Greater Space Battles Solo Campaign: 2nd Battle

I played the first battle using my solo campaign system to test out concepts for Greater Space Battles, establishing which rules needed fixing; the resulting current game resides on my downloads page.  Last week I replayed that first battle using the finalized rules and had a great time.

The Traughbo's Cluster Vassalry ended up coming out ahead by losing only their size 1 ship while destroying a Hilherndon League heavy cruiser (size 4), the Kesolgu.  I rolled 2d6 for each faction to see if these losses were significant enough to affect the next Sphere of Influence (SOI) roll.  Since the Vassalry lost only 1 size point of ships, their roll was an automatic success.  The League rolled an 8, exceeding the 4 points they lost in the battle, so they too did not record a negative modifier for the next SOI roll.

Next I rolled a d6 to determine if the campaign period would continue with more battles or end with an SOI roll.  The roll was a 3, which exceeded the number of battles already fought (just one) so that meant more fighting.  I rolled up an new battle, but after going through all the gyrations I only generated two single size 1 corvettes facing each other.  Not only boring but neither ship's loss would be of any significance, so I skipped this battle.  Rolling another d6 I got a 1.  The die score failed to exceed the number of battles fought (now two) so the campaign period ended with a SOI roll.  I rolled a single d6 for each faction; neither had any negative modifiers.  The Hilherndon League rolled a 1, but the Vassalry rolled a 4.  Since the Vassalry's roll exceeded its SOI of 1, the faction's sphere of influence increased to 2.  The poor Hilherndon League remains at 1.  So political infighting about an unpopular war has the League unfocused, while the Vassalry manages to sign a treaty with a neighboring group of systems and expands its power-base.

I rolled up the first battle in the second campaign period but again it was worthless.  The post-battle 1d6 roll showed another battle followed so I rolled up the next target system.  This one was interesting!  With coordinates of 2,5,6 this system was right next door to the Hilherndon League's home systems, and not too far from Traughbo's Cluster as well.  The system, Latham, has a metallic hydrogen mining operation on the second largest moon of the fourth planet, a ringed gas-giant.  Although the mining facility is tiny (I rolled a Strategic Significance of 2), its proximity to both home systems results in a nice handful of ships for each side.  The League gets 10 size points and I roll three size 1 frigates and cutters, a size 3 and a size 4 ship.  The Vassalry only gets 8 points but one is a size 5 dreadnought with a size 3 escort.

Space Campaign, Period 2, Battle 2

The picture above shows the readout discs for the ships participating.  I rolled experience points (XP) in a new way: I rolled a number of d6 equal to each ship's respective size, and took the largest die score as the XP.  Therefore each ship has a chance for 1 to 6 XP, with larger ships skewed towards 5 or 6 XP.  I think this is how I will randomly generate XP from now on, versus the method described in the Greater Space Battles rulebook.  Zero XP would therefore only be possible in ships which lose XP in battle, and represents a skeleton crew.

The game table shares space with  my model shop

Lots of tokens allow me to return later to a game in progress

The battle is on-going, but so far a heap of fun.  The Hilherndon League's heavy cruiser, the Xavinger, took three critical hits early in the battle, forcing it to keep its distance.  The Vassalry's dreadnought, the Thun-Baro, closed for the kill, but the Hilherndon light cruiser Vammala bravely interposed itself and gave the Xavinger enough time for damage control.  Many, many turns later both larger ships have repaired all their critical hits and the Vassalry light cruiser Lapeyrouse has just been vaporized.  Now the big Vassalry dreadnought stands alone against four League vessels (having mauled a size 1 frigate earlier).

Solo Space Campaign: Opening Battle

I've played about four different battles in order to playtest my newest solo game Greater Space Battles.  I feel like the rules are pretty much set now although vastly altered from the version posted on my downloads page.  Eventually I'll get the new and improved version (featuring momentum conservation) uploaded.

I'm quite happy with the rules.  In fact, during one evening last week I found myself staying up until 2AM finishing a game.  I haven't become that enthralled in a game since my high school days, nearly two decades ago.  With the ship-to-ship combat mechanics hammered out, the next step is to run a campaign.

The campaign features two opposing factions: the Hilherndon League and the Traughbo's Cluster Vassalry.  The rest of the fluff is at the end of the post, after the star map; first let's get on with the nuts-and-bolts...

I rolled three six-sided dice for each faction, generating the X, Y, and Z coordinates of their home system group.  The star map below shows the coordinates for each system as well as their Spheres of Influence.  Spheres of Influence, labeled SOI on the map, start at 1 for each and describe each faction's ability to project "hard", i.e. military power.  The goal of the campaign is for one faction to reduce the opposing faction's SOI to 0.

Factions raise their spheres of influence by resource acquisition, whether from exploring new systems, establishing and maintaining treaties with lesser kingdoms, or espionage.  All of this is beyond the scope of the solo campaign and is distilled into a simple die roll.  The die roll may face negative modifiers however, based on losses  incurred in space battles.  Up to six (randomly determined) space battles are fought between every SOI roll.  If a faction suffers significant losses in a battle it may (another random roll) receive a -1 modifier to the next SOI roll.  Therefore a faction may incur anywhere from a 0 to a -6 modifier to its SOI roll.  A modified d6 roll which is above a faction's current SOI results in an increase of 1 to its sphere of influence.  A modified roll which fails to exceed the current SOI results in the sphere of influence remaining the same.  A modified roll resulting in a negative number however decreases the sphere of influence by 1.

There will always be at least one battle between SOI rolls.  For the first battle of this campaign period I rolled the coordinates of Beta Murronus VI, the location of the encounter.  The coordinates(X: 4, Y: 3, Z: 3) mean the system is distance 5 (4.690) from the Hilherndon League and distance 4 (3.742) from The Traughbo's Cluster Vassalry.  Next I rolled three six sided dice and chose the lowest one to determine the Strategic Significance of the system.  The result was a 4 (a fairly important resource-laden system).  Despite this lucky roll (a 4, 4, and 6), I'm purposely trying to skew the results toward smaller values since it's the opening phase of the war.  At the middle phase I will roll three dice and choose the middle value to determine strategic significance.  At the end of the war I'll choose the highest of the three dice rolled.  Thus the battles should grow in size.  So what is the strategic significance score?  It simply shows the number of d6's summed to determine the size of a faction's task force/squadron.

Since the strategic significance is 4, normally I would roll 4d6 and add them together to get the total size of a faction's strike force.  First however, I had to modify the rolls to account for each faction's ability to project power that far away.  The Hilherndon League's sphere of influence of 1 minus the distance of 5 to the target system resulted in a (1 - 5 = -4) four dice penalty to the force size roll.  I therefore rolled 8d6 and discarded the four highest dice, only adding the scores of the four remaining dice.  The Traughbo's Cluster Vassalry's distance of 4 with a Sphere of Influence of only 1 resulted in 3 penalty dice; I rolled 7d6 and discarded the three highest dice, summing the remaining four.  Coincidentally both rolls summed to 8, so the two opposing spaceship forces are identical in size.  Due to the system's strategic significance (4), four dice will always be summed, yielding a fleet size of 4 to 24.  The meager spheres of influence of the opposing factions greatly skews the result to the low end of the spectrum.

My rules set groups ships into size classes, with 1 being the smallest hull and 5 the largest.  The dice roll described in the paragraph above indicates the total size of all the ships in the squadron.  In this case both forces have ships whose combined size totals 8.  I rolled a d6 for the Hilherndon League and got a 4, followed by another roll and other 4.  The League's force therefore consists of two size class 4 ships.  For the Vassalry's forces I rolled a 4, then a 6.  There are no size 6 ships so I rerolled and got a 1.  Since I had only enough size left for a class 1, 2, or 3 ship, I randomly determined between the three and got a 3.  So the Vassalry's fields a three ship force consisting of a size 4 heavy cruiser, a size 3 light cruiser, and a size 1 frigate.

That's it; the stage is set for the first battle of the campaign.  As you can see, this whole method is just an exercise in dice rolling.  I tried however, to create some kind of framework to the dice rolls, a framework that will change based upon the successes and failures of the opposing factions.  I think it will work.  If I remember correctly, Star Fleet Battles, and its successor Federation Commander, use five ascending size classes; this system could therefore support a solo campaign if you're using those rules to fight your battles.

Space Campaign, Period 1, Battle 1

The setting uses the feudalism-in-space trope as in Dune, and the role-playing game settings Traveller and SpaceMaster among others.  Faster-than-light travel exists, but starships require days if not weeks in order to make "probability jumps" to other systems.  More importantly superluminal communication does not exist.  Feudalism therefore makes the most sense to me.  I've taken it one step further: in my setting spaceships are hereditary, controlled by lords and manned by vassals.  These lords in turn pledge their support to even greater lords, who control the resources to make interstellar travel possible.  A typical greater lord would be one whose family has acquired a large fleet of sublight spaceships over the centuries, allowing the bloodline to monopolize a system's resources.  The "kingdom" of the typical greater lord consists not only of baronies on the habitable worlds of a system, but more importantly of the interstellar ships pledging their allegiance to him or her.  Alien intelligences have never been discovered in the thousand plus years of human exploration, however remains of civilizations have been.  People still report "lights in the sky" and the major religion revolves around the concept of unseen extraterrestrial benefactors.  Disagreements on key points fracture the religion; the major argument lies in the nature of the benefactors: simply highly evolved aliens, divine beings, machine intelligences, etc.  A sizable portion of the interstellar human population scoffs at the notion of any "benefactors".                   

Solo Space Campaign Set-up 1

OK, I'm two days from getting back to my table and scratchbuilding stuff, so I'll kick this campaign off and document it to illustrate my method.

I just shuffled two decks very thoroughly and drew a Queen of Diamonds and 6 of Clubs from the red deck (I'll call them Side A for now until I flesh this setting out).  A crappy low draw.  I could take a Size Class 2 ship due to the two suits, but at the Obsolete technology level only ship designs with 4 Systems boxes are available.  I could do that but it would waste two boxes, so I decide Side A gets two Size Class 1 ships (3 Systems boxes each).  Side B (blue deck) draws a King of Diamonds and 8 of Clubs.  Weird!  Almost identical draw.  So I assign two frigates to Side B (4 Systems boxes each).

I thought this would be a quick redraw but since these forces are so closely matched (difference of only 2 Systems boxes), the odds on my Mythic Fate Chart don't change at all.  So I ask "will this encounter have an impact on the war?" with the odds of a "Yes" at "Has to be".  Chaos Rank of 5 means a 95 for a "Yes"... I roll a 94.  Holy crap these are some weird draws and dice rolls!  So this tiny little skirmish actually has an impact on the war.  Perhaps this is some diplomatic incident that touches off the war?  When I get back I'll grab some miniatures and fight it out.

The smaller ships aren't as fun to sculpt, but this actually works out perfect.  I hope to have my space mat modified with hexes before the weekend is out and this little four ship fight will be a quick test of the hex-based variant of my rules.  Stay tuned for the battle report.

Solo Space Campaign with Mythic GME

I imagine the solo wargame crowd being pretty small, and the subset using the Mythic GME even smaller.  And those who've actually read my game War In Space... well that's a miniscule number.  So to all but a select few (probably just me), this post will read pretty esoteric.  Like a non-gamer wandering into a D&D conversation and trying to decipher THAC0, hit dice, and save vs. rods.

Anyway, I plan on combining my solo campaign rules with the Mythic GME to run a space war.  I'll flip playing cards as my rules describe, generating two opposing space forces.  Then I'll ask the question: "will this encounter have a significant impact on the war?" and roll on the Mythic Fate Chart.

As per Mythic rules, four results exist: "Exceptional No", "No", "Yes", and "Exceptional Yes".  "Exceptional No" means the encounter has absolutely no impact on the war; I won't bother fighting it out.  Instead, I'll flip more cards and generate another two forces, repeating the process.

If the Mythic result is "No" the battle has a negligible impact on the war, but if the cards reveal an interesting mix of ships I may just fight it out.  Regardless of which side wins, neither card deck will change as a result of the battle. More likely if I get a "No" result I won't fight the battle but I'll randomly generate a few dictionary words and come up with the seeds to a role-playing adventure involving the space battle (even if only peripherally).  That's what a "No" on the Mythic Fate Chart will indicate for me: idea seeds that either serve as an "anthology" type RPG, or as set-ups to later wargame scenarios.  For example, I roll up a "No" result but then roll "teetotaler" and "question-mark" from the dictionary.  I wrack my brain and decide maybe a certain taskforce commander prohibits the junior officers in his formation from drinking booze, but perhaps one of his patrol boat captains, a lieutenant, is running a lucrative alcohol smuggling operation.  The lieutenant's operation brings his little ship in contact with a supposed "enemy" ship on a regular basis; liquor pays much better than fighting.  There's a lot of ideas to springboard off of there; the wayward Lt. is a secret intelligence agent (straight RPG adventure), or the smugglers get caught during a shore leave, causing a shoot-out with authorities (set-up for next scenario). 

A "Yes" to the question posed above means I'll fight the battle normally, and the winning force gets to lose a face card from their deck, as detailed in my campaign rules.  Lose a card?  What the hell am I talking about?  Download and read it!  I'll usually use the dictionary method above not for an RPG adventure, but to set up a scenario for the actual battle.

An "Exceptional Yes" indicates a potential turning point in the war: a sinking of the Bismark, a Coral Sea, a Midway, etc.  I'll fight the battle but in this case the winner will get to discard two face cards: a decided advantage in the overall campaign.  Maybe I'll integrate it into a ground miniature game, like a space D-Day.

OK, so how will I decide the odds for the Mythic Fate Chart?  I'll assume the odds of a "Yes" answer to the question "will this encounter have a significant impact on the war?" are "Has to be" if the forces are equal.  My logic is that for the big, pivotal events of a war, the opposing sides will try to bring all their resources to bear and generally will field similar forces.  So I'll take the difference in the sizes of forces (in terms of Systems boxes) and use this to reduce the odds of a "Yes".  For a difference of every 4 Systems boxes, I will drop the odds of a "Yes" one level.  Example: I draw a small force for Side A which totals 14 Systems boxes, and a larger one for Side B with 47 boxes.  The difference of 33 boxes drops the odds eight levels, all the way down to "Very Unlikely" that the encounter matters to the war.  If I still roll a "Yes" in this case, well I'll just have to come up with a solid scenario to make the battle worth playing despite the disparity.

The final element of the Mythic Fate Chart, the Chaos Rank, starts at 5 for the first card draw of the campaign.  When a numerically inferior force wins an engagement, the Chaos Rank increases 1.  When a numerically superior force wins, the Chaos Rank drops 1.  Otherwise, the Chaos Rank will remain where it is. 

I'll track certain ships' crews, build a star map and slowly build a little RPG universe set during a space war while getting in some good miniatures battles in the meantime.  Hurray for Mythic!  Despite my initial trepidation I'm falling in love with this system.
           

Solo Full Thrust Campaign System

Let me preface this by saying I don't play Full Thrust.  I do however realize that it's one of the most popular of all the space miniature games.  I therefore offer this solo "campaign" system.  Unlike my multi-player campaign system which is a full up board game, this solo system basically just sets up the battles.  All the political maneuvering, interstellar exploration, resource development, etc. is ignored as beyond the scope of the game.  This very simple system does however model a war of attrition very nicely.

Start off with two decks of playing cards (Jokers included) with different colored backs.  The decks represent two warring factions.  Shuffle the cards thoroughly.  Draw from the top of one deck, turning over cards until you reach a face card.  Note: If the first card drawn is a joker or face card, simply continue drawing.  If it happens again, keep drawing.  The key rule to remember is only stop drawing when a face card follows an Ace through 10.  Repeat with the second deck.  The two piles of face up cards represent two space forces meeting for battle.  For each pile add up the value of the cards (Aces count as 1, face cards and jokers as 0).  The total value of the cards multiplied by 4 equals the Mass available to that respective taskforce.  Note also how many suits are represented in each pile (Jokers each count as their own discreet, unique suit, thus there are six suits available).  Individual ships in the taskforce may have a maximum Points Value of 75 for every suit represented.  Note that the cards determine only Mass and Point Value parameters; the actual number of ships does not correlate to the number of cards.  For example: from Faction One's deck you draw an Ace of Clubs, 3 of Hearts, 10 of Clubs, a Joker and a Jack of Hearts, the last card causing you to cease drawing.  You have a total card value of (1+3+10+0+0)=14 so you have 56 Mass available for Faction One.  Also, three different suits are represented (Clubs, Hearts, Joker).  Thus any number of ships can be in the taskforce, as long as the Mass of all the vessels totals no more than 56 and no single ship has a Points Value that exceeds (75x3)=225.

Determine the ships available and fight the battle using normal Full Thrust rules.  Victory conditions should be determined before the fight, but generally will be simply forcing the enemy from the playing field either by causing his ships to flee or totally destroying them.  If the card draws result in two very disparate forces, feel free to create a scenario which allows the weaker force a chance at victory.  Do not level the playing field too much however; war is not fair.

After determining the victor, discard the winning faction's face card.  Set discarded cards aside in separate piles; these cards will not return to play.  Collect up the remaining face up cards and reshuffle them into the deck.  Repeat the entire process.  As the game continues, the forces should be larger and larger, with more and more capital ships appearing.  As one faction wins more engagements, it will lose more face cards from its deck, allowing it to draw more and more cards when building a force.  This nicely models a war of attrition where one side gains a crucial advantage and then slowly grinds down the other, choking the enemy's access to resources while expanding their own.  The campaign ends either from player boredom or when one faction has discarded all of its face cards.

   

Campaign Rules

Long post ahead...

Departing momentarily from scratchbuilding, I'd like to share my campaign rules.  My rules are almost like a board game, complete with victory conditions.  I use a deck of cards per player to simulate a faction's resources, therefore modeling exploration, technological research, and development albiet at a very abstract level.  The cool thing about this system is that it allows players to hide their ships at the strategic level, only revealing specific hulls when the battle begins.  The rules are designed specifically around my homebrew War In Space game, but with a few simple modifications it could be used with almost any system.  Also, my campaign assumes a non-FTL technology level, therefore it is set in a single solar system.  Again the rules can be used with little modification to model an interstellar conflict.   The following rules explanation assumes two players.

Materials needed:

• Playing surface (I recommend 1.5m x 2.5m table)
• Two decks of playing cards (Jokers included)
• Two different types of tokens (I use poker chips and pennies)

Set up: Players should sit opposite each other on the long ends of the table.  Draw a number of ellipses as depicted in Figure 1 below.  The number of ellipses (representing the individual orbits of a solar system's outer planets) is agreed upon by the players.  The inner ellipse represents all the inner planets and has two playing areas on it in front of each player.  This is where the players start.  Each other ellipse has only one designated playing area.  Players agree upon a single suit and draw all three face cards of that suit from their decks, placing them face-up on the table on the inner ellipse.  Players shuffle their respective decks thoroughly.

Object of the game:  The first player to reach 100 resource points wins.  Players may make up alternate victory conditions.

Play: The game has four phases per turn

1. Development Phase
2. Resource Phase
3. Transit Phase
1. Transit/Arrival Subphase
2. Departure Subphase
4. Deployment Phase

Development Phase: Players with all three face cards of the same suit in a single system may draw one card from the top of their deck.  The drawing player may look at the card and then place it face-down on the table in the appropriate system.  Players alternate drawing resource cards for each eligible orbit.

Resource Phase: Players collect 1 resource point for every face card they own that is currently face-up on the board.  EXCEPTION: players may not collect resource points for any orbit where the opponent has fleet cards (Ace through 10 and Joker) played face-up.  I use three colors of poker chips to represent 1, 5 and 10 resource point denominations.

Transit Phase: Players alternate moving cards between orbits.  Accomplish all transits (and subsequent arrivals) first, then all departures.  Of course, on the first turn there will be no transiting cards, thus I will explain departures first.  Take one or more cards and place sideways and face-down on the destination orbit.  Place a number of transit counters on top of the cards (I use pennies).  The number of transit counters is equal to the distance between orbits (or the sum thereof if skipping an intermediate orbit).  The distance from the inner ellipse to the first outer orbit is 1.  The distance between this first outer orbit and the next is 2.  The next distance is 3 and so on.  Therefore to transit from the inner planets to the outermost orbit in Figure 1 would require (1+2+3)=6 transit tokens.  At the beginning of each transit phase, remove one transit token from every transiting group.  If the last token is removed, the cards are left face-down but turned 90 degrees back to a normal orientation indicating arrival.

Deployment Phase: Face-down cards are eligible to be deployed only if they are not in transit.  It costs 1 resource point to deploy any card, regardless of value.  There are two card types: face cards representing "soft power" (i.e exploration, arbitration, diplomacy), and non face cards representing "hard power" (space fleets).  The card types have different deployment restrictions.  Face cards must be of the same suit of any other face-card already in play in that orbit (representing scarcity of a limited resource).  Obviously if no face cards have yet been played at a particular orbit, a player may deploy a face card of any suit.  Also, players may not play face cards on any orbit where the opponent has fleet cards played face-up.  Playing a face card represents exploring a planet and its moons, finding valuable resources, and establishing treaties and contracts to exploit those resources.  Deploying any other card (Ace to 10, Joker) means a faction applies military power, either just sabre-rattling or full-out warfare.  When deploying a fleet card the player must declare either "attack" or "blockade".  Players alternate deploying cards, one at a time.  If a player deploys additional fleet cards to an orbit, all the cards played perform the last action declared.  For example: a player pays 1 resource token and deploys a 3 of Diamonds announcing "attack".  His opponent deploys a 10 of Clubs and declares "attack".  Hoping to de-escalate and prevent an actual engagement, Player 1 then deploys a second card, a 4 of Spades and declares "blockade".  Both of his cards, the 3 and the 4, now are blockading rather than attacking.  In addition to attack and blockade, players may declare "retreat" and flip fleet cards that were already played face-down.  Retreating does not cost any resource tokens.  Since all fleet at a particular planet take on the action of the last fleet card played there, any declaration of "retreat" results in all those fleet cards being flipped.  Players unable or unwilling to deploy further cards may announce "pass".  Once two passes have occurred, the Deployment Phase ends.  If players both have face-up fleet cards in the same orbit, they must determine if there will be any engagements and if so, resolve these battles before the next campaign turn.

Engagements: If either players' fleet cards at a planet has announced "attack" a battle will occur.  If both players announced "blockade" at the same orbit then no fighting occurs, but since enemy fleet cards are face-up, no one will get resource tokens from that orbit.  Obviously if all of a player's cards retreat at a certain planet there can be no fight.

Fighting the Battle: In War In Space, all ships have from 3 to 15 systems boxes, and ships fall into a Size Class from 1 (smallest) to 5.  Assuming these rules, the following describes how to determine your actual taskforces which show up to fight.  Add the numeric value of all the fleet cards in play at a planet (Jokers have a value of 0).  This is the total number of systems boxes of all the ships in the taskforce.  Count the number of different suits among the in-play fleet cards.  This is the maximum Size Class available; any or all of the ships in the force may be this Size Class or smaller.  Jokers are considered to each have their own discreet suit, which allows the fielding of Size Class 5 ships.  Example: Player One attacks with a force of five cards, a 2 and 3 of Clubs, a 7 of Hearts and a 9 and 10 of Diamonds.  The total value is 31 and there are three suits showing.  He then decides to field a destroyer (Size Class 3, 8 systems boxes), two frigates (Size Class 2, 5 systems boxes), a light frigate (Size Class 2, 4 systems boxes), and three war skiffs (Size Class 1, 3 systems boxes each).  The number of cards has no correlation with the number of miniatures that show up on the table.  Other games may use this system as well.  For example, if you are playing a rules-system that uses a Points Value system, you can simply make 1 point of card value equal to some increment of Points Value.  Let's say you are playing Star Fleet Battles.  It's been about 20 years but if I recall I think SFB has five ships sizes, so the Size Class concept requires no modification.  You could then simply state that each point of card value is worth 50 points.  Using the above example in this SFB context, Player One would have 1550 points available and could not choose any ships larger than Size 3 (I think that's a good amount of points... I don't remember).  I've never played Full Thrust but my understanding is it has a points system, so it would be an easy conversion.

Results of the Battle: The defeated player must flip his fleet face down and both players must discard (i.e. remove from play forever) cards whose value equals the amount of systems boxes (or points) destroyed.  Lets use the above example: Player One's heavy destroyer takes 5 points of damage, and both his frigates and one of his war skiffs are destroyed, causing him to flee the battlefield with his remaining ships.  Back on the campaign table he flips all of his fleet cards at that planet face-down, and then chooses 18 points (5 systems boxes on the heavy DD, 5 systems boxes each on the frigates and 3 for the skiff) worth of cards to discard.  He discards the 9 and 10 of Diamonds, the minimum cards he must to meet the requirement.  Also he inflicted 23 points of damage on his opponent so although he retreated, Player Two has a lot of cards to discard.  This may be the hardest part of my rules to convert to another starship combat system.  Players must discard cards due to damage however, in order to reflect the enormous cost of repairs and new construction.

Figure 1 Campaign Game

The above Figure shows the table set up and a game in play.  Concepts illustrated are

1. The inner ellipse, which is the starting point for both players.  Also shown are the three face cards played at the set up, ensuring each player can build new units.
2. The orange player has a face card in play at the first outer planet.  He is receiving an extra resource token each turn due to this.  He also has a few cards face down here to defend his mining settlement... but what are they?  Are they all high value cards of different suits, allowing him to repel all but the largest attack, or are they all face cards and Aces, pretending to be a large force?
3. The purple player has a number of cards in transit to the second outer planet.  It will be three turns before he can deploy any of these cards.

 I will explore further options to these rules, like spending resource tokens to cut transit times, and attacking opponents' colonies, requiring them to discard face cards.