"Real Cargo" draft material

[Dave Baughman]

Cargo Capacity

Unlike naval aerospace units (transported with figher capacity) or ground units (transported with lift), other in-game objects are transported using cargo capacity. To calculate a unit's cargo capacity for game purposes, deduct 10% of the unit's mass from its normal cargo capacity. Divide the remaining number by 100 and round to the nearest whole number.

For example: A Mammoth class DropShip masses 52,000 tons and has a cargo bay capacity of 37,248 tons. Its adjusted cargo capacity is 32,048 tons, which means that it has 320 points of cargo capacity in-game.

The accumulation of, use of, and reduction by damage of cargo capacity works the same as lift.


6-8 row restriction

There will be a new "DC" (Cargo Dropships) table. Its 6-8 rows should not contain anything with a cargo capacity greater than 100. Given the extremely limited number of cargo designs, the GMs will probably make a standard "baseline table" to start everyone with except for a couple of exceptions for factions with unique cargo carriers (liket he DC's Rose class).



Moving Commodities

Commodities will have cargo weight values assigned to them. They will range from relatively low (consumer goods and other 'simple' commodities) to quite high (germanium, precious metals, etc). In general, the weight of the goods will correlate with their value.

Intellectual Property stored in data cores will have a fairly low weight. This will be touched on in more detail in the R&D rules.

Raid Changes

The current "resource raid" order will be totally rewritten. The final text will follow, but key points are:

• Resource Raid no longer "steals" RP. Instead, a successful resource raid has the dual effect of terrorizing the hex for one turn and creating a "raid booty" commodity that can be cashed in once the raiders reach an appropriate friendly hex.
• A new order called Objective Raid will be introduced which allows for targeting an existing commodity for theft. Both trade goods and data cores can be targeted.
• The old, deprecated Destroy Resources order will be coming back in some form, allowing commodities to be targeted for destruction (presumedly to "keep them out of enemy hands").
  

Blockade Behavior

While not strictly part of these rules, its worth noting that Blockades will almost certainly take on the economic effects they had in Flashpoint. Blockades are not good for trade.

Salvage

The way salvage is handled will be changing. "Salvage" is now a commodity that is generated by battle. The 30% Battlefield Repair rule will be staying around in some form for both ease of play and game balance reasons, but otherwise, salvage must be moved to a friendly industrial hex improvement to be cashed in. The salvage roll itself will be changing, probably turning into a table with a few different results.