u/Simply-Curious_

I wanted to share my absolute awe at the power of community in this game.

Its been not even 2 years since the original kickstarter and the creativity, the technical skill, the depth of lore is just incredible. I just saw an entirely original modular board set up with museum quality prints.

Its clear that TCs decision to permit agnostic models, community input, and lore support is a roaring succèss.

So I'd ask you, my faithful and Heretic legions to post up your favorite TC content so we can all appreciate how far we've come together. For my part I must celebrate u/studiolevel for their modular war board. And u/independanthabit384 for the Propeller War wolf.

Thanks for inspiring me guys. Stay holy.

I'm a grown man, with a family, I've been on the Internet for 20+ years. I sign up to mailing lists as a sign of support but often immediately mute all contact due to spam.

I can safely say the mailing list for trench crusade is one of the first and only emails I've got that I actually read, it has free lore included, a friendly tone, and doesn't waste my time.

I didn't know this needed applause.

Hello, I've become a Design System consultant, designing design systems for clients who usually have a messy product and want to make it scalable.

I'll be approaching it as a product, doing research on use when I arrive, and trying to build something from what they have as a one-man army (building allies along the way).

Advice? I've build a couple simple systems, filly tokenised, primitives to component level, basics of documentation, publishing libraries and pushing out dev ready components.

Still a bit nervous to start

Advice: Would you urk at an AI diagram of work?

I have rushed to throw together a portfolio after getting laid off and having a great opportunity (two!) Appear suddenly.

I wanted to show them some basic things I worked on but that don't have visuals I can share. I cant share my milestones or jira, so I knocked out a timeline woth Jira like cards on it to show the roadmap progress. AI did a great job but it still is AI.

Same for the Product map. Can't show it. But can knock out a basic overview using my own documentation and have a flow diagram generated.

I have very little time. I'm talking 6 hours total over 4 days.

So I figure done is better than perfect.

But using AI in a portfolio urks me. What would you my colleagues recommend.

Can one of you wise engineers throw together a mod that I'll automatically pilot a tank or car back to a given location while avoiding buildings. It could ise the same panel as the trains but for vehicles.

So tired of losing my tank in my base

I see, unfortunately, in our industry lay offs are real and common. I've seen through thr thread and online the devastating effects of a sudden layoff both at a personal and market level.

So I thought I'd share what happens here in France when you get laid off as a PM, perhaps to tempt some of my colleagues to leave their high stress situations and come eat baguettes with me.

I have been laid off. I'm not worried. My employer had a meeting to explain that economically they need to make cuts and that's me, they will replace me with AI. OK good luck.

This starts a process. I wait to receive a letter. The letter is signed at the point of delivery. This letter is a summons informing me we will have a layoff meeting in 6 business days.

In the letter it gives me all the information of the districts employee rights advisors and union reps.

I contact one, and he replies. He agrees to come with me to the meeting. Everything is free, and we arrange it by WhatsApp. We meet on the day and I share the situation with him before the meeting. He's bound to my interests as an employee so I can be crass, direct, and upset.

We go to the meeting together. My employer justifies why this is required sharing company finances, reports, details, and who else is impacted. I listen and take notes. I can ask questions at any time. My Councillor asks some hard questions on my behalf.

They then offer the settlement called the CSP. The company agrees to pay the government the value of my last 3 paychecks, and in return the government will pay 80% of my salary to me, untaxed, for 2 months, on the condition I demonstrate I'm looking for work or improving myself for work.

I agree to the csp and sign. The Councillor checks every detail to ensure my employer has respected the law. He approves. I have 2 weeks to make a handover. At which point my contract breaks, I'm paid out all my vacation time, I get my last salary, and I immediately start my search. I am appointed a recruiter who funnels work relevant to my previous role at me every 2 weeks. It's only Product management roles or similar. I have to apply for every role they send, however I have the right to refuse an offer for work if I truly don't like the post. I can do this 3 times.

I'm allowed 35 days of vacation a year during these 12 months, which I apply for like anything else.

I can also requisition any means of improvement from the government with a valid reason. In my case I wanted to polish my French skills, so I was placed in a French class at the Sorbonne for 6 weeks, everyday. Since universities are free and public here there's a lot of options to take.

Once I find a job and sign the contract, the state thanks me by giving me however much money was left in the csp (12 months possible, I find a job, I 3 months, so I get 9 months salary) paid as a bonus (-50%).

And that's how lay offs work in france in tech.

I improved my second language, I had a vacation, I had plenty of time to polish my CV and portfolio, and I took a job the government recruiter recommended for a unicorn company.

How do lay offs in your country work?

Help catching up

Figma has been pushing features pretty quickly.

I work on a very rigid design system so I see the new indicators and icons but it's just not part of our product right now, so I rarely use them.

I've been placed on a new smaller product and been told we can quickly define how it will function using the new figma features.

So my question is, for you guys, what are the most impactful new features I should take some time to explore?

Right now it seems:

\- Slots (though they have a lot of conflict with prototyping)

\- Slot limits

\- Figma Motion

\- tab groups (simple QOL but interesting)

\- Check Designs looks very interesting

\- Diagramming in figjam using Make (looks helpful for converting dense documentation to visible diagrams)

I'm looking over all 2026 not just Config.

Did I miss any? Anyone try all these features and have advice?

Figma has been pushing features pretty quickly.

I work on a very rigid design system so I see the new indicators and icons but it's just not part of our product right now, so I rarely use them.

I've been placed on a new smaller product and been told we can quickly define how it will function using the new figma features.

So my question is, for you guys, what are the most impactful new features I should take some time to explore?

Right now it seems:

- Slots (though they have a lot of conflict with prototyping)

- Slot limits

- Figma Motion

- tab groups (simple QOL but interesting)

- Check Designs looks very interesting

- Diagramming in figjam using Make (looks helpful for converting dense documentation to visible diagrams)

I'm looking over all 2026 not just Config.

Did I miss any? Anyone try all these features and have advice?

I'm falling on roles more and more that just seem unsurmountable. How can anyone be responsible for this volume of work. Develop the product, define its direction, build a design system, manage stakeholders, manage tickets, perform user research, organise user research, define AI RAG and Agent logic, and finally be a compliance officer.

- A head of design or CDO

- UX researcher

- UI designer

- product manager

- AI backend architect

This if for a senior. Just a senior. How did this happen?!

What You’ll Do

UI/UX Design Leadership: Own the design vision and execution for the full homeowner experience across all three core pillars — inventory, services, and projects — ensuring each feels cohesive, intuitive, and distinctly branded across iOS, Android, and responsive web. Define information architecture, interaction models, and visual design systems that work beautifully across platforms, including the micro-interactions and motion design that give consumer apps their feel

Consumer-Centered Design: Translate complex end-user workflows into experiences that feel simple, trustworthy, and genuinely useful. Design and optimize onboarding flows that activate new users quickly, and retention surfaces that keep them engaged over time. Apply iOS Human Interface Guidelines and Material Design principles fluently, knowing when platform conventions serve the user and when our ai experience should diverge from them

Design Systems & Craft: Build and maintain a scalable design system — including component libraries, design tokens, motion guidelines, and handoff specs — that works across mobile-first and responsive web contexts. Champion accessibility from the start: WCAG compliance, dynamic type support, color contrast, and screen reader compatibility are part of your design process, not an afterthought

Research & Insights: Lead user research initiatives: interviews, usability tests, prototype testing, and in-app behavioral analysis to generate insights that sharpen each product pillar. You’re as curious about why a user forgets to log a service as you are about why they abandon a contractor bid

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner daily with the product team and engineering teams to ship high-quality features on schedule. Present design decisions and rationale clearly to founders, product, and engineering. Advocate for the end-users when business pressure is high, and trade-offs need to be made

Metrics & Iteration: Define and track experience quality metrics (task completion, drop-off, CSAT, activation, retention) across each product surface. Use data to iterate relentlessly on what’s shipped and inform what’s next

Stakeholder Communication: Present design decisions and rationale clearly to founders, product, and engineering. Advocate for the homeowner when business pressure is high and trade-offs need to be made

What You’ve Done

5+ years of UX/UI design experience, with at least 3+ years focused on B2C consumer mobile and web products (degree in Design, HCI, or equivalent experience)

A strong portfolio demonstrating end-to-end design work across iOS, Android, and responsive web — including evidence of visual design craft, not just wireframes (please include in your application)

Shipped consumer apps on both iOS and Android — you understand mobile-native patterns, gesture navigation, bottom sheets, tab bars, haptic feedback, and know when to apply them

Deep proficiency in Figma: component libraries, auto layout, variables/tokens, prototyping, and developer handoff; experience maintaining design systems at scale

Strong user research skills: you know how to ask the right questions and synthesize findings into clear design direction

Data literacy: comfortable reading analytics dashboards and connecting design decisions to measurable outcomes

Working knowledge of accessibility standards: WCAG guidelines, dynamic type, color contrast, and screen reader behavior on iOS and Android

Comfortable working with distributed, cross-timezone teams

I'm a product designer. I'm leaving an immature and unpleasant founder-lead company in Europe.

​

I've got my portfolio website some what ready and my CV.

The issue is that because of our immaturity I can't demonstrate methodology in my case studies. Though I avoid saying it the process is always the same:

I produce a product discovery document, risk assessment document, run a discovery workshop with stakeholders, prepare and trim a jira space with epics based on an agreed retroplanning, and breif the team using a RACI and a project planning document I built.

Then my CEO approves it, we have our first meeting, and he immediately promises a complete high fidelity screens for the following month, he then disregards all planning that he approved of and was approved by the client and begins a landslide of panic and visual edits of his improvised solutions inviting the client to request any and all changes directly on the canvas until the client stops requesting changes, to which point the projects complete.

​

Our deliverables are hideous, nonsensical, and take "design by committee to its extreme". Nothing is salvageable, though the ceo demands we reuse work constantly, and most product accounts start by duplicating the previous mess and removing assets.

​

I know its bad, I'm leaving for a reason.

However my portfolio keeps getting passed over for not showing a good methodology. Even though I am capable and organised.

​

Should I lie?

I have successfully visited all of the starting 3 planets and built enough of a base on each to export their planet specific items.

But it's just so grinding slow now.

Every base is just a mess of spaghetti, choke points that didn't appear for the first 50h, and science is a grinding slow 40 per minute due to the city blocks I built falling apart due to train loads constantly getting stuck.

I really want to push onto the final planets. But I don't want to just start my bases from 0 again. It's too much. But they're useless in their current states.

Advice?

I'm leaving a strange product situation.

It's a small company of 15 and I cannot understand how it doesn't just fail.

The ceo is an ex-retail store designer and insists all design is the same. He only requests and accepts visually pleasing screens. He seeks to reuse anything created for new pitches constantly even when the context is wrong. This landing page is like a sign up page so just use the same one bit make it 'of taste'. His management can be cleanly described as 'improvisation of everything and infinite flexibility for any request without limit'.

The cto exists, in a cocoon. Refuses communication, finds design a 'nice to have' for his new features that he dreams up and deploys without any notice.

And then a team that exists to execute exactly what's requested. All requests are oral, documentation even as simple as a checklist of tasks is a waste of time, and anything that prevents full force face in the wind momentum is a problem, and not a system or process, a personal problem, with you, for not being motivated.

It's created this surreal environment where teams arrive on Monday, receive a stream of consciousness from the cto or ceo, with no continuation from any previous task or project, and they execute that specific request, and then slack off. Performance is measured in good vibes and how the ceo feels that day.

Any critism of any point makes the ceo uncomfortable or openly hostile to the point of threatening employment. There's apparently 3 products in the pipeline, no roadmap, no planning, no vision, only existing in the ceos mind, and he often makes sketches of what he wants and deviation or remarking on clear issues is again punishable by a salty look.

I'm leaving that's for sure, as is the lead PM, and the Lead Dev left 2 months back. But my point is, the company keeps going. It continues to operate given this total failure of any actual messiness or management....

How? How do these horrible places just continue, they don't grow, or change, they possess no marked talent, that which is does leaves, and when clients do appear it's just a cluster fuck of he said she said, but I know what the client wants...

Sorry, a little PTSD there. But anyway, any experience or understanding of how this happens?

Anyone attempted a "make anything machine".

A single assembler that can meaningfully produce every item on request ? And what would be the most effective use case for one?