So I've had a reasonable amount of games with this game mode now, and the local group has received it pretty well. The feedback from the local group has been that of it's something they'd like to see more of, potentially expansion cards for the decks providing new missions/battlefield conditions. One change that I'm considering with house ruling is the terrain rules for the battlefield conditions. They're kind of a boring result when both players draw and use one. I'd personally consider limiting them to 1 effect for two reasons: 1) There are combinations that don't really make alot of sense. Space Aquatic battlefields for example, what are we doing, fighting in an outer space aquarium? 2) They make for a relatively dull result that we already kind of get out of the regular ITS rules. Essentially it could be bypassed by just forcing the second person to redraw as if they revealed a duplicate condition. Easy enough change for anyone that wanted to guarantee a bit more variety to their game. The other thing I'd like to see done is for the rules to more explicitly allow for faking out opponents with the mission of objectives. Right now you can do a few things like dropping beepers or touching objectives while it's not your objective to try and get your opponent to chase ghosts thinking they're stopping you from scoring, but it could be taken further by explicitly allowing people to do some of the other things like making WIP checks against scenery pieces or the HVTs for example. Personally I'd be happy to run these in an ITS event, probably not the entire event as I still enjoy the regular ITS missions as well but as a TO I'd be more than happy to use the custom mission slot for it in an event.
I've played several games of Res Ops and I am enjoying the blind mission aspect and the battlefield conditions cards are an interesting addition to the game. I have found that generally the Res Ops are taking a little longer than a standard game possibly because we have been caught in an analysis trap. I think there is plenty of scope for custom missions using the tools that the Res Ops cards provide. Battlefield conditions cards for example are a great way to give your table some flavour and a TO could encourage people providing tables to an event to pick one or more Battlefield conditions to apply to a table for the duration of an event. With the mission cards I'm contemplating writing a variation on the standard Res Ops mission that allows for some more mission interaction like maybe if a specialist interacts with a console they can reveal an opponents card or draw a new card for yourself.
Any space station that experiences gravitational failure in a location were a lot of water is stored would have this effect, be it hydroponics, leisure districts, artificial forest areas, waste disposal ectr.
