanding of the rules, or inexperience, or both. I don't worry about any of the above. Similar challenges in the past I've resolved with more game play, or in some cases, just house ruling the annoying part out of my game play.

Play. Play again. Play a lot more times

Here are a few more tips which I've found useful:

Expect to lose, a lot, especially in solo. This is not something which is really acknowledged as widely as it should be, in my opinion. The game shares a "mostly lose" characteristic with Lord of the Rings LCG, and it's fine.
Keep in mind the learning curve is really, really steep. None of the rules in the game are particularly difficult. Understanding how all the rules synergize with each other is considerably more difficult.
Don't expect to build a lot of momentum early in the game. It's possible to get your LEO stack hammered back into your hand with multiple pad explosions, and possibly lose part of your hand with budget cuts. In a solitaire game, a couple of ill-timed events in a row may put you back a full 12 turn cycle. This is really hard.
Read through Strategy Guide (Section W) in the Appendix. Reread it. Come back to it often. The most important advice in that section is use what you have right now to do what you can, rather than trying to get what you want to do what you want. This game is all about exploiting expedience.
Play through every rule. Have you exploited the Site Refuel operation?
Vary how you run missions. If you usually build a mongo stack and move it all at once, try shuttling components over several turns. And vice versa, if you usually shuttle, try building and moving a big stack.
Move without fuel. It's possible to (slowly) move from Hohmann to Hohmann on successive turns without burning any fuel, and if the rocket has enough thrust, even land on sites to refuel.
Read all the card texts in detail, both white and black sides. Is there a way to convert busted sites? If so, which card?

As stated, expect to lose, a lot. But it does get a lot better with repeated plays.

Scenarios & Variations

High Frontier is a competive race game game, if not against the clock, then around certain end conditions. HF is a sandbox system, where the rules, cards, and map be be combined to create scenarios and variations of play.

As mentioned, the amount and consequences of risk can render the solitaire game tedious and boring. However, because the risk mechanisms are so blunt, relaxing any of them changes game play considerably. Whether this is good or bad is a matter of taste.

As an example, consider relaxing the the patent cost restriction for the Altruism scenario where the patent cost increases by one for every cycle accomplished. In a futures game, patents will cost 8 Aqua each on the last cycle. This means that players not having a viable suite of patents by mid-game are unlikely to achieve a future. It just takes too many turns to acquire, boost or ET produce and deliver those patents.

However, relaxing that constraint can lead to having so many patents that it's difficult to manage them.

More future for solitaire, causis belli may not be that interesting in solitaire, and there are a lot of futures with that.

CEO Solitaire

If the initial patents look good, consider Fund Raising into Authority to protect against Inspiration Event. Good means:
- Viable robonaut or thruster with 1 or preferably two supports.
- Solar sail is available. Be wary of using this without having push capability, it can be a trap. That single push thrust can make a huge difference.
For CEO and Hermes Fall, the Rules As Written are either insanely difficult, or wildly improbable to win. I don't have an answer for how to rectify the situation. I do have recommendations for how to use those scenarious to better learn the game.
For CEO, feel free to stack the patent decks a little bit, even if only ensuring you'll get that particular robonaut, sail, or whatever interesting card you'd like to learn how to use.

Hermes Fall

For Hermes Fall, The Phasing Player does an impromptu analysis of the numbers: winning it as written is wildly improbable. Another way to play the scenario is just see how many turns it takes to complete the mission, then reduce that number and try again. And start with the only available dirt thruster already in hand.

For CEO, increase the patent availabilty and decrease the cost.

New "scenarios"

Here are a few more ways to tinker with the system. Since the game is essentially a race, the focus for the following scenarios is speed.

My First Claim

The objective here is to claim any site as fast as possible. Here are the various "win" conditions:

Easy: more than 24
Medium: 19-24 turns
Hard: 16-18 turns
Expert: 12-15 turns
Lucky: less than 12 turns

These really ought not to be called "wins" so much as "achievements" as building a colony in less than 18 turns is really going to require both the patent decks and event rolls to play along.

However, the question to be asked: suppose the patent decks lined up perfectly? Would you recognize that situation? Playing through "My First Colony" might help.

My First Colony

The objective here is to claim, industrialize, and build a colony on any site as fast as possible. Here are the various "win" conditions: A slight easier version is to just industrialize. This saves the 1 mass of Crew, which can really matter a lot.

Handicapping

Bowling leagues typically handicap players, why not High Frontier? Here are a few ideas:

Reduce FINAO by 1, 2, or even 3 Aqua.
Ignore Radiation Hazards, or limit Radation damage in some way.
Ignore all hazards outright.
Relax the hand limit by one or two patents.
Ignore Pad Explosions, use that result for an optional Inspiration or something else.

Any of these ideas can be used solitaire or in opposed play. Given the sandbox nature of the game, feel encouraged to develop your handicaps.

Starting states

One popular variation of the game provides each player with a starter rocket stack, fully capability of claiming and colonizing at the start of the game, which can be shortened by one or two cycles.

Another way to start the game is providing an even more advanced game state, with each player already having one or more industrialized or colonized sites. Perhaps a Bernal might be provided as well, for a fast start to a futures game, cutting off 3 or even 4 cycles.

Future projects

Here are a number of interesting notions for adding to the High Frontier experience.

Continue to develop Space Diamonds as a standalone game and relaase it with a reduced map as a free print and play.
Use the fundamental map device of energy levels to create many more interesting games. What would an energy map look like for just Earth and Luna? What could it be used for? Industrializing Luna? Weaponizing orbital space? The mind boggles. (At least, my mind boggles.)
Separate the rules text from the illustrative examples. Move the text-based rules to a rationale format for automated document processing, such as LaTeX or Markdown. Move rules development to github. This
Do the illustrative examples in an open source tool such as Inkscape, and use SVG format so that files can easily be tracked and versioned using git. This provides archival protection, and promotes more community contribution and remixing.
Clearly delineate the difference between errata and rules updates. Explicitely version rule sets independently of game releases.

I might take on some of this after I retire. So it's all talk and no action, feel free to ignore and move on. Or poach any of these ideas and go bananas.

In conclusion

High Frontier is amazing and challenging and frustrating and gratifying experience, often in the same game, sometimes all at the same time. After more than 50 plays, most of them solitaire, I can safely assert there is much more game in the box. I've barely scratched futures. I've only industrialized Jupiter once, have not exploited and comets, have not industrialized the Trjoans or the Jovians. I've been to Neptune a couple of times, and Pluto and Charon only once. Sedna remains a target, as do all the Solar exit futures. I look forward to many more plays in the future.