New Logistics System - Battle for Talathen Sector

I've rewritten the logistics system for the campaign. the original system was quite abstract, and pretty damned bland. It didn't really give the 4X ( eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) feeling to the campaign that I was after. You know, like civilization where you develop tech, build infrastructure, get units and kick butt. 

So I completely reworked it into a card driven system that use's building, trading a resource management. The rules are below, and all the resources for the new system are in this folder.

Please note, that like most things in this campaign, this is entirely off the top of my head and has undergone zero play-testing whatsoever at this time.

In this article, i've posted sample cards. These are not all the cards in the deck, but all the common cards are there (with the yellow saber marking)

Here is the updated logistic command, note the new head of manufacturing job, and production areas, as well as contracts. Also, smugglers have been moved to their own board. 






























Phases for Logistics command

1. Replenish supplies and income
2. Commander actions
3. Assign smugglers, escorts and make smuggling rolls
4. Purchase supplies 
5. Assign supplies to chief of staff
6. End phase


REPLENISH SUPPLIES:

• Place a number of “Credits” cards on the logistic board equal to the current income value 
• Then place basic resource cards equal to the manufacturing values for each basic resources in the production pool 
• Layout the trading map
• Shuffle the common, illicit and rebel decks
• Deal out facedown common cards equal to the yellow boxes on each planet, illicit cards equal to the red boxes, and rebel cards equal to the green boxes
• Shuffle each planet deck and deal one card face up on top of the stack
• Deal out cards as described above to the local supply. Add cards for the planets Kronos, Cahn and Solitude X if the Rebels have established a diplomatic station there and have more influence than the Empire on that world. Place these cards face up

COMMANDER ACTIONS:


The Director of Logistics, Head of Manufacturing and Head of Finances may do the following actions

• Long term investment. Make a mental roll. You may then increase your income by one point. The cost of this improvement is the new income score in Galactic credits. This cost is reduced by 5 for each triumph, 2 for each success, 1 for each advantage to a minimum of one credit. The cost is increased by 5 for each despair, 2 for each failure, and 1 for each disadvantage. (Director, Finances only)
• Short term financing. Costs one galactic credit to take this action. Make a mental roll. Gain galactic credits equal to (5 for each triumph, 2 for each success, 1 for each advantage) divided by two. (Director, Finances only)
• Support smugglers. Make a hard mental roll. Each success adds one boost dice to each smuggling roll this turn, each triumph adds one skill dice to each roll. (Director only)
• Improve manufacturing capacity. Make a mental roll. You may then increase your manufacturing capacity in one area by one point. The cost of this improvement is the new score times five in Galactic credits. This cost is reduced by 5 for each triumph, 2 for each success, 1 for each advantage to a minimum of one credit. The cost is increased by 5 for each despair, 2 for each failure, and 1 for each disadvantage. (Director, manufacturing only)
• Enforced overtime. Make a mental roll. You may improve the production of an number of manufacturing areas by one equal to (5 for each triumph, 2 for each success, 1 for each advantage) divided by two. No area may improve production by more than one each turn. (Director, manufacturing only)

ASSIGN SMUGGLERS

• Assign each smuggler in your smuggling pool to one planet. Only one smuggler may visit each planet per turn. 
• Consult fighter command on escorts. If a squadron is on escort duty it is used for this turn. This action does not cost any resource cards. 
• Each fighter assigned to the mission allows one reroll of the despair dice on a mission failure at the cost of the fighter being destroyed. 
• Make a smuggling roll, if you fail roll the despair dice and check the results. Then end that smugglers action. The difficulty is based on the wold visited, one for low risk worlds, two for medium risk worlds, and three for high risk worlds. 
• If you pass move to the next phase. For each triumph or two success rolled gain one galactic credit. 

PURCHASE SUPPLIES

• Players with rich characters now receive one galactic credit each. They may give this to logistics command and receive one clout. Or they may hold on to it and use it later. 
• Reveal all supply cards on each world visited
• Purchase cards in any order. 
• You may purchase any cards from the local supply at the listed cost
• You may purchase any cards from the production pool facilities at the listed cost
• You may purchase any cards on successful visited worlds up to your ship carrying limit. Resolve immediately cards and contracts do not count towards this limit. 
• A HWK or Firespray can carry two cards, other light transports three cards, and a GR-75 five cards
• Place all purchased cards into your stores
• Rich players with credits may now purchase supplies from the local supply or manufacturing if any remain. 

SUPPLY CHIEF OF STAFF

• Decide which cards you are making available this turn and give them to the Chief of Staff. He will manage their expenditure in consultation with the command staff
• Rich players may give their purchased cards to the Chief of staff or send them to the stockpile. They may not keep resources between turns. 
• Any cards you do not give to the chief of staff go into your stockpile and may be used again next turn. This includes unspent galactic credits.

End Phase

• Any unpurchased cards from manufacturing go back to the deck
• All cards unpurchased from local supply go back to their decks
• All cards unpurchased from planets go back to their decks
• Trade map is removed from the board. 

Battle reports round 2 - Battle for Talathen Sector

Fleet attack on deep space training station

After rolling a lot of sucesses on his planning roll, this was going to be a short and swift action. The empire has been well and truly caught with it's pants down, as the end of round two photo below shows. 

I'd like to note that from here on in, the battles will be getting harder. The training period is over, so this should be the last "turkey shoot", unless the players roll exceptionally. From now on, an "even roll" on a planning mission will have them outnumbered and outgunned. it's only fair, they are the rebels after all.

This missions fielded 8 stands of z-95s (3 Speed, 4 shoot, 4 hull, 1 red anti-ship, escort), A nebulon B support refit (borrowed from the rebel fleet), a CR90 and a CR90b vs two Victory I's with no fighter screen. It was never going to be a straight up fight, but I really wanted to test how the empire would perform in from such a terrible position.

The Rebels came in a lot slower than I expected, so by the time we got to engagement range, I had managed to swing both Star destroyers around, and found myself able to target two ships most rounds with side and rear arcs. I didn't manage a single frontal shot in the whole game :(

Splitting formation was a mistake, I should have turned both ships the same way at slightly different speeds. This allowed the rebel fleet to focus fire on one Star Destroyer. The poor guy on the right of this picture.

Accidentally, the Nebulon B crashed into the Victory on the right, which prompted us to go to the "ramming" rules.

As a result, this mission ended in a hail of ramming at point blank and fighter attacks against un-shielded quarters. I find it quite pleasing that I managed to damage each of the rebel capital ships, knocking down most of their shields and forcing some to use engineering orders.  

Still, a hopeless fight is a hopeless fight, and when the Victory on the right exploded, it was close to "go-home" time. So I called the mission a solid Rebel victory, even though one Victory managed to jump to lightspeed to escape. 


Special forces free slaves on Nimbala

This was another massively successful planning roll, no reinforcements, open deployment for the scum forces, enemy troops reduced in number/quality and infiltrators ready to pop up from ambush. I set myself the goal of taking down at least one character before the rebels murdered everyone.

The game used one of my many sci-fi maps. It's worth noting that imperial assault plays very differently in big open spaces, range matters so much more. 

The czerka force consisted of two group of low level mercs (rebel troop stats), 2 elite trandoshans, 4 normal ones, A czerka boss (Elite Imperial officer), two super-battle droids (Elite Stormtroopers with no special abilities) and a landspeeder (E-Web with 8 move and no rapid fire).

As you can tell, i'm making a lot of adjustments to the game to fit the narrative story we are telling.

The Rebels objective was the prison cell holding wookie captives in the top right

The Rebels were led by Hallarn Yarn (bottom right) who was using the Valiant Commander cards. The squad also contained Mark Keel, a Mon Calamari sniper (beside Hallarn) using the Bothan cards, Gouda Cheesa, a Rodian gunfighter (top left) using the gunfighter cards, Gaxx, a Wequey enforcer (right) using the Wookie cards and finally Fenn Signis (top right), using his own card deck and powers.

The rebels started off by kicking open the external barracks and murdering the people inside. I rocketed my landspeeder and Trandoshan's out to face the threat. 

And was suddenly ambushed by Twi'lek saboteurs out of ambush. Turns out the Rebel Saboteur's are really good at scragging things. 

Early on, I had some pressure on Hallarn and Keel with a tight group fo four Trandoshan blasting away with shotguns. Good use of Keel's mobility, Hallarn's orders and Gouda's insane short range firepower dealt with that threat.

Meanwhile, Fenn and Gaxx decided to rush the prison complex and were met by gangsters and the battle-droids. 

It turns out the havoc fire and cleave make very short work of tightly packed enemy troops. In a short amount of time, the back of the Czerka forces were broken, but not before Gaxx was wounded. 

The elite Trandoshans rushed to defend their employer, and Gaxx smashed their face in with cleave and multiple attacks. Turns out melee is pretty damned brutal in this game and that the Wookie cards can make you into a tank that deals horrific damage...... I shouldn't be surprised. But this game went from feeling like a real fight, to a murderous blood splattered glee fest for the Rebels in two turns. 

The mission ended with the freeing of a large clan of wookies that were kept prisoner at the facility. In exchange for the transportation of the old, weak and infirm off world, the Wookie leader, Attatark agreed to return and help fight for the rebellion with some of his clan. These Wookies will join the recruitment pool in a few turns time.

That's it for the battle's this round.

As mentioned, from here on in, the difficult goes up. I deliberately made the first few turns easier because I know the games a lot better than my players. In story terms, it also represents the empire being unprepared in the sector for rebellion, but the loss of Wookie slaves, a training squadron and a STAR DESTROYER, will really wake them up. 

Turn 2- The rebellion heats up

Strategy phase two

Here is the sector board at the start of turn two. The changes to popular support have been made, as well as the addition of the "pink" colour to represent the growing "Devourer cult" on Cahn. The Devourer Cult is a doomsday style cult that worships the black hole in Talathen sector. They will play a roll in this story as it progresses. 

The map was covered in mission icons, and the forces of the rebellion could only deal with about half the activity available. This is a planned feature, as the rebels cannot be every where and the Empire needs to have some wins :)

Assignments

Our new recruits received their postings, with Hallarn yarn being put in command of a special forces squad, supported by Gaxx and Fenn Signis. 

Toryn Farr joined fighter command as a squadron leader, Ged'Ruh joined the intelligence services and Garn Dravis was posted to logistics command. 

Overall goals

The Rebellion wanted to heat it up this turn, and hit some soft imperial targets with full force. Also of priority was stopping imperial investigations near the main rebel base on Axamar, and preventing the Empire from completing it's base construction on Selano

Strategy Phase

Alpha team: The player character group was assigned to investigate an imperial expedition to some ruins on Axamar. Their are rumours of lost Jedi temple sites on the planet, so it was deemed important to keep that information out of Imperial hands. 

Logistics: Kresh, the director of logistics succeeded admirably in increasing the overall wealth of the rebellion while his finance officer, Tressk got some short term wealth by speculating.

Roark garnet lost some escorts during his smuggling run but brought home three additional supplies. Garn Travis, in his first smuggling run ever, brought home five supply points.

This gave the rebellion ample supplies to run all it's missions this turn. 

Note: I have just rewritten the logistics system to be something quite different. We will introduce the new trading, manufacturing & smuggling card based mini-game in the next full turn of the game. 

Intelligence: Nibb Nibb only generated one point for the intelligence pool, but was bailed out by Sly who earned five points. Six points was enough to support the actions this turn as well as ask for information on what a group of bandits are doing in the boneyard. 

Ged'Ruh's first mission was to demolish the construction efforts on Selano. With 1 Success and 4 advantages, this mission should succeed with some interesting consequences. 

Diplomacy: Lianna Tell attempted to open diplomatic relations with Solitude X in an effort to find out why the Empire is interested in them. While she did not succeed in creating a diplomatic station, she did find out a little about what the empire is after. 

Fleet Command: Reports of Imperial ships using a relay beacon near a small asteroid cluster in deep space reached the rebellion from it's new spy in the fleet (Dana, from operation wishbone). 

Mustering the full force of the Rebel fleet, as well as spending some fleet favour to obtain additional support, the fleet planned an attack. With significant intelligence support the Admiral made an excellent roll, generating 8 tactical points. 

He spent those to hold initiative for the battle, to deploy second, and in flanking positions, and for the Imperial ships to start stationery. 

Squadron Command: Lt Blout and Torryn Farr put their heads together and came up with a brilliant plan to attack the Imperial flight school on Fraxan. Their brilliant plan netted no sucesses, so the plan boiled down to "fly in and shoot them".

Typical Blout

Ground command:

General Del Kern worked with Hallarn Yarn on a plan to disrupt Czerka operations on Nimbala, while freeing twi'lek slaves from oppression. An amazing roll generated 11 strategy points to spend.

The ground operation will have initiative, infiltrators, deploy 2nd, cut off enemy reinforcements, and reduce overall strength of the defenders. Should be a cake walk. 

Recruitment: An exceptional roll from Evo Tras generated four successes. He wants to recruit fighter aces, fleet officers, diplomatic agents and Ithorians. Chances are, he will get one of each in next turns recruitment pool.

Training: Another phenomenal roll generating 14 training points to be spent in the end phase. 14 points is enough for many X-wing pilot skill cards, crew cards, or a few armada crew cards. 

R&D: Nun Diem turned his focus to Star fighter teach, generating 9 points to spend on X-wing upgrades. That's 2-3 good cards that can be added to the x-wing equipment pool in the end phase. Gartoka added two more points to the special category for the role-playing team to use. 

End: An up and down turn for the rebels, a lot of amazing successes and a few non results. Still, they are set up well for the battles ahead, well, asides from the first report

Z-95's attack Imperial training grounds

With no successes on this roll, it was going to be a straight fight. 8 Headhunters, including Blout, with concussion missiles vs 6 Academy Ties and Snattercat, our named chiss hero pilot using the Darth Vader card and equipped with missiles, stealth device, accuracy compensation and Elusiveness. 

In retrospect, I should probably have had a 7th academy tie as those missiles really do add up in points. 

Our forces deployed opposite each other, with a small mine field in between. Turn one we drove towards each other and on turn two I banked the Tie fighters across the line of the mines in order to speed down the line and attack half the Headhunters while the others played catch up.

This seemed quite clever at the time, the problem is, it invariably left me at range 3 of the the headhunters, where they were at their most deadly due to their concussion missiles. 

I mean seriously, compare these formations. The Tie's are moving in coordination, while the headhunters are sprawled around like a bunch of drunken baboons. 

Yet, formation flying helps you little when target lock + focus concussion missiles are fired against ties. Still, no one could fire a missile on snattercat thanks to her amazing pilot skill and elusiveness. 

Still, she did 8 points of damage in 5 turns of fighting, but not a single point of hull damage. Due to the irregular flight patterns of the headhunters, it was difficult for her to stay on one target without being exposed to fire from many other headhunters. 

It's also worth mentioning how important pilot skill is. Having the headhunters fire first was catastrophic on many turns. A tie at range one of a headhunter exploded to a missile from another headhunter at range 3 on no less than three occasions.

In the end, Blouting, the act of rushing head long into danger and randomly turning with no care for formation actually defeated the empire. It broke up their formations and reduced it to a brawl, and invariably, when a tie had got good position on one headhunter, it was in perfect missile position for another. 

Snattercat eventually called a retreat when the 4th tie fighter exploded from a missile, leaving the score Rebels 4, Empire 0.

Still, the empire has received it's first ship upgrade. Tie Advanced fighters, and the rebels will be seeing more of these in the future. 

Next update. The fleet conducts a ramraid, and special forces conduct a rescue. 

End turn 1- Battle for Talathen Sector

End phase round 1

Well, we finally go through the first full round of the game. 1 week on planning/politicking, 2 weeks board gaming and 2 week role-playing. That seems like a pretty good balance for our gaming group and is keeping the content quite fresh. 

Mission reports

Well the team conducted a number of missions, whether they were abstracted diplomacy/intelligence missions using the dice system, table top encounters using the board/miniature games or the roleplaying sessions. 

• Logistics generated four supply from investments to be used next turn
• Intelligence forces sabotaged a "Empire Day" fly-by on Zenith, causing tie-fighters to collide midair during the parade flyover (2 Glory)
• Lianna Tell had an amazing diplomatic mission to Selano, removing all imperial support and creating some rebel support (2 Glory)
• Delta Squad attacked a military base on Korvas was bombed during the Empire day celebrations while it had a skeleton crew. (8 Glory for Leader, 2 for squad members)
• A chief aide to the Moff was assassinated heading to Talathen VII for Empire day celebrations when his Lambda Shuttle was shot down by Z-95's. (8 Glory)
• Czerka shipping was raided and a GR-75 stolen from Nimbala. (5 Glory, 2 Supply, 1 GR-75)
• Alpha Squad conducted a clandestine operation (wishbone) on Selano, full report here. (10 Rebel fleet Favour)
• Bravo Squad conducted a rescue operation on Fraxan to recapture Roark Garnet. During this mission misleading information about their location of the rebel base was planted. (Imperial focus shifted to Kronos)
• Due to no operations being conducted on Talathen Prime or Luxon during Empire Day, rebellion support dropped on those planets. 

Purchasing

R&D had 1200 credits to purchase supplies for Special Forces, and purchased an e-11 Blaster, Marksman Barrel and Combat coat. These are now available for any special forces mission

R&D also has 3 point to spend for the Roleplaying group, but we decided to spend those during the RPG session. 

Training would normally purchase at this time, but we hadn't fulled formed the rules at that point. They upgraded four pilots from rookies to veterans. 

Clout and the draft. 

The Luxons and Repubnlican's entered this round at a major disadvantage. Not only had they not saved any clout from the previous round, they also earned less clout from having more people in "glory" positions, rather than behind the scenes pulling strings. As Commander of both Recruitment and Training, the People's movement player gained more clout than the others, also the Basra conglomerates player was in a close second.

Clout earned from turn one

Luxon Militia - 17 Clout
Republicans - 20 Clout

Bastra Consortium - 25 Clout
People's Movement - 32 Clout

Six characters were available. Recruitment had asked to find "ground pounders" so several were in the recruitment pool, as well as the captain of the GR-75 captured at Nimbala, and the operatives who coordinated "operation Wishbone". 

The head of recruitment opted for all the recruitment pool to be revealed, as well as blind bidding. 

Hallarn Yarn was considered by the group the top recruit in this weeks draft. With reasonable stats in all three categories, the reliable trait, special forces and spying skills, and the Chief of Staff's favour. He seemed like an excellent candidate for many jobs, and potentially a senior leader of the future.

The people's movement spent a lot of clout to secure his services. 

Next up was Garn Dravis. The Basra Consortium said it was doubling down and the areas it already controlled and invested a significant amount to secure his services. 

An unusual character, Garn is a average smuggler but a reasonable combatant. But the addition of a decent medium transport was what motivated the Consortium to procure his services. 

Fenn Singnis is next up, a hero most of you will recognize from Imperial Assault. His character card reflects his persona in that game. He's a one man commando strike team, or an excellent addition to Special Forces.

The Luxon Militia, seeing a man who fit's their ideology to a tee, went all in on signing this man up to their cause. 

Toryn Far has the distinction of being one of only four human females with speaking lines in the original trilogy. A smart character who excels at coordinating others actions, she would be an asset to any area, but excels at coordinating starfighter operations.

The Republicans spent their stack of Clout to secure her loyalty. 

Gaxx is the most one dimensional character in this group, but he's really good at what he does. In Imperial assault, he uses the "wookie" cards and is a melee wrecking ball. Just don't expect him to conduct a fine tea ceremony. 

The People's movement put in a modest bid for him. But considering that both the Luxons and Republicans were tapped out, it's not surprising he went cheaply. 

Finally, Ged'Ruh Srazz, a Twilek who can hold his own in a fight, but who's specialty is blowing stuff up. 

Continuing the plan of "doubling up", his services went to the Basra Consortium, who now have a strong grip on Intelligence and Logistics command. 

Glory Scores for Round one

In addition to the rewards mention above, each player gets 1 glory for participating in a table top battle, even if they have no troops involved. It's a little "attendance bonus".

So final Glory Scores are

Bastra Consortium - 4 Glory
People's Movement - 6 Glory
Luxon Militia - 15 Glory
Republicans - 15 Glory

There is a clear split among the factions, with one group getting Glory now and banking it, and the others playing a longer game of building up their faction by getting more clout early on. I'm really interested to see how this shifts during the campaign. 

End of Turn one!

We conducted the planning/strategy phases for turn 2 on the same night. That report will be up in a few days. 

Operation Wishbone - A mission report for the Battle for Talathen Sector

Clearance – Top Secret Delta

Mission – Operation Wishbone

ID: TSC- 000101

Reporting Officer: Major Hallarn Yarn

Mission successful – with caveats

Operational report

Mission team assembled successfully and were briefed in transit to the mission site at Samoth Paradise resort.

Our target was a young Imperial naval officer immediately out of the academy and on route to her first assignment.

The mission briefing outlined our objectives as follows

• Travel to Samoth Paradise, a luxury resort for the rich and famous under assumed cover identities.
• Observe the target, make a note of her mannerisms and personality
• Obtain biological samples of the target, including a full bio-scan fingerprints and other biometrics.
• Obtain voice recordings and background information of the target.
• Use the advanced flesh cloning technology we had obtained to convert Agent Dana into a clone of our target
• Capture the target and replace her with our operative.
• Interrogate the target and obtain all security codes and personal information needed for Agent Dana to assume her identity
• Ensure that there was no “missing time” or continuity errors between the target and her replacement.
• Dispose of the target in a way that the replacement cannot be discovered. 

The team performed their jobs admirably, and all mission goals were achieved with the highest degree of success. The operation to replace the target with our operative was flawlessly executed, and I recommend that all of the operatives involved be commended, although noting the security of this action I understand that will not be possible.

Our cover stories and the luxury ship proved to be of excellent quality for maintain the operation as a clandestine endeavour.

Personnel reports from commanding officer.

Inomo Cle’fasa

A male twi’lek from Talathen sector, Inomo proved adept at both clandestine operations and interrogation. He has a natural ability to make people like him, and is a classic “people person”. He was well suited to this kind of operation, although he developed some attachment to our target and was an advocate of not killing her afterwards. I recommend not assigning him to tasks that require extreme measures unless a clear case can be made for them.

Ana Tola

A female Twi’lek from Nimbala, Ana did not seem prepared for clandestine operations, but showed a willingness to do what was required when it was required. She demonstrated a deep conviction to the rebellion cause and desire to complete the mission to the letter. I recommend more training in clandestine operations and recommend her for any operation.  I suspect, from our brief conversations, that her skills are more focussed on direct action.

Zorrin Vox

A human male, and older brother of Luxon Militia leader Kallista Vox. Zorrin is a soldier, first and foremost, and demonstrated a great degree of comfort in a military setting. He is also an exceptional medical officer and capably managed the cloning procedure and handling the biometric data. Issues with the cloning technology made Zorrin miss most of the clandestine operation, but his medical expertise ultimately delivered a successful outcome for the operation. I believe he could be an asset for rebel HQ, but I suspect his familial loyalties will keep him in Talathen Sector for the foreseeable future.

Oli Shim

A Mon Calamari male with a cranial computer, Oli is an unusual individual, even for a Mon Cal. I believe he has some form of dissociation disorder, as he has very little empathy or understanding of personal interactions. With that said, his expertise in computer engineering and his attention to detail was invaluable to the mission. I admire his thoroughness and professionalism, but he would need to operate with others to avoid arousing suspicion with his social awkwardness.

Crin Dollos

A human male from Corellia, Crin is a bit of a freebooter and was in an Alliance jail cell for minor acts of disobedience before this mission.  Crin is an expert pilot and mechanic, but what stood out during the operation was his commitment to getting to understand the target and play his cover role exceedingly well. Crin has a finely developed sense of justice, and his feelings towards the outcome of the mission were very negative. While he did his job admirably, he felt a deep sense of remorse and betrayal when we had to complete our mission. Like Inomo, I do not recommend assigning him to tasks that require extreme measures unless an excellent rationale can be established.

Commander’s recommendations

This sort of operation goes against a lot of the principles that the rebellion was founded on. The target was revealed, under interaction and interrogation to be a rebel sympathizer with no history of violence or criminal activity. For all intents and purposes we destroyed the life of an innocent for the potential gain of intelligence information.

While the initial mission guidelines I received strongly recommended terminating the target one the operation was over, I could not in good conscience follow those orders.

It is my recommendation that the target, Jenna Ken, be allowed to live on an alliance safe world for the duration of the conflict, or until our agents mission is over.  I believe that disposing of this innocent girl would amount to a war crime, and I want no part in that. I have given my word to the operatives involved that no harm will come to her.

It is also my recommendation that this style of operation be suspended immediately pending a review.

I understand that difficult decisions must be made during war, but operations like this undermine the core values of the rebellion.  

Major Hallarn Yarn

Alliance Intelligence

RV – 7019929