Breach 2

The tasking and the party

You take a boarding party of 4 to 6 troopers onto somebody else's hull, or down onto a shelf with no air on it, do a named job, and bring everybody back to the airlock you came in by — the cell you boarded at and everything within 2 of it. One of them is the squad leader. Within 4 cells of him a trooper draws 2 extra points and steadies faster, so he is worth bringing forward and worth protecting.

The action ends when you withdraw, when nobody is left standing, or when the clock runs out. The clock you are shown is the only clock there is.

Pace, limit and par are measured from a competent run rather than chosen. Par carries sampling noise: the two seed families used to fit it disagreed by up to 19 points.

Action points

Everything a trooper does costs points, and when they are gone he is done for the turn. His allowance is 6 plus 0.6 for each point of agility, so an agile trooper gets several more steps than a heavy one. A hardsuit takes 1 point off it. Carrying a casualty adds 2 points to every step.

Anything you do not spend is lost, except the 4 points you can put into standing watch — a trooper on watch fires once, on his own, at the first hostile that moves across his front.

Moving, facing and what he can see

The deck is a square grid and a trooper may step diagonally. He cannot cut a corner through a bulkhead and he cannot go through a doorway on the diagonal — a threshold is entered square. Stepping onto a shut door opens it as he goes, at the cost of working it.

A trooper faces one of eight points and sees 12 cells within 45 degrees either side of his facing, plus everything at arm's length. What one man sees the party knows. A contact you can no longer see stays on the plan as a mark that ages, and after 4 turns it is worth nothing.

The station listens. Shots, charges and vents are loud, and the machine that runs it sweeps toward what it heard in the last 4 turns.

Tactical overlays

Reach marks cells the selected trooper can reach now. Threats marks the weapon reach of hostiles currently in sight. Cover marks explored passable ground that has intrinsic terrain cover; when the plan is large enough it prints that percentage in the cell. Cover is still directional in an actual shot, because the last cell a round crosses can also protect the target.

Fire

Three ways to shoot: a snap shot for 4 points, an aimed shot for 7, and a burst for 8 which throws several rounds at falling accuracy. Chance falls with range past the weapon's best distance, rises with the trooper's marksmanship, and falls with whatever the shot has to pass through. A hostile who has not seen you is worth 1.25 times the usual chance. No shot is ever surer than 95 in a hundred or worse than 3.

Armour stops damage, it does not stop bullets: each point of armour the round cannot cut takes 2 off the hurt. Cover is read off the last thing the shot passes through before the target.

Every attack is reported. Before you pay for a shot the cursor quotes the odds, the range, what the round has to pass through and how much hurt to expect against what the target has left. Afterwards the same figures are printed back to you round by round, with what his armour stopped and what he has standing — and the shot is drawn on the plan, solid where a round told and dashed where it did not. A standing watch steadies fire made FROM that watch by a further 10 in a hundred; a deliberate shot spends the watch and cannot claim it.

Air, pressure and venting

Every compartment either holds air or does not. In vacuum a sealed suit spends 1 of air a turn; a holed one spends 3. A vacuum suit carries 40, a hardsuit 52, and an air pack puts 18 back. At zero the trooper goes down.

The hull can be opened. A charge on a hull plate vents whatever it touches, and the vent runs on through any door that is standing open — which is exactly why you shut the door behind you. Anything in a vented compartment that is not sealed dies, including anyone you came to fetch.

Doors, locks and charges

Pressure doors are the seams of the ship. Working one costs 2 points. Some are locked; a trooper picks a lock on his technical rating, and a lock cutter is worth a great deal more than his fingers. A charge will also open one.

A charge costs 6 points to set and fires at the head of the next turn, so you set it and you get clear. A grenade costs 5 and lands where it is thrown rather more often the better the thrower's demolition rating.

The orbit link — Aldermoor

This is the game. The frigate that put you here is fighting her own action overhead, and everything you can ask of her is paid for out of link credit that she can only earn while she is holding her lane. She starts with 4 and can hold 10.

She drifts. The harder the tasking presses her the faster she goes out, and a loud action on the deck presses her too — the station's alarm is on her plot as much as yours. Once she is off the plot nothing more comes down and you walk home.

A lance strike only reaches a cell with sky over it, so it is a surface weapon and a weapon for a compartment you have already opened. A medevac takes a casualty who is lying on the extraction point and turns a dead trooper into a wounded one.

The campaign and the depot

An action on its own is a single tasking with a party the quartermaster kits out. A campaign is all 5 of them in order, with one roster of 6 that carries between them.

What a trooper learns he keeps. What he spends is gone. Wounds heal between taskings; the dead do not come back, and a replacement arrives with an empty jacket — which is the real cost of losing a man, not the 18 points. A trooper lifted off by Aldermoor lives, and spends the next tasking in the infirmary.

Each tasking pays into the purse against the account it came home with, and the depot sells arms, armour and kit between them. A trooper carries at most 4 pieces of kit, and the depot buys back at half. The squad leader always goes; if he does not come home the campaign is over.

Skills, casualties and the account

A trooper who does the work learns it. Every successful shot, lock, treatment, lift and charge gives about a 34 in a hundred chance of a point of the skill it used, up to 10.

A trooper at zero body is down, not dead. He can be treated where he lies, carried out on somebody's back, or lifted off by Aldermoor. Left on the deck he will die of it.

The account: each objective is worth what the tasking says, a trooper who walks out is worth 6 and the leader another 8, a trooper left behind costs 18, a wounded one 4, every turn past the pace costs 2, and link credit you never spent is worth 1 apiece.