I couldn’t really find many examples of clock lengths for Long Term Projects. In Blades in the Dark they’re mostly 8-Clocks to Discover and then 8-Clocks to build, but mostly in Band of Blades they seem to be 4-Clocks. I thought it might be cool to have a thread for GMs and players to help spitball Clocks for different projects? (And just talk about Long Term Projects in general!)
Here are some my players are talking about, and I wonder what other folks think.
- Build a Supply Cart?
I said 4-Clock, because it’s pretty simple. It’s mostly worse than Aquire Assets for it, but Laborers can build it passively.
- Build a Siege Engine?
This seems like it should be harder than Build a Cart. It’s a fine good instead of a standard good. But, a 6-Clock represents 3-ish Aquire Assets actions, which seems like too much for 1 Asset. So I guess it should also be a 4-Clock?
- Train Guard Dogs? (The Legion gets three uses of Dogs. When they use them, they get dogs on the mission for zero load. The dogs protect against ambush, help find things, etc. They also add a threat 1 dog if they let it fight in combat.)
I said 4-Clock, this doesn’t seem too hard. Laborers can’t help though.
- Create an Intensive Training Program? (ITP: The Quartermaster can spend a Campaign Action training. When they do, two troops can either receive a skill advance or, if eligible, a Playbook advance.)
I’m leaning toward saying 4-Clock, because the main cost is the Campaign actions to power it? A supply can make recruit get 3 recruits and 2 soldiers instead of 5 recruits, so this cost is already “about right”. The main question is whether it’s too good to turn soldiers into specialists or keep upgrading specialists? Also, the Chosen powers that do training are 3 XP * specialists, so 15 XP to the troops, and more as your number of specialists increases. So, two upgrades seems on par or slightly worse than the Chosen training powers.
What do y’all think? What are some examples of projects you’ve done/seen in your game and what did they cost? Were you happy with those costs? Did you have a project that “broke” your game in a cool way? Did you have a project that “broke” your game in a bad way? What were they?