Diaspora is © VSCA Publishing

The referee can decide that a task cannot fail if the character takes all the time in the world to finish it. In that case, negative shift does not signify failure but additional time needed, by moving down from the base time set accoring to the rolled result.

When you want an action to succeed but have the degree of success (or failure) determine how long it took, the referee should set the difficulty and the base time needed to resolve (picked from the Time Track in the sidebar). Each shift generated moves up the track one line. Negative shifts move down the track one line for each shift.

At any time a player can pay a fate point and declare a true fact about the world as pertains to the character’s apex Skill. The referee can return the fate point and modify the fact but cannot simply deny it altogether.

Spin can be spent by the defender or any ally, and must be used before the end of the defender’s next turn. Defenses that can harm the attacker (such as defending against Electronic Warfare in space combat) do not generate spin because they already have an effect beyond successful defense.

Each number above the target value is called a shift. Hitting the target number exactly is a success, but generates no shifts. When an attacker fails by three or more (negative three shifts), the defender gets spin.

It can be handy to throw some kind of token on the table to indicate spin and let anyone pick it up. Index cards with the generator's name on it greatly aid remembering when it expires.

Spin can be used by you or an ally to gain +1 on a roll – basically your defensive maneuver put your opponent at a disadvantage or one of your allies at an advantage somehow. You need to use up spin by the time the turn comes back to whoever generated it – he's the last person that can take advantage.

The degree to which you beat your target value is your shift . Shifts may have a mechanic effect. In combat, for example, shifts determine the amount of damage done. If you exceed your opponent when you make a defensive roll that does not have any effect other than being a successful defense, you don't get shifts. Instead, for every three by which you exceed the attacking roll, you generate spin .

Zero shifts is a success. Rolls that use shifts for effects do not generate effects with zero shifts. These may be useless successes.

An opposed roll is 4dF + Skill compared against an opponent's 4dF + Skill. Attacker and defender may use different skills. The result is the number of shifts obtained.

You want to beat someone else at something. The defender rolls defensively and you need to meet or beat that roll offensively. Use fate points as before to increase your result. Your opponent may well do the same.

The result is the number of shifts obtained. Zero shifts is a success. Rolls that use shifts for effects do not generate effects with zero shifts. These may be useless successes.

A fixed difficulty roll is made with 4dF + Skill against a target value established by the referee based on the estimation of the task's difficulty (the Ladder may be a useful tool here).

The referee sets a difficulty level and tells you what skill you need to use. You throw your fate dice, add them to your skill and if it's equal to or greater than the difficulty, you succeed. If you fail or want to improve your result, you can invoke an Aspect and spend a fate point for +2 or a re-roll. If you still are not satisfied with the result, you can try to bring in another Aspect. And so on.

Players may use any spin accumulated by them or an ally to gain +1 on their roll. Any number of spin points may be used towards a given roll.

Players may tag as many free-taggable Aspects as they like that exist on their opponent and gain +2 on their opponent for each.

Players may invoke an Aspect of theirs, narrating how it relates to the situation, pay a fate point, and gain either +2 on their roll or the right to re-roll. They may tag an Aspect on their opponent, narrating how it relates to the situation, pay a fate point, and gain +2 on their roll.

Once compels have been resolved, any actions that can be taken will be resolved. This usually means that dice are rolled and a Skill value added.

The referee, however, can compel at any time, in or out of combat, and the effects of the compel are not constrained. That is, the referee can offer pretty much anything as a compel, as long as it ties in to the Aspect well.

Any player can compel the acting player’s character. If someone does, he offers a story based on one of the acting player character’s Aspects and presents a fate point. If the acting player accepts, he receives the fate point and complies with the compeller, forfeiting his action. If he denies he must pay the compeller a fate point. During combat, the compeller can demand only one of two things: inaction or forced movement. The mechanical specifics of these is described in each combat mini-game.

First, the acting player declares his intended action and, if there is one, its target. Next, the player managing the order of events (usually the referee) asks for compels.

Place an Aspect on an opponent or a scene with a Skill check (static or opposed, as determined by the referee). If successful, the target now has the Aspect. This Aspect can be tagged once for free and thereafter for a fate point.

Having an Aspect of your choosing placed on an enemy is pretty powerful all by itself, but there is an additional power: an Aspect placed as a result of a maneuver can be tagged without paying a fate point once by the maneuverer or an ally (it is free-taggable). It can be tagged normally subsequently as long as the Aspect lasts, but the first time (and only the first time) is free.

A maneuver is an action your character takes that will change the status of something and this status change will be represented by the addition of an Aspect. The referee will decide what to roll (either a Fixed Difficulty Roll or an Opposed Roll – see the Resolution section) and on success the target acquires an appropriate Aspect.

Aspects reveal something about the character that the character may not even be aware of. Similarly, an Aspect might be a physical object (an heirloom weapon, or a spaceship). In making that choice, the player is telling the referee that this object is part of the character identity. It won't be taken away, but it will also confer obligations and responsibilities, so that it too is an active part of the economy.

Not all aspects can work that way, and it may emerge in play that some aspects do not enter into the fate point economy at all. They are the ones which can be traded out through the experience process.

A well-worded Aspect can be both revealing of the character's nature, and be obviously invokable for both benefit and detriment.

Aspects are the catalysts for the economies of fate points. They need to be worded in a way that you can invoke them on yourself (for when a bonus to a roll is needed), but—more importantly—they need to invite compels from the referee. Otherwise you lose your fate points too quickly and there is no obvious source for replenishment.

In addition, any number of free-taggable Aspects from any scope may be tagged and don’t count against your tagging limit (that is, you can tag two free-taggables at zone scope and still tag a third if there is one for the usual fate point cost).

There are a number of ways that aspects come into being, and a number of ways they can be used during conflict (whether that's just a skill check during regular role-play or a specific roll in a combat sequence).

All characters and some things will have Aspects. These short phrases indicate what is important about the character. Scenes might have Aspects, maps might have Aspects, systems, worlds, and cities might all have Aspects. Give a thing an Aspect when you want it to have a feature but don't need a specific rule mechanism to govern how that feature operates. Instead you are declaring that something is important and leave it to players to determine how to make it important.

Fate points use other qualities of a character to create in-game effects; that is why the precise wording of an aspect can be so important. The natural instinct for players is to hoard fate points, and save them for a big flourish at the end. But there are rewards to be had in keeping the flow of fate points relatively constant. Maybe not for every roll, but regularly, fate points should be spent by players, or should be offered by the referee, to create a sense of them as units of trade, as a genuine economy, that creates an ebb and flow throughout the session.

Fueling almost all interactions in Diaspora is the fate point economy. Characters have fate points, as do ships, and the referee has an unending supply. Even if a given interaction doesn't actually lead to an exchange of fate points, the possibility that it might do so inevitably affects player choices. Fate points are limited, and as a scarce resource, players will be looking to spend them carefully, and collect them zealously. If a player wants something to happen and the dice have said no, then fate points provide a mechanism for the player to create success.

While higher numbers are possible (through the invocation of Aspects, described below), most numbers in the game, when all things are considered, are single digits. If one is looking for appropriate adjectives to describe an action, it is often the difference between two rolls that might determine the quality of success. So, in an opposed roll (described below, in which a player roll is compared against a referee roll) results of 7 against 5 represent a decent success.

The words only applicable directly when a single character acts. Since an apex Skill is at level 5 (as we will see in character generation) and since the best result from a roll of the dice is +4, a result of +9 represents an exceptionally successful attempt at something by a dedicated professional.

In FATE, successes and difficulties are rated by numbers or by the terms on the Ladder. Our Ladder here is slightly different from the Spirit of the Century Ladder, in that the term Fair is replaced by Decent.

Abstraction facilitates narration, because it allows the players to define constraints or accomplishments for themselves. Narration feeds into the rules, which then in turn provide opportunities for the interpretation of a given roll, in the form of more narration. It's all about the stories.

Second, there is a continual back and forth between these two levels, and narration, from the players and from the referee, becomes essential. A player narrates what he wants to happen, which may lead to an out-of-character tabulation of whether a roll is needed and what the target number might be. Dice are rolled, and the result leads to more narration (from the successful player, from the referee, or from the table generally) giving an interpretation of the roll within the game.

First, the referee keeps very little mechanical information secret. Mechanical details, such as aspects and skills, are not hidden from the players (unless there is a game-based reason why that might be). Players are always maintaining a double awareness at all times, and the tension between player and character is something that the FATE system exploits powerfully.

Player authority and character integrity are both important. Because of the fate point economy, it will often be the case that the player wants something to happen that the character would not. Two things follow from this.

In place of hard rules, what Diaspora rewards is narration: narration from the players, and from the referee. Giving details of what you want to happen within the game is as important as working out what roll on the dice is needed for success. Both, of course, will happen. The talk around the table will always be a mix of in-game-character-based narration and out-of-character rules discussion. There are no necessary mechanical consequences of narration in the game, but it may still prove to be the most memorable of the session.

We grant equal weight (though your table may choose otherwise) to all players throughout the first session. Cluster, world, and character creation are all egalitarian pursuits.

We also talk frequently about the table. The table is the sum of the players, the referee included, with all opinions weighed equally. The table is the consensus, and it is more important than any single player's authority, including the referee's.

Alternatives to yes exist that are not no. One popular one is, yes, but …: In this case the referee agrees but adds a complication. If everyone is grinning and nodding, the referee has succeeded. Another is yes, and …: Here the referee agrees and escalates the player's idea even further.

The guiding principle is say yes or roll the dice. When a player has an idea about what he wants to happen, it can often be the case that what he wants doesn't mesh with what the referee wanted. Look at the idea, ignore your plans, and either say yes or set a difficulty and make them roll to see what happens.

Diaspora is not a game in which the players drive the action without the input from the referee, who only establishes the setting and mediates the rules. But many of the ways players can use their characters' skills give the player some power over narration.

Diaspora is a set of mini-games. Each of these use fate dice, Aspects, and other elements from the FATE system but the may have other distinctions. These mini-games are:

The system will work with a different probability curve by rolling two different coloured six-sided dice and subtracting the darker from the lighter. Treating the -5 and 5 results as zero keeps the expected range though with better chances for extreme results.

Almost every roll in Diaspora is 4dF: a single roll of four Fudge dice, yielding a range from -4 to +4. A Fudge die is a d6, with two faces marked -, two faces marked +, and two faces blank. You add up the +s, subtract the -s, and you have a total. Without special dice, you could treat 1-2 as -, 3-4 as blank, and 5-6 as +; this is functionally the same as rolling 4d3-8. This yields a particular curve, around which the game is built.

You roll your set of four fudge dice, which yields a result between -4 and +4, you add an appropriate skill, and then you compare against some difficulty level, which might be someone else's roll or might be a level imposed by the referee.

All conflicts in Diaspora are resolved using the FATE mechanics as elaborated in Spirit of the Century and available from the System Reference Document for that game, available on the Internet .

Diaspora is a role-playing game with a focus on hard(ish) science-fiction adventure. You build a universe, you build characters, and then you play with them in it.

That’s your cluster! It will have natural hubs and relationships between systems with positive and negative resources. Each world is connected by one to five links to other systems. Next we will discover which worlds can exploit these links and which will have to pay to engage in interstellar trade.

Continue for each system until all systems are connected. The second to last system never needs a roll – it will always connect only to its next neighbour.

You have already created some number of Worlds, so now we're going to determine how they are connected. The Caller will draw a line of Systems, using the initial letter of each system name to identify it.

You can re-use your clusters as often as you like—there is room in any one of them for more than one campaign—but they are small enough that it’s simple to build a new one every time you make characters if you prefer.

Slipstream points (slipknots) are located at a distance roughly 5 AU (astronomical units) above and below the barycenter, which is the point around which all bodies in the system revolve. How close you need to be to this point is determined by the technology level of your slip system—a small device, but capable of translating the ship across unknown distances pre-determined by hidden geometries of our universe.

In Diaspora, systems are separated by unknown volumes of space—their positions in the universe are so diverse as to be likely unknown and possibly unknowable. And yet they are connected into a tight cluster of only a few stars by some currently inexplicable laws of physics. These connections, the slipstreams, take only an instant to traverse, but in that instant vast quantities of heat accumulate and must be dissipated upon arrival.

Attributes are generated by a roll of the dice (4dF): the typical world will therefore be T0 E0 R0, or a system with a sustainable garden world which is actively exploring space.

Typically a system consists of a star and some attendant planetary bodies. It could be a as familiar as a yellow star with eight worlds, one of which is habitable, or as exotic as an artificial quintet of neutron stars and a vast field of rubble a thousand million miles away. These things are for you to determine. They are what you invent to make sense of the statistics.

Each system represents some place in space where humans might reside. A place where two slipknots exist—those mysterious points in space that allow limited faster-than-light travel. Nothing else is written in stone—a system can be completely empty but for the slipknots, and that’s got to have a story.

Systems will be described by their statistics, and their Aspects. Details can be elaborated through narrative, but will have no mechanical effect in the game unless accompanied by Aspects.

The first step in creating a cluster is to create the set of systems that will belong in it. The caller shall assign each player, including himself, one or two systems. The total number of systems usually is between six and ten.

You will then link these systems into a structure called the cluster, which will show which systems are connected to which other systems by slipstreams. Faster-than-light travel between stars only occur along these paths. Once this geometry is established, it can be useful to go back to the systems and write a little more—how do the various surpluses and deficiencies affect traffic on the slipstreams? Who supplies slip ships? Who competes?

You will create a handful of systems and find out what they are like, filling in details with your own stories as you make sense of the system statistics.

Designate someone as caller. This person will guide the group through the application of the rules and perhaps take notes on the results, even though the caller’s creative input need not be any greater than that of any other player.

The first session of a Diaspora campaign is used to create the setting and the characters. At the time of this first session it is not necessary to have a referee (what some games call the Game Master or GM). Everyone can have complete narrative authority over the pieces they will create.

Similarly, an energy weapon might have a biometric check associated with it, allowing only the owning player to use it (this would be similar to making the weapon integral). Something like this might be hard to find, and it may be illegal, but it does not require a special Skill or Stunt to use.

Creativity can be rewarded, especially when the benefits come at the level of role-playing, rather than at the level of the specific combat sub-games. A highly advanced knife might not do any more damage, but perhaps is made of a memory plastic—when inactive, it is a simple cylinder of plastic but becomes activated by smacking it against a hard surface, and the cylinder deforms to become a hard, sharp, combat blade.

Many people will want the highest technology gear for their characters, and it is worth keeping track of the technology rating of anything purchased, if only because that can possibly serve as an Aspect at moments of crisis. Nevertheless, things do not stay at the same quality once they are invented, and a T3 hand computer will be far superior to a T0 one.

Nothing guarantees the continued presence of the equipment, unless there is also an Stunt to cover it.

Some Skills imply access to some kinds of equipment. Below are a list of associations that one can afford to take for granted, though, unless the equipment is represented by a “Have a thing” Stunt, it’s not guaranteed to always be with the character—it can be lost or destroyed. This list can be extended, according to the decision of the table: the standard is whatever’s reasonable.

Rather than itemizing in a list, starting gear is assumed based on the Skills players select for their characters; quality of gear might also be affected by the Skill level: a character with EVA 1 might have an old T1 suit worn by her father; a character with EVA 4 might have a sleek T3 suit, custom fitted.

The referee cannot take away equipment specified as a Stunt from a player’s character unless the player agrees and the Stunt is changed. This does not imply that an owned spacecraft (through a Stunt) cannot be Taken Out in combat, but rather that Taken Out cannot mean total loss of the craft with no chance of repair or replacement, unless the owning player agrees.

Characters should be considered to start with whatever equipment is relevant to their Skills and any trivial equipment should be present if needed unless lacking the item advances the plot. The only equipment that is guaranteed to be with the character when they need it is equipment that is represented by a “Have a thing” Stunt.

Stunts like Military-grade that can have a player-defined effect are approved under the authority of the table—that is, they are acceptable when there is consensus from all players.

Note: Using a “Take a bonus” Stunt in space combat counts as the character’s action for that phase, and risks incurring Skill penalties for further actions later in the turn.

allies can use a Skill of at least level 3 to receive a +1 bonus to a roll, as specified. When there are restrictions, the effects may operate at the scale of space or platoon combat, subject to the approval of the referee.

The character has an important thing at his disposal. This might be a spaceship, property, or something else. Note that this does not help with monthly maintenance costs, and so a character with this Stunt who has taken a slipship may be assuming obligations he otherwise wouldn’t face.

For other Skills the player may have to invent the effect. The precise effects of a military-grade Stunt can vary from game to game and from character to character.

Apply to one Skill. Military-grade (MG for short) provides a qualitative difference to its Skill: it allows you to make rolls in circumstances where you would not be able to otherwise. For weapons and armour, the character can now use and have access to non-civilian weapons. For space Skills, the effect varies by system; see Space Combat .

There are four well-defined categories of stunts: military-grade, have a thing, skill substitution, and alter a track. There is also room to build your own stunts without reference to these categories, which we call “free-form” stunts.

Each character also selects three Stunts, from a list of general Stunt types. Players are expected to define what exactly their Stunt does based on the general rule for the type of Stunt they have selected.

At any time in a fight of any kind, if you have not been Taken Out, you can offer a concession. Referees especially like this to keep villains alive for another day. A concession is something you offer to end the combat instead of play it through. If your opponent accepts it, it’s true. Good concessions give something up but keep you in play. Things like, “I tell him the combination to the safe but sneak out while he’s not looking, escaping back to my safe house” or “Our ship escapes through the slipknot but our motors are not working so we’re stranded on the other side” are great.

When you take a hit that would go off your stress track, you are Taken Out. Whoever scored that fatal hit gets to decide what happens to you. You could be dead or you could just be unconscious. Or, with a financial hit, you could be slaving away in a burger joint with no prospects of happiness or promotion.

Any time you are taking hits to a stress track, you can reduce the number of hits with Consequences. A mild Consequence reduces the incoming hits (usually shifts) by one, a moderate Consequence reduces them by two, and a severe Consequence reduces by four. Normally you can have at most three Consequences and no more than one of each kind. Each Consequence is a kind of Aspect and represents real damage: “Shattered jaw” or “Hopelessly depressed” or “Hunted by loan sharks” are all good. Each is free-taggable by your enemies once. Consequences are discussed in more detail in each combat chapter.

The Wealth stress track takes hits when a character fails a Wealth check when buying something or assisting with monthly ship maintenance. It follows all the same rules as the other stress tracks do, though recovery can take longer.

The Wealth stress track represents how close you are to having real financial trouble. It does not represent actual debt or financial ruin but rather how close you are to feeling the ramifications of debt. The Wealth stress track is modified by Assets.

The Composure stress track takes hits when a character loses a social combat check and sometimes when under fire in combat. As with Health, it’s not an effective hit until a Consequence is applied.

The Composure stress track represents how close you are to mental breakdown. It does not represent the degree of actual breakdown. The Composure stress track is modified by Resolve.

The Health stress track takes hits when a character loses a combat check—he takes a bullet, gets burned by a laser, is cut by a knife, or is punched in the eye. It’s not an effective injury unless it causes a Consequence—there is no mechanical effect to having a box filled in a track. It’s when boxes you don’t have get filled that you have trouble.

The Health stress track represents how close you are to sustaining an injury that will affect your performance and require time to recover from. It does not represent actual injury. The Health stress track is modified by Stamina.

Tracks start out with three boxes in them, which represents a character untrained in the relevant Skill. If the relevant Skill is 1 or 2, the track is 4 boxes; if it is 3 or 4, the track is 5 boxes; if it is 5, the track has 6 boxes.

Every character has three stress tracks: Health, Composure, and Wealth. Each has a relevant Skill that can modify the number of boxes in the track. Some Stunts can modify the number of boxes as well. The Health track is associated with the Stamina Skill. Composure is associated with Resolve. Wealth is associated with Assets.

Characters may, however, select “archaic weaponry” instead of a system in the cluster to gain familiarity in historical styles of fighting (T-4 to the highest C/T tech value) or may choose “precollapse weaponry” to gain proficiency with high tech weapons (from the lowest C/T tech value to T4). Players should note on their character sheets the tech range of weapons their characters are familiar with.

All Close Combat weapons, Slug Throwers, and Energy Weapons have a technology rating, which reflects their capabilities. Characters are skilled in all weapons for the technology ratings in the range between the highest tech and lowest tech world for which they have Culture/Tech (C/T) familiarity. A character who has C/T for two T2 worlds can only use T2 weapons and Brawling weapons with their combat skills; all other weapons are considered untrained (skill -1). A character with C/T for a T-1 world and a T1 world can use T-1, T0, and T1 weapons as trained.

Most characters will want at least one combat Skill and one space Skill, or will have a good story for why they do not.

An attempt to use any Skill that is not in the character’s Skill pyramid does so at an effective Skill level of –1.

There are many Skills from which characters can choose, most of which represents a specific area of learned knowledge. Each Skill is presented with a brief overview, and some idea of what a character choosing this Skill as their apex might be. In each case, though, the precise range of a given Skill’s effect is to be determined by the referee in consultation with the table.

One approach for new players is to choose an apex Skill first—what the character does best. Stunts may follow from that. Finally, the size of the various hit tracks is calculated. This process might take another 20-30 minutes perhaps, yielding completed characters.

Selected Skills should be logically consistent with the character’s background material as elaborated in the Aspects phases but there are no hard and fast rules for selection. Skills are selected so that they are appropriate for the characters about whom we’ve now learned quite a lot (with even more existing in the players’ imaginations). Players will also select three Stunts (see below). Some players may prefer to select their Stunts before their Skills, or at the same time. This process may require some revision of Aspects or some redefinition of character direction.

Players select 15 skills for their character and rank them in the pyramid : one at level 5, two at 4, three at 3, four at 2, and five at 1.

Going through the five phases for four characters might take 45-60 minutes, including reading aloud the gradual development of the characters after each phase.

Aspects derive from the character’s background. Skills and Stunts are selected after the background is constructed. Stress tracks have a basic rating modified by some Skills and Stunts.

Character creation is ideally done as part of the first session: characters develop naturally out of the system development, and the process of making characters in turn elaborates crucial details about the cluster. Characters are composed of four mechanical elements: their Aspects, their Skills, their Stunts, and their stress tracks (Health, Composure, and Wealth).

Second, and perhaps more importantly, it creates the opportunity for players to change roles as the campaign progresses—if a player has a story in mind and an urge to referee a game to trigger it, it’s a great deal of fun if the prior referee can grab his character and join a new game in a familiar story line.

First, when there are more than three characters being created there are characters who do not necessarily know each other except as a “friend of a friend” and this is cool.

Creating a character uses a process that creates significant interaction in each others’ backgrounds. No Diaspora game begins, “You all meet in a space bar,”—how all the characters know each other and even what dirty secrets they share will all be considered as part of character creation. By this stage you may already have selected a referee from your group to run the game. That’s cool and natural. Resist, however, the temptation for the referee to not make a character. There are several rewards to the inclusion of the referee in this process.

The Sequence outlines the order of combat, and is presented both in outline and with detailed explanations. Wherever relevant, a list of equipment is provided: guns and armour in the chapter on personal combat, typical units for platoon combat, and ships in the chapter on space combat.

The rules for each of the sub-systems have at least the following parts: the map, the Sequence, and detail of the Sequence. The map describes the terrain in which combat is fought. In all sub-systems, it is abstracted, like so much of Diaspora, to allow a rough-and-ready feel without a great deal of preparation.

But the point is, the resolution must come into the context of one of the mini-games: there is no interface. Bombarding a planet might add the Aspect Ruthless killer on a ship in the context of space combat, but the planetside effects, if pertinent, would need to be determined in the context of personal combat. If during social combat someone starts firing an assault rifle, the social combat is deemed unsuccessful, and a new map is drawn for the personal combat. Any strict mechanical linkage between Skills and stats of one system and Skills and stats of the other system will be intrinsically broken, though, so don’t do it.

It might, however, be done to add the Aspect Weakened Hull to the zone in the context of personal combat. A spacecraft firing a shipboard weapon at people on the planet’s surface does not do Health damage, but it might place the Aspect Under bombardment on the zone in the context of personal combat, or it might be the equivalent of an area-effect grenade going off (or more).

There is no strict mechanical interaction between stats in one mini game and stats in the other. Any interaction is part of the table process of negotiation for effect common to all the combat systems. So, shooting your laser (a personal combat weapon) at the hull of a spaceship does not cause hull damage (a space combat statistic) to the spaceship.

There are four “scales” to combat in Diaspora: personal combat, space combat, social combat, and platoon combat. This demands that we address the issue of the interface between them: what happens when a guy shoots a spaceship? Or the reverse?

You can skip any or all of these subsystems. If combat mini-games don’t interest you, the core mechanisms of FATE are certainly sufficient to resolve issues, whether gunfire is involved or not.

In Diaspora we are interested in dealing with various forms of combat as more detailed structures than a simple roll of the dice, because combat games are fun. As an adjunct to this, we want the combat games to stand on their own—you should be able to make up guys and run a big fight with no role-playing context and no referee. So the primary combat mini-games of Diaspora—personal combat, social combat, platoon combat, and space combat—can be played with or without the context of the role-playing game.

Sometimes player characters are not in contact with their ship for extended periods. In this case, where the characters are not conducting ship’s business but are also not using the ship for anything, don’t go making a lot of maintenance rolls. Instead assume that the ship has been properly mothballed or leased or is otherwise taking care of itself. Make a single maintenance roll and call it a day. No one wants to roll twelve times in a row when a character with any common sense would have considered the storage and care of his prized possession. Assume the characters are smart and resourceful, especially when it’s not fun or interesting to do otherwise.

Any ship with a Trade value of 2 should be able to stay solvent in the normal course of things. Once one roll is missed, however, the consequences of debt accumulate rapidly which can put huge (fun) pressures on the players.

Further, if a ship has been engaged in some adventure other than the pedestrian trading of cargo from one system or another (or however it is a ship usually earns its keep), that adventure may yield value that can be put towards the maintenance roll, at the discretion of the referee. He should allow some fraction of (part of, all of, or possibly more than) the ship’s Trade rating to be rolled for maintenance this period even though no trade as such was accomplished.

Ships may elect to spend their time speculating, which introduces the potential for greater gains (and greater losses!). The effects of speculative cargo may have a positive or negative value: roll the dice, and apply –2 to the Trade roll if the result is negative, no effect if zero, or +2 to the roll if the result is positive.

If the ship is on a subsidized trade route (limiting the choice of planetfall for the characters, and requiring a schedule to be kept, as determined by the referee), or if it is trafficking in illegal cargo (opening many potential hazards in the event of a failure) the Trade roll gains +2. Only one of these benefits may be claimed.

The following modifiers may be added to increase the choices players can make about the trade their ship conducts, at the discretion of the referee (or the table, as appropriate). Use these when the focussing on trade, otherwise they are not necessary and can be skipped.

On a successful Trade roll, crew members may use any shifts to clear their Wealth stress track hits. The crew will have to negotiate who gets to use how many shifts, if that proves an issue. Each shift may be used to remove one hit anywhere on one character’s Wealth track, at the decision of the owning player (or as negotiated by the table). Shifts from a Trade roll cannot be used to clear Wealth Consequences.

A failure might also be mitigated by a character’s credit check—-the target value is the amount by which the cargo roll was missed.

Failure also negatively impacts the owner (whoever has the ship as a Stunt or who holds the title if it was bought during play). On failing a ship maintenance roll, the owner takes a hit to his Wealth stress track according to the degree of failure. This may have its own Consequences.

Failure on the roll must be mitigated by Consequences on the ship just as combat damage is, but, since there is no “track” for this damage, it always gets a Consequence on a failed roll, which is repaired as any other damage Consequence. That Consequence will be mild. If a mild Consequence is already on the vessel, then a moderate Consequence is taken. If a mild and moderate Consequence are already on the vessel then a severe Consequence is taken. If the vessel already has three Consequences, then it is Taken Out: inability to accept a financial Consequence means the ship is repossessed (or at least marked for repossession), or suffers some similar fate.

Success indicates that the ship remains solvent: crew is paid, fuel is fresh, docking fees and local taxes are paid, minor repairs are made, and a percentage is kept for annual maintenance. This abstract system does not measure any huge profits: it is assumed that running spacecraft is not going to yield huge personal profits. The ongoing use of the ship is, essentially, the reward (again, unless the player chooses to model profits by raising his Assets skill).

Only ship Aspects may be used to modify the roll, and they use ship fate points. This assumes the ship is working full-time to maximize legal cargo or passengers, etc., but still allows two periods of three days per month on planets for shore leave (adventure!). It does not imply anything about how much time it takes to ply the space lanes—presumably the combination of V-shift and Trade value on the ship describe how it makes its money. It does imply that all or most of the flight time is devoted to the ship’s commercial purpose. If the ship has spent more than travel time to and from a slipknot doing something other than servicing their commercial purpose, add 2.

The ship needs to roll it’s Trade Skill against a target value of zero, the target value modified as below:

If a player has a full Wealth track and a ship, to remove the Wealth stress he needs a month of down time, but still needs to roll on the ship maintenance. This could easily turn into a downward spiral as a month downtime could require another month downtime….

Every session, the first time a spacecraft is at a station equipped to perform maintenance, a maintenance check is made. Every month of downtime that passes during the session, another maintenance check must be made. This includes downtime that occurs in order to make repairs.

These rules are intended to integrate specifically with spacecraft economic issues and model a simple cargo ship at least breaking even in regular service; similar rules should be used for any item with a base Cost of 6 or more that a player may own. Treat equipment with the Cheap stunt as two levels of Cost higher than its base Cost. Cheap is never cheap in the long run.

Some things you have need regular maintenance, and certainly a spacecraft is one of those things. Some resource is being expended and we want to model that in a way that creates pressure.

No other advantage is conferred from selling something: as the Assets Skill is a character Skill and changes according to the experience rules and in accordance with the player’s wishes (and is balanced with other Skills), characters cannot become “rich” in any mechanical sense except through juggling Skills during the refresh. The Assets Skill, like all game statistics, are effects and not causes: causes emerge only through narration justifying the effects, as with everything else. This means that when your spacecraft has become a crippling burden, making you a combat liability because you are carrying around so many Consequences, selling it has only one effect: clearing your stress.

If a character sells an item that is owned from a Stunt, then all financial effects are cleared, but you lose the Stunt (at the end of the session, a new Stunt is selected, as per the Experience rules; the Stunt selected must reflect the new conditions and the narrative).

When you sell something, you clear the checked Wealth stress track boxes up to the Cost of the item, less one (less two if the object is stolen or otherwise compromised). Selling many small items cannot remove the extremes of financial stress, but can provide “breathing room” on the track. Consequences can also be cleared by selling things. In addition to removing stress hits, selling a Cost 4 item will remove a mild Consequence, a Cost 5 item removes a moderate Consequence, and a Cost 6 item a severe Consequence. This assumes there is a plausible buyer, reasonable title to the object is held, etc.

Note that time spent clearing Wealth stress effects still triggers maintenance checks, except now you aren’t running the ship either. If you want a ship with no trade value, you better have a bankroll to fund it.

A severe Consequence can be cleared by anyone (including the character) with an Assets check against difficulty four as soon as all Wealth stress is cleared. It is automatically cleared if it is carried through a complete session with a clear Wealth stress track.

A moderate Consequence can be cleared by anyone (including the character) with an Assets check against difficulty one as soon as all Wealth stress is cleared. It is automatically cleared if it is carried through a complete session with a clear Wealth stress track.

Wealth stress hits must be carried for one complete session. At the end of the first session in which no new Wealth stress or Consequences have been acquired, erase all Wealth stress.

Wealth stress track hits don’t go away as easily as other stress. The “combat” of finance is an ongoing issue and characters are never very far from it. Consequently, recovery requires time explicitly spent recovering finances. It only requires that the downtime exists.

If an item falls between two Cost points, the higher number is used. Specific prices and currency are dependent on the system or cluster, of course, but each additional Cost point should represent substantially increased expense. For any character with an Assets Skill, a roll for Cost 1 items should only be required if the result is potentially interesting for the narrative: if failure is boring, items should simply be granted.

The cost of things is determined by the referee: while the economics of a given system will depend on the overall cluster, the table above is offered to give approximate price-points.

When making purchases, the character whose Assets Skill is being rolled (and whose Wealth track is at risk) may invoke a single Aspect (free-taggable or otherwise), and may receive no other help.

As Assets is, unlike all other Skills, tied to something fairly concrete, free-tagging multiple Aspects set up by maneuvers simply doesn’t work—or rather it works too well: three characters without a nickel can each perform a maneuver to place a free-taggable Aspect on the situation (or vendor or whatever) and then a character with, say, Assets 5 could tag all three for an extra +6 bonus and buy a star system. Since that’s not what we want out of the economic system, in this case only free tags may not be stacked. Purchases are a personal affair.

Cost is finally modified by the difference between the ship technology and the system technology where it is being purchased.

If a character does not start with a ship as a Stunt, they may choose to pay for one. This may represent outright ownership or an extended lease. Initial ship cost (separate from regular payments) is 8, modified as follows: -2 if the ship has the Civilian Stunt; -1 if it has the Cheap Stunt.

Purchasing an item is a Assets Skill check against the Cost of the item. Regardless of success or failure, the character gets the item. A failure does generate a hit on his Wealth stress track equal to the number of negative shifts: mark that box and all the character’s boxes below it. If the box is already marked, then mark the next higher available box and all below it. As always, a character can take a Consequence to reduce or remove the number of shifts. The Wealth stress track accrues hits and is mitigated by Consequences (which again come out of your precious three) and could lead to being Taken Out (in this case smothered by debt, working as a fry-cook forever, or dodging loan sharks).

All items have a Cost attribute, whether they are spacecraft or candy bars. Some big items (mainly spacecraft) also require regular maintenance checks. The Cost attribute is an exponential scale that represents the difficulty a character might have in scraping up the funds (whether cash on hand, selling stocks, or acquiring loans) to get the item. And spacecraft require constant upkeep; owning a ship (through a Stunt, and perhaps supported by an Aspect) does not confer the resources needed to maintain it. This is modeled on a required roll each session.

Wealth in Diaspora is a player choice. It’s not a reward granted by the referee to player characters but is instead integral to the character each player has intended. As such, there’s no economic mini-game that players can play to get their characters rich. You want to be rich? Make Assets your apex Skill. Want to model getting rich? Use the advancement system to shift Assets up your pyramid until it’s your peak stat. Players are in complete control of this. But we still want to model the fact that characters are not in control of it. Sometimes they can afford something and sometimes they can’t. And sometimes they buy it anyway.

If you arrive in the middle of a firefight with a free-taggable Aspect and a full Heat track, you are probably screwed and soon to be Taken Out anyway. If you arrive in that state at a way-station, you are totally not screwed—in fact you’re fine. If there’s no fight and no way-station, then that’s a story in itself, so tell it! You don’t need a mechanism to tell you what to do.

Ships with the Extended range Stunt cannot conduct an overburn, since they are not outside the design efficiency envelope for mass versus drive design. They can, however, travel for 4 times the normal period. So, whereas a V-shift 2 vessel normally has a duration of 18 days (twice the slipknot distance), one with the Extended range Stunt has a duration of 72 days but cannot run faster than V-shift 2.

Following an overburn, a ship has an effective V-shift 0 until it can re-supply. For purposes of combat, the Aspect and Heat track problems should be enough to deal with.

A ship may travel at one V-shift higher than its stat value for no longer than the time it takes to reach a slipknot (overburn). On arrival the Heat track is filled and the ship acquires the free-taggable Aspect “Low on r-mass.” If you can count on a refueling point right outside your slipstream, you can use the next better category: a V-shift 2 can reach the entrance point in 6.5 days, arriving empty and helpless.

A ship that travels at speeds two V-shifts lower is conserving r-mass to maximize effective travel range. It may use the extended range duration for the (adjusted) V-shift rating.

Any time someone attempts to free-tag a Low on r-mass Aspect, the ship’s navigator may make a Navigation check against target 3 to deny it, indicating that he has plotted an extremely efficient course.

Any ship thrusting at its full V-shift for at least the rated time to slipknot has the free-taggable Aspect Low on r-mass.

Ships generally carry enough r-mass to reach a slipknot and back, with some to spare. You can go faster, using all your r-mass, to a closer destination.

Moving around inside the system can be extrapolated from these numbers—the typical distance to a slipstream entrance from a world on the ecliptic is around 5AU, which is a little less than the distance from the sun to Jupiter. Typical destination inside a system will be around that number—much less inside a planetary system, traveling from moon to moon.

Interplanetary distances are closest approach. Safe to say that the Oort cloud is forever out of reach to human travel: no one has enough r-mass to run a motor for 2 years and no one would be able to live under 3G acceleration for that time anyway.

In general, travel times will be determined by the referee or the table, but you may want more detail. The following table gives some guidelines, highlighting the common case: travel between the slipknot and the habitable orbit zone of most stars.

Advances in technology only change little in the fact that reaction mass makes up for a majority of system level ships, with the best mass/payload ratio approaching but not going under 5:1 for 1G of thrust. Radical changes should only be expected at the far end of T4 development.

We are postulating realistic reaction motors whose efficiency changes as technology increases, but which are still fundamentally operated by sending some reaction mass out the back at high velocity, usually by heating it. The performance of a spacecraft is measured by its V-shift Skill for game mechanical purposes.

Note that a much worse roll, -3, would mean a disastrous overshot, and require “a few weeks” to re-orient. The ship might not have enough supplies for that, and suddenly the story becomes one of deep-space rescue.

All spacecraft have a Heat stress track that keeps a record of how hot the vessel is compared to how fast it can dissipate the heat. This stress track is used in combat. It also absorbs the heat that is generated while traversing the slipstream. On arrival after a slip, a ship with a T2 slipdrive has its Heat track filled. A ship with a T3 slipdrive has its highest box marked, but none below. T4 slipdrives do not generate Heat stress in the slipstream.

Automated navigation systems always score a -4 on a Navigation roll (that is, they don’t roll: they always generate -4 shifts) unless it has T4 equipment. T4 equipment has arbitrary behaviour under the narrative control of the table or the referee.

When exiting a slipstream, make a Navigation roll against the Time Table, measuring the positive or negative shifts against a target of “a day”. The result is the time to orient the vessel and begin normal travel. If a ship had entered the slipknot without control (e.g. if there had been no deceleration), this roll is made at -2.

The process requires sophisticated problem solving and pattern matching that is just not available directly to computers until the dream of artificial intelligence is realized (T4). This makes automation practically useless for military operations.

A person with sufficient training and a good computer with up to date information, however, can significantly reduce the unknowns: momentum can usually be preserved, even if the entry vector cannot be governed.

Activating a slipdrive is relatively simple: flick a switch and you’re there. A robot could do it. Problem is, you can’t predict within a hundred thousand kilometers where that will be. Nor how fast you’ll be going. Nor in what direction. Since a ship emerging from the slipknot has, essentially, a random vector, in almost every case one loses by going through with momentum. Except in emergencies, pilots tend to decelerate as they approach the knot.

These concerns combine to suggest that a ships payload section is relatively small (10-30% of the ship’s mass), Given the limits on payload, space for crew, weapons, cargo, and extras is limited. Slipdrives are small to allow FTL travel within the design constraints (i.e. we wanted ships both with slipdrives and with guns), and so the limit on FTL travel comes from the point of departure, well above the ecliptic of the system.

Both Heat and Frame tracks can be attacked in combat , from which a ship may receive Consequences. A third track, the Data track, represents the ship’s computer system: data hacking and electronic warfare (EW) generally seemed a fun and powerful dimension to add to space combat.

Heat is always a problem, and an inability to dissipate heat can get one into trouble. Burn your engines too much, or fire too many lasers, and you start to have problems in combat yourself, because of an inability to radiate heat into the darkness of space.

When traveling, ships accelerate to the midpoint of their journey, turn around, and decelerate. No dogfights, no Immelmann or Crazy Ivan maneuvers: safe travel means accelerating to a midpoint at 1.0-1.5 G, turn around, decelerate at 1.0-1.5 G, over a period of several days. Ships are built like office towers, with small decks stacked on top of each other, which experience gravity only when the ship is under thrust.

Ships cannot enter atmosphere, as the gravity would crush the frame. All travel between planet surfaces and orbiting stations or spacecraft is done through interface vehicles.

Spacecraft are built around a symmetrical Frame, attached to which are the motors, which take reaction material and convert it into something pushed out the back end; that’s how ships travel through space. We largely abstract the fuel from the conversion process since the bulk of the ship’s total mass is reaction material, which is consumed and needs constant replenishment. Without reaction material, there’s no way to go anywhere.

All science fiction spacecraft have a distinctive feel derived from their setting, and this is no different in Diaspora. Spacecraft in Diaspora are big. Space, of course, is bigger, and in the end size didn’t make a great deal of difference, no matter how we chose to simulate spacecraft design.

Sometimes even non-player characters are too much to represent a certain kind of threat. A pack of dogs, say, or a gang of teenagers, doesn’t need full representation in the system. In such cases, establish a threat level to represent how much trouble these mooks are. They will be represented without Skills or Aspects. Instead they have a single stress track that is used to mark all hits. The number of unchecked boxes on this track is also their attack and defense value for all cases. Any hit that goes past the stress track defeats all of the mooks represented by it. With mooks you do not apply the First Blood rules.

Hunting larger animals therefore requires attrition, wearing down the tracks with multiple hits. Such animals can do extensive damage, and then retreat or flee. When they first achieve a hit, the players decide whether or not they want an opposing animal to take Consequences. If they do, then victory means the players can narrate the conditions of the victory (trophy!); if they do not, then the referee does (which may be death, but may also be flight).

Animals only have Health and Composure tracks, of whatever length the referee deems appropriate, based on the size and mass of the creature in question. A small animal might have one or two boxes, anything about human sized is three to five boxes, larger animals are 6 to 8 boxes, and giant animals may be 10 boxes or more.

Common animal Skills are: Agility, Alertness, Brawling, Charm, Intimidation, Resolve, Stamina, Stealth, Strength, Survival, and Tactics. Some animals also have a Skill in Natural Weapons, which is not available to PCs (humans with built-in weapons from a Stunt use Brawling).

Animals can be modeled precisely as non-player characters, but animal Skill diversity is probably not as high. Instead give them a Skill column: one Skill at each rank starting at some maximum. Add a Stunt to round them out. No Skill should exceed level 6. Some Skills (such as Stamina and Resolve) will not affect tracks, but can still be used to achieve maneuvers and defenses. Any appropriate integral equipment can be modeled based on the nearest human equivalent; in most cases, it should be powered by a new Skill, Natural Weapons. All Natural Weapons or armour would also require a Stunt analogous to Integral Equipment.

In most cases, NPCs will not take Consequences: any hit over their stress tracks takes them out of the scene. Only in cases where the referee needs the character kept alive (for plot, or because a player character has an associated Aspect) should NPCs be given Consequences.

The referee can decide not to allow the suggested Aspect, but should offer the player something else, another Aspect to help fill the character out. This means that a player’s actions do not need to determine the Skills and abilities of the NPCs they encounter, but that through the process of interaction the players will come to know who it is that they are dealing with.

When non-player characters have not been made in advance, it is possible for the players to define Aspects for these characters through maneuvers. This might encourage the referee to fill out the card in other ways. The creation of NPCs becomes a collaborative process.

There remains, however, enough variability that a given opponent may still have a rank in a Skill that the player characters lack, and can then be co-opted and introduced into the larger story.

This is a sufficient representation for thugs, policemen, goons, and villains. While six Skill slots does not seem like many (compared to the fifteen of the player characters), in practice it works because these characters have context-appropriate Skills. NPCs, in most cases, need only be functional in a given environment, for a short time (often only one scene), and are designed for that circumstance.

Non-Player Characters (NPCs) have Skills in a pyramid just as the regular player characters have, but the peak value of the pyramid might be lower than 5. A moderate-threat NPC, for example, might be capped at Skill rank 3 (a “3-cap” character, for short): one Skill at 3, two at 2, and three at 1. NPCs have one Aspect for each rank in their apex Skill, one fate point per Aspect, and Stunts as appropriate (no more than 3).

It’s not necessary to create statistics for all characters that the referee will bring into play. In many cases the referee need only establish their single Skill rank in much the same manner as he would estimate a difficulty level for a static check.

One aspect of conflict in the stories you will tell is going to be combat, whether physical or social, and that will require some kind of mechanically represented opposition.

Severe Consequences must be carried through one complete session (from beginning to end) in which the stress track associated with the Consequence does not take any hits, and are removed at the next refresh.

Severe Consequences will generally linger for the entire session following the one it was received. That session should contain a month or so of in-game time explicitly spent recuperating.

Moderate Consequences require the character get a little more time and distance. A good night’s sleep or other extended period of rest and diversion is required.

Mild Consequences are removed any time the character has the opportunity to sit down and take a breather for a few minutes. These Consequences will usually last until the end of the current scene, unless there is no break between scenes.

Consequences fade with time. How long this takes depends upon the severity of the Consequence, which in turn depends upon how it was received.

Wealth stress track hits are cleared at the end of any session in which the character takes no hits or Consequences against his Wealth stress track.

Characters may therefore change from one session to the next, and can develop Skills and interests as time progresses. Nevertheless there is clear continuity from one session to the next.

Players usually regain fate points between sessions, when a refresh occurs. If the referee left things at a cliffhanger, he is entitled to say that no refresh has occurred between sessions. By the same token, if the referee feels that a substantial amount of downtime and rest occurs in play, a refresh of fate points may occur mid-session. Normally each character starts each session with exactly five Fate points.

Occasionally a session will narrate away large blocks of time as downtime. It’s perfectly reasonable for the referee to offer one or even several refreshes to let the players decide how this time has affected their characters. A referee may grant two or three refreshes to the players to indicate major life changes that take place over several months.

If the session begins at an appropriate facility, any spacecraft may make a maintenance roll now using modifiers based on the prior session (for determining whether the vessel was engaged in trade, and so on).

Characters should be checked to see if they qualify for any healing. Specifically, any severe Consequences that have been carried completely through the last session (that is, they were inflicted the session before the last session) can finally erase that consequence. All Health and Composure stress is cleared. Wealth stress might be cleared (see Stress Track Recovery ).

Players may make adjustments to their characters to represent changes and experience as a result of the last session.

Characters get five fate points each. Fate points are not recorded between sessions, so at the refresh all characters start with five no matter how many they ended the last session with. Spacecraft similarly get five fate points.

The first few minutes of every session are set aside to manage some accounting and preparation that needs to take place before actually getting down to the game. This is called the refresh. In FATE this is when you get your fate points assigned for the session. In Diaspora there is some more going on.

Armour has cost 3, modified by the difference between the armour technology and the technology of the location at which it is purchased. Civilian armour is one cost level cheaper.

The Agility Mod applies to all armour, positive values implying powered armour. This value modifies all Agility rolls made by the wearer. Note that the Agility Skill is not modified—the roll is modified. Thus a character with an untrained Agility Skill and powered armour with an Agility Mod of +2 would roll 4dF -1 (untrained Skill value) + 2 (Agility Mod) for any Agility checks. Most armour will have a negative Agility Mod, representing the awkwardness or discomfort of wearing the armour.

Armour has three statistics: Defense, Stamina Mod, and Agility Mod. The Defense rating of armour is the amount by which an attacker’s roll is reduced automatically. It may be modified by the attacking weapon’s penetration value. The Stamina Mod applies to powered armour only—it is the amount by which the wearing character’s Stamina rolls are modified when a Stamina Skill check is made. Note that the Stamina Skill is not modified—the roll is modified, and the Health stress track is not affected.

Armour not designated as Civilian can only be employed by characters with the Military-grade EVA Stunt or any Military-grade personal combat Stunt. A referee would be perfectly right to rule by context (say, for example, that chain mail can’t be used with Military-grade EVA), but writing those down as rules would just create a ton of uninteresting exceptions.

The basic cost for an energy weapon is 4, modified by the difference between the weapon technology and the technology of the system in which it is purchased. Thus a T3 laser pack requires and Assets check of 4 in a T3 system, but 6 in a T1 system and 3 in a T4 system.

Some weapons have Aspects. The weapon becomes a new scope of Aspects that can be tagged in addition to the usual ones on friends, foes, and places.

The basic cost for a civilian slug thrower is 3, modified by the difference between the weapon technology and the technology of the system in which it is purchased. Thus a T2 combat rifle requires and Assets check of 3 in a T2 system, but 5 in a T0 system and only 1 in a T4 system. Civilian weapons are one level cheaper.

Any long stick with a pointy end is a spear. These stats model all pole-arms. Wherever technology has fallen, these cheap and effective weapons will be common. In some cultures spears might also be found as part of a spacecraft’s defensive equipment—a long pointy weapon could be particularly effective in the narrow confines of a ship. Some Close Combat weapons are designed to be thrown. These will have the Thrown Stunt and they get to be re-used indefinitely, as with a firearm or laser. They get the Out of ammo Aspect to model this.

The Close Combat Skill covers all melee weapons, all of which are civilian. If a player wishes his character to own such a weapon it should simply be granted. There is no obvious reason to differentiate or restrict. Assets check to acquire a blade anywhere is 1. The Broadsword includes any long two-handed blade, including battle axe. While not a common weapon, where technology and industry have fallen behind, these are the mainstay of the heavy infantry.

Most equipment needs little more than a list of their statistics, and so at the end of this chapter there will be a table of all the equipment tidily presented in a way that’s easy to use during actual play. Each can benefit from a little cluster-specific story, though, so feel free to write that. Give the weapons technical sounding names and military designations. Give them manufacturer’s names and model numbers. Make them yours.

Weapons not designated as civilian can only be employed by characters with the appropriate Military-grade Stunt. That is, non-civilian slug throwers require the Military-grade Slug Throwers Stunt, and so forth. The statistics of weapons are:

Weapons break down into the following categories, each represented by a Skill of the same name:

Making a note card for each character, placed in front of the player with all the relevant information and a small pile of fate points stacked on top keeps all the information clear at all times. This is obviously scaled back from the RPG, and introduces a slightly different calculus for what constitutes a success. With reduced characters, teamwork, particularly in laying down maneuvers to be free-tagged, is rewarded.

Each character should have three Aspects, revealed to all at the table. Each character also begins with three fate points.

Every character selects a Stunt. Making something Military-grade or altering how a stress track works are both obvious choices. (For some stories, it may be desirable to allow two Stunts per character; that’s fine, as long as it’s the same across the board).

Characters should only concern themselves with Health and Composure stress tracks. Each is three boxes long. If the character has Resolve at level 1 or 2, the Composure track has four boxes; if he has Resolve 3, the Composure track has five boxes. If the character has Stamina at level 1 or 2, the Health track has four boxes; if he has Stamina 3, the Health track has five boxes.

Given the limited focus of this tactical game, 3-cap characters should be sufficient: pick one Skill at level 3, two at level 2, and three at level 1. Everything else is considered untrained. While any Skill might be taken, the following list presents Skills particularly relevant to this mini-game: Agility; Alertness; Brawling (combat); Close Combat (combat); Energy Weapons (combat); EVA; MicroG; Resolve (track); Slug Throwers (combat); Stamina (track); Stealth; Tactics.

Once the map and the story are determined, everyone should spend five minutes (no more) making one or two characters to push around the map.

Most important is that the story articulates victory conditions, which need not be the same for all players. Is this a fight to the death? An attempt to capture someone alive? Someone working to escape detection and get out of a building, or sabotage a spacecraft’s drives? Whatever the case, the victory condition might be defined in terms of time: get off the ship in eight turns; spend two turns alone in the engine room setting explosives.

The process of drawing a map has already begun to determine what the story is: is this a fight to the death? Are there teams? Is most of the table maneuvering against a small cadre controlled by the caller (or by someone else)? Is there a difference in tech level between two sides? Whatever the case, articulating the story that is being told might mean that you go back and change the map slightly, add an Aspect to a zone or two, or whatever.

Once that is done, divide the map into zones. You don’t want too many, but enough to allow opportunities for getting outside of range, and to allow movement. When drawing zones, it is often helpful to go from corner to corner: that means it is always clear when a character enters an area (from a door, or otherwise along a side) what zone he is in.

You can start with a blank piece of paper, and take turns drawing features, until it looks good enough. Feel free to write words on the map too – these can become Aspects and help clarify what’s what.

Someone is chosen as caller. Either the caller or the table draws a map. Is it a shoot out in an airport? A race to secure a bunker at the top of a hill? A boarding action in a submarine or a spaceship? Whatever the case, you need a map to play on.

Sometimes it’s fun just to make one-off characters and have them shoot at each other. To play independently as a tactical war game, you need three things: a map, a story, and characters.

The referee may determine penalties that apply in MicroG environments: without a handhold, it simply may not be possible to throw a grenade effectively.

The MicroG Skill does not confer knowledge of the maintenance and repair of any weapons: for that, checks need to be made against Slug Throwers or Energy Weapons, as applicable.

In some contexts the shifting of gravity can lead to interesting play environments. This might lead to a permanent penalty on all action in the scene: e.g. “Sloping gravity” (when a ship is rotating under thrust, for instance), where all actions are done as if in gravity (i.e. without the MicroG Skill) and are at -2; or Stuttering microgravity (if a drive keeps kicking in and out), where all actions are as in MicroG, but at -1; or Low gravity, where all actions are at -2, using the better of MicroG or the relevant combat Skill. These environmental effects may be determined by the referee as the map is designed, or they may be a consequence of player actions.

MicroG rolls may also be called for to perform movement or other activity in zero or low gravity.

Some weapons are recoilless, and are designed for low gravity, and these will have the Low Recoil Stunt.

When fighting in zero or low gravity the scene has the Aspect, “Zero gravity” or “Low gravity.” This can be tagged as usual by participants.

Sometimes a fight will take place in an environment where the integrity of armour is important not only to absorb combat damage but also to resist environmental effects. These environments might include low pressure, high pressure, or toxic atmospheres. In these cases a loss of suit integrity (any Health track Consequence) has serious ramifications.

Any weapon or armour that does not have the Civilian Stunt requires a Military-grade Skill in order to use. It may be the case that it is sufficient at some tables to deny access and not explain, but it might be more satisfying to have a mechanism. A character without the appropriate Military-grade stunt can use the military equipment (at her Skill level), but only by paying a fate point for each roll. Thus the player can have her character use the superior but unfamiliar equipment, but with an attendant loss in fate points.

Anyone who has used a slug thrower to make an Area of Effect attack (fully automatic fire, a Stunt that some weapons have to allow multiple attacks in the same zone) gets the Aspect “Out of ammo” to be compelled liberally, and it can be free-tagged each time the weapon is used for an Area of Effect attack.

Who wants to count bullets? Not us. It’s way more fun to have an Aspect, and let your opponents decide when you run out of bullets. Anyone using a slug thrower automatically gets the Aspect “Out of ammo” to be compelled liberally, but which cannot be free-tagged.

Note that Consequences reduce shifts before they are marked as damage, so they do not have to be applied separately for each of the Health and Composure tracks here. This means that when first hit, a player must decide whether to take a Consequence that will have a doubled effect (but making the character more vulnerable in the next round) or decide to tough it out, in hopes of finishing the fight quickly.

When a player marks a Health stress track hit and has not yet marked any Health or Composure boxes, the Composure stress track is also marked at the same value (and all boxes below, as always). After this initial combat shock all attacks are against Health or Composure but not both.

A severe Consequence can be healed by a medic rolling against difficulty 4. It requires an advanced medical facility such as would be found in a hospital, and the technology rating of the facility is applied as a modifier to the roll. The referee may decide that the facility is, despite technology, better or worse equipped and apply this as a modifier to the difficulty. This takes one month, modified by the number of shifts achieved. In no case is the impact of the severe Consequence removed before the end of the session following the one in which it was received. example: getting a finger shot off

A moderate Consequence remains until a medic can make a successful check against difficulty zero. Base time to heal is a week with (positive or negative) shifts modifying time to solve by one per shift. It requires a medical clinic (such as would be found on an ambulance or in a ship’s sick bay), and the technology rating of the facility is applied as a modifier to the roll.

In addition to the purely mechanical process of recovery described above, there may be narrative reasons to introduce the need for actual medical help. The following guidelines are suggested, when pertinent. A mild Consequence can be treated by a medic without a roll after the combat in which the wound was sustained is over. It requires a first-aid kit.

Healing Consequences is governed, in the first instance, by an external time frame, which forces players to endure the effects of combat through the rest of the session.

All Health and Composure stress hits are erased after a few days relaxing downtime. The table should rule when enough time has passed or whether the downtime was sufficiently relaxing.

Stress box hits are not real damage. They are the sweats, panic, scratches, “only a flesh wound,” and so on: nothing that can’t be fixed with a tiny amount of downtime and nothing that actually affects performance. Consequently all Health and Composure stress track hits are cleared at the first instance of downtime, whether that’s a fancy hotel room with no one fighting in it or just the three days’ travel time to the slipknot.

Characters cannot begin removing Consequences until the associated stress track has been cleared (and this is not instantaneous but rather dependent on the number of boxes and the associated Skill).

When narrating how an opponent is Taken Out, it is essential to articulate how and if the opponent can return to the game. A ship that has been Taken Out is no longer able to participate in space combat, but could, in theory, be boarded (where it could revert to the personal combat game). Or it could be destroyed (in which case it could not re-enter the game). This gives a lot of power to the victor, and should be an incentive to players to offer concessions when things aren’t going their way. A major opponent Taken Out in personal combat can no longer fight, but the long-term repercussions are determined by the narrative. Being Taken Out might also change features of a character sheet, though this requires some negotiation.

The attacker narrates taking out his opponent (subject to reasonableness, as determined by table authority). Anything that suits the method (gunfire, punching, whatever) and that genuinely removes the character from play is suitable.

A character is out of play when he sustains a hit past the end of any stress track. This means a person can be Taken Out without ever taking a Consequence and therefore without ever taking any serious damage! A person that takes eight shifts past his Health stress track cannot be saved. That’s a one-shot kill… or maybe there’s a better way to narrate it?

A player may only ever have a maximum of three Consequences and may only have a maximum of one of each type regardless of the track the Consequence was scored against. This means that a character suffering economic hardship (see Chapter 4) is easier to take out.

After mitigation by Consequences, the remaining number of shifts indicate the box to be marked on the appropriate stress track. Mark this box and all boxes below it. If the highest box to be marked has already been marked, the damage “rolls up”: mark the next higher open box and all below it.

When a character has been hit by an attack that generates shifts, she may take damage. Before marking the damage, she may reduce the shifts by applying one or more Consequences: a mild Consequence reduces the number of shifts by one, a moderate Consequence reduces the number of shifts by two, and a severe Consequence reduces the number of shifts by four.

As with other combat actions, the decision to do something else may be preceded by a free one-zone move. The player can be compelled to prevent the action; if a compel is accepted the player’s action ends. Whatever the result, the process should be narrated once it is completed.

If any shifts are generated, the player may place a pass value of two on any single border of the zone he has declared as his target (2/2/2). If a pass value already exists on the border, it may be incremented by +1 (+1/+1/+1).

The player declares a target zone boundary and declares a Skill to be used, then narrates his attempt. He rolls 4dF + Skill against target value 2. Bring all the Aspect invokes, tags, and spin to modify the roll that you would for any other roll.

One way to inhibit movement is to create an obstruction, which applies a pass value to the border between two zones. The precise nature of the barrier, and its duration (whether it needs to be maintained or whether it is permanent) depends entirely upon the narrative offered by the player, and is subject to table approval.

Someone with the Medical Skill may wish to help an ally during combat. The target number for success is the highest box marked on the Health track. The number of shifts indicates the track box (and all marked boxes below it) that are erased. If that track box is not marked the next lower marked box is erased. The assisting character receives the temporary free-taggable Aspect Sitting Duck unless the character has Military-grade Medical.

Some environments may set a different difficulty target (and consequently a different level of automatic damage) to represent lesser danger—the difficulty of 4 is intended to model a zero pressure environment.

When a suit capable of resisting the hostile environment loses integrity, the wearer must make an EVA Skill check against difficulty 4 to repair it instead of a combat action. Each turn this check is failed the character sustains a Composure and Health track hit on a box equal to the amount the check was missed by (negative shifts). If the player refuses to declare a repair action and instead takes a combat action, he automatically takes four shifts of damage to both Composure and Health tracks. These shifts may of course be mitigated by Consequences.

When a pressure suit has lost integrity (i.e. when the player has received a Consequence from his Health track), that hole needs to be fixed.

Players invariably will want to do something that doesn’t naturally fall into one of the above three actions. This is fine, and is subject to table consensus and a plausible narrative. A player may want to jury-rig a circuit, by making a Repair roll (against a difficulty determined by the referee), or shut off the engines, by making a piloting roll (against a difficulty determined by the referee), or any of a host of other things. Here are some further ideas, with mechanisms to deal with them.

Aspects placed on a character can be removed by the character on his turn. If the Aspect is still free-taggable, he may free-tag it and remove the free-taggability without a roll as his action. If it is not free-taggable, he may remove it with a maneuver against himself at target zero. Success erases the Aspect.

Aspects that have been placed on a zone may also be used to compel anyone in that zone, just as that character’s own Aspects might be used in a compel. Write that Aspect right on the map! The caller should determine whether the Aspect placed is permanent or transient.

Any free tags placed by maneuvers at this time are immediately available to the next character to announce action (or any following character, until the free tag has been tagged).

A successful maneuver roll places a free-taggable Aspect on a person, or zone. Maneuver rolls can be modified by invokes, spin, tags, and so forth as any other roll.

The maneuvering player makes a roll at 4dF + an appropriate Skill (as chosen when narrating) against target zero. If the roll is successful he places the Aspect.

A player may wish to place an Aspect on a zone, a character, or the scene. This can represent anything from distracting the opponent to changing the environment of the conflict. Before the maneuver, the player may choose to move his character one zone.

Borders with a multiple move cost to pass through (like a closed door or difficult terrain) can be moved through with one turns’ expenditure (if it’s sufficient) or can be eroded over multiple turns. So, for example, trying to move through a closed door with pass value 2, a player adjacent to it could erode it by 1 and still make a combat action or forfeit his combat action and make a Agility roll. At a minimum he will erode the pass value by 1 but he may well generate enough successes to open the door and move through it. Any number of successes may be brought to bear on border obstacles as long as the three zone movement limit is maintained.

A character may move no more than three zones in a single turn, including the free move. Excess shifts can be used to erode pass values, though.

Any combat action allows a character to move a single zone. If, however, the player declares his whole action to be a move, he may roll Agility (or MicroG if in a microgravity environment) against difficulty zero and count shifts. He may use these shifts for movement in addition to his free move of one zone for up to two additional zones.

Any attack that would normally cause damage to the Health track can instead be used to damage the Composure track if the attacker so desires and declares before the dice are rolled. The attack is conducted exactly as normal with all modifiers unchanged.

Any attack can be made against either Composure or Health tracks. They are made with any weapons Skill. Characters may attempt Composure attacks without using weapons, in which case the character also gains the temporary Aspect, “Sitting duck.” (A given table may decide that MG Intimidation could avoid this result Aspect, and allow Intimidation attacks in combat without penalty). Armour affects Composure attacks just as it does Health attacks but only those that use a weapon.

A Composure attack is conducted exactly as an attack above, but the damage done is to the Composure stress track only.

Leave defensive rolls on the table (note the value on a piece of paper or the map if Aspects have been tagged or invoked—the value left at the table is the roll + Skill + any Aspect related improvement). If the character is attacked a second or further times, before acting, use the roll on the table whenever the same skill is used for defense. This “one defensive roll per round” rule has tactical ramifications. First, if you get a bad defensive roll expect to be ganged up on. Second, if you get a great defensive roll you could generate multiple spin counters.

For each successful attack, damage is noted, and mitigated as per the Damage section below. If this is the first time the character has been hit in this session, the damage is to both Health and Composure stress tracks as per the First Blood section below. Free tags resulting from Consequences are immediately available to the next opponent character to announce action (or any following opponent, until the free tag has been tagged).

The difference between the attacker’s roll and the defender’s roll after all modifications is the number of shifts. If this number is positive, the attack was successful. If zero or negative the attack fails. If the result is -3 or lower, the defender gets spin.

Both attack and defense rolls may now be modified by invoked Aspects, tagged Aspects, spin (though only one of each type: see Playing with Fate) and any other available modifier.

A weapon used inside its minimum range or outside its maximum range applies a modifier of -2 to the roll. Brawling and Close Combat weapons may not be used outside of the weapon’s maximum range unless they have a Stunt that allows it.

Attacks roll 4dF + the appropriate Skill and add the weapon’s harm value. The Defender rolls 4dF + an appropriate Skill + any defense conferred by armour. Armour defense is reduced by weapon penetration, though no lower than zero. See the weapon tables to find the harm and penetration values for weapons. See the armour tables for the defense values of armour.

If an attack action is declared, the player will announce their character’s action for the round and will interpret it, with the assistance of the caller, in game mechanical terms as a Skill test roll of some kind with appropriate results.

The action will fall into one of four categories: attack, move, maneuver, or do something else.

In combat, each player may only use a given Skill only once per round. You cannot use the same Skill for offense and defense in the same round.

Combat is organized into turns of non-specific length, but each representing something between twenty seconds and a minute, depending on the actions described. Consequently, it may be assumed that more is happening within each round than is actually being described, and in a given round a guy with a pistol might shoot an opponent, or he may defend against multiple attacks by shooting (but never hitting) in the direction of his attackers.

While objectively it is more appealing to poll characters in order of some Skill (Alertness is the usual choice, with ties broken by Agility), in practice this does not have a huge impact on play except to slow it down and confuse the order. A more effective solution for actual play is for the caller to select a player by any criteria he likes and then poll players clockwise or counterclockwise around the table.

Combat occurs according to a strict sequence of events. In order to run the Sequence, one player should be named the caller (usually the referee, but if one player’s character is not physically present, it makes sense for him to call, while the referee controls the opposition). The duty of the caller is to run the Sequence: he ensures that each phase is given sufficient time and that there is a smooth pace as phases proceed. The caller should have the Sequence Summary in front of him during the game.

When using a cross sectional map, it is not necessary to represent literally the features of the interior.

Another possibility is to display the ship in lateral cross section instead of the usual overhead view and increase the abstraction. In this case (or any case where you want to use a cross section instead of a floorplan—a fight in an office building, for example) it will be handy to invent a Stunt that makes a whole set of zones (a deck or a storey) behave accordingly. We’ll call that set of zones a “level.”

Spacecraft will typically be organized with small decks stacked along the axis of thrust so that the ship’s acceleration provides “gravity” for the occupants. This presents a minor problem for running personal combat: the decks are not going to be very big or very interesting, so a familiar overhead deckplan view might not be the best way to proceed.

An overhead map may have several zones. A region that is hard to pass may be split into more zones. Visual cues on a map can be used exactly as a worded Aspect. There may be zones without Aspects. These are areas that don't offer tactical options. The personal combat system presented here is well suited to simple maps.

A simple notation for borders is to use a digit representing the pass value. For borders with two states, separate the three (cost to open, cost to pass while open, cost to close) pass values with a slash. A low stone wall might be represented simply with a 2/2/2 or just 2. A dogged hatch might be 4/0/4, and would cost 4 shifts to open at which time its pass value is zero. It would take 4 shifts to then close it again. Punching a hole in a thin bulkhead might be represented 20/4/X—costs plenty to get through and is never all that easy to crawl through the hole and isn’t reversible.

Borders that have a state change state when the pass value is paid and remain in that state until the pass value is paid again. So a door that someone has already paid to pass through is now in the open state and costs nothing to pass through until someone pays 2 movement successes (shifts) to close it. Some borders may have a state that is not reversible—for example an obstacle that must be dismantled somehow and cannot easily be put back together—in which case the border reverts permanently to the new state’s pass value (probably zero, but a referee could get creative here). Note then that the pass value is also the cost to change state, even when it is in a state where the effective pass value is zero.

Borders can have pass values. Any borders between zones that is especially difficult to cross will have a pass value—the number of shifts (from a successful move action) needed to pass through the border. Basic doors might have a pass value of 1 or 2. Dogged hatches might have a much higher pass value: perhaps 4 or higher. A pass value may be zero, as in an open room or an automatically opening door.

Write the Aspects right on the map. If a zone has an Aspect (and this is a great way to model terrain effects), just write the Aspect right on the zone.

Avoid laying out a grid. The zone system rewards non-orthogonal layout. Zones should not only represent strict distances but also represent the relationships between space and ease of travel and view. Wide open spaces can be big, for example, while rooms in a spacecraft or building can be much smaller, becoming zones with their walls as boundaries. A long straight corridor can reasonably be a single zone if it is narrow enough that you couldn’t swing a broadsword in it.

This is deliberately abstract, and involves some deliberate bending of space. Maps for a good Diaspora fight should be kept simple. We like to lay a piece of paper over the playing area and then sketch the map. When a few terrain elements have been laid down, it should become obvious how to divide it into zones and apply zone Aspects and pass values.

A combat session should take place on a map laid out in zones. Transition between zones may have some action cost associated with it (doors, etc.) or not, using a mechanism referred to as a border. Range is measured in numbers of zones, and is pretty loose; but generally:

Combat in Diaspora is lethal. Intimidation is a useful Skill but during combat (and often outside of it) true intimidation derives from the genuine danger a weapon puts the characters in. The stress tracks you’ll be marking are Health and Composure on individual characters.

Original Material The original chapter about Space Combat is available from the Diaspora Website.

Spacecraft are large, relatively fragile things pursuing their goals at high velocity in the dead of space. They are constrained by their available reaction mass, the mass allocated for trade cargo, and their ability to dissipate heat. When they test each other to destruction using the assorted weapons of space combat—beams, torpedoes, and electronic warfare—they are chiefly pursuing goals of domination or escape. This system emphasizes these goals. The stories we want to tell include:

an inferior ship escaping from the authorities

a hostile vessel capturing cargo

a threat so powerful the only real option is to surrender

a convoy of merchants and escorts safely defending itself from marauders

Space combat occurs on a simple map that emphasizes pursuit in order to provide a simple and fast system.

Combat occurs in phases. First is the detection phase which establishes the initial positions. Then the positioning, electronic warfare, beams, torpedoes, and damage control phases are repeated in order until everyone is happy, dead, or escaped. Order of action is controlled by social pressure: a player is designated caller for the fight and that person controls the transition from phase to phase (see sidebar on “Social Initiative”). If a player wants to act in a particular phase, he announces his action. The advantage of going first goes to the one that speaks first. The advantage of going last goes to the person who speaks last. When the caller calls for a change of phase, it is possible that some players failed to act in time.

The Crew Diaspora assumes that spacecraft have a fully functional crew aboard, who draw a salary and are able to man their stations competently. There is no need to flesh them out unless there are role-playing reasons to do so, and player characters can work beside an undifferentiated crew happily. Except as noted below, all combat crew positions on a ship are assumed to be staffed by someone with a Skill level of 2. PCs serving aboard such ships may use their individual Skill levels, but if they choose not to (e.g. if they ride as passengers), there is always someone who can do the job. A ship’s Trade value is not used in combat, and therefore there is no default broker aboard to assist with maintenance rolls. The exception to this is a spacecraft that has the Skeleton Crew Stunt, in which case all the jobs in combat must be taken by a known individual (either a player character or an NPC who has been developed) who is trained in the relevant Skill. In particular, Communications and Gunnery stations, if they have a positive value, may not be operated by an untrained individual. For each crew position, there is only ever one person doing a given job at a given time. One Navigator rolls in the detection phase, and only one Computer expert rolls to repair the Data track. A PC may occupy more than one position on the ship, but it becomes challenging during combat. Each Skill associated with a combat phase normally requires a single crew member to staff it. Rule Staffing more than one crew position during combat earns a -1 cumulative penalty to the effective Skill level. A gunner may fire beams offensively and defensively without penalty, but would receive a penalty on the torpedo roll if he has fired beams. Rule Each crew member may only act once per phase in combat. A single gunner may not fire beams defensively and launch torpedoes in the same phase.

Spacecraft Spacecraft are the unit of scale in this mini-game, and not player characters. They have their own Skills (V-shift, Electronic Warfare, Beams, and Torpedoes), Stunts, Aspects, and stress tracks (Frame, Data, and Heat). The mini-game will involve rolling those Skills to achieve results and marking damage against those stress tracks. Spacecraft can mitigate stress hits with three Consequences, just as characters do. You will find a list of ships at the end of the chapter, and later a method for creating your own. Spacecraft not designated as Civilian can only be flown by characters with the Military-grade Pilot Stunt. Further, offensive use of the EW ship Skill can only be done by characters with the Military-grade EW Stunt. Aspects listed are meant as suggestions: every ship has its own quirks and personality.

The Map Our map is a piece of ruled paper, number each line from -4 to 4 and place (or draw) ship models on the lines. Moving a ship between the 3 and 4 bar (or the -3 and -4) costs 2 shifts. Moving a ship from the last bar off the map costs 3 shifts. Because of the constraining boundaries (escaping the map is escape from combat, or forced removal from combat) we have to see the map as also abstracting relative velocities. That is, we are not collapsing 3-dimensional position information into 1-dimensional (range) position information. Rather we are collapsing everything about the current 4-dimensional space state of an object into a position on the map. Therefore the map should be read thus: The distance between two vessels is their separation in space. The distance between two vessels does not encode their bearing, heading, or velocity.

The distance between a vessel and the nearest boundary is, roughly, a measure of its vector (both direction and magnitude) away from a hypothetical ship at range bar 0. When a player determines position, then, he is determining the range between his placements but he is also determining their relative velocities. Placing two ships at the zero line means that not only are they close, but they are not moving relative to the hypothetical observer. More importantly, they are not moving relative to each other. This need not be true of two ships sharing the -4 line. They may have widely diverging vectors though they are close in space or they may be far apart on parallel vectors. Should they remain in this map location at the end of the next turn, the transition should be read as the vessels have diverged and then re-converged, retaining large differences in velocity vectors. They could be seen as “braiding” around each other. Where it is desired that ships be in close proximity to each other and sharing vectors and at the same time be distant from other vessels, formation and tethering rules may be used to collapse the ship representations. Placing a ship near the boundary indicates that that vessel is moving rapidly away from the battle. So when we have a case of three fleeing ships placed near a boundary being pursued by one ship some bars away towards the zero line, we do not just have three ships far away from a pursuer. We have also indicated by map position that