So You Want to Play 60 Years in Space

 

cover art by Rob Turpin

Congratulations! You are an absolute sicko. But so am I. This is a game for sickos (positive), and as such it is pretty daunting to get into even if you're the right kind of person for it.

Note, this is not a "how to play 60 Years in Space for absolute beginners" post: that would be way longer than I can do in a single writeup. I'm writing this generally with the presumption that you probably already know what 60 Years is and have some desire to at least read the game. 

[If you don't know what 60 Years is, it's an rpg by Andrew Doull, based on the High Frontier board game by Phil Eklund. It's an extremely crunchy maximal-simulationist space colonization game, which is also multiple other games in a trenchcoat, if we're being honest. You can find it here.]

[I have some older posts where I am fairly critical on the game: some of those critiques still stand (tables and headings should be numbered!), the updates the game has gotten since release have turned me around enough that I'd say it's so far and away my favorite RPG of 2026, warts and all.]

This guide is currently for running solo games using version 7b of the rules; if anything drastically changes in future updates, I’ll edit accordingly.

Picking the Books You Need

The first hurdle is figuring out what you need to play the game. It's intimidating (and pretty pricey if taken all together), but not as much as you'd think at first glance: the books have mostly settled into a series of mostly-modular rulesets by this point, so most of them are "include if you want to". The seven-games-in-a-trenchcoat design allows you to zoom in or out to a preferred level of simulationist granularity, and cobble together your own ruleset out of things you care about while eliding the rest.

I've split the book list into required (you need this to play the game), recommended (not technically required, but I consider them important enough that I wouldn't play without them), and optional (books that I either used very little or nothing from while playing). The abbreviations I use will be (in parentheses)

Required Books

• 60 Years in Space (SY)
• The core rules; this contains everything you need to play the game solo as a minimum-viable product (more on this below).

 

Recommended Books

• This Space Intentionally (TSI)
• The supplement that covers missions, trade, downtime, and colonies in more detail. Strictly speaking it's not mechanically necessary for the core game, but the colony builder tables are nice and crunchy and provide a lot of flavor for the places you visit.
• All Errors My Own (AE)
• This is where all the Trends (setting elements that progress and change as you play) are found, so it’s basically required if you want to really get into the sci-fi-sicko shit.
• The 7b version only covers Eras 1-3; Eras 4 & 5 got split off into a new book (All Terrors My Own, which is next on the release docket), so you’ll need v7a if you intend to play through those eras (which is still bundled in with 7b)

 

Optional Books

• Crewed Rules (CR)
• This supplement is focused on individual PCs at a pretty high level of granularity, so it’s not really relevant if you’re playing a zoomed-out game. The nationality tables and extra colonist factions are nice but definitely not necessary. I was able to run my entire first campaign without it.
• (A) Base (D) Landing (AD)
• A base-building supplement for the early stages of an offworld colony. I think it’s a bit too complex and needs a few good editing passes at the moment, but there’s nothing in it that isn’t covered at the (much more) zoomed out level of the base game.
• If you still wanted to do a base-building exercise, I think you could probably port something over from Traveller / Cephus / Hostile.
• A Facility With Words (FW)
• You play as one of the minor factions that are living in the background of a normal game of 60 Years. There's some faction management stuff in here, but overall it's the closest to a traditional RPG with the presumption being that there’s a party of downtrodden ne’er-do-wells doing ethically-questionable things and exploring abandoned structures for loot. 
• It does have the details on how freighters / freighter fleets / mobile factories actually work, which is annoying (freighters are mentioned repeatedly in the core rules but don’t get a dedicated section in that book; hopefully this gets changed in a future update.)
• Colony: Sub/title (CS)
• Play the stock market, scope out some novel aquatic biospheres, irrevocably change the course of transhuman history.
• I like being able to see how all the wild high-concept ventures interact with each other to form potential Futures (this is a specific mechanic, basically it’s what happens to the setting after you hit 2100) but it’s definitely not necessary for the game.
• A Lot of Zeroes (LZ)
• The extreme-far-future supplement where you’re travelling the galaxy in a massive interstellar spaceship looking for the answers to Big Questions.
• Can act as a standalone game, though I'd now say 60 Versions is needed to supplement it if you want to deal with individual planets.
• 60 Virs10ns (SV)
• The supplement for playing as a pre-spaceflight alien species on their homeworld; contains the planet generation tables that used to be in A Lot of Zeroes and ecosystem generator from Colony: Subtitle.
• Still mostly unfinished / in ashcan.

Forthcoming Books

• All Terrors My Own
• Trends and Impacts for Eras 4&5
• RE:0Mi55ions
• Collection of extra material that couldn’t fit neatly into other games, if I understand it properly. Sounds like it'll mostly contain things that got shoved into and then cut from This Space Intentionally.

Other Supplies

• A fistful of d6s (I don’t think you’ll ever need more than 6)
• A campaign notebook or binder
• The High Frontier 4 All map
• Since I presume most of you don’t have a physical version of the game on-hand, you can go and bookmark hf4map.com and save yourself infinite hassle (and also save the image as a scalable webp on your phone)
• I have been slowly working on a simplified printer-friendly version, but as you might guess that’s fiendishly hard.

Setting up your notebook

There are printable sheets to keep track of all the moving parts in the game, but for my campaign I elected to rewrite the relevant parts so I could fit everything (or most of everything) onto a single page, shown below.

At the end of every era (15 turns) I did a roundup page of all the factories, colonies, infrastructure, etc.

There’s some components missing here (character stuff, primarily), so I might expand it to a 2-page spread per year for the second campaign.

It’s extremely helpful to have a reference for how developed a site is and by who: I copied the destination tables from 60Y and just notated faction color and development level every time it changed (ex: “Titan (G) 🞅 🞎 ⯊” indicates that Titan has gotten 3 space comms encounters and been developed into a permanent colony of < 100 people for Green faction)

You can also use the site folio on TIS 71, though that has a lot more sites than what you’ll normally need. 

Making Your Own Rules Reference

I’m working on putting one together for at-home printing, but until then you’ll have to make do on your own. Here’s the non-exhaustive but mostly-complete list of what I have in mine, plus page numbers:

• Order of Play (SY 74)
• Spacecraft Movement (SY 76-78) 
• Space Politics (SY 17)
• Space Program (SY 28)
• Space Agency Nationality (CR 49)
• Colonist Nationality (CR 50)
• Spacecraft Components (SY 56-60)
• Skill Checks & Control Points (SY 30-31)
• Yearly Events (Faction/Cycle) (SY 91-94)
• Technology Levels (SY 25)
• Space Comm Encounters (SY 82)
• Encounters (SY 82-87) 
• Mission Builder & Destinations (SY 53-57)
• Payloads (TIS 48) 
• Accidents and Hazards (SY 78-80)
• Exoinfrastructure (SY 206)
• Colonist Module Builder (SY 228)
• Personal Upgrades (CR 113) 
• Interception Builder (TIS 126)
• Factory and Colony Construction (TIS 65)
• Colony Builder (TIS 78)
• Trends & Impacts (AE 11, 14)
• Tables of Trends (AE 12-13, 15)
• I separated these by era rather than type in my notes, which I found useful enough to recommend.
• Encounter Table (AE 16-17) 

You'll also probably want to bookmark the Operations chapter on SY 110, and either print out these pages or make equivalents for yourself:

• Spacecraft folio (No blank version, but premade rockets are on SY 65)
• Fuel / mass tracker (Not in book, but included on premade rockets)
• Staff folio (SY 33)
• Crew folio (SY 34) 

This is of course how I do it, cut and adapt and ignore as works best for you. Order of Play, Spacecraft Movement, Skill Checks & Control Points, Yearly Events, Space Comms, & the Mission Builder are the most important to have on-hand.  

Hopefully I can get the printer-friendly guide formatted and done relatively soon.

Starting A Trial Run

The core book comes with a couple starter scenarios and the procedure for making your own; if you’re unsure about whether you’ll like the game but want to give it a try, running a single mission from Low Earth Orbit to your destination (like I did last year) will give you a good idea of the core gameplay loop. The AIDA and HOPE missions will give you a step-by-step tutorial on how to accomplish the mission, while Free Agency is fully player-driven.

If that works out and you’re the right kind of sicko for the game, then comes the rest. Let me know if I missed something or if things are unclear. 

Quick, where's this NPC from?

This started as list of replacement mission control nationalities for 60 Years in Space, which is why the distribution is uneven. Roll 1d6, then again as directed.

1
Atlantis

2
Carcosa

3 (1d6)
1-2: Mu
3-4: Thuria
5: K!n-Yan
6: Tsan-Chan

4 (1d6)
1: Y’ha-nthlei
2: Atvatabar
3: Pegana
4: R’lyeh
5: Barsoom
6: Pnakotus

5 (2d6)
2: Caspak
3: Satanazes
4: Opar
5: Averoigne
6: Xebico
7: Zothique
8: Dylath-leen
9: Oriab
10: Oz
11: Tsalal
12: Kadath

6 (3d6)
3: Sannikov Land
4: Xuchotl
5: Ulthar
6: al-Waqwaq
7: Onigashima
8: Lyonesse
9: Laputa
10: Celephais
11: Erewhon
12: Kitezh
13: Brob Ding Nag
14: Libertalia
15: Ooth-Nargai
16: KwaKukuana
17: Patusan
18: Leng

Character Portfolio: 60 Years in Space v6

Portfolio Index

via NASA

60 Years in Space is an extremely crunchy space colonization simulator by Andrew Doull, based on the extremely crunchy space colonization boardgame High Frontier by Phil Eklund. It’s a game for an extremely specific type of sci-fi sicko (hi, it’s me, the sicko), and despite a pretty rough launch the game has been regularly updated and refined since its release. I played through a mission using the v5 rules last year, and the following v6 re-organized and streamlined a decent chunk of the game (with some changes in direct response to my play reports).

I recommend reading post 1 of that series to compare the process.

Future Dan here: I wrote most of this post in preparation for an attempted solo campaign. That campaign has successfully wrapped as I write this. It will get a writeup eventually.

1. Space Politics

Space Politics is a color-coded representation of the political zeitgeist on Earth, and how that influences who gets into space and how. It’ll stay in the background of the game, changing occasionally and modifying various rolls we make later. In v.6, Space Politics will also act as your starting Social Trend (trends being background social and technological developments occurring within your faction and the world at large - it’s where all the sci-fi sicko stuff lives).

Space Politics (2d6): 7 - War (Resource War)

“Heightened tensions between Earthside nation-states have resulted in a volatile situation in space where rockets and ray-guns can be retooled into weapons at a moment’s notice. [...] A resource war includes trade wars and fighting over depleting resources needed for space travel.”

Rolling 1d6 for my first trend impact, I get 6: Peace Talks. Looks like we’re nearing the end of said resource war, or at least a ceasefire. Little emergent storytelling prompts like this are a highlight of the game

2. Space Agency

Next up is our space agency and mission control: like space politics, mission controls have a broad archetype with a color code that will provide roll modifiers going forward. The list of archetypes has been expanded since v5, with most colors now having two or more options, and they’ve also been uncoupled from real-world organizations in the base rules, which removes a major issue I had with the previous version.

Normally I would roll here, but for purposes of story I’m going to choose #5 Trade Association, since it falls within the 2d6-2 roll I would normally be making. This means mission control is Green, my spacecraft quality is Medium, and my rank chart is Generic Green. Rolling on the launch facility tables (60Y 34-35) I get Tanegashima Space Center, which is mostly for flavor but can tie into regional events later on.

(It seems the dice gods really want me to play as Japan in this game, I got that last time as well.)

Since in this version of the base rules we don’t roll for a specific real-world group, I’m going to make one up and say that I’m playing as the Toha Industrial Workers Union.

While I’m at it, I’ll generate the factions that are already in space: I just need to go down the list and see if a d6 comes up 1. Red and Purple are in, which actually works great for me because with the space fascists and space liberals in place I get to be the rebel alliance-alike.

 

3. Mission Control Staff

New to this version of the rules is the framework to play as the space agency itself, with individual crew and staff basically being names attached to skills unless you decide to zoom in. You hire on staff and crew using Control Points, and you start with four of those and gain 1 per year. 

(Control Points can also be used to gain tech readiness with a component, pay off debt, or a bump to adjust the result of a roll by 1.) 

Future Dan here: I skipped this entire step when prepping for my campaign, because I don’t like the skill system in 60 Years all that much. It wasn’t a huge loss, since I was playing at full zoom-out, for reasons I’ll get into. 

Mission Control Staff come with a level of 5 in a single skill, which gives a +1 to any roll where they match skill levels with the crewmember they're helping. I think that's an extra thing to track that makes them mostly useless (vs providing a flat +1 to a skill), in what will become a running theme with the game. But for now, this is quite important because 6 is the magic number.

I’m going to spend all 4 of my Control Points on staff (the power of hindsight says that Control Points are best spent on staff and debt; tech readiness and bumps were effectively useless in my campaign.)

1. Head of Sciences (Prospect 5)
2. Head of Operations (Industry 5)
3. Head of Research (Research 5)
4. Chief Information Officer (DevOps 5) 

 

4.1 Crewmember Abilities 

I can have up to 8 crewmembers, which are generated by drawing three cards from a standard deck to determine the level of their primary ability (1/2 card value, rounded up; faces = 5, aces are special), which is then used to derive their skills. All their other attributes are treated as 3.

Just as an example, I'm going to go with a minimum crew of 4.There are four abilities - physical (clubs), mental (spaces), social (hearts), and capital (diamonds) - each with specific skills associated with it. Selected cards are bolded.

• Crewmember 1: 10S, 6D, KH => Social 5
• Crewmember 2: QC, 3D, 5C => Physical 5
• Crewmember 3: 4D, 4C, 9S => Mental 5
• Crewmember 4: 3S, JC, QD  => Capital 5

 Next is skill selection, which is a major problem.

 

4.2 Crewmember Skills 

Skills are wildly unbalanced between abilities:

• Physical: 2 skills (Bypass, EVA)
• Mental: 12 skills (Combat Ops, Devops, Ecology, Engineer, Industry, Medical, Mining, Pilot, Prospect, Research, Suffrage, Teleops)
• Social: 1 skill (Negotiate)
• Capital: 4 skills (Activism, Antitrust, Recruit, Trading Desk)

Nearly twice as many Mental skills as all others combined. Crewmember #1 up there is useful for exactly one type of skill check (and #2 is barely better). For everything else, the best they could start with is 4, which is the worst you can get from someone with the correct ability for it. I’m aware that you’re meant to compensate for these deficiencies using your mission control staff and increasing crew skill levels over time, and that failure is supposed to lead to interesting and often catastrophic complications. I get that. I still don't think it works in practice.

 

5. A long aside about the 60 Years skill system

Skill checks in 60 Years are 2d6 roll under your skill level, as in Traveler. This comes with complications:

• If you don’t have training in a skill, you roll under the relevant ability on 3d6.
• If you have chrome on a skill roll (from meeting certain conditions, usually ownership of a patent for the equipment you're using), you roll one less d6 for the check. 
• Since the game is designed for your crew to modify themselves, increasing your skills and attributes is a core part of the premise and rules-as-written they're supposed to be tracked per individual.
• If you have 6+ in the appropriate skill and chrome, you automatically succeed and your roll is there purely to see if you have a complication.
• You're going to have chrome for most rolls you make in the game when zoomed out (since it's pretty difficult to get your hands on a spacecraft you didn't build yourself, which means that as soon as you hit a skill value of 6, skills literally do not matter.

Now, I like the idea of the system in principle: space operations are too expensive to justify anything short of extreme operational competence and failure is liable to come from defects in the machinery (something the game tries to simulate). Chrome is basically a way to bake "don't roll if success is guaranteed" into the procedures - but it also asks me to track 21 skills per crewmember (since while crew start with only 3 skills, they will quickly gain more from participating in Operations or getting upgrades) for a mechanic that was only relevant 8 times in an entire 60 turn campaign. 

The character sheet provided in the book are pretty perfunctory and not really made for tracking changes over time, and while I could probably have made up a better layout for it I really didn't have any reason to do so: it's pretty difficult to end up with a crewmember who has anything lower than a 5 for their main ability score, and so I just said "the crew as a collective starts with a 5 in every skill, and every era that passes that value goes up by 1" for my own campaign. It worked, and it was still barely relevant.

But for the purposes of the post, I'll pick the following. "Held Skill" designates skills that are held in reserve to be determined later, per the rules.

Crewmember 1 (Social 5)

Negotiate 6 

[Held Skill] 3

[Held Skill] 2

Crewmember 2: (Physical 5)

EVA 6 

Bypass 5

[Held Skill] 2 

Crewmember 3: (Mental 5)

Pilot 6

Prospect 5

Industrialize 4 

Crewmember 4: (Capital 5)

Trading Desk 6

Activism 5

Antitrust 4  

As an alternative, you can treat the crew as a collective and start with 5 in all abilities, and then fill in four skills at 6, three skills at 5, two skills at 4, one at 3 and one at 2. 

But yeah, I dumped all of that when I ran my campaign and it was fine.

6.1 Spacecraft Overview

All spacecraft are going to have a crew module to carry people and a thruster to get them to the destination. The payload will vary according to mission type - for a bog-standard industrial mission, I need a robonaut to prospect the site and a refinery to turn into an automated factory. These components (as well as thrusters) can have additional requirements, which can be met by including reactors or generators (to produce energy), and radiators (to vent waste heat), but we’ll get into those later.

Note: Andrew told me this entire section is going to get overhauled in the next major update, though what I’m describing here will still be around as an alternative procedure in one of the other books.

Starting craft have a spacecraft quality - this won’t be relevant after you build your first factory and refit your ship, but for now it’s a way to provide variety for your maiden voyage. As a Trade Association, my starting rocket is medium quality, and rolling 2d6 on the Medium Quality Ship table (SI 191) gets me 5+6 = 11 and the following traits:

• Thruster Quality: High
• Radiator Quality: High
• Refinery included in mass?: Yes
• Refinery Quality: High
• Payloads: Substitute Thruster
• Damage: None

So I get a high quality craft with a substitute thruster. Fine by me. High quality craft sidestep a lot of the construction process, since they’re high quality by merit of all their parts working together in harmony from go, but the substitute thruster is a nice wrench in the works.

6.2. Spacecraft Construction

Substitute thrusters (SI 195) come in two varieties, robonaut and bernal. There’s no apparent roll to see which subtable you get, so I did odds/evens and got robonaut. Good thing too, bernals are heavy as shit on account of being entire space stations

Future Dan here: I am realizing now that bernals are probably only used as substitute thrusters when you’re on a mission to move a bernal, since the egregious 10 mass of the bernal is less egregious if you aren’t also carrying a thruster around.

A roll of 3 on the substitute robonaut table gets me Tungsten Resistojet which starts me with the base stats of a Hall Effect thruster. But since everything is high quality, I don’t need to build off the base, I can pop over to the high quality craft table (SI 203) and roll a d6 for my loadout: a 1 gets me the following components and stats.

• Reactor: Rubbia Thin Film Fission Hohlraum
• Generator: AMTEC Thermoelectric
• Robonaut: Tungsten Resistojet
• Refinery: Carbochlorination

• Dry Mass: 5
• How heavy the craft is without fuel
• Thrust: 1 ● 1
• First number is how many burns I can make per turn, second number is how many fuel steps each burn costs me. My craft’s mass will determine how many fuel steps I get for a given unit of fuel, so that doesn’t need to be worried about for now.
• ISRU: 3
• In-situ resource utilization - how well my equipment can deal with conditions on the ground. A lower number is better & means I can operate at sites with less water.
• Therms: 2
• How hot my equipment runs - I’ll need radiators to cool this.

Now, you might notice here that the component list is a bunch of technobabble to make Scotty proud and no stats. There are stats for components, but they’re in another book (A-Base D-Landing): this is going to get fixed in the next update, and not a moment too soon - when you get into factory building and building new ships, it becomes really important to know what components are compatible with what and what requirements they have.

Using the full info, my components are:

• Hall Effect: Mass 1, Thrust  3 ● 2, Rad-Hardness 5, Water Fuel
• Rubbia Thin Film: n reactor, Mass 1, RH 5, 1 Therms; -2 thrust, ½ fuel consumption
• AMTEC Thermoelectric: e/H-generator, requires n reactor, Mass 1, RH 6, 1 Therm
• Resistojet: Mass 0, requires e-generator, RH 5, ISRU 3
• Carbochlorinator: Mass 2, requires e-generator

This gets me the same numbers in the end, but you can see how everything fits together much better this way.

Now I take these numbers and apply the modifications from the resistojet thruster: +2 thrust, x2 fuel consumption, 1 Afterburn, and -1 Mass, which is less than ideal but not the worst it could be: Mass 4, 3 ● 2 +1AB, ISRU 3, RH 5, 2 Therms

Nearly there: to deal with that waste heat I go to the High-Quality Radiators table (SI 190) - I pick the Magnetocaloric Refrigerator: 2 Mass, cools 2 therms, requires e-generator, RH6. After that, all I need to do is stick a 1 mass standard crew module on this thing and we’re good to go. 

My craft’s final stats are:

• Dry Mass: 7
• Thrust: 3 ● 2 +1AB
• ISRU: 3
• Rad-Hardness 5
• Therms: 2 (-2)

Only thing left to do now for character creation is smash the champagne and give it a name. To keep with the theming of the Hayashida mission, this one will be named the Kui.

Wrap-Up

The greatest obstacle between 60 Years and the player is information presentation. This is to be expected from a game of this complexity, and there have been improvements since v1, but the issues remain: information is broken up between segments or even books, leading to constant flipping back and forth. The order of topics in the book doesn't align with the order of play. LATEX can't handle tables and so forces them out of order and breaks the surrounding text. Information is often duplicated where it doesn't need to be, elided when it shouldn't be, or confusingly worded.

However: I had fun putting this together (and as a spoiler for the future, the campaign was also a lot of fun.) When the issues above are pared away (in my case, by spending a whole lot of commutes reading the books and then writing a cheat-sheet for myself) the underlying systems are manageable, if wonky, and I'd say with the updates its gotten to a "recommend with big caveats" state - the game is still rated S for Sickos, but if you're the right kind of sicko, ey, you might have a good time.

60 Years in Space: The Finale

• Part 1: Crew & Mission Generation 
• Part 2: Rocket Science
• Part 3: Mission Year 1 
• Part 4: Mission Years 2-4 

What a wild ride.

TLDR Version

• I had fun
• It scratches a particular itch no other game (that I know of) is scratching
• I wouldn’t recommend it

Now if some other mad bastard really wants to try playing it, I'll gladly encourage them to do so and point at my play reports as an example of how, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to rec it to anyone who isn’t a certified Sci-Fi Sicko with extreme patience and or an extremely specific compatible hyperfocus.

I like highly-procedural solo games

This series has really made that clear, and it’s probably why I stuck with 60 Years far longer than I did with the more mechanically-polished Ironsworn. If everything is loosey-goosey make-a-narrative there's no real draw for me, because that is already the default setting of my waking hours.

Characters feel irrelevant

I don’t think I would have lost much if the Hayashida’s crew had been fully elided, or reduced to brief bits of fluff. For the amount of work it took to make and maintain the characters, zoomed-out play rarely gave individuals something to do, and those times it did felt like unwanted intrusions. 

Solo play for 60 Years sits in a weird middle ground between playing as a single character and playing as the faction: for this kind of game I prefer the latter and I think 60 Years is stronger that way.

Additional complication is that most of character generation is stuff that doesn’t really apply once you get into the late game. Like I'm not entirely sure how you even make a character for later eras, because clearly the starting archetypes aren’t going to cut it, and family and nationality aren’t relevant. I guess you’d use A Facility With Words? 

A Lot of Zeroes bypasses the character issues by letting you choose what kind of funky transhuman your crewmembers are via their Lifestyle, and then just not really using them further - the shortest Operation in that game is 12 years long, so there’s not a lot of room for granularity. This, mixed with FWs approach would probably be the best way to roll with a faction-level game in earlier eras.

BSUs still don’t work, but they probably could

They work better when you’re in Sci-Fi Sicko territory, but in early phases when you’re still using real-world organizations the limitations are apparent.

A potential patch would be to swap out the real-world organizations with thematically-appropriate fictional ones, and use them as default/invariable starting options. While this goes against the spirit of the game somewhat, using broad-brush trope-based factions to fill the broad-brush trope-based BSU colors works. I cooked up with three sets just as an example, using Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, Mass Effect (you can just pretend the aliens are just like, countries on alternate Earth or something), and the SCP wiki.

• Red - Human Hive or Spartan Federation
• White - Lord’s Believers
• Green - Stepdaughters of Gaia
• Purple - UN Peacekeeping Forces
• Orange - Morgan Industries or University of Planet

**

• Red - Batarians
• White - Turians
• Green - Elcor, Volus, Hanar, Drell
• Purple - Asari
• Orange - Salarians

**

• Red - Daevite Empire
• White - Adytumite Sarkics
• Green - Fae and / or Bigfoot
• Purple - Ortothan Kingdoms 
• Orange - Mekhanite Orthodoxy

None of these would work for the game proper in the books, but it’s extremely easy to cook up alternatives: Atlantis, Mu, Kin-Yan, Lemuria, Carcosa. Writes itself.

Issues of Scale

A lot of the friction in 60 Years comes from the fact that it’s five different games in a trenchcoat: a game about the astronauts of a single crew, a game about factions expanding and exploring, a future-history worldbuilding simulation game, a colony building game, and a deep space / deep time exploration game. 

The last two are mostly self-contained, and it seems that this is the direction the bulk of the game is going to be taking in the future, which is a very welcome shift: A Lot of Zeroes,  A Facility with Words and the heretofore unmentioned A-Base D-Landing are designed to be more or less standalone - unfortunately for me, I wasn’t using any of that material. CR and SI are still married-but-separated to each other and keep leaving their things in each other’s apartments, and AE is clearly marked as a supplement so while not a standalone game it does live in its own world and that’s fine.

Proceduralism and Design

The game works best when there’s a procedural outline to follow, and its biggest flaw is that the books aren’t laid out to support that. This isn’t unique to 60 Years, of course; ttrpgs in general have inherited a lot of bad design from the 90s and early Aughts, and have been playing catch-up to the board game revolution ever since.

The current version is better than it was at launch, but still nowhere near where it should be: the core loop should be contained within a single book, whatever form that will take, and the mechanics should be presented in the order they’re relevant. 

Ultimately, I don't think that the layout and information presentation issues in 60 Years are fixable while it’s still being laid out in LATEX. That program can automate a whole hell of a lot, but sometimes you just need to be able to click and drag something manually.

A Map, a Map, My Kingdom for a Map

60 Years, as written, has an enormous amount of content entirely dependent on having the High Frontier map on hand; this experiment would have been unplayable without the online planner someone made.

The only alternative presented in the book, which I brought up in Post 2, doesn’t really fill the mechanical gap left behind if you remove the map. This puts the game in a weird limbo where neither option is fully functional: the intended experience is missing its central component, and the alternative is so lightly sketched that I’m certain it will break other mechanics later on down the road.

This doesn’t have to be a one or the other thing, the game could include both play options and I think it should; I also think that its current state doesn’t help anyone.

A pared-down, printer-friendly version of the High Frontier map is possible with a bit of creative re-interpretation: I’ve seen solar system maps laid out as subway lines, so it’s entirely possible to get more compact. End of the day you’re just dealing with lines and shapes and abstracting the rest.

[Aside: I am one of those extremely unhelpful people who says “figuring out how to get somewhere is easy, because there are only ever three options: turn left, turn right, and go forward.”]

By that same token, if the no-map travel rules are going to be an option, I think they need more than just a single roll: I’m bought in to a certain amount of complexity, I'm playing 60 Years in Space here; I'm willing to do a bit of math.

A happy medium, I think, would be sitting down, crunching the numbers, and making a table of “it takes X burns and Y turns to get from Point A to Point B”. If we were calculating this for all 50-some destinations it'd be way more worth than what's worth it, but if we group those sites by region and let generalization carry the rest of it we can cut it down to 13 regions and 156 potential routes, which is much more manageable. It's still a lot of work up-front, but the end result is that the player doesn’t have to fiddle with anything if they don’t want to; they can find more efficient routes on their own if they have the map and the desire, but if they don't they can just check the table for an average route and calculate the fuel consumption and mission turns from there.

The thirteen regions being:

1. Mercury
2. Venus
3. Near-Earth Asteroid
4. Earth
5. Mars
6. Main Belt
7. Jovian moons
8. Jovian Greek asteroids
9. Jovian Trojan asteroids
10. Saturnian moons
11. Uranian moons
12. Neptunian moons
13. Trans-Neptunian Objects

Might squeeze in some extra categories for Centaurs and individual comets, but even with that it's not going to get too much worse, at least compared to the 2400+ of everything to everything.

This would, at the cost of a few additional tables (for readability, I would go with one table per page per launch point, since routes have to be listed with burns, turns, and transfers in order and that will take up the whole row) bypass the issues caused by there not being a map WITHOUT having to jettison the entire shipbuilding system. It’d work fine with both full granularity and simplified transit.

Proofing Note: One of the Inner System Expansion destinations is “Himala” - I cannot find any asteroid by that name, anywhere. Not on Wikipedia, not on the HF map, nowhere. Another reason to include the number.

I do think that the in-depth travel rules and ship builder should probably be segmented off into their own booklet - not as an individual purchase, but as an easier organizational thing. 

All Errors My Own is Peak

This is where the Sci-Fi Sicko Shit lives, and it’s the main reason that this game won’t leave my head. You will also notice that I have barely mentioned it in this series of posts; which is something of a problem considering how much I am hyping it up.

AE is the book of factions, player character options, enemies, equipment, and setting / adventure / module defining elements. 658 pages of supplemental material, most of which will not be seen in a game of 60 Years even if you manage to play it through beginning to end. Its mix of hard science with absolutely bonkers extrapolations positions it orthogonally to the genre conventions that chain most sci-fi ttrpgs to the millstone, like the alien at the end of Annihilation. 

Despite being so alien, it’s also not some monolithic, set-in-stone lore dump - 60 Years uses these for procedural future-history building. They’re a springboard, a box of Legos, a sandbox where you and the dice can build something at random or at whim. Each faction has options for its origins and doctrines, plus its various upgrades and potential social impacts, allowing for extra variation on a theme and providing you alternative jump-off points. Not too hot on the idea? Five other options just in that category, pick the one you like. 

The temptation to just build a setting with all of them and incorporate every single damn thing in this book, while foolish, absolutely exists. I think the game’s inbuilt limiting factor helps avoid that pretty nicely: If you’re playing the game all the way from 2040 to 2115 RAW and replacing the Trends every time it’s mechanically possible (once every 8 years), you’re still only going to get like, 9 of them for a single type. 18 total. As alien as this can get, you have to go out of your way to make it truly overwhelming.

That’s a lot of words without an example, so you know what, here's just a big list of cool shit I like from the book.

1. Uplifted manta rays
2. Resurrected prehistoric human species (Including the vampires from Blindsight)
3. Blue goo (medical nanotech) symbiotes
4. Mutant strain of toxoplasmosis that triggers aggressive cat-worshiping behavior.
5. Cyborgs that carry around a team of AI and swap them in and out of their head depending on task.
6. Living spaceships that skim fuel off of the upper atmospheres of the gas and ice giants
7. Postsingularity beings who want to move Earth into orbit around Neptune, and then turn Neptune into a fusion candle for interstellar transit.
8. Sapient ecosystems where all biological components are actually distinct phases of a single organism's life cycle(s). 
9. Parahumans with exoskeleons decorated with bright, friendly colors and patterns. 
10. Mass-scale insect farming to offset Earthside food shortages.
11. Morlocks - humans modified to spend their entire lives underground or underwater - they're got an explicit reference to Deep Carbon Observatory in their writeup.
12. Six different ways for slightly-changed microbes can trigger catastrophic environmental collapse.
13. "Surprise! There was an alien civilization inside Europa the entire time!"
14. Hyper-compartmentalized cell-based conspiracy where no one in the group knows that they're actually part of the group.
15. Gentlemen! BEHOLD! Martian bigfoot!
16. The Alpha Centauri colony mission is absolutely fucked in 6/7 origin stories
17. Eusociality emerges due to the pressures on small, extremely isolated populations. 
18. Postsingularity entities that encoded themselves into the interactions of extremeophile microbes.
19. Predatory space habitats that eat other space habitats for resources
20. LS4D - the drug that allows you to visualize in more than 3 dimensions 

I desperately want this book in a system-neutral form. Or a form that has permissive licensing so it can be easily adapted to other games. Something that allows it to spread outside of 60 Years. Take the factions et al from this book, combine it with the solar system / planet builder from AE, the life / ecosystem designer, and some other bits from the rest of the books, strip out the 60 Years mechanics, and you have a system neutral hard-science rpg toolkit that isn’t afraid to get weird with it: That is an extremely undeserved market in this field. 

It'd be really nice for the uplifted manta ray, the prehistoric vampire, and the medical nanite symbiote to be in a game that isn’t such a hassle to play. 

Finale

I say it often and it bears repeating: Flawed art with vision is more engaging than 'good' art that remains safe. This is one of those cases. I haven't had this much fun with an RPG (sans the one session of Mothership I've run this year) in ages, but it's also a mess of a game that gets in its own way constantly and is nearly, but not quite, unplayable. Both can be true. And the great thing about text in a pdf is that it can be changed: mechanics can be adjusted, cruft can be cut, elements can be re-arranged and reformatted and we've seen that already happen with this game.

I've gotten my fill for now, but might return in the future, either if there are revisions that streamline the play process of the main game / split off the history simulation aspect, or if I get the itch to run A Lot of Zeroes. But for now, we return to the regularly unscheduled programming.

60 Years, the Return: Part 4

Let's get right into it.

• Part 1: Crew & Mission Generation 
• Part 2: Rocket Science
• Part 3: Mission Year 1 
• Part 4: Mission Years 2-4 
• Part 5: Wrap-up 

Service Risk Triggers

1. Cosmic Ray (Applies if no cosmic ray protections)
2. Extended Ops (Applies if 2d6 < mission years)
3. Lifespan (Always applies; roll twice if Augmented+)
4. Maintenance (Always applies; roll twice if AWOL)
5. Microgravity (Applies if size/thrust < 10 and Crew Quality < High)
6. Psychological (Always applies: roll for result first time only)

2041 (Era 1, Year 2)

Blue 4

Planning Phase

•  Service Risks (SI 57)
• Noi - 2: Extended Ops
• 2 = 2, no effect
• Shin - 4: Maintenance
• 2 - Implant Aging (no implants, does not apply)
• En - 2: Extended Ops
• 11 > 2, no effect
• Fujita - 4: Maintenance 
• 6 - Unlicensed items (does not apply) , Aging/ Mental (1(d6) + 1(era) , 3 (character age in decades). No effect yet, Fujita now has Mental Aging 1.
• Public pronouns (CR 103)
• N/A
• Dependency (FW ??)
• N/A
• Move / Operation Selection
• Completed in Part 2
• Faction Event (SI 44)
• 4 - Faction Accident (Green) - The Southern Alliance suffers another setback as one of their shifts suffers a thruster accident in LEO; the entry on SI 316 says to destroy the thruster and a “support card” which is a board game component not otherwise mentioned or explained in the book.
• Solar Cycle Event (SI 44)
• 7 - Trend (Does not apply)
• Trends (AE 12-17)
• N/A

Execution Phase

• Resolve Interceptions (SI 98)
• N/A
• Move (CR 206)
• Green Line Merge Point through Jovian flyby through Saturn band
• Encounter (CR 246, SI 13, AE 18)
• 11 - 3rd Wave Crew
• (1, 3) + (5, 11) : GISTDA (Thai national space agency)
• Communication Origin: Shackleton Crater, Lunar South Pole
• Encounter Prompt: Propaganda
• The Hayashida picks up self-congratulatory and spin-doctored broadcast from GISTDA’s lunar facility about recent manufacturing developments.
• Operation (SI 270 & 274)
• Research - 3! A plain success. We research the 3 remaining components for our upcoming ORION rocket.
• Held Move (CR 206)
• N/A
• Gain skill points (SI 270 & CR 119)
• Going to handwave these again, except for Fujita; going to use his skill point to negate his Mental Aging penalty and bring him back down to 0.
• Dysphoria penalty for AWOL Modded / Converted / Exospecies crew (CR 163)
• N/A
• Mission Results (SI 41)
• N/A

Year 2 Wrapup

• 3 major factions
• JAXA (White)
• Planetary Society (Purple)
• The Southern Alliance / SACU + MERCOSUR  + ASEAN (Green)
• 2 minor factions
• Zero Family (Earthside criminal syndicate, Purple)
• GISTDA (Thai national agency) 
• 3 factories
• 10 Hygeia (Planetary Society)
• Arsia Mons caverns, Mars (Southern Alliance)
• Shackleton Crater, Lunar South Pole (GISTDA)
• Faction finances: 1 debt, capital 5
• Research queue: 5/5 ORION components researched 

2042 (Era 1, Year 3)

Yellow 1

Planning Phase

• Service Risks (SI 57)
• Noi - 3: Lifespan
• 6 - Sleep Companions + Aging/Physical (5 + 1 > 4, no effect)
• Since I am not really caring about sleeping arrangements, part 1 does not apply.
• Shin - 6: Psychological
• 1 - Autonomization: Shin has developed a tendency to doubt the competence of anyone outside of mission control and the Hayashida’s crew: he will take a penalty on all skill checks where someone from outside the faction attempts to help.
• En - 3: Lifespan
• 2 - Mission Contacts
• I understand the point of the contact risks: having your contacts die while you’re out on a mission is good storytelling fodder, but contacts and all that are a part of 60 Years that is very easy to let fall to the wayside. 
• Proofing Note: AFAIC, Delta Green still remains the king of contact mechanics for a good reason - they get you a lot of material (ie, see how someone’s relationships change  over time) for an easily-grasped and always relevant mechanic (ablative SAN armor) - there are just one or two moving pieces too many here.
• Fujita - 3: Lifespan
• 6 - Sleep Companions + Aging/Physical (3+1 > 3, no effect)
• Public pronouns (CR 103)
• N/A
• Dependency (FW ??)
• N/A
• Move / Operation Selection
• Completed in Part 2
• Faction Event (SI 44)
• 3 - New Factory + Faction Mission
• New Factory 6 (Space Politics = Purple) - The Planetary Society gets a new factory up and running at… 1d6 = 1, +1 because they already have a factory, Glory destination, 1d6 again… 3:  Mars North Pole.
• Proofing Note: The faction mission result says to generate using the faction mission table, which I cannot find in CR or SI; it also does not specify if the d6 I am presumably rolling as usual for the Faction Events is the faction that is undergoing the mission, or the faction that is giving me the mission. Since the mission control trend I roll for this year gives me a faction, I am folding this into that by fiat.
• Solar Cycle Event (SI 44)
• 10 - Spacecraft Glitch + Earth Disaster
• Since the ship isn’t AWOL, we’re up to date with our computer patches and this is a minor glitch, which is supposed to be taken care of with a DevOps skill check. Since this ship is something we have Chrome for that’s 1d6, a 4 means no complication.
• Disaster roll is 11 - American-Carribean earthquake. No disruption of Mission Control support.
• Trends (AE 12-17)
• Social Trend: 8 + 1 = Sustainable Development Goals
• Somehow, human civilization starts getting its shit together.
• Proofing Note: as is commonly the case in this series, I am second-guessing myself despite superficially-clear description: I think that you don’t get an impact when a trend is rolled. I think. I’m going with that. But it feels wrong.
• Mission Control Trend: 6 - 1 = Upported Colonists
• Rolling a 2 for the White column, I then roll 1d6+6 and get 12: Svalbard Caretakers.
• Fun! These guys have a writeup in AE. 

Svalbard Caretakers (White)

They maintain the Svalbard seed vault, the secure backup vault of genes and seedstock for as much of the world’s flora as they can fit in there.

• Majority Doctrine: Conservationists 
• What it says on the tin
• Majority Origin: Food security piracy
• Mass food shortages and crop failures have brought some nations knocking, with guns to get the point across. Our caretakers are fleeing to space because the continued safety of the Terran vault is no longer a given.
• Minority Doctrine: Acclimatisation Societies 
• Controlled introduction of non-native flora into environments bolster damaged ecosystems.
• Minority Origin: Svalbard conspiracy theorists
• The outside pressure is fueled in large part by the online conspiracy ecosystem; people are certain that there is more in that facility than just seeds, and some of those people are enough political power to act on their suspicions. 
• Upgrades
• (4, 4) Orchard Ecology (Mass 1 biosphere) - The Caretakers are looking to set up a food-production operation, both as a backup in case the earthly vault is lost and as support for the growing extraterrestrial human population.

Here’s where I tie in the Faction Mission from earlier: rolling on the goal and destination table I get Long term colony - Ceres. The caretakers aren’t fucking around on this one. Since the Hayashida can’t do anything here, another crew will handle this, arriving at Ceres in (using my simplified transit houserule) 2 years / 2045.

Proofing Note: With Political trends and impacts getting cut, I don’t know how or when crew replacement is supposed to take place. These weren't relevant right now, but looking at the faction section in AE reminded me that they exist.

Execution Phase

• Resolve Interceptions (SI 98)
• N/A
• Move (CR 206)
• Uranian band into the first half of THE TERROR ZONE
•  Encounter (CR 246, SI 13, AE 18)
• 2nd Wave Crew 
• Communication Origin: 2d6 - 5 = 0, they’re Earthside 
• 2, (6,10) - POLSA (Polish space agency)
• Encounter prompt: Praise for gov’t.
• I’m presuming that’s our gov’t. maybe JAXA and POLSA are starting up some  king of joint project, something with a lot of ribbon-cutting and speeches that run on too long.
• Operation (SI 270 & 274)
• Since we have the research we need, I’m going to do an Income operation to cancel out our debt.
• 6 - Success with complication - 2d6 = 7, Rapid Operation: we get to do an extra operation this year! But since we’re stuck in transit there’s not much to do, so I’m going to Research again.
• Research 8 - Success at cost. Going to fiat that we can bank 1 point of debt clearance into a rainy day fund to cover future shortfalls. We research 1 additional technology, which will remain banked until narratively relevant.
• Held Move (CR 206)
• N/A
• Gain skill points (SI 270 & CR 119)
• I could fix Shin’s penalty, but that one is not liable to crop up in this demo mission so I’ll pass.
• Dysphoria penalty for AWOL Modded / Converted / Exospecies crew (CR 163)
• N/A
• Mission Results (SI 41)
• N/A

Year 3 Wrapup

• 3 major factions
• JAXA (White)
• Planetary Society (Purple)
• The Southern Alliance / SACU + MERCOSUR  + ASEAN (Green)
• 4 minor factions
• Zero Family (Earthside criminal syndicate, Purple)
• GISTDA (Thai national space agency, White)
• POLSA (Polish national space agency, White)
• Svalbard Caretakers (Partnered with JAXA, White) 
• 4 factories
• 10 Hygeia (Planetary Society)
• Arsia Mons caverns, Mars (Southern Alliance)
• Shackleton Crater, Lunar South Pole (GISTDA)
• Mars North Pole (Planetary Society)
• Ceres (Svalbard Caretakers, not yet constructed)
• Faction finances: 0 debt, capital 5
• Research queue: 
• 5/5 ORION components researched
• 1 banked research project 

2043 (Era 1, Year 4)

Yellow 2

Planning Phase

• Service Risks (SI 57)
• Noi - 1: Cosmic Ray
• 5 - Smart device glitch; 5 - Safety failure
• One of the ship’s smart devices glitches, causing it to no longer be safely usable. There’s no roll to determine what asset is effected, so I’m just going to roll with “personal computer develops dangerous overheating issue and needs replaced”.
• Shin - 4: Maintenance
• 4 - Robot aging - I don’t know where the aging rules are for robots, so I am just going to say “yes, this happens”. Poor spider-bot is beginning to slow down.
• En - 5: Microgravity
• Does not apply to high-quality crew
• Fujita - 5: Microgravity
• Does not apply to high-quality crew
• Public pronouns (CR 103)
• N/A
• Dependency (FW ??)
• N/A
• Move / Operation Selection
• Completed in Part 2
• Faction Event (SI 44)
• New Factory (White)
• Goal & Destination: (6, 7) Industrial - Karin B
• I can’t find a listing for any asteroid named Karin B, but there is the Karin family and 832 Karin. I’m just going to go with 1079 Mimosa because it was the second of the Karin group to be discovered.
• Proofing Note: Please include asteroid numbers
• 1079 Mimosa gives us an S-class factory: combined with the C-class factory on Pholus, this gives us the opportunity to build Europa class Promoted spacecraft. Eventually. I’ll put our extra research towards one of those, though it won’t really matter for this demo.
• Solar Cycle Event (SI 44)
• No event
• Trends (AE 12-17)
• N/A

Execution Phase

• Resolve Interceptions (SI 98)
• N/A
• Move (CR 206)
• TERROR ZONE, part 2; landing on Pholus.
• Encounter (CR 246, SI 13, AE 18)
• 12 - 3rd Wave Crew
• (2,2) + (3,2): Red - National Military (India)
• Communication Origin: Long-Term Colony - 588 Achilles
• Encounter Prompt - Was originally “survey questions”, which i felt didn’t make any sense, so I went with the nearby “news report”
• The Hayashida receives a news report from the inner system that the Indian Space Force has been deployed to quell unrest at their facility on Achilles.
• Operation (SI 270 & 274)
• Technically, I have to spend this on a Prospect operation before I do anything else: the Prospect operation exists purely as a fuck you to the player, because you’re forced to waste a year on the chance that the site is busted and you can’t make a claim on it, which means you can’t build your factory.
• MAJOR PROOFING NOTE: The Prospect operation, if it absolutely must be retained, should be moved to mission selection. Handwave it with probes or drones or whatever is needed. Having a player wade through all of this to yank the rug at the last moment is extremely aggravating:  sudden bad fortune and difficult rolls are not bad design in and of themselves, but they will be more aggravating for the player (and the player will be more likely to avoid the mechanic or the game entirely) if those elements are judged to be at too great a cost in time / in-game resource investment is too high. This is why lunchbreak-sized roguelites are an extremely popular genre: you’re going to lose, but it won’t take long and you’ll probably get something from it. 
• Industrialize Operation - We have Chrome, since we’re stripping out our ship components: 5 gets me a plain success.
• Held Move (CR 206)
• N/A
• Gain skill points (SI 270 & CR 119)
• Going to have Noi and Shin spend their points on fixing their gear.
• Dysphoria penalty for AWOL Modded / Converted / Exospecies crew (CR 163)
• N/A
• Mission Results (SI 41)
• Since we have 2 operational factories, we are technically at the Advanced tech level, I think. Which feels wrong, I think that the lucky “New Factory” event might have broken the flow of the game somewhat, since looking at the Tech Levels on CR 147 it says that we’re normally supposed to get here midway through Era 2. I’m going to go with my gut and just roll on the ET Produced column instead
• 1 - 1: All four crew get 5 points to put into their Social stat, which may now be raised to 6… but since raising it to 6 costs 6 points (CR 81), Noi is the only crew who can even use these points and goes from 4 to 5.
• Proofing Note: The generic faction upgrades are not rewarding. All the factions in AE have cool stuff they’ll give you if you do missions for them; I got skill points I can’t even use.
• Proofing Note: It’s possible to Jump to Advanced / Dual Technologies by the end of your first mission due to background faction activity.  

Year 4 / Mission Complete Wrapup

• 3 major factions
• JAXA (White)
• Planetary Society (Purple)
• The Southern Alliance / SACU + MERCOSUR  + ASEAN (Green)
• 5 minor factions
• Zero Family (Earthside criminal syndicate, Purple)
• GISTDA (Thai national space agency, White)
• POLSA (Polish national space agency, White)
• Svalbard Caretakers (Partnered with JAXA, White)
• Indian Space Force (Red) 
• 3 factories
• 10 Hygeia (Planetary Society)
• Arsia Mons caverns, Mars (Southern Alliance)
• Shackleton Crater, Lunar South Pole (GISTDA)
• Mars North Pole (Planetary Society)
• Ceres (Svalbard Caretakers, not yet constructed)
• 588 Achilles (Indian Space Force)
• 1079 Mimosa (JAXA)
• 5145 Pholus (JAXA)
• Faction finances: 0 debt, capital 5
• Research queue: 
• 5/5 ORION components researched
• 1 banked Europa-class research project 

Proofing Note: There should be bookmarks for individual operations instead of just the section header; it’s tiresome to scroll everywhere constantly.

Proofing Note: To cut down on swapping between books, I ended up going through each element instead of each year ie, I rolled the faction events for all 4 years, then the solar events for all 4 years, etc.

**

And there we have it: Hayashida's Pholus mission is done; the white whale is slain, perhaps.  A gargantuan accomplishment, yet still somewhat hollow feeling - there’s all this stuff about upgrades and progression and whatnot, but it’s so opaque and scattered throughout all of the books that it never kicked in. There’s huge lists of stuff to manufacture, but I’m playing zoomed-out: if it’s not rocket-related or interesting flavor, it doesn’t really apply. The ending is a flat note, though that is likely to be expected when I've played a fraction of a full game.

The social simulation & worldbuilding elements - developing new factions and watching as they spread across the solar system - were a lot more satisfying once I got the procedure down. Those parts are, ultimately, the lion’s share of why this game has remained in my head for so long, so I suppose that means the experiment is something of a success. I'm certainly happy with the amount of actually game-related writing it spurred me to do, and I won't say that I didn't have any fun.

My full thoughts will be in the fifth and final post in this series: stay tuned.

60 Years, the Return: Part 3

• Part 1: Crew & Mission Generation 
• Part 2: Rocket Science
• Part 3: Mission Year 1 
• Part 4: Mission Years 2-4 
• Part 5: Wrap-up 

With our astronauts made and our course plotted, all that remains is to go out and do it.

As before, our ship is the Hayashida and her crew:

•     Noi Shimada, Pilot; Callsign DEADLIFT
•     Shin Zaha, Mission Specialist; Callsign HAMMER
•     En Hajime Astronaut; Callsign TOADSTOOL
•     Fujita Avakian, Astronaut; Callsign TENGU

Goal is to establish an automated factory on the outer-system centaur asteroid 5145 Pholus.

 

9. Order of Operations

Each turn has a set order, found on SI 40. Planning Phase steps don't have any inherent timing, Execution Phase steps must be done in order.

Planning Phase

• Service Risks (SI 57)
• Every crewmember rolls on the table every year, though each risk type has prerequisites that need to be met in order for it to trigger.
• Public pronouns (CR 103)
• Era start year only
• Dependency (FW ??)
• A feature that comes into play when new species start being developed: it's not going to be relevant for this game, though if it was I wouldn't be able to do anything with it since the current version of A Facility with Words has cut that segment and I deleted my older copies of the books (and it doesn't look like older versions are available on Itch) 
• Andrew told me he is working on something to bring this back in.
• Move / Operation Selection
• This is for games with multiple players that need to agree on the next actions - since I’ve already planned out my route, it doesn’t really apply.
• Faction Event (SI 44)
• Random event focused on one or more of the major factions (not always your own).
• Solar Cycle Event (SI 44)
• Random event affecting the solar system at large; the list of events will change depending on what phase of the 12-year solar cycle is active (see below.)
• Trends (AE 12-17)
• Long-term changes to The Way Things Are for your mission control, and society at large (see below)

Execution Phase

• Resolve Interceptions (SI 98)
•  In-transit encounters, which are scheduled in advance due to the necessities of spaceflight. Might be a quick chat, might be a resupply, might be a boarding action.
• Move (CR 206)
• You can hold your move until after the year's Operation.
• Encounter (CR 246, SI 13, AE 18)
• This is what it says on the tin, but it’s also a bit confusing in that there are three slightly-different versions of the encounter table in CR, SI, and AE - I’m using the one in AE, because I’m using social trends, but this comes with some issues you’ll see below.
• Operation (SI 270 & 274)
• A year-long action involving the entire crew - this is the core of each  turn. I’m 99% positive this is from the board game, and I appreciate the structure it provides
• Held Move (CR 206)
•  If the year's movement was held, it goes here instead.
• Gain skill points (SI 270 & CR 119)
• All crew participating in an Operation get a skill point; they get an additional down-time point if they end a year at a site instead of in-transit.
• Dysphoria penalty for AWOL Modded / Converted / Exospecies crew (CR 163)
•  Only relevant for later eras / crew augmentations.
• Mission Results (SI 41)
•  On mission completion receive either faction rank up (SI 41), or an upgrade from the relevant faction. (CR 160) 
• The SI directions leave out faction-specific upgrades, which are present in CR; I'm also double-guessing if it's actually supposed to be "rank up or upgrade" rather than "rank up and upgrade".

Proofing Note: The sections for these steps should be presented immediately after the listed order of play, in the order of play, preferably with internal hyperlinks.

In line with upcoming updates to the game, I'm not going to include political trends and impacts.

9.1 Solar Cycle

The color + number codes below are in reference to the solar cycle, which runs in three four-year chunks (Blue > Yellow > Red) and determines one of the yearly events and a few other factors here and there.

9.2 Trends

Trends are where all the truly wild sci-fi stuff lives, and I would be lying if I said my attempt to play this game was anything beyond an excuse to get to this specific mechanic. When laid out over the course of an entire game, trends give you a future-history simulation with some true sci-fi sicko tier Big Idea, and you know how much I love a Big Idea for Sci-Fi Sickos.

Unfortunately, since Trends don’t kick in until 2042, this mission is only going to get the first pair and I won’t roll Impacts for them. At default you only roll for Impacts once every four years, which means that comparatively little of the big list of Big Ideas for Sci-Fi Sickos is going to feature, even if you play all five eras.

While this is somewhat disappointing on the surface, something that isn’t a current Trend can still exist, it’s just not the dominant Thing at the moment. 

I had tried, a couple years ago now, to do a run-through of only trends where I triggered Impacts twice a cycle: this technically worked, but it didn’t work well, and I hadn’t realized at the time that all the cool factions (You know me, I love a faction) that are difficult to land on with Trends are much easier to invoke with the encounter table. Lesson learned.

Clarification needed: I still don’t know if trends carry over between Eras. Do they automatically end when the year turns over, or do they keep going in tandem with the new trend until it fizzles out according to the usual mechanic?

Anyway, here’s how Trends work with the rest of the cycle.

• Year 1: Roll d6 for each Trend: if lower than the number of Impacts the trend has generated, a new Trend is rolled.
• Year 3: Roll a new Impact for each active Trend. Upgrades, crew replacements, and anything else directly involving the crew will take effect the next time you have a layover at a site or factory.

 

9.3 Encounters

Encounters need a dedicated section here, because as-written they’re kind of a mess. 

The baseline version on CR 246: roll d6 to determine which color faction you run into, no muss no fuss. SI and AE expand (and explicitly supersede) that by adding more options (and increasing the range of your roll as era progress), but the underlying chassis of colors and factions wasn’t built for more options. New factions are also rolled on this table as well.

CR 288 tells us directly that: 

 "There is a limit of 5 major (on map) factions including yours, one of each BSU color...The major factions will change as time passes, evolving into new factions and even species as time progresses." 

and 

"Any additional factions are considered minor factions, which can build infrastructure and supply missions, but do not have a significant presence on the map." 

We then get 3 categories of factions

• Crew Factions = Factions that have a mission control, ships, and are equivalent to player factions.
• Colonist Factions = Groups that want to go out and live in space, usually minor.
• Social Factions =  Broader social movements and trends, which can provide crew members and sometimes replace major factions.

This trichotomy, to the best of my search ability, does not get mentioned in SI or AE, despite being pretty vital to juggling all the factions you're going to be making. Trend and Colonist factions are pretty self-explanatory, but Crew ones have some confusing category overlaps that were giving me issues. 

Here's the two tables for reference, just before I go any further.

 

SI Encounter Table

AE Encounter Table

We're told that major factions are only generated by New Faction or Faction Replacement event; rolling a color that doesn't exist for an encounter means there's no encounter. Robots, splinter factions, and most new species have a Major Faction they're associated with, which is easy enough.

But there's a Problem: The expanded encounter rules don't have any indication as to whether or not an encounter is with a new faction or an existing one.

Worked example, directly from my mission reports. I roll a 3rd Wave Crew as a New Faction event in 2040 and they take up one of my major faction slots. But I also roll 3rd Wave Crew for the random encounters in 2041 and 2043. This has led to several questions I have been unable to find answers for.

• Are all three of these meant to be three different factions?
• Is my 3rd Wave major faction encountered only if I roll Major Faction, or is it possible on a roll of Major Faction and/or 3rd Wave Crew, since it's both of those things? 
• Am I supposed to be building up a bespoke encounter subtable specific to my game i.e. if I roll 3rd Wave Crew, do I then roll a second time to see if it's an existing faction or not?
• Does the New Faction event trigger multiple new factories in later eras for all groups, or is that just for new Major Factions? 
• Am I supposed to just make new factions for encounters until I roll the exact same result on the subtables?
• Do minor factions generated by encounters get factories or colonies?
• Do 1st and 2nd wave crews automatically qualify for major factions if their color hasn’t been claimed? 
• For encounters that generate a new faction, do I use the original roll or the black highlighted one? 
• What determines if a colonist faction is independent or not? Are all colonist factions independent, and all other colonies are just considered part of a major faction by default? 

For the time being, my hasty patch-job is re-ordering the encounter procedure: 

The bulk of encounters in 60 Years are via long-distance communication (I love this, gracefully squares the circle of how to have random encounters when you're in an empty void millions of miles away from anything else), part of the process entails rolling for its origin point; I rolled for origin point first, which would would allow me to check against existing factions and their factories to see if the encounter is with a new or existing faction.

Houserule: For long distance random encounters, roll for origin point first; if location has been claimed, use that faction for the encounter. If it hasn’t been claimed, roll on the encounter table and treat as a new minor faction.

 
Now, finally, it's time for the Pholus Mission; I’ve kept the steps that aren’t applicable for this mission anyway as a model / memory aid.

 

2040 (Era 1, Year 1)

Blue 3
 

Planning Phase

•  Service Risks (SI 57)
• Since we're still on Earth, I'm skipping this step for this year. 
•  Public pronouns (CR 103)
• Since this is an era start, I roll 8 on the table and add +1 from Purple Space Politics: They / Them / Their, indicating a greater mainstreaming of gender neutral language in the general culture.
•  Dependency (FW ??)
• N/A 
•  Move / Operation Selection
• See Part 2 
•  Faction Event (SI 44)
•  10 - New Faction x2
•  Solar Cycle Event (SI 44)
• 6 - No Event 
•  Trends (AE 12-17)
• Not applicable

Fun! I get to make two new factions. I roll 2d6 on the encounter table, since I'm in Era 1 / Upported, twice each and take the higher, and get 6/6 and 7/11. That gets me Space Politics Major Faction, which would be Purple, and a Third Wave Crew. 

Rolling on the Purple Mission Control subtype table on CR 39 I get 2, so it's the Planetary Society. New factions get 1 factory per era, and rolling on the goal/destination tables I get Long-Term Colony - 10 Hygeia. They're 99% definitely going to name it Sagan.

Rolling on the 3rd-wave factions table in the supplement, I get a joint venture between two regional organizations. Back to CR 39, I end up rolling SACU and MERCOSUR (South African Customs Union and the Southern Common Market). They're green, but we already had a Green Major faction from earlier with ASEAN; I'm actually going to fudge things a bit and say that these are the same faction, being a sort of unified front for the global south vs American & Chinese military / economic domination. Maybe the failed mission to Wilson-Harrington was the signal for the other members to step up, maybe they already had this factory up and running.  

They also get Long-Term Colony for their goal, with a destination of the caves and lava tubes of Arsia Mons on Mars.

This is fun, it's actually falling into place now. 

Execution Phase

• Resolve Interceptions (SI 98)
• Not applicable. 
• Move (CR 206)
• See Post 2: the Hayashida launches from LEO into a lunar fly-by and coasts along until it merges onto the Green Line. 
• Encounter (CR 246, SI 13, AE 18)
• 9 - Earthside Colonist (It was originally Upported Colonist, but I counted it as a new faction just because it is still just Year 1.)
• Operation (SI 270 & 274)
• The Hayashida is a fine ship, but we need something faster. Much faster. We're going to set up a D-Class factory, so I bop on over to the spacecraft table on SI 244 and oh would you look at that! One of our options is PROJECT ORION, and that's an easy choice. Go big mode or go home, why not strap ourselves to some nukes and use them as propulsion? A full overhaul of the Hayashida into a Project Orion rocket requires 5 new patents, so this year's operation is going to have to be Research.
•  This will involve the first actual skill roll of the game, which I will detail below.
• Held Move (CR 206)
• N/A
• Gain skill points (SI 270 & CR 119)
• All crew gain a skill point for participating in the Research operation, which can then be used on the skill used in the op, on a mission control contact with the relevant skill, chrome for a component used in the op, or recovering from a penalty.
•  These cannot be banked.
• Dysphoria penalty for AWOL Modded / Converted / Exospecies crew (CR 163)
• N/A 
• Mission Results (SI 41)
• N/A 

First things first, the encounter. I roll 2d6-5 on the Goal table to determine where the signal is coming from and end up with -1, so the new faction is on Earth. Makes sense for an Earthside Colonist. Earthsiders are one of the Primary Colonist Types (SI 187), I roll 2d6 on that table and get 6: Criminal Syndicate (Purple)

A few sub-tables later, I get a name (Zero Family), two doctrines (Cybercrime for the majority, financial crime for the minority) and an origin (Social Control: Very easy to get around the law when you are no longer within the territory of a nation-state.) So they're running some massive fraud from orbit, possibly by hacking communications satellites. Using crypto for money laundering, all that stuff.

The actual encounter prompt roll is 4-5, which gives me "Approached about business" and oh buddy we are COOKING. For now I'll say that (rolling...4) Fujita receives a message as a response to one of his many science communication videos shot aboard the Hayashida regarding a potential sponsorship/partnership deal with an up-and-coming media group, which is slightly sketchy but not entirely. Normally this would involve making a skill roll, but I have ignored skills thus far and will do so for as long as I can, so I'll just split it odds / evens: 2 is a No; Fujita rejects the offer. Will this have repercussions? Unknown.

For the Research Operation, I'm going to need to make a roll with the Research skill - since operations use the entire crew, they're treated as having a default skill level of 5. Mission control will give us a +1 for a total of 6.

An extremely important aside: The basic skill roll in 60 Years is roll 2d6 under your skill level. This is increased to a whopping 3d6 for flat ability score checks, and reduced to 1d6 in cases where it is extremely easy or if the crew or crewmate has relevant Chrome - Chrome is not super well defined, but it applies to rolls using technology you have patents for (i.e. have researched and produced), medical specialities, language fluency, and some very vague Crew Certifications and Player Certifications, which seem to be intended almost as a kind of achievement system but only appear in a literal printed certificate for players after character generation, giving them Chrome with crew modules. There aren't any other mentioned or lists of certifications anywhere else in CR or SI.

A second important note: 60 Years operates on the principle of "Failure is Not an Option" (FINAO), which boils down to "you're always going to succeed at your rolls, but succeeding at cost will build up flaws and defects in your crew and equipment that, if not treated, will eventually cause an Accident and that will very likely fuck you up royally, because it's space."

Under your skill is a plain success, under half your skill allows you to choose a complication (since some complications are bonuses), exactly at your skill level is a random complication, higher than your skill but less than 2x skill is either a Partial Success (Which is not well defined, appearing in only 2 other places in CR and nowhere in SI) or Expedited Abort and Retry (allowing you a second shot if you take 2 penalties), and greater than or equal to 2x skill is Mandatory Abort (plus one defect, debt, point of stress, or consumable tally)

I really like this a lot in principle: very good use of the dice mechanic to reinforce themes: your characters are still astronauts, they need to be extremely good at their job and failure will very often mean near-instantaneous death.

In  practice, though, I'm still figuring out how much I like it wrt the actual dice rolls and how Chrome works. 

I don't see any way for the Hayashida's crew to have Chrome in this scenario, since the tech is all going to be new, so I'm going to roll 2d6: I roll an 8, which puts me in the normal fail zone. Stress (as mentioned in Worldbuilding from Scratch's posts) is a bit of a non-downside for Operation-scale actions as it stands. I don't want defects, so I'm going to go with debt.

Normally, debt is per-crewmember, I'm going to change that.

Houserule: debt incurred by FINAO rolls is faction-wide; bankruptcy still works the same, if debt = Capital ability score we clear the debt but permanently reduce Capital by 1. If I would ever end up dropping to 1 Capital, I would treat that as game over.

So despite the costs, we are succesfully able to scrounge up 1d6 new patents. I only roll a 2, so we're going to have to do another Research op next year and hope we don't go into further debt.

Notes for Year 1 

• 3 major factions
• JAXA (White)
• Planetary Society (Purple)
• The Southern Alliance / SACU + MERCOSUR  + ASEAN (Green)
• 1 minor faction
• Zero Family (Earthside criminal syndicate, Purple)
• 2 factories
• 10 Hygeia (Planetary Society)
• Arsia Mons caverns, Mars (Southern Alliance)
• Faction finances: 1 debt, capital 5
• Research queue: 2/5 ORION components researched 

 

Wrap-Up 

Whew! Went longer than expected on this one, but now things are finally taking shape and falling into place. At last, the big picture is revealed and all the pieces are fitting together. It took far too long to get to this point, but suggestions for how that might be addressed will be saved for the final installment.

 

60 Years: Return Part 2

I hope you like math, because today is ROCKET SCIENCE DAY

• Part 1: Crew & Mission Generation 
• Part 2: Rocket Science
• Part 3: Mission Year 1 
• Part 4: Mission Years 2-4 
• Part 5: Wrap-up 

Our story stars JAXA’s exploratory rocket Hayashida and her four-person crew:

• Noi Shimada, Pilot; Callsign DEADLIFT
• Shin Zaha, Mission Specialist; Callsign HAMMER
• En Hajime, Callsign TOADSTOOL
• Fujita Avakian, Astronaut; Callsign TENGU

Their mission is to pile themselves into a pressurized metal can called the Hayashida and launch themselves at extremely high velocity towards the outer-system centaur asteroid 5145 Pholus to build an automated factory there.

6. Housekeeping

A few bits and bobs were left over from last session, so I'm going to deal with those first.

 

6.1 Responses

Andrew had some responses to Part 1 on Bluesky

• The game timeline splits from ours in 2015, when the real-world project started.
• Afrispace is indeed a leftover from that period.
• The problems with tables come from LATEX formatting issues. (I know nothing about LATEX, but if anyone out there does / knows how to make tables behave better, drop a comment below)
• The BSU colors were inherited from the boardgame but were given a greater importance in 60 Years, which has led to some conceptual breakage.
• Political Trends will be removed in the next update.

 

6.2 Bonus Skill Points (CR 119)

In a nice change of pace, the book aligns with a choice I was going to houserule: being able to spend the bonus skill points from chargen whenever I want instead of before I know what I need (CR 119). This is good, we love to see flashback mechanics to cut down on analysis paralysis.

A bigger issue can be found in actually spending those points on skills, because the section on buying and upgrading skills is confusingly written and needs another pass.

Proofing Note: The skill list doesn’t mention what each skill’s associated ability is. While most of them can be sussed out without much issue, it’s odd that this is left out, even when the only time it seems to be relevant is when purchasing a new skill (since the first point buy gets you skill = ½ the associated ability score).

Just as a demo, I am going to buy Fujita’s bonus skills, because he actually has all 6 of his starting points accounted for; his athlete service history means that he needs to spend 3 points on the Strong Arm skill before I do anything else.

His physical ability is 4, so the first point spent gives me Strong Arm 2, then two more points brings him up to Strong Arm 4. Science Specialists need 5+ in Prospect and he starts with 0, and we are…not able to meet the requirements. 3 skill points, even with the boosted first purchase, will only be able to get him up to Prospect 4.

So I will be ditching athlete and rolling again on the service record table: 3 gets me criminal conviction with a choice of assault or possession / sale of drugs or DUI. I’ll go with drunk driving, because if I had chosen drugs I would have had to roll a new character again since my faction is White.

Proofing Note: It’s possible to generate non-viable Science Influencer crewmembers. And probably other archetypes as well. Since this isn't funny a la characters dying during chargen in classic Traveler, it's best removed. 

6.3 Contacts (CR 116)

Everyone gets a free Emergency Contact, and then can purchase other contacts with skill points. I’m going to focus on Mission Control Contacts for now, since they can help us out with skill rolls and, unfortunately, they are also necessary for a couple mission types. I can't find where it says that, so I am going to hold off for now. The mechanical importance

7. Mission Builder (SI 68)

This Space Intentionally has an itemized list for mission components (hooray!), as follows:

• Source of mission (Done; it’s from our faction, White)
• Type of mission (Done; it’s a Science mission)
• Payload location (Done; Low Earth Orbit is the only option)
• Required payload specialists (Done: Engineer & Scientist)
• Payload: (Done: Refinery)
• Goal (Done: Industry)
• Destination (Done: 5145 Pholus)

So we have basically everything we need already figured out, though the refinery requires a bit of explanation.

Factories are used to extract resources from sites and build better ship parts. They require a refinery, a robonaut, a generator, and a reactor. You’re likely thinking “wait that’s four components why is the payload only one?” There is an answer, and while repeated several times in the text I don’t think it’s signposted nearly enough - the direct quote is on SI 70:

“...spacecraft are built using modular and re-usable components which means that the spacecraft will need to be rebuilt at a factory or turned into an outpost after it delivers its payload.”

Translated for layfolk: The intended gameplay loop is that you dismantle your ship when you arrive at your destination, then manufacture upgraded replacement parts (which you probably researched in transit).

In principle, I think this is cool. It’s one of those elements where realism adds a flavor that just doesn’t exist within the normal genre structures. But it is very clunky, and throws players directly into the deep end of the rocket components tables at the end of This Space Intentionally. But I think there's a potential ground that could smooth out this friction enough for everyone to leave happy. 

The premade rockets on CR 50 could be expanded into a flowchart; start with your basic rocket, then follow the line to 2-3 choices for each factory type you’re able to build, with those choices being functional differences ie “this one is solar powered” vs “this one is designed to deliver standalone modules” vs “this is an all-rounder”

The tables in the back of This Space Intentionally where all the rocket parts are located are already organized by premade rocket model, so the job is halfway done. Then all that analysis paralysis can be reduced down to “you need to spend x turns researching + y turns manufacturing, then you choose your new ship from the chart according to what factory you have.”

This would be a pretty happy medium, I think, between the crunch of the High Frontier system and something that would be more enjoyable for a general audience: you’re still making choices, but with more guidance and structure.

The starting rocket cards are halfway there: the Hayashida can be upgraded at an X class factory, which doesn’t help me at all with the mission I rolled since Pholus is a X-type site. Flowchart would help solve that.

If I decide to play more of this in the future, I will definitely be making something like this.

Anyway, back to the mission.

8. Plotting out the Mission 

Remember how I said there was a paragraph that took me 45 minutes to parse? It was this one on CR 206:

“Spacecraft movement consists of following a line on the High Frontier map and paying fuel steps to enter ”burns”, represented by pink shapes (circles or landers). You can stop on circles, zigzags (Hohmann intersections) or line intersections and change direction for free: a) on any circle including a burn; or b) by ending your move and choosing a new direction the following turn. You may also cross a zigzag or change direction at an intersection without a circle by paying for the equivalent of two burns mid-movement – you must stop on zigzags and intersections if you do not pay this two burn penalty. Each free pivot your thruster gives you allows you to ignore one of these two burn penalties and cross the intersection for free. A year passes when you stop moving.”

It also doesn’t contain the single-most important rule in the game, which is found in the middle of a paragraph in a premade tutorial mission in SI 27:

“You cannot enter more burns in a year than your net thrust.” 

To not belabor the point, that big confusing paragraph could be (and should be) cut down to:

• Your ship can burn fuel steps equal to its net thrust per year.
• You must burn 1 fuel step to enter a pink burn space.
• You may change your direction (pivot) for free on any intersection with a circle on it (if the circle is pink, you still need to pay 1 fuel step to enter.)
• Otherwise, you must burn 2 fuel steps to pivot at an intersection that doesn’t have a circle.
• You must burn 2 fuel steps to pass through a zigzag (Hohmann Transfer) on your route.
• You can bypass the cost of a pivot or transfer by ending your turn at that point on the map.
• Black circles are gravity assist flybys: they give you X free burns that must be used the turn they are received: only one flyby can be performed per year.
• A thruster’s afterburn stat gives you that much thrust for the year’s move for the cost of 1 fuel step.
• Some thrusters can provide you with additional free pivots.

 

Why do I suddenly hear Sburban Jungle when I look at this

I’ve highlighted the intended route on the map (the High Frontier mission planner is an absolute godsend and 100% the reason this is doable at all for me), and as you can see it’s a right bastard of a trip. 9 burns +  6 pivots + 3 transfers, but this will be cut down when I factor in my freebies. The Lunar and Jovian flybies will cancel out a total of 5 burns, and 4 of the pivots can be tossed because they have a circle on them, leaving me with (rough estimate) 4 burns, 2 pivots, and 3 transfers. We’ll shave off some more as we go, since we can’t do all of them at once.

The Hayashida can produce 4 thrust, plus 1 if we afterburn, at a fuel cost of 1 step per burn. This means we max out at 5 burns per year, though as you’ll see the actual number is going to be lower. With the refinery and crew module included, the Hayashida has a dry mass of 13, which puts us at a -1 thrust penalty and a 1 fuel tank / burn ratio at our absolute fastest.

The tyranny of the rocket equation is that you have to lug around all your fuel with you; as it turns out rocket fuel is real fucking heavy and so a huge chunk of your fuel budget is wasted hauling the rest of your fuel around. In-game, this is factored into your ship’s thrust and fuel efficiency: if your ship is above a certain wet mass (ship + fuel), you’ll take a penalty to your net thrust (can make fewer burns per year) and be able to make fewer burns per fuel tank.

From this I now have to work backwards to figure out how much fuel I need to get to Pholus.

Commentary: Incidentally, this section is an excellent illustration of why it was extremely silly to add a crucial fuel-based plot point to The Last Jedi. Star Wars ships run on “spaceship go vroom”, the moment you try and treat it like actual space travel even a tiny bit you bring in a thousand new and complex questions.

8. It is, in Fact, Literal Rocket Science

So the book doesn’t include much guidance on how to actually calculate how much fuel you’ll need. It gives you the table to figure out your thrust and fuel efficiency at a given point and over time, and the game says you start with enough fuel to get to your destination, but to actually figure out the numbers I had to longhand it.

But in longhanding it, I did manage to cook up a decent, if basic, way of visualizing and conceptualizing fuel: It’s spell slots.

This is just the table on CR 208, the only difference being the addition of the tracking column.

I start with a dry mass of 13, which means I get a maximum (we won't need all of it) of:

• 3 burns at 1 burn/tank, 3+1 burns/year.
• 8 burns at 1 burn/tank, 2+1 burns/year
• 4 burns at 2 tanks/burn, 2+1 burns/year.

We’re going to need to stop somewhere along the line so we can use the flybies, so one more pivot can be tossed. At maximum (if we don’t make any other layovers), we would need enough fuel for 12 burns, which would put us right at Wet Mass 24. That’s enough to pencil in, and I can make a draft plan.

8.1 Year 1

Relatively simple, as far as rocket science goes: Low Earth Orbit into a Lunar slingshot and onward to the Sol-Mars L4, where we make a free pivot towards the Green Line (LEO > Enceladus)We end the turn merging on the Green Line, which will make that pivot free and allow us to use the Jovian flyby next turn.

• Starting Net Thrust: 2+1AB
• Total Movement: 2 burns, 1 free burn, 1 free pivot (end turn).
• Year-End Wet Mass: 22

8.2 Year 2

We stick to the Green Line for two more burns until we reach the Jupiter flyby, which gives us a whopping +4 gravity assist. We slingshot north, pivot left at the T (2 burn, cancelled out) pivot right for free at the next burn (1 burn, free), pivot left at the Sol-Saturn L5, coast until we hit the next burn (our last freebie). We afterburn this year, getting us to the next burn (1 burn) and call it a turn.

• Starting Net Thrust: 2+1AB
• Total Movement: 3 burns, 3 free pivots
• Year-End Wet Mass: 19

8.3 Year 3 

Now we enter a SuperEyepatchWolf-certified TERROR ZONE: three back to back Hohmann transfers. (Well, not that much of a terror zone, I originally thought it was six transfers because of the way the map parses pivots)

That’s six burns worth of transfers, and there’s one more burn before we reach Pholus. I’m still stuck at 2+1 burns per turn, so I’m going to have to split this up.

I can pass through the first Hohmann Transfer, but have to end my turn on the second.

• Starting Net Thrust: 2+1AB
• Total Movement: 2 burns (1 Hohmann transfer) + 2 free burns (turn end)
• Year-End Wet Mass: 17

8.4 Year 4

We spend 3 burn to push us through the last transfer and the last burn

• Starting Net Thrust: 2+1AB
• Total Movement: 2 burns (1 Hohmann transfer) + 1 burn
• Year-End Wet Mass: 15

We have some excess fuel, but that’s actually a good thing: the Hayashida can’t actually land on Pholus: landing requires net thrust greater than the site size, and Pholus is size 4.

BUT! We have our handy-dandy detachable crew module! Mass 1, Thrust 8, 8 steps per burn / Afterburn 2. I move one of our spare fuel tanks to the module, which gives us a Wet Mass of 2 and a net thrust of 9, which is more than enough to land on Pholus. Since landing on Pholus doesn’t cost me a burn, I don't have to worry about fuel steps.

We’ve done it (the planning stage, at least)! The Hayashida can reach Pholus in four years and her crew can safely land and build a factory!

FUCK YOU PHYSICS YOU CAN’T STOP ME. I’LL FIGHT GOD AND WIN.

I will leave things here and start the actual gameplay segment in the next post, but to wrap it up I’ve got some chunky additional commentary

  

9. Further Thoughts about all that the Rocket Science

I won't lie; it was satisfying to see it all come together. But there has got to be a better way of calculating this. A graph, a table, an equation, something.  Maybe there isn't and this actually is the most efficient way to do it - I doubt that's the case, but maybe. Aft the very least it needs to be way more streamlined and player-focused than it is, because it's the central mechanic of the game. 

9.1 The Alternative in the Book

The rules do provide an alternative, where the shipbuilding and mission calculations are elided entirely and replaced with a single roll of 1d6+1 years (CR 40). If I was going to play more than one mission, I’d take this option, but I don’t think it’s a satisfying solution: it doesn’t scale with distance (which is weird, considering that range bands are a recurring mechanical component of the game), which means you can end up with missions to Mercury and Neptune running the same amount of time and likely being far too long or far too short. 

I’m violating my “no homebrew” rule to introduce a minor palliative to this mechanic. The roll now varies slightly depending on launch point and destination; the “inner system” is not strictly defined in the book (at least not that I could find), so here I'm using the most reasonable option of “everything from Mercury through Ceres”.

• Inner > Inner: 1d3 years (1d3-1, minimum 1, if adjacent bands)

• Inner > Outer: 1d3, +1 for every Outer System range band you pass through, inclusive of destination. Back of the napkin calculations
• Earth > Jupiter 2-4 years
• Earth > Saturn: 3-5 years
• Earth > Uranus: 4-6 years
• Earth > Neptune: 5-7 years

• Outer > Inner: As above, but the Inner System counts as one zone if you're starting from Outer.

• Outer > Outer: 2d3+1

• Traveling between moons of a single planet is just 1 year.

9.2 Alternative 2

Ignore fuel entirely and just use net thrust and dry mass to determine how far you can go in one year. We have a wizard opening up a portal to the outer corona of Azathoth or something.

9.3 Alternative 3

Calculate wet mass as an abstracted +X fuel tanks per range band you’ll be traveling through. Burns are then used only as a way of calculating time, since you can still only travel equal to your net thrust. We only track fuel expenditure on a per-range band basis instead of per burn; -2 fuel tanks per band, every band. You’d have to break the total burns into both # of burns per band and each individual year, which is less than ideal

EX. Earth > Uranus band is 5 bands, if I say it’s 2 tanks / band the Hayashida would be starting at 23 mass, which is in the same range as my in-depth calculations. 

** 

So yeah, there we go; a shit-ton of number crunching and a plan to get from Point A to Point B. This was significantly less frustrating than Part 1, likely as a combination of getting used to the books, the method paying off, and this section being mostly pulled from board game rules that have had four editions worth of refinement.

Tune in next time to see it actually get played! If I don't get perma-distracted by Hades 2.