VBAM Games Forums

I am reading a good series right now,
The Helfort Warby Graham Sharp Paul.

The second book introduces a concept of a 'reef' that blocks the ability of jump ships to cross. Merchants between systems have to drop from jump and cross a distance in real space, and then jump again. In VBAM terms, a non-system map node, essentially.

Anyone use this concept before in a VBAM game?

Starfire kind of has an object like this, that they call a Starless Nexus IIRC. I had something similar penciled in for Star Charts, and it should get ported into the Second Edition system generation rules.

Essentially, it becomes a "system" that doesn't contain anything. There might be the chance of some system terrain being present, but otherwise it is just a "wide spot in the road" that players can visit and have to travel through.

So far I have not had one appear in any campaigns, so I can't say as to what kind of effect they have on campaign strategy.

-Tyrel

Tyrel Lohr wrote:Starfire kind of has an object like this, that they call a Starless Nexus IIRC. I had something similar penciled in for Star Charts, and it should get ported into the Second Edition system generation rules.

Essentially, it becomes a "system" that doesn't contain anything. There might be the chance of some system terrain being present, but otherwise it is just a "wide spot in the road" that players can visit and have to travel through.

So far I have not had one appear in any campaigns, so I can't say as to what kind of effect they have on campaign strategy.

-Tyrel

I could see that they would complicate supply routes, or act as choke points for invasion approaches.
Nasty in terms of trade fleets, too, if they showed up in a key area.

And really frustrate a player in an exploration campaign. "Yay! New system! I'll finally be able to expand and then.... what? nothing here?!"

I think they turn up in some form in the Honor Harrington books (not as a null "system", but as tracts of space that have to be crossed in "real space" rather than the much faster hyperspace (Honor among enemies perhaps?),

They would slow advances somewhat (maybe take an extra turn to get where you want) as well as messing up supply something nasty!

They also make intel extremely difficult because of the intel range thing...

As an aside, in doing a final playtest run on the star system rules this last weekend, I found that campaigns run at the Commodore level or above (where the detailed stars will take effect), players will find quite a few star systems that contain no planets at all. Of the 23 recorded systems I generated, 8 contained no planets.

While at first I thought this might be a problem, the more I thought about the problem the more I realized that it actually helps makes defense in depth more viable, and makes it easier to have buffer zones between your core territories and those held by your opponents.

Luckily, those star systems that did contain planets usually had at least 3 of them present, and one had as many as 9 on a random roll (and that was even after a penalty to the die roll).

One of the more interesting systems that was generated as a K8 III Orange Giant that has 3 Planets and 4 Jump Lanes, but is also effected by an Emission Nebula, Ion Storms, *and* Plasma Storms. Needless to say, even if one of those planets was worth living on it is almost guaranteed that no empire would actually consider establishing a presence there because of the navigational hazards.

-Tyrel