I picked up a copy at B&N and have a few questions/comments after trying a solo game:
1) Despite saying "1-8 players" on the box, it doesn't really have any support for solo play. Most fundamentally, when playing solo there's no way to win or lose or get a high score. You play until the end of the game (i.e., when you get 10 reputation points), but that is an inevitability. You can't fail to achieve that goal. And when you do get to the end, there is no mechanism to keep score to try to do better next time (e.g., win in fewer turns, or something).
There are also some cards (e.g., Planetary Assault: New Aragon) that say that the player to your left gets to choose your encounter for you, and no explanation for what to do if you have only 1 player. And finally, although the Noble Patronage and Censure tokens *work* when playing solo, it feels weird that if you happen to get one of these tokens, you can't lose it for the rest of the game (they are supposed to hop around between players based on who has the most rep or lowest c-bill total).
2) I assume that if equipment has no maintenance cost, it can only be used once. You can't pay 0 to maintain it and use it again, right?
3) It is unclear to me when a contract's effects are in effect--just while actively working on encounters in the same column as that contract, or for the rest of your turn. For example, if you flip Planetary Assault: Apollo, does that change the maintenance costs of lasers and ballistics only for the maintenance phase that happens immediately after flipping it? Or do the maintenance costs change for your entire turn, even if you lock all your dice and choose to "extend the contract" by flipping over a new contract?
4) I'm confused about the card "Planetary Assault: Robinson." This card says "[t]o end this Contract, the player must declare their intent to end this Contract, then reveal and defeat one additional Encounter." However, "end this Contract" is not a term defined by the rules, so I don't know what that means.
Does it just mean to
exercise an escape clause? If so, that seems easy enough--if you want to escape, you have to announce that and then defeat one more encounter, or else you default.
But there's another card, "Escort Duty," that implies that
completing a contract also counts as "end[ing] a Contract" (it says "[t]he player may not end this Contract without completing it"). If Robinson's special effect also applies to
completing (or presumably,
extending) a contract, then I don't understand how that works. Say I have 4 unlocked dice. I announce that I intend to complete the contract. Robinson says that I then reveal and defeat one more encounter. Say I do so, but that encounter only locks 2 of my dice. Do I get to complete the the contract anyways? If so, then Robinson is just a more confusingly-worded "Garrison Duty" that also gives you an additional reputation point. Or do I default on the contract? Or something else?
I suspect the answer is that Planetary Assault: Robinson is supposed to say "to exercise an escape clause," not "to end this Contract." Is that right?
EDIT: While searching around a bit more, I found an official FAQ that was posted on Board Game Geek (although I'm not sure how official it is. It says official and was posted by someone with Demo Team flair, but some of the entries appear to contain speculation, not actual dev answers).
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/277218/encounters-battletech-faqIt (2) and (4) above. It mostly addressed (1), although the answer regarding Planetary Assault: New Aragon seems to be speculation from the FAQ author on one possible way to resolve the card when solo, rather than an official dev answer.
