Reply: Star Trek: Ascendancy:: General:: Re: Synopsis of what we know

by Angelsenior

spacelane length is determined randomly by a special 6-sided die which is included in the game

once you discover a system, a random system disc is drawn and put in place, if its a phenomena you will most likely need to roll for hazard for each ship that arrives in the system; roll a normal D6 and substract your shield modifier, if total is equal or more than the hazard number the ship is destroyed. if at least one ship survives you may take the research token that is placed on the phenomena, a new token is placed at the end of the turn. you have to roll for hazard again if you want to take the new token again in a following turn. if you discover a planet system, it may or may not contain a hazard as well for which you must roll, then you draw an exploration card to determine whether you discover an established colony or crisis or make a discovery. only a surviving ship can resolve/see the exploration card.

the turn is divided in 3 main phases;
1) production and research phase in which you build nodes and ships and perform research on your advancement cards (1 research token placed per card per turn) or on your shields and weapons level
2) the command phase in which you move your ships, discover spacelanes and systems, combine ships into fleets and perform combat. you must use 1 command token per ship or per fleet you move or 1 to combine ships into a fleet.
3) income phase in which you collect your resources from your established resource nodes and trade agreements

ships can only be built at the homeworld or at a starbase you own, ships built at the same location may be immediately combined in a fleet without using a command token.

Combat consists of rolling 1d6 per ship and substract opponents shield modifier, each result that is higher than your weapon to hit value destroys an opponents ship, otherwise its a miss.

ships move at either impulse speed which is a number of spaces (a spacelane consists of a number of spaces and a system is one space) per turn or at warp speed which is a number of full spacelanes you travel over a number of turns, warp travel is hidden until the ship/fleet arrives. you must stop moving when reaching an enemy-occupied space.

a fleet consists of a minimum of 3 ships, each race has 3 possible fleets, each fleet card has 2 types of fleet on it, available types depends on the race (can be science, diplomacy, exploration, raider or battle fleet, some offer special bonuses). fleets are shown on the board by use of a fleet marker. once a fleet has less than 3 ships its no longer in effect and its remaining ships are placed on the board instead of the marker.