Re: I need help with starting a campaign.

One thing I've been playing around with re campaigns.

1 month turns, each of 4 weekly phases.

Movement - Thrust / 2, so Thrust 2 = 1 campaign area.
EXCEPTION: any ship that starts in Hyperspace may always move in a
phase.

Star Systems contain a core area, and a zone for each hyperspace link.
So they look something like this:

		etc
	  _______|_________
	  |    link 2	   | 
       ___|________________|__	   ______________     _______________
etc___|Link 1 | ALPHA| link 3 |____| Hyperspace |_____|Link 1| BETA |
      |_______|______|________|    |____________|     |______|______|
	 |Link 4 |Link 5 |
	 |_______|_______|
	/		 \
 ______/_____	   _______\____
| Hyperspace |	  | Hyperspace |	    
|____________|	  |____________|
      / 		    \
     etc		   etc

Thus a Thrust-6 FTL ship would be able to go from the core worlds of
system BETA through the outer zone of BETA in phase 2, into Hyperspace
in phase 3, and arrive in the No 3 outer zone of ALPHA, at the last part
of phase 4.

A Thrust-2 FTL ship during the same period would only go to the outer
zone of Beta.

Ships arriving at each place can be given orders to either "push
through", in which case any enemy ship there can ambush them, or "stop
at contact", in which case even a single enemy scout can halt the
progress of a battlefleet.

Ships that co-exist with an enemy at any phase cause a battle.

Counters representing task forces move as follows (dice for initiative
in case of ties)

Phase 1: 8's then any ship in Hyperspace that's slower than 8
Phase 2: 6's then 8s then any ship in Hyperspace that's slower than 6
Phase 3: 4s then 6s then 8s then any ship in Hyperspace slower than 4
Phase 4: 2s then 4s then 6s then 8s then any ship in Hyperspace

The strength of each task force is noted separately, and may consist of
a  single neutral freighter or friendly scout. A task force that's
encountered is immediately removed (and is available next turn) if it's
a freighter.

The number of task force counters is determined by the size of the
fleets. Usually 1 per capital ship, plus one per friendly system. Any
ships not in a task force are shown "face-up".

Rules re ships arriving from Hyperspace, where ships go to if activating
jump drives in combat etc  should be obvious. And, for the hard of
thinking, non-FTL ships can't enter Hyperspace (unless carried or towed
by an FTL Tug).

For small asteroidal or M-class systems, there may be no "core" as such.

Note that this system works pretty well even for a 3-D starmap - in pure
mathematical terms, it's only the existence of vertices and adjacent
edges that are important in the graph, not the length of the edges.

This Hyperspace method can be well represented by Hypertext <g>, giving
href's to adjacent zones.

Rules for economics etc are another matter, and can be grafted on as you
see fit.
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