Drive Pods

Drive Pods are units of propulsion. Each Drive Pod equipped on a ship provides that ship with one Burn and one Maneuvering Thrust per turn.

Burns

A Burn accelerates the ship 2 hexes per turn in the direction it is currently facing. If the ship is facing a hex side, both points of thrust go into that hex side. If the ship is facing a hex spine, 1 point of thrust goes into each of the hex sides adjacent to that hex spine.

Maneuvering Thrust

A Maneuvering Thrust rotates the ship 30 degrees (i.e., to the adjacent spine or side) OR accelerates the ship 1 hex per turn in any direction *except* the direction it is currently facing.

Example

A ship with 3 drive pods may make up to 3 Burns and 3 Maneuvering Thrusts (rotations OR pushes) each turn. Burns and Maneuvers may be made in any order. A ship with the following orders:

PA, RS, BURN, RS, BURN, BURN

Will push aft, rotate 30 degrees to starboard, burn, rotate another 30 degrees to starboard, and burn twice more.

Guns have:

Firing Arc - A geometric zone of effectiveness; targets in the firing arc can be hit by the guns

Rate of Fire (ROF) - The number of dice (d10) the gun rolls when it fires. Each die that beats the range to the target is a hit.

Damage Multiplier (Damage Class / Size / Caliber / Whatever) - The amount of damage each hit does; multiply this by the number of dice that beat the range to the target to get the total damage.

This means that the range to the target is the percent-chance of a miss on each die.

There are 8 "protection levels" for ship systems. The lowest protection level is 3, the highest is 10. The higher a system's protection level, the less likely that system is to be damaged. This is a *ship-design* consideration: each ship has only a limited number of "slots" per protection level. When designing ships, the player allocates systems to the various protection level slots. The number of slots per protection level is determined by the class of ship being designed.

When a ship takes enough damage to (meet a certain condition / cross a threshold) a "system damage check" is triggered. The defending player rolls 2d10 and selects the die showing the lowest number. The defending ship's "hysteresis" number is added to this roll to get the final result. All systems allocated to the protection level matching the die roll take damage. After each system damage check, the defending ship adds 1 to its hysteresis number.

A system damage check result of 1 or 2 never does any system damage.

If a system damage check ever selects a protection level with no valid systems to target (i.e., no systems were allocated to that protection level, or all systems there were previously destroyed) the defending ship takes an additional number of superstructure damage points equal to the system damage check result. If this additional superstructure damage is significant enough, it may itself trigger another system damage check, and so on, in a cascading damage scenario.

If a system damage check ever rolls an 11 or higher, *catastrophic damage* occurs; the defending ship is destroyed in a spectacular explosion.

Add "vector display" on ship sheet

Turn sequence:

1 - Vector Consolidation
Add vector changes recorded last turn to the vector configuration. Place future position markers according to these vectors.

2 - Burn

Spend one fuel point to move the ship one hex in the direction it is currently facing, up to a maximum of three fuel points. Record a vector change of +2 for each such burn. Rotate the ship up to three hex sides.

3 - Drift

Replace future position markers with ships, preserving ship facing.

DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS


Elements of Space

A hex-map is a huge logical abstraction in two respects. First, it reduces the arena of combat from three dimensions to two. Second, this two-dimensional array is neatly partitioned into discrete hexagonal sectors.

However, a hex-map does accurately represent the arena of "real" space combat in one important way: it is entirely featureless. There is no high ground or cover; every hex is exactly identical to every other hex in terms of its tactical value.

This presents a design challenge in that maneuvering tactics are not immediately implied by the combat environment - as there is no variety of terrain, all locations are equal. In order for maneuvering tactics to be relevant, game mechanical meaning must be given to the geometric relations between ships. This can be done in the following ways:
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