Wandering Galaxy Designer Diary
Sixth Entry
Space Battles in Wandering Galaxy
The Wandering Galaxy is a dangerous place. Sooner or later you’re going to have to hop in a turret and fire some laser cannons at hostile enemy ships and predatory space creatures. It’s all part of the gig!
When you encounter threats in Wandering Galaxy, you often have opportunities to avoid a fight. You might be able to intimidate the enemies, scaring them away with your swagger alone. You might strike a bargain, trade goods, or otherwise negotiate an amicable resolution. Heck, you might have a cloaking device and just disappear altogether. But try as you might, you can’t always avoid space battles. Some jobs will require you to blow something up to get paid, or if your communication skills prove unsuccessful, you might find your only option is to blast your way out. It’s inevitable!
Battle Stations!
When you get into a space battle, the app will send you to one of the various space battle pages in the location book. These are similar to other pages in the location book, but the art on the left page will show a top-down battle schematic with your ship in the center hex sector, and six numbered hex sectors surrounding it.
The app will instruct you to place enemy scanner blips on the numbered sectors. These blips represent the general location of the enemies, and each blip matches an enemy strength dial on the security station. The app will instruct you to set the strength dials usually based on the number of players.
Just like other location book pages, starting with the first player and going clockwise, each player places their standee on one of the actions on the right page. This will give them options to maneuver the ship, fire ship weapons, launch torpedoes, lock on enemy targets, or even improvise ways to thwart their attacks.
Fire at Will!
The ship weapons are represented by cards assigned to the security station’s three weapon slots. To blast an enemy ship, you must choose a ship weapon that has an enemy blip in a sector covered by its firing arc, then make a Targeting skill check. The higher your total, the more damage you’ll do to the chosen enemy. Damage caused to an enemy ship lowers its matching dial. If its dial is reduced to zero, the enemy is destroyed and its blip is removed from the page.
Round End
After all players have resolved their actions, you will enter the ‘Round End’ code listed at the bottom of the page. This is when the enemy ships make their moves and attacks guided by the app. When an enemy ship attacks, draw the indicated damage tokens from the bag. The tokens in the bag have a variety of effects. Any damage effects drawn are applied to the station that matches the sector that enemy is in.
Crash Landing
It happens to the best of us.
There are two essential ship systems that must be maintained to avoid crashing the ship: Life Support, and Hull. If either of these reach zero, you’ll be forced to make an emergency landing on a hostile planet where you’ll be tasked with improvising some janky ship repairs so you can get back to your adventures.
After you blast the enemy ships into oblivion and beyond, you often get a chance to scavenge some sweet spoils. You might find weapon upgrades, valuable cargo, or even special ship devices like a Foldspace Capacitor, or Cloaking Device. It makes it all worth it!
I hope you’ve enjoyed the Designer Diaries for Wandering Galaxy! The Kickstarter has ended, but pre-orders are coming soon. Sign up for our newsletter to be notified when those open up!
