Pigs in Space

My gaming has been pretty sporadic since the annual Christmastime extravaganza, but I’ve had some pretty fun times over the past few weeks. Notably, I’ve been playing Battlestations somewhat more regularly. Battlestations is a sort of boardgame/role playing game hybrid. You create a character to control, and you can use that character on subsequent plays. There is a game master (GM) who takes you through each mission, keeping information hidden and doing her level best to confound and destroy the crew. Your character gains experience and money at the successful completion of each mission, and can gain levels. Subsequent missions are then tailored to the enhanced abilities of the crew.

A typical crew in a beginning ship consists of a pilot, a marine, a scientist, and an engineer. Each profession has enhanced abilities and gear according to the needs of their position. For example, the engineer is responsible for generating power in the ship’s engines, and allocating that power to shields, helm (piloting actions), and guns. The engineer has a bonus, then when he rolls for a success at generating power, or undertaking repairs. The floor plan of each ship is assembled, and the character standups are placed in their start positions (at battle stations). Thus, a character must move throughout the ship in order to accomplish their tasks. You can’t fire a missile if there isn’t anyone manning the missile bay, for example.

Separate from the ship’s floorplan, there is a map of the region of space where the action occurs. Generally, there’s a planet placed as a reference point, then the crew’s ship, and then any other details, such as debris, asteroids, or enemy ships. For the missions that we’ve attempted, the early part of the game is largely maneuvering and firing. Later, there may be a boarding action, either by the heroes or the enemy.

This game starts off kind of slow and thoughtful, as the players try to come up with the best strategy to approach the mission. The writers do a great job of coming up with interesting puzzles for the players to solve. In one mission, the enemy ship had an inversion field that turned successful rolls into failures, and they could switch it on and off. We made the mistake of boarding their ship—a mistake because the two boarding characters were specialized for this sort of thing, and the enemy characters were horrible at combat. Thus, they cut us to shreds while we missed badly.

It’s difficult to describe the allure of the game, so here’s a sample session report of our last go-round. We had tried, unsuccessfully, two previous missions as pirates, but our puny Level 1 characters didn’t have much of a chance. So we decided to join the Federation and do some contract work. After gaining some levels and upgrading our ship, we plan to return to a life of plunder. This was our first such mission:

A federation spy was flying way undercover with a pirate syndicate. The Federation received intel that the spy’s position had been compromised. We needed to perform an extraction before the enemy ship reached its headquarters. Simple, eh? Yeah, right.

We set a course orbiting a seemingly deserted planet, while sending out a distress call. Sure enough, the brigands warped into our sector. They immediately sent a message demanding our unconditional surrender, and fired a lucky cannon shot to make their point. This was somewhat more heat that we had expected so soon. They lobbed a missile to try to soften us up some more, but we were able to electronically scramble it (ECM) and then harmlessly destroy it. By this time, we were on the dark side of the planet, and breathing hard. We realized that our slow speed was making us a sitting duck, so we prepared to accelerate as soon as we had completed this orbit.

In the meantime, we had received communications from the enemy ship, via the secret agent. He sent along a schematic of the enemy vessel and info about the crew. He also managed to trash their teleporter and damage other modules. As we accelerated away from the planet (lobbing a missile of our own) we received a final communiqué. He was jumping ship. On the next turn, six spacesuits were simultaneously ejected from the craft. Only one of them had a passenger. As we exchanged fire with the pirates, our scientist probed the suits for signs of life. Finally, we identified the correct suit and set a looping course to intercept.

The rule for picking up a space walker is that the ship must have a speed of zero and occupy the same hex. The slower you go, the easier you are to hit. So we were getting pummeled by the other ship as we attempted this maneuver. But we were also giving as good as we got. It was their cannons that caused most of our distress, since our scientist was a specialist at remotely detonating enemy missiles. But then, as we were two hexes away from our quarry, the scientist rolled a successful ECM against a missile. The GM informed us that the missile failed to explode.

A few beats later, comprehension dawned on the faces of the crew. It was a boarding missile, which is a piloted, two-person vessel. It crashed through an engine room, and an enemy marine and engineer emerged. The engineer immediately began hacking into our ship’s systems, but quickly became a smoldering pile of chitin. Oh, wait…I forgot to mention the races.

My character, and the ship’s pilot, are both Tentacs. This is a race of highly tentacled beings who have a decent move rate, and great endurance, but cannot wear armor. The ship’s engineer is of a fungoid race known as Whistlers. His movement is enhanced by the ability to “puff”, or soar a short distance as part of his movement. The ship’s scientist is a Zoallian, which are roach-like creatures that have a natural armor bonus. The invading pirates were Zoallians. There are also silicoid creatures, cat-like creatures, and, of course, humans.

The invading roach backed away from our defense squad, destroying the engine compartment as he did. When a module (such as an engine) is badly damaged, or slagged, there is a movement penalty within the module. There is also a penalty to all skill rolls while in the module. Our ship is shaped like a donut, so we were faced with the choice of either following the marine through a path of destruction or doubling around to cut him off. We went with plan B.

Meanwhile, the success of the mission was in jeopardy. We continued to slow to zero while taking shots from the enemy ship. Finally, we were at zero and sitting on the same hex as the double agent. The enemy ship had overtaken us and was on the same hex, as well. Why they didn’t attempt to ram us, I don’t know. We had two missiles trailing the ship, and their scientist couldn’t keep both of them off, so there was a strike. The GM performed a hull check, and failed badly. The enemy ship exploded right over our heads.

Our mission was to safely return the agent. Failing to do so would be, well, failure. Conditions for an Overwhelming victory involved killing all of the enemy and destroying their ship, as well. The GM rolled for damage…6d6. The result was 14. The spy survived, but was quite unconscious. Our ship took damage, and we did a hull check. It failed. However, each player has a certain number of Luck points at the start of each mission, each of which allows a reroll of one die. We survived on luck. There was only the pesky marine to deal with.

That little bastard had managed to slag all three of our engines. With no engine power, we couldn’t pick up the spy. Our engineer went into action, repairing the nearest engine and pumping for power. We got enough to scoop up the spy, and our scientist set about healing him. Meanwhile, the pilot and I were bearing down on the roach. I hit him once, but then my dice got all crappy on me. So I did my duty and blocked the way into the only operating engine room and let him rip me up. The pilot did the same, and so we kept him occupied for a few turns. We had the advantage of being in an operational module while he was backed into a slagged module.

Eventually, the spy had recovered enough to come running, with the scientist and his MediKit in tow. The spy had a much nicer weapon than any of us…the same weapon that the roach was using to fire indiscriminately into the wall of our ship. I guess he'd figured out what that big explosion was. The spy roasted him, and we all collapsed in relief. Well, all except me and the pilot, who were already sprawled on the floor with life-threatening injuries.

Upon our glorious return, we received a bunch of credits, serious experience that we used to level up, and we went shopping. We each requisitioned new modules for the ship, and then bought items that would likely help out our respective professions. I got a scope that I can put on the particle rifle that I found on the marine roach. I also got a few different types of grenades and satchel charges. Safe to say, I can’t wait to try out my shiny, new tools of destruction!