The seductive warp of hyperspace vanished from the viewscreen, leaving the more natural but no less beautiful image of a sun burning dead ahead. The Executive Officer leans back in her chair with a satisfied smile.
"Nicely done, as always, Helm," she says, nodding at the ensign manning that station. "Make sure the hyper generator is locked down, then take us-"
"XO!" The raw terror in the young Tactical Officer's voice snaps the XO's head round like a whip. "I've got hostile traces - multiple hostile ships surrounding our emergance point!"
The XO will never remember how she got from her chair to the tactical console. The two red icons of enemy ships pulse in the view, and a moment later one of them spouts a ruddy vector: she is already underway, heading obliquely towards the ship.
"Bring the wedge to full power," she says, amazed at the calm in her voice. "Bring the crew to battle stations." As the siren began to sound across the bridge, she leans closer to the Tactical Officer. "Can we hyper out in time to warn the convoy?" she asks in a low voice.
The TO's fingers dance over the controls, but the XO already knows the answer. The young officer's headshake just confirms it.
"Very well," she says, "then we'll have to keep them busy here. Comms - make sure the skipper's been notified. We've got a fight ahead of us.
Welcome, collective captain, to the burden of command! You've just entered the system with your single (gold) ship, and have discovered that it is in enemy (red) hands. Your number two priority is to make it back across the hyper limit (blue line) and jump to hyperspace, getting the word out.
Unfortunately, your number one priority is the unarmed and unarmoured convoy coming in behind you. They will arrive at your current location in five turns, which also happens to be the time it will take you to make it back over the limit and hyper out. You can't send a message to them while they're in hyperspace, so their only hope is if you can draw the enemy ships off and give them time to escape - another five turns after they cross the limit.
The hex grid is your tactical plot. It shows your ship (in gold), and your current vector - ie, where you will end up if you don't make any changes to your heading this turn. It also displays any other ships or missiles you can currently see - in this case, two enemy vessels. Your Tactical Officer has helpfully displayed the enemy's current vector, and the volume of space they could end their next turn in if they maneuver. The grid extends indefinitely in all directions, but nothing has been detected beyond the volume of space shown.
Your ship has several critical systems you should familiarise yourself with:
a) Your gravitic wedge is both your drive and your shielding. While it is raised, your ship has an acceleration of two. That means that in each turn, you can change the endpoint of your gold vector by up to two hexes. This shift can be forwards (accelerating), backwards (decelerating), or to the side (turning); your Tactical Officer has helpfully displayed the area you can reach on your plot. Your ship will follow the arrow as it exists after you maneuver, and that will be its new vector next turn. The enemy ships, and the convoy, have the same two-unit acceleration; the ring around your ship's icon indicates a raised wedge.
At the end of each turn, you may choose to lower the wedge, or raise it if it is already down. This takes effect immediately.
c) Your sensors detect gravitic wedges. A raised wedge can be detected at any distance, in real-time. A lowered wedge is invisible at long range - you can only detect it three hexes away. The enemy, and the convoy, have weaker sensors than you - they can only spot a lowered wedge at two hexes. So lowering your wedge lets you enter 'stealth mode' - but means you can't use it to maneuver, and you lose its protection against attacks.
c) Your thrusters are used for maneuvering when the wedge is lowered. They are very weak - they grant you an acceleration of one, but you can only use this on alternate turns. They are non-gravitic, so cannot be seen on sensors; that means that you (or the enemy) can never know precisely where a ship is once its wedge is down. The enemy, and the convoy, have the same thrusters as you.
d) Your weapons come in two kinds. Lasers are the simplest: they're instantaneous weapons which can hit any hex directly adjacent to your ship. You can fire one laser per turn. Your missiles are essentially tiny starships: they have an onboard acceleration capacity of ten, which they can split up however they like: they can spend it all in a single massive burst, spread it out to maneuver over twelve turns, or anything in between. You can fire one missile per turn.
Enemy lasers are identical to your own. Their missiles only have an acceleration capacity of eight. The convoy is unarmed. Needless to say, firing missiles with their drives online reveals your exact location even with your wedge lowered, though not your vector.
If a missile or laser shot enters a hex containing a ship, it has a chance to do damage. We'll cover that if/when it comes up.
All rules apply to all ships on the field - the enemy are flying under the same conditions as you. Their communications are also slow enough that they have to maneuver before they know what their colleagues are doing - they can't rely on someone else catching you. Turns are simultaneous (meaning in practice that I've already plotted the enemy's first move).
The order of actions on your turn are:
1. Launch missiles and/or fire lasers. These will move simultaneously with you, at the end of the turn.
1b. Adjust the acceleration of your previously-fired missiles.
2. Use your wedge or thrusters to accelerate, or choose to repair a system instead. If you start your turn outside the hyper limit (blue line), you may hyper out.
3. Decide whether to raise or lower the wedge.
4. Commit. All ships will fire weapons, and laser hits will be resolved. All ships and weapons will move. All missile hits will be resolved. Then wedge raise/lower commands will be resolved.
Anyone can take the captain's role for each turn; please don't hog it, but let other people have a turn if they want it! Feel free to write a snippet of narrative to go with your orders; I've deliberately left the bridge crew (and ship) unnamed and undefined to let you fill in the details. Probably the easiest way to describe your actions is to draw arrows on the tactical plot - you can upload to Imgur without an account, as an example, and I'm sure there's others.
And remember: priority 1 is giving the convoy ten turns to get in and escape again. Priority 2 is getting out alive.
hS
(The setting is adapted from David Weber's Honor Harrington books. The game design is modified from Triplanetary. Ask if I haven't made sense.)
