I read a post here recently about someone trying to create a co-op mission for X-wing and I began thinking about non-combat oriented missions. For those of you that read the books you may be familiar with Lando’s Folly. It is from the first book of the Yuuzhan Vong series. Wookieepedia link: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lando's_Folly

The basic gist:

“The obstacle course was called The Belt and participating in this course was called “running the belt”. The station’s (Belt-Runner 1) paltry shields were upgraded so that it could protect pilots should they crash into an asteroid. Through the use of powerful ion generators and modified tractor transmitters the station could project repulsor shielding to fighters several thousand kilometers away”

Participants would “run the belt”, which consisted of entering a stream of asteroids, flying a Tie Advanced x1 w/ additional shielding via the Belt-Runner 1. The winner was the pilot that could stay within the asteroid belt for the longest period.

As so much of X-wing is dependent on maneuvers I thought this idea would be a very fun scenario to challenge a person’s flying ability. Here are some ideas I have for it, but would love some additional input.

The course would consist of a 3’ by 1’ area.

- “The Start” will refer to the side that a player’s ship is placed

- “The End” refers to the other end of the play area and is from the direction that new asteroids will be placed.

The Tie Advanced can be placed within range 1 of the start of the course. Then asteroids will be randomly distributed (not sure how to do this yet) starting at the end of the course up to the middle of the course. In addition to randomly placing the asteroids, I need to develop a system for randomly assigning a movement template to each asteroid as it is placed. This movement template would then be the asteroids movement from one end of the course to the other.

Turn Order:

- Player would choose a maneuver from the Tie Advanced dial

- Asteroids would all move according to their templates

- Player would then reveal his dial and move

- New asteroids are placed at the rear of the course (with random movement templates)

The player loses if:

If a ship ever overlaps with an asteroid, regardless of if the asteroid moved into the ship or vice versa the ship is bounced out of the course. (From the book, the projected shields from Belt-Runner 1 provided enough power that the ship would be thrown wildly out of control when it had a direct hit with an asteroid) In addition, when a movement template runs completely over an asteroid this is also considered a direct hit and the ship is bounced off the course.

If the player’s template partially overlaps an asteroid, the player must roll. On a hit or critical hit the ship is bounced to the nearest side of the asteroid and THEN continues the maneuver from that position. In the book, Han Solo and Chewbacca used the shields to skip into better positions using the Belt-Runner 1’s projected shields. A very talented player could then use asteroids to his advantage.

Winning:

- There is no specific condition to win. Getting to the end is not the goal. The goal would be a competition between players to see who could stay in the course for the most number of turns.

Foreseeable problems:

- What happens when an asteroids runs off the course, should it bounce back in? If it doesn’t, the start of the course would have far fewer asteroids than any other part of the course.

- In the book it was a disqualification if a pilot flew backward, but what about K-turns etc in the game? In addition, the course if finite so should players be able to fly backward as they want?

- If two asteroids collide, should they bounce into different directions? Making predicting them all the more difficult.

My goal would be to keep the game as simple as possible and not overwhelm the scenario with rules and micro-managing. I ended up getting very wordy, but hopefully it makes sense for the most part. Please let me know what you think!

Give it all packman sides... if an asteroid goes off one side it phases back in on the other side. If a player exits the "end" they just phase back in on the "start" side.

First off I really like your idea. That part was pretty cool in the book (although I haven't read it in years and wouldn't have ever thought of it if you hadn't mentioned it.) I think a couple of things would be a good addition.

1. Use a scatter dice to determine which way each asteroid moves at a set template distance(2 straight would be good, or 2 bank if you want to go crazy.) Or you could assign each movement template a different number and role a dice for each asteroid each turn and always use the same spot on the asteroid to place the template. And I think that asteroids should definitely bounce off each other.

2. I think that you should ease up on the way asteroids affect ships. I would make it only if you actually land on the asteroid do you take damage, since I sure you are going to pack the course with more than one set. Make if very hard to land in an asteroid free space, but make getting to that space not as damaging.

3. I think that you should get points for progressing along the course as well as for number of turns before you die. Make some sort of scale to determine what is worth more points. Mark off the course in segments of range 1 and see who can get the farthest by the time they die.

4. Allow k-turns, but make the penalty for doing it(not getting as far in the course) make them unattractive

5. Rakky Wistol had a good idea with the "pacman" thing. Just keep track of how many segments a pilot goes each time for a total distance traveled score.

Just my 5 cents. :-)