Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: July 03, 2007, 03:29:02 PM »Quote from: "Edsel"
How do you handle the numerous hostile colonies and outposts that are often present in a system whose space is under the control of an attacker.
For instance the Alphans have taken control of space in the Eagle star system. They discover that their enemy has in excess of 200 asteroid outposts and desolate moon colonies in the system. There is also a large population planet with impressive orbital defenses. As I under stand the rules, in order to have complete control of the star system they are going to have to occupy each and every little population enclave in the system. They will either have to land PCFs or use the Fast Ground Combat rules. In the latter case they will have to calculate the occupation costs for each and every system body that they occupy. They can't do the entire star system as a whole since the Large population planet will take months of build-up to invade. Either way this is a bookkeeping nightmare. They might also choose to genocide these tiny populations but the penalties are something unacceptable.
How do you handle these sorts of situations in your campaign? Do you just handwave it? Pretend that the colonies would become depopulated as the discouraged colonists surrender and are repatriated? Something else?
This sounds like a Starfire question rather than an Aurora one so I'll answer it on that basis (let me know if I am misinterpreting). In the Rigellian campaign I tended to assume that the asteroid colonies would just be occupied as well, without bothering with the occupation mechanics (although many races would wipe them out to avoid the hassle <G>). If you are using SA, I think there is a way to place all colonies in a system as occupied with a couple of clicks (probably on the F2 window)
Steve