Breach

How to begin

You command a boarding detail of the Federated Worlds Special Forces. Choose a campaign — one squad through all five taskings, with the same marines carried forward — or a single boarding action, then pick a difficulty and take the field.

A tasking order names what the Corps wants off that station and how the team is to come home; everything else is your affair. Read it, then board. The station is generated fresh for the action: nothing about the deck is known before you set foot on it.

Pace is what a competent team keeps. Past it the score begins to bleed, 2 points a turn. The limit is when the station has won, and it is the only clock — there is nothing hidden behind it. Par is what a good team averages on that ground, measured rather than declared.

Controls

Click a marine to select him, or click his row in the sidebar. Click the deck to march — hovering quotes the cost before you commit anything. Drag to pan the plan, roll the wheel or use the plus and minus buttons to zoom, and click the station schematic to look elsewhere.

Orders are the buttons under the jacket. Fire settings, grenades and charges ARM first and are then aimed with a click on the deck, so nothing fires blind. Escape cancels an armed order.

Every order spends action points from the selected marine’s allowance, shown as pips on his jacket:

Heavier armour costs points: a boarding hardsuit takes 2 off the allowance and assault plate 4, against 3 and 5 points of protection.

Turn order

A turn is yours first and the station’s second. Give every marine the orders you want in whatever order you like — there is no sequence within your own turn — then end the turn and the station moves, shoots and searches with what it knows.

Points do not carry over. What is left at the end of a turn is either put on watch or wasted, and the difference between a good squad and a poor one is mostly that.

Points left in hand can be put on watch, at least 4 of them. A marine standing watch fires a snap shot at the first thing that crosses his arc, before it acts. Every body may take one such shot a turn, and the station’s own troopers take theirs the same way.

Marines steady between turns, and a marine within 4 cells of the squad leader draws 2 extra points and steadies faster. The station remembers a noise for 4 turns and sweeps toward it.

Movement

A step costs 2 points straight and 3 diagonally. A march halts of its own accord the moment the team makes fresh contact.

A marine sees a forward arc of about 120 degrees out to eleven cells, plus everything he could reach out and touch. He is blind behind him, which is what facing is for: turning costs 1 point and is often the best 1 points you spend.

What the squad can see now is drawn solid. What it saw and no longer sees is a report: a ring that widens as the report ages, because the thing that made it has been moving all the while.

Pressure doors stand closed. They stop movement, they stop sight, and they can be closed behind you. A door drawn in red is locked — an override card opens it, a breaching charge removes it. You may not cut the corner of a doorframe: doors are entered and left straight on.

Cargo pallets block movement but give cover to anyone alongside them. A deck lift carries one marine between decks, and anyone he is carrying goes with him.

Combat and scoring

Arm a fire setting, then click the contact. An aimed shot is steadier than a hip shot and a burst throws 3 rounds for the worst accuracy of the three. Range tells against every weapon, and cover is read from the ground the shot passes over last — a marine behind a pallet is covered from the pallet’s side only.

Armour stops damage; it does not stop bullets. A shot that lands on assault plate still lands — it simply does less.

A marine who fires after moving gives his position away and is easier to hit for the rest of the turn. One who fires from a prepared post beside a bulkhead has shown the station nothing it did not already have. That is the whole argument for arriving before you shoot.

Aliens sense you all round and close fast. Machines watch a forward arc and shoot better than they move. Troopers do both, and unlike the rest of the station they can break. A body that does not know you are there is markedly easier to hit.

Scoring: the tasking’s own points for what it asked, 1 a hostile put down, -18 for a marine lost and -4 for one brought home badly hurt, and -2 a turn once you are past the pace. Trading bodies for objectives is the fastest way to a bad afternoon.

Winning

A tasking is complete when everything the order asked for is done AND the team is off the station. Withdrawal is an order, not a consequence: every living marine must be standing in the airlock — the dashed ground you came in on — before the order will be accepted, and what the team has with it at that moment is the result.

On a tasking with no airlock leg, holding the lift head is the extraction: the cutter comes alongside the moment the ground is held.

Anyone under tow comes out with the marine carrying him, which is how rescued crew and a downed squad leader are brought home. A marine can carry one body at a time.

Your score is read against par for that ground. Beating par is a good afternoon; matching it is competence. In a campaign, finishing all five taskings with the leader alive is the whole game.

Losing

Three things end an action badly. The clock running out; the whole team killed aboard; or the squad leader left behind.

The marine marked with a star is the squad leader, and he is the campaign. A leader brought to nothing is DOWN, not dead — put a marine alongside him, take him aboard, and carry him into the airlock and he comes home wounded. Leave him aboard and the campaign ends there, whatever else the team achieved.

The station answers noise. Gunfire, blown doors and grenades raise the alarm; a general alarm wakes the deck and starts feeding reinforcements aboard through the hatches. Quiet work with a suppressed sidearm buys time that nothing else will.

Withdrawing without finishing the order is not a disaster — the team is alive and the score records what was done. A campaign only ends early when the leader is lost or the detail falls below three.

Saving and restarting

The action saves itself at the end of every turn, in this browser only. The title page offers to resume it; a resumed action is on the same turn, with every marine where he was and the station remembering what it had heard.

Storage is used for one save and nothing else. If the browser refuses it — private browsing, a full quota — the game says so and plays on without one rather than locking up.

Between taskings the depot pays out. Experience and old wounds carry forward on the jackets, ranks bring points and steadiness with them, and requisition buys weapons, armour, kit or a replacement marine. A replacement arrives in duty fatigues and is worth a vest before you take him aboard.

To start again, finish or leave the action and take a new tasking from the title page. Beginning a fresh campaign replaces the saved one.