Thoughts on the direction of the campaign

1. Probable restart
1.1 I would like to accommodate more players
1.2 Eddie has come up with some interesting ideas on economics which will need a new map to implement properly
1.3 I'd also like to have enough "grey space" around the edges of the map to allow for external threats
1.4 I'd welcome people's thoughts on the overall amount of real estate on the map.
1.5 At present I am thinking of roughly six or seven worlds per player, with the same number of worlds again in non-player hands. This would give about 85-90 worlds. I'm interested in hearing whether people think there should be more worlds and in whether people would prefer their holdings clumped or scattered. My preference is that everyone would have about the same degree of scatter rather than the last map where some players were very much clumped and others were very scattered.

2. New Economics
2.1 It's likely that the campaign economic engine will be adjusted to make income dependent on trade rather than inherent value of worlds. Every pair of worlds would have a trade income which will be vulnerable to interdiction, both by other players and by non player pirates controlled by a malevolent DM.
2.2 The overall income generated by this system will be give each player slightly more than what is needed to maintain the overall fleet. Obviously exact detail will depend on fleet levels.
2.3 Each planet is likely to be coded in a very crude way as to its principal outputs, the aim here being to make people act to preserve specific resources or acquire more of them. Availability of resources will be a background constraint on operations; if you don't have the resources for operations, you'll have to buy them with money or make trades with people who do.

3. Timings
3.1 The economic turn will be dropped; turns will be a week, income will accumulate on a weekly basis (or not), spending will also be weekly, income will be tweaked to make this simple to integrate with the maintenance overheads. As much as possible the game week will be the real week; turns will be handled by email, and battles that have to be fought will be fought on the Mondays.

4. Greater level of abstraction
4.1 Following receipt of all moves, players who find themselves in contact in a system will be notified as to the rough level of opposition and asked what they plan to do. It will be open to either side to withdraw if they feel overmatched; if both sides engage, the first option will be to try to play out the battle, and if this is not practical, abstract solutions will be considered. The overall aim will be to have tabletop fights which will be quick, fun and if possible involve everyone.
4.2 This greater level of abstraction will nail a lot of the problems encountered with the pre battle manoeuvring and the orbital defence rules.

5. Logistics
5.1 Sorry, but it has to be done. It fixes too many problems and I think Eddie and I may have cooked up a simple mechanism which will work without causing too many headaches.
5.2 All units will have a limit on their endurance outside home space. The lighter the unit, the longer the endurance - the assumption is that frigates have been optimised for extended patrol, SDNs for deliberate assault. Endurance will be expressed in weeks.
5.3 Endurance can be extended by deploying supply ships (RFAs) with task forces. RFAs will carry fuel, life support and weapons support. A task force which does not bother with the third will not be able to resupply after combat.
5.4 Combat will reduce endurance. Every five turns in combat will knock a week off the endurance of the force.
5.5 In essence this places a realistic penalty on super heavies without having to write new rules to discourage their construction or make it more difficult to give them orders or anything like that; they're just going to be harder to use in operations without a lot of preparation.
5.6 Balancing this, a lot of the maintenance costs are going, particularly the contentious costs of replacing munitions, which are taken up instead in the cost of maintaining RFAs.
5.7 RFAs will effectively embody much of your maintenance costs. It will be more bookkeeping for the DM, but you shouldn't notice it; essentially vessels will have a three factor maintenance cost and this will be met either by return to base and a direct charge or by loading the maintenance cost into the RFAs and moving it to where it's needed.

6. SV
6.1 I'd almost prefer to abolish the damn things, but instead I'm tilting towards the idea of making their campaign rules specific to them. This is likely to lead to a situation where combat repairs of SV ships will take a long time (recuperation) or carry a serious risk of going wrong (surgical intervention). This is necessary because otherwise SV are in the position of repairing everything at a lower cost than their opponents, and it's not as though they're labouring under disadvantages for which this would be a welcome balance.

7. Texture
7.1 Enough with the empty blackness of space - future battles will involve more clutter, both to avoid running into and to hide behind.
7.2 RFAs will need to be bought and paid for - there will be some interesting decisions to be made on speed and protection versus cost containment.
7.3 Actually taking a planet will require ground assault and specialised equipment. This will usually be not that interesting to game, but providing cover and support to the ground assault force will give another mission type, and replacing any assault equipment you lose will give you something else to complain about the cost of.