Ground War Nears Testing, Fleet Action Success, and the Scale of the Universe

Hello again! It's been less than a month since our last update. Maybe these things are becoming more regular. Who knows.

Ground War made a major breakthrough this week. Any weapon in the core book can now be represented as just 4 attributes: number of attacks, damage, range, and ammo count. This combined with the new stat blocks for vehicles and squads will make combat flow smoothly with a minimum of number to remember, hopefully. Testing will tell, but the hope is to allow up to battalion level combat (hundreds of troops) with full vehicle, aircraft, artillery, and orbital support with ease. 

Fleet Action finished round 1 of playtesting yesterday with great results. The consensus among playtesters is they can't wait for round 2. Some bugs in the system were found and summarily squashed. A few numbers needed tweaking but the feel of the game hit exactly as intended. Space combat is as lethal as expected by players of the core game. The length of play worked out perfectly. A test battle between a GM and 3 players was completed in an hour and a half, including the time to explain combat rules and get off track. 3 Frigates and 9 Cutters were given to each side to simulate a middle of campaign engagement between two evenly matched navies. Players were already able to see the breadth of tactical options of the system even in its cut down and incomplete form for testing. Fleet Action will be tweaked and more options will be added before round 2 closed testing starts, which should take place in a few weeks depending on scheduling. After that testing opens up to the public. 

With the release of Ground War and Fleet Action, all 3 books will work together to give the complete Vertigo experience. Fleet Action's boarding rules will make use of the mass combat rules laid down in Ground War for squads with each ship being represented as a hex grid with points of interest to fight over. Do boarders focus on taking the bridge or maybe capture engineering and force the ship's reactor to shutdown? Do defenders just stall the attackers until their fleet gains battle space superiority and can recieve reinforcements?  On the flip side, players that want to make full use of their ground armies will need fleets to transport their men and equipment. All of this will fit together to allow a campaign of any scale where every choice matters. Individual player characters, armies, fleets, all the rules needed and streamlined to work together for whatever your story requires.