![]() isn't that what makes it fun? In the end, Ashen Stars space combat is just rolling dice, spending ability pools and accumulating skirmish points. Of course, a lot of Star Trek or Firefly is technobabble, but RPGs seemingly should involve meaningful choices, brainstorming and problem-solving, and the tension produced by unpredictable results as well. Mechanically, all four actions are effectively the same and the descriptors are just window dressing. That may sound like something, but in reality the verbiage is just ad libbed technobabble and the override "choice" is just an attack mode that would have almost inevitably come up in the battle regardless of any adventure theme. You and your players are supposed to add colorful descriptions, but the mechanics are vanilla regardless of these descriptions. the attacks individually don't make any difference (maneuvering is ultimately the exact same effect as firing weapons, overriding etc.). the order at which you choose attacks doesn't really seem to matter (you are encouraged to cycle through all of the four attack modes and most combats are going to involve multiple circuits through these attacks). Despite all of this writing, the whole thing comes down to just spending pools and making faux "tactical" decisions that aren't really tactical decisions at all. It has its own chapter, which is the longest chapter in the book (indeed, it is more than twice as long as the average chapter length). It has the longest example in the book (which takes up an entire appendix, which is the longest appendix in the book). It is both overly extensive and nevertheless also strangely clinical and sterile. The blurb for the game describes it as "extensive, streamlined rules for space combat", which I think is exactly the problem I am having. Secondly, the combat system is largely just a cipher for spending abilities until one side gets enough points to win. For one, they seem like the most involved system in the ruleset, which is odd because the game is not about space combat. I am reading Ashen Stars again and enjoying it for the most part, but I keep stumbling on the space combat rules.
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