Final Frontier

Introduction

Final Frontier is a hex-based tabletop starship combat game, designed to emulate the kind of
battles we always wanted to see in Star Trek, but somehow never did. It's not a starfighter game,
so if you want to replicate the kind of dogfights seen in Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica, go and
play Silent Death or something.
However, if you want capital ship combat, where decisions about whether the energy
produced by your engines would be better utilised powering your weapons or your shields and
screaming "The engines cannae take it, Captain!" is strongly encouraged, you're in the right
place!
All you will need to play is a selection of starship models, a playing area divided into hexes, a
handful of six-sided dice and these rules.

Success and Failure

As these rules utilise a dice pool mechanism, where every ship has a set number of six-sided
dice (more commonly known as d6's) they can use each Turn, we need to define what
constitutes a Success and what constitutes a Failure. It's very simple - a roll of 4 or greater on a
d6 is a Success and a 3 or less is a Failure. As these terms are used throughout the rules, we
thought it best to explain it up front, so you'd know what we were banging on about later.

Starships

Every starship or space station in Final Frontier is defined by certain characteristics, which
are noted below:

Name: This is the name of the vessel, which can be anything you like - USS Enterprise, NSEA
Protector, Hand of God 137 or Red Dwarf.
Faction: This is the race or organisation that the specific ship belongs to, such as the United
Federation of Planets, Klingon Empire, the Minbari or the UN Protectorate. Typically, all ships
fielded by a player will belong to the same Faction. This doesn't necessarily mean they will have
a uniform look - just look at the movie Battle Beyond the Stars...
Type: This is the particular type of vessel, which can be whatever has been defined by your
particular chosen universe. For example, the various incarnations of the USS Enterprise range
from the original Consitution-class up to the Galaxy-class of The Next Generation.

These three characteristics are mainly for colour, and other than the Faction, don't really
affect play. The remaining characteristics below define how the starships interact with the rules.

Category: Every vessel in Final Frontier falls into one of three Categories - Light, Medium or
Heavy. The Category of the starship defines not only how big it is, but also how manoeuvrable.
The larger the ship, the more capacity it has for additional systems, but also the more power it
requires in order to move.
Bays: A vessel's capacity for additional systems, over and above those that are automatically
built in when they roll of the production line, is measured in Bays. These are spaces within the
hull that can have a variety of additional systems installed, from torpedo racks to transporter
rooms.
The number of Bays a vessel has depends on its Category. Starships with 7 or less Bays fall
into the Light Category; those with 8 to 11 Bays all into the Medium Category and those with 12
Bays or more fall into the Heavy Category.
Bays also define the points value of the ship or space station. A vessel with 6 Bays has a
Fleet Value (FV) of 6, whereas one with 10 bays will have a FV of 10. This allows opposing
players to assemble fleets of equal value before play, although the exact Systems installed in
each ship will be known only to the owning player.
Standard Systems: As briefly touched upon above, every vessel has three standard Systems
built in; a long-range scanner, a shield generator and a high energy beam weapons array, or to
use the shorthand, Scanners, Shields and Weapons. What each particular system can do is
defined below.
Additional Systems: On top of the three standard Systems mentioned above, you can install
additional Systems into your vessels, with each system taking up one Bay. Other than Engines,
for reasons that will be explained below, every other System is optional - if you don't want to
install a Transporter Room, you don't have to. And there is no limit on the number of Systems
you can install, as long as you have the Bays available. If you want four Torpedo Racks, you can
have them.

So, before you build your first starship, you're going to need to know what options you have
available...

Impulse Engines: More commonly known as just Engines, each Bay of Engines provides 1
dice worth of Power. These Power dice are spent on moving and manoeuvring your starship and
for powering ther majority of your ships systems. Whilst you could just have 1 Bay of Engines,
your vessel will be limited in what it can do each turn, so it's best to fill most of your Bays with
Engines.
If you have 8 Bays of Engines, for example, your vessel will begin each Turn with 8 Power
dice (i.e. 8d6). If you allocate 4 of these dice to movement, you will only have 4 Power dice left
to allocate (i.e. power) your other systems, so careful management of your ship's dice plays an
important strategic aspect of the game. However, not every System requires Power dice, as
noted under their descriptions.
Long-Range Scanner: Space, as Douglas Adams once quoted, is big. And as we're dealing
with capital ships, which are essentially small towns floating about in space, even the smallest
model on the table is actually pretty huge. So whilst the distances on the tabletop may not
appear to be large, scale-wise, we're actually looking at quite substantial distances. So Line of
Sight, a common part of the majority of tabletop wargames, is pretty pointless, as you can't just
look out of the window to see other vessels, unless they're very, very close. And this where
Scanners come in...
 To operate your vessel's Scanners during a Turn, you must assign at least 1 Power dice to
them. You may choose to allocate your Power dice elsewhere, but this means that your ship is
flying blind and CANNOT fire upon an opposing vessel, unless that ship is in an adjacent hex
and within one of your ship's Firing Arcs.
You would not nor normally roll the dice assigned to your Scanners - the Power dice is just to
ensure that someone's actually turned them on. However, there will be occasions when you will
not only need to roll this dice, but also choose to assign more than one dice to your Scanners.
And that will because of the next item in the catalogue...
Cloaking Device: Stealth technology that renders a vessel partially or totally invisible, more
commonly known as a Cloaking Device, initially made its debut as an option for starships in the
original 1966 Star Trek episode "Balance of Terror", attached to a Romulan Bird of Prey. So we
really had to include it in the rules...
Any ship can choose to install a Cloaking Device as an additional System, providing it has an
available Bay. To operate your vessel's Cloaking Device, you need to assign at least 1 of your
Power dice to it, but the actual number of dice is up to you.
When an opposing ship uses their Scanners against a cloaked vessel, they must roll the
number of dice assigned to them, with each Success counting as a positive trace on the
cloaked ship. The cloaked vessel then rolls the number of dice assigned to the Cloaking Device,
with each of their Successes cancelling out each positive trace. If the Cloaked vessel's
Successes either equal or exceed the Scanning vessel's, then the ship remains undetected. If
the Scanning vessel's Successes exceed the Cloaked vessel's, then the ship has been detected
and may be fired upon as normal.
The final rule regarding Cloaking Devices is that if the cloaked vessel fires any of it's weapons
during the Turn it is cloaked, the Cloaking Device immediately turns off for the remainder of the
Turn. You may cloak your vessel and move it about during your Turn with no problem, but as
soon as you open fire, the cloak drops. Should you choose to fire at the beginning of your Turn,
you may NOT assign any Power dice to your Cloaking Device until the next Turn. This is known
as Gygax's Law.
Weapons Array: As mentioned above, every starship automatically is installed with a high
energy beam weapons array. Whether you decide to call these turbloasers, disruptors, phasers
or laser beams doesn't really matter - it's a high energy beam weapon of some description.
The standard weapons array, more commonly just referred to as Weapons, is installed at the
front (or fore) of your vessel and fires in a 120 degree arc, centred on its middle. In actual fact,
this being three dimensional space, it's a 120 degree cone - but as most space combat games
are played on a two-dimensional surface, we shall refer to it an an arc. If you want genuine
three-dimensional space combat, go and play Elite. This is known as a Firing Arc.
Now, you may be thinking "Actually, I'd quite like to have weapons that fire to both sides and
out the back too..." This is not a problem - you can install additional Weapons on both the left
(Port), right (Starboard) and rear (Aft) of your vessel. Each additional weapons array will take up
one of your Bays, however. Each weapons array will have it's own Firing Arc, centred on
whichever side of the ship you have assigned it to. As the astute amongst you will have realised,
this means that in certain instances, you will have an overlap where any enemy vessel within it
can be fired upon by both weapons arrays. This "sweet spot" can be exploited by canny naval
officers.
 As with other Systems, you must assign Power dice to Weapons in order to fire them. The
number of dice assigned to Weapons not only determines how many dice you roll in combat, but
also the range at which the weapon is effective. The more power diverted to Weapons increases
both the damage they can do and the distance at which they're effective.
For each Power dice assigned to Weapons, you may fire 1 hex at an opposing ship that falls
within your Firing Arc, not including the hex your ship is on. So, if you assign 3 Power dice to
Weapons, you may fire at any enemies within 3 hexes of your position.
To determine damage, you roll the Power dice assigned to Weapons, with each Success
constituting 1 Hit on the opposing vessel. However, these may be blocked by the defending
vessel's Shields, as explained below.
Torepedo Rack: Of course, high energy beam weapons arrays are not the only weaponry
available to the aspiring starship captain. Starships may also opt to have a Torpedo Rack
installed, more commonly known as Torpedoes. Whether these torpedoes are photon, plasma,
proton or quantum matters not, as they are all essentially highly explosive guided space
missiles.
The advantages of installing a Torpedo Rack are that it is one of the few Systems that does
not require Power dice to operate, they're long range weapons and when they hit, they're pretty
devastating. The disadvantage is that they take longer to recharge/reload than the standard
weapons array.
Whilst you may install as many Torpedo Racks as you wish, providing you have the Bays
available, you must declare which of the four Firing Arcs your racks operate in, similar to your
standard Weapons. You may opt to have them facing forward, as a back-up to your standard
weapons array or decide to give your vessel a "sting in the tail" by mounting them at the rear. It's
entirely up to you, but must be recorded on your ship's records, so that no confusion arises
during play.
For every Torpedo Rack installed you may 'fire torpedoes!' at one enemy vessel within its
Firing Arc. Torpedoes have a range of 6 hexes and cause 3 Hits when they impact on the
defending vessel, which may be blocked by their Shields, as with normal Weapons.
Once fired, Torpedo rack takes 4 Turns to recharge/reload. So, if a starship fires its
Torpedoes on Turn 1, it will be unable to fire again until Turn 5.
Shield Generator: Every starship, no matter its size, is equipped with a Shield Generator, more
commonly known as just Shields. This is a barrier of energy which surrounds the vessel, to
protect it from the rigours of travel and combat in space. Every ship has a low-level passive
shield in place whilst moving, to protect the vessel from the dust, debris and other objects that
would otherwise impact upon its hull. Whilst space is usually described as a void, it is far from it,
and even the smallest micro-meteorite can seriously ruin your day if it strikes an unprotected
vessel at Warp Factor 10. Hence the low-level passive shield. However, during combat, active
Shields come into play...
As with other Systems, to activate your starship's Shields you must assign Power dice to
them. For each dice assigned, you get to roll that number of dice for each attack made against
your ship that Turn. If you,ve assigned 3 Power dice to Shields and are being attacked by two
enemy vessels, you get to roll 3 dice for each attack. Each Success rolled blocks 1 Successful
Hit made by the attacking ship.
 However, any Hits scored against your ship which are NOT blocked by your Shields are
considered to be damage sustained by your ship. For each unblocked Hit taken as damage, you
lose 1 of your Power dice from the beginning of the next Turn. So, if your opponent rolls 3
Successes with their Weapons and you manage to block 2 of them with your Shields, you would
lose 1 Power dice at the beginning of the next Turn. The more damage you take, the less your
ship will be able to do.
Sometimes, due to the specific scenario being played out or the parameters of the mission
your ship's captain has been assigned, it will be necessary to send a landing party or 'away
team' down to the surface of a nearby planet, derelict vessel or space station. In these
situations, it pays to have the foresight to have installed some kind of transportation system
within your starship, such as a Transporter Room or Shuttlecraft Hangar.
Transporter Room: The almost-instantaneous teleportation of matter is a staple of most hard
Science Fiction, and has gone by a variety of names over the years - teleportation booths,
transmat beams or transporter rooms. Whilst not particularly combat orientated (with the
exception of "The Crowe Stratagem" which involved teleporting a armed quantum torpedo
directly onto the bridge of an Aztek Imperium warship and detonating it), the ability to send
members of your crew down to the surface of a planet without having to land can be useful.
Any ship can have a Transporter Room installed and as with other Systems, it takes up 1 Bay.
Unsurprisingly, in order to use your Transporter Room, you will need to assign Power dice to it
for each journey. If you beam down your landing party to a planet, this will cost you 1 Power dice
and the return trip, once they've finished whatever it was they were doing, will also cost 1 Power
dice.
Transporters only operate over a short distance, so wherever you are beaming your landing
party to has to be in a hex adjacent to the hex in which your starship is positioned.
Another factor to remember when utilising Transporter Rooms is that they cannot be
operated whilst your Starship has its Shields up. You can beam your party down and then raise
your Shields, but will not be able to beam them back up until your Shields have been lowered
once more.
Shuttlecraft Hangar: The alternative to having a Transporter Room in your starship is to
install a Shuttlecraft Hangar instead. This will house a single shuttle, capable of transporting
your landing party from your starship to its destination and back again in relative comfort.
The advantages that a shuttlecraft has over a transporter are that launching a shuttle does
not cost Power dice and a shuttle can be used at a greater range.
However, the disadvantage of a shuttle is that whilst it falls into the Light Category of vessels
in respect of movement and manoeuvrability, it has no offensive or defensive systems. A single
Hit from an enemy vessel will destroy a shuttle, as it only has the low-level passive shield in
order to protect it from space debris and entering and exiting a planet's atmosphere. Once
landed however, or docked with a space station or other vessel, it cannot be fired upon.
As with transporters, a shuttle cannot be launched from or return to its hangar if your
starship has its Shields up.

So, now that we've explained the standard and additional Systems that you can install into
your vessels, let's build some starships!
 For our examples, we will be using some background fluff developed for the ships built to
play-test the game.

The planet of New Albion was discovered and claimed by colonists from the Terran nation
originally known as Great Britain. The whole planet is ruled by a hereditary monarchy, the current
incumbent being Queen Victoria III. Historically, Great Britain lay claim to a vast empire due to its
superior naval power, and the New Albionites are no different, with the New Albion Royal Navy, or
NARN, being well-respected for their tactical and strategic prowess.
So, in order to create some starships, we've decided that that initially the NARN will have 4
types of ship; Corvettes, Frigates, Cruisers and Dreadnoughts. These will have 6, 8, 10 and 12
Bays respectively, meaning that the Corvette and Frigate fall into the Light Category, the Cruiser
into the Medium Category and the Dreadnought into the Heavy Category.
Deciding to add a little colour, the first four ships will be a Unicorn-class Corvette, a Bulldog-
class Frigate, a Wyvern-class Cruiser and a Dragon-class Dreadnought.
For the Unicorn-class Corvette, we have installed a forward facing Torpedo Rack and 5
Engines in its 6 Bays. This means that it will generate 5 Power dice each Turn.
For the Bulldog-class Frigate, we have filled all 8 Bays with Engines, meaning that it will
generate 8 Power dice each Turn.
For the Wyvern-class Cruiser, we decided to add 2 Torpedo Racks, one on each side, and fill
the remaining 8 Bays with Engines. As with the Frigate, this vessel will generate 8 Power dice
each Turn.
Finally, for the Dragon-class Dreadnought, we decided to add to its existing forward weapons
array with an additional forward facing Weapons array AND a forward facing Torpedo Rack. This
truly is a dragon now! The remaining 10 of its 12 Bays were then filled with Engines, meaning
that it generates 10 Power dice each Turn.
As you can see, 'designing' a starship with the Final Frontier rules is simple and takes
minutes.

Space Stations

Whilst combat between individual or fleets of starships is the main focus of the Final Frontier
rules, these are not the only types of vessel you may find in interstellar space. We are, of course,
talking about space stations.
If we were to use an Age of Sail analogy, starships are ships of the line, whereas space
stations represent ports.
Space stations have exactly the same characteristics as starships, but as they tend to be
larger than the majority of the vessels in Final Frontier, you're unlikely to find one with less than
12 Bays.
The main difference between starships and space stations is that space stations are static
installations and cannot move. However, their Fleet Value is the same, relating to the number of
Bays the space station has. "Surely," I hear you cry, "it should be cheaper, as it just sits there..."
The answer to this is "no"... for two reasons: docking and drydocks.
Docking: If a starship is in a hex adjacent to a neutral or friendly (i.e. owned by the player)
space station, the player may declare that the starship is docking - this takes 1 full Turn and the
starship may not do anything else that Turn. To undock takes the same amount of time. A
maximum of 6 starships may be docked at a single space station, one for each hex surrounding
it.
The advantage of being docked at a space station is that the Shields generated by the space
station apply to anything docked to the station as well, so effectively they extend for an
additional hex beyond the hex occupied by the station. As space stations do not need to
allocate Power dice for movement, their Shields tend to be a lot stronger than those of
starships.
If a space station has its Shields up, no vessel may dock at or undock from the station
during that Turn.
Drydock: Space stations do have three standard Systems built in, the first two being
Scanners and Shields. However the third System is not a weapons array, but rather a Drydock. If
you want to arm your space station, you will have to install weapons arrays in your available
Bays, bearing in mind that as the station doesn't actually move, you will need 4 Bays worth of
Weapons in order to cover every side.
A Drydock is a repair bay, in which starships can regain lost Power dice. In order for a
starship to be 'healed', it must be docked with the space station and the station must expend 1
of its own Power dice for that Turn to repair 1 lost Power dice on the damaged starship. Only 1
Power dice may be allocated to the Drydock per Turn, but a station with multiple Drydocks may
allocate 1 dice to each Drydock. If you happen to be the only damaged starship docked at a
station with three operational drydocks and the station allocates dice to each Drydock that Turn,
then your ship can have 3 Power dice restored that Turn, instead of 1.
To give an example of how this works, a starship ends its Turn adjacent to a space station.
On the next Turn, the player declares it's docking and the following Turn it may have 1 lost
Power dice restored. It may then undock on the third Turn. Whilst this will take it out of active
play for 3 Turns, it will be protected by the space stations Shields during this period and will
leave the station fully repaired.
Only space stations may install drydocks.

A space station may install any additional System, including additional Drydocks, provided
they have the Bays available.

Main Rules

Now that we've explained how to build starships and space stations and what options you
have available, it's now time to explain how to play the game.

Every game is divided into a number of Turns, with a Turn being defined as the length of time
it takes for every player to have expended all the Power dice for each vessel they have in play.
In order to determine which player goes first, all players roll 1d6 and add the number of ships
they currently have in play. This is known as the Initiative roll.
Whoever gets the highest roll goes first, allocating Power dice to each ship they have in play
until all their ships have moved, fired, etc.
 The second player then gets to do the same. If you have more than two players, whoever rolls
highest goes first, followed by the player with the next highest roll, etc. Once all players have
allocated Power dice to all their ships, the Turn is over and Initiative is rolled once more.
Now, there may be occasions when both (or more) players roll the same amount on their
Initiative roll. What comes into play then is a rule we like to call "Captain's Orders".
Each player writes down on a piece of paper exactly where they are allocating their Power
dice for each ship and in which direction, if any, their ship's are moving. The players then reveal
these "Captain's Orders" to their opponent and allocate Power dice and move their ships
accordingly.
As neither player has the advantage of knowing what the other player is going to do, this can
lead to some interesting tactical challenges, as you try and second guess your opponent.

As we've already covered the rules for allocating Power dice to your ship's various Systems
and how each System works, we only need to cover moving and manoeuvring your ship during a
Turn and Landing Parties.

Moving

In order to manoeuvre your ships you must allocate Power dice to movement. A ship may
move 1 hex for every Power dice allocated to movement, but only if it falls into the Light
Category. Larger ships require more power to manoeuvre their bulk, so a Medium ship must
allocate 2 Power dice for each hex moved and a Heavy ship must allocate 3 Power dice.
You may only change facing by 60 degrees (or 1 hex side) for each hex moved, so to come
about 180 degrees will require 3 hexes of movement, which forms a nice little arc.
To try and replicate three-dimensional movement on a two-dimensional playing area, ships
may pass through a hex containing another vessel, as long as their final move places them in a
different hex to the vessel they have passed. They are considered to have gone either over the
top of or beneath the other vessel.

On occasion there may be other objects floating about in space, such as derelict vessels,
satellites or small moons or asteroids.
For small objects, which is anything roughly the same size as a starship, they are treated
exactly the same as starships in respect of manoeuvring past them.
Larger planetary masses are treated slightly differently. As a small moon or planet is a large
solid mass, it cannot be passed, so ships must go around them or navigate over the top or
beneath them. This takes more time and therefore requires more hexes of movement, so more
Power dice.
To keeps things simple, if a large planetary mass takes up one hex, a ship may pt to go
around either side of it or over the top. From one side to the opposite side is 4 hexes worth of
movement. However, to go over the top only costs 3 hexes of movement, 1 to go 'up' the hex, 1
for the hex it occupies, and a further 1 to descend the other side.
Now, you might be asking why anyone would bother to go around a large planetary mass,
when it costs less in movement to go over the top. The reason is that whilst it does costs less,
whilst the ship is going over the mass, it can be fired upon by any enemy vessel's in range. A
ship on the other side of a mass may be detected by the enemy's Scanners, but cannot be fired
upon, because the mass is in the way. It's similar to the idea of being able to see your opponent
on top of a hill, but not if they're behind it.
Obviously, masses larger than 1 hex are treated in the same way, with the number of hexes
wide the mass is plus 2 being the cost to go 'over' it, whereas the movement cost to go around it
will be the number of hexes actually moved.

Landing Parties

As explained under the descriptions of Transporter Rooms and Shuttlecraft Hangars, there
may be occasions where a specific mission or scenario may require a starship captain to
dispatch a landing party or 'away team' to a derelict vessel or down to the surface of a planet.
Whilst we've explained how you transport them to and from their destination, we haven't
explained how you actually get them to complete their mission.
As with the rest of the rules, they're very simple.
Once a landing party has arrived at it's destination, you may roll 1d6 for each Turn they spend
at their destination. A Success (i.e. 4+) means that they have achieved their mission, be it
convincing a team of scientists to abandon a doomed research facility to locating essential
fissionable materials to repair your starship's engines. A Failure requires additional Turns spent
at the destination until such time as they Succeed.