Quote: (Ginger @ 24 Apr. 2009, 17:10 )
'Free Planetfall'
I belive it needs to be worded so that the act of planetfalling is made a separate activation from actually doing anything on the table - in other words, to follow the normal process but without the spaceship activation. Doing this would make the whole thing simpler and reduce its power to the same levels as normal planetfall. (As it is now, you effectively get an additional activation post free-planetfall before the opponent can react).
I'm not sure I follow this, Ginger.  Making the free planetfall and activation one event is more powerful than Teleport in some ways, as it allows less opportunity for the opponent to react.  I could also see how it is better than a normal planetfall in that it allows the player to retain and use two ground formations rather than spacecraft/ground combo.
However, making the free planetfall and activation separate would be worse than normal planetfall because you'd have to spend an activation solely on the planetfall, without the benefits of a spacecraft action.  That's basically burning an entire activation to do nothing.  That would cause 2 problems - using that activation to stall early in the game and delaying critical activations later in the game. To give an example of a potential abuse, an OGBM list with 3 Rokks (one for each DTF objective) could start Turn 1 with "Planetfall, Rokk on OW, Planefall, Rokk on OW, Planetfall, Rokk on OW" and cycle through 6 enemy activations before being forced to move a Gargant.
One potential change to the mechanic would be to make it a "beginning of turn" activity like Teleport, but with the preplotting and scatter restrictions of planetfall.
