Advanced Star Systems

Playtesting & Rules Development
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Tyrel Lohr
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Advanced Star Systems

Post by Tyrel Lohr »

gstano and I have been discussing changes to the Advanced Star System rules for the 2e COMPANION, specifically how they relate to the Stano Brothers' Nexus campaign setting.

One thing that has come up is the idea of having encounters in a multi-planetary system occur at specific system objects (planets) instead of having one encounter per zone. This increases the number of potential encounters per system, but it also lets us setup situations that occurred in the Nexus back history where an alien power could try to jump in to different locations in a system and try to gather intelligence without necessarily generating a major engagement.

Expanding on that idea, if encounters are on a per-object (vs. per-zone) basis, other ships from the same zone could be brought in as reinforcements during the battle. This lets you keep bringing units in if you have them, but it also reinforces that you'd want to have a defense fleet at most major worlds just to keep them safe in case someone jumps in to harass you.

The COMPANION will also have rules for jump engines and jump gates under a combined "Jump Engines" rules subsection in the Movement chapter. Jump would then be a special ability with a +1 Cost modifier that lets you jump into any object in a system (instead of requiring you move into the outskirts first), and a ship with a jump engine could be called into a scenario as reinforcements in any encounter generated in that system. Non-Jump should would have restricted jump lane movement options, moving as Slow ships under the standard rules (as they exist now), or else we can tie in the jump gates to allow non-Jump ships to only move between systems that contain friendly jump gates.

In discussing the Nexus jump gates, a possibility that was brought up was only allowing basic supply routes to be traced through systems where your empire controls a jump gate (or there is a friendly jump gate controlled by a trade partner). That works in that setting but may not be universally applicable, but it definitely serves the purpose of making jump gates extremely strategic and not something that you'd necessarily want to destroy, preferring to capture them instead.

For players that have used the 1e advanced system rules, what are your thoughts on all of this?
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aelius
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Re: Advanced Star Systems

Post by aelius »

I like it. I always liked B5 and these rules work very well for my games.
I also think the supply line idea for the jump gates is very good. It makes them very important.
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