New Rules Development for Sci-Fi Rules

I've been doing a bit of work on my adaptation of the Second World War Rules from the Introduction Book. This has entailed a significant stretching of the rules to a very specific style of combat which I came across in my youth regarding the excellent series of SPI Board Games which covered the Star Force: Alpha Centuari universe. This particular adaptation used one of the games in the Trilogy - the Star Soldier Board Game, as the basis.

It involves a fictional future setting dealing with planetary conflicts set in the 25th to 28th Centuries between a handful of races including Humans that use telesthetic shifting to move between star systems and then deploy Strike Forces of Star Soldiers to perform assaults on the orbiting Star Gates and Planetary Defences.

The combat units are squads of Star Soldiers that can move in both ground and airborne modes utilising Active Battle Dress to provide completely self contained environments and the deployment of a variety of direct fire energy and projectile weapons to neutralise enemy units and ground bases. This was a lot of fun to develop and the Future History presented is very intriguing. I've done some minor play-testing and published my draft with outline Army Lists and background in the Modern Rules Folder in the Files section. I hope to play some larger games and develop the scenario design to cover the mission types these future armies would engage in. Seems to work fine and demonstrates to me at least what you can do to a good simple core design to meet any gaming requirement.

Solar Union Universe: Timeline

Here is the timeline I've created for this new alternative Future Wars campaign:

1905: End of Great War with victory to the British American Empire

1907: New Thinking becomes prevalent in government circles and starts to permeate society

1911: Discovery of White Energy

1951: Lunar Station completed

1950s: Colonisation of the Solar system

1956: Discovery of the Warp Field

1965: Creation of the Solar Union as the new world government

1976: First FTL warp to Alpha Centauri

1980s: Exodus into surrounding space to establish colonies

1980s: Encounter Andrayadan, Kyrillian, Grail and Geonee

1983: Colonial Union Defence Force founded

1986: Interstellar Wars commence

1999: Current year

I've also fleshed out some other details about the CUDF which now resembles a militarised Space 1999 complete with Eagles and Hawks. Pure indulgence!

Here also is an extract on the Grail mentioned in the earlier post.

The Grail are a lesser but still potent and frightening enemy. They are inter-dimensional beings that have been warped from what humans’ term chaos space. They use their priests and acolytes to wield their mind powers and assimilate sentient races. They are particularly partial to humans and have made a compact with the other races. They resemble Mind Flayers from AD&D.  

Future Wars Rules: New Setting of the Solar Union

I've recently been working on another setting for playing my Future Wars modifications to the WWII Rules from Introduction. This one introduces a mish-mash of my experience with counter factual history, Space 1999, Star Force Alpha Centauri and some other appealing themes and ideas in general sci-fi which I've melded together into something I'm comfortable with.

Here is a synopsis of the overall idea. I'm working on the army lists and supplementary rules just now with a view to get these posted into the files section in the Group pages in the near future.

Human history follows a different course following the failed American Revolution and the dominance of the British American Empire culminating in the defeat of the German Empire and the establishment of complete world supremacy in the early 20^th century.

Parallel to this were two revolutionary technological developments. The first was the discovery of White Energy which provided a limitless and highly effective power source to catapult human technology. In turn this led to the discovery of the warp field allowing faster than light travel.

In the area of human civilisation there was a fundamental re-focus of intellectual thought. The New Thinking following the Great War preached tolerance and socio-economic relationships where it was in the individual’s best interests to act for the greater societal good. This had a fundamental impact on the ethos and outlook of the emergent Solar Union government which setup the Colonial Union Defence Force as agents of human expansion and colonisation in the remaining century.

The date is now 1999 and the CUDF administers c50 active colonies. So far the alien worlds they have explored have tended to have mainly non-sentient life-forms, however, the few technological races encountered with star faring ability have been almost universally hostile. Curiously they have similar technological developments in respect of energy and warp fields so planetary conflict is between similar technology levels.

The Alien Conspiracy is a current theory being used by the CUDF to explain and react to the perceived threat to human expansion. This is no longer a paranoid reaction, but a proven viewpoint from recent discoveries. It now transpires that the alien powers ranged against the Solar Union are party to a still unexplained but certainly co-ordinated opposition to human expansion.

The alien forces ranged against the CUDF are formidable opponents and present a real danger to ongoing human expansion and potentially human existence in this region of space. The major opposition are the Andrayadan Collective and Kyrllian Combine. The Grail are a lesser but still potent enemies.

The Geonee Technocracy: this humanoid race is the only advanced species encountered so far that has provided a passive response to the Solarians. The Technocracy has enslaved a number of “low” races in it’s development so far and Geonee rule is generally at odds with Union political philosophy. The resulting alliance that has been established is one of convenience. The Geonee hope they back the eventual winner in the conflict and will be able to benefit from the enslavement of the Andrayadan and Kyrllian races.