Now that we've expanded on the sorts of terrain we could run into during our battles, I'm wondering what else we could see in the future. I think this one is a no-brainer:

Ion Clouds!

When your ship or maneuver template overlaps an Ion Cloud, receive one Ion token and roll one die. On a hit result, suffer one damage.

Too strong? Not strong enough? Completely unnecessary?

Alternately, if you have your own ideas, lets hear them!

Space Stations!!!!

Automated defense turrets for area denial - Equal opportunity, of course, firing at both players.

Building on the Ion nebula idea from above, perhaps ships within range 1 of the nebula cannot have Target Lock tokens assigned to them, and lose any that they currently have.

Explosive Gas Clouds - can be targeted by attacks, automatically scores 1 evade result. Perform an attack against against all ships within range 1 with dice equal to the number of hits dealt to the cloud, defender rolls dice as normal. Any critical hits from the explosion do not apply, and instead cause the Explosive Gas Cloud token to be removed from the battlefield.

Space dolphins: you land on a pod of these enchanting creatures and all thought of conflict leaves you, cannot attack or be attacked.

Space sharks: Your dead!

Different color nebulae. Each one has a different effect (no shields, no attacks, etc...)

Black hole - takes the place of 3 asteroids or debris tokens. Any ship that crosses the event horizon is destroyed. About the size of a large base.

Nebula clouds. Large obstacles that obscure attacks but don't actually effect you if you overlap them.

Space Slugs-It eats all ships within Range 1.

Mynocks loose a shield.

Civilian and Cargo vessels, asteroids, armed asteroid bases.

Black hole - takes the place of 3 asteroids or debris tokens. Any ship that crosses the event horizon is destroyed. About the size of a large base.

Err... Black Holes are former stars. Even though they've been compressed a lot, the gravity is still the same, so getting anywhere close to the star they once were's radius is a very bad idea (In other words, a black hole's danger zone would be... enormous)

Err... Black Holes are former stars. Even though they've been compressed a lot, the gravity is still the same, so getting anywhere close to the star they once were's radius is a very bad idea (In other words, a black hole's danger zone would be... enormous)

And the scale of movement, play area, range and so on on this game is highly abstracted so that doesn't really matter.

Black hole - takes the place of 3 asteroids or debris tokens. Any ship that crosses the event horizon is destroyed. About the size of a large base.

Err... Black Holes are former stars. Even though they've been compressed a lot, the gravity is still the same, so getting anywhere close to the star they once were's radius is a very bad idea (In other words, a black hole's danger zone would be... enormous)

Err... Black Holes are former stars. Even though they've been compressed a lot, the gravity is still the same, so getting anywhere close to the star they once were's radius is a very bad idea (In other words, a black hole's danger zone would be... enormous)

And the scale of movement, play area, range and so on on this game is highly abstracted so that doesn't really matter.

The sun's schwarzchild radius is about 3 kilometers, and it's almost 4 times smaller than the smallest known black hole. The CR90 is 150 m. So, to clarify, a black hole's event horizon is larger than the playmat, and it would probably crush anything that got within kilometers of that due to gravitational force.

Not that FFG couldn't create such a thing if they wanted, I'm just saying such a small black hole is... unlikely to say the least (It also wouldn't last long due to Hawking radiation, but that's another matter)

I'm talking about a game mechanic not real life. We are playing a 2-D space combat game and you're worrying about realism a little bit too much.

If aramada is any clue, a space station that gives a benefit for being within range 1 would be an interesting dynamic.

Black hole - takes the place of 3 asteroids or debris tokens. Any ship that crosses the event horizon is destroyed. About the size of a large base.

Err... Black Holes are former stars. Even though they've been compressed a lot, the gravity is still the same, so getting anywhere close to the star they once were's radius is a very bad idea (In other words, a black hole's danger zone would be... enormous)

Not necessarily. Black holes of extremely small size and relatively low mass could theoretically exist, caused by high energy collisions. Low mass black holes would evaporate very quickly and be teeny tiny, but since I'm not a physicist I can't explain it much better than google can.

I'd tend to agree that black holes don't need to exist in a game of this scale, but to say they couldn't exist seems to be wrong

... and ninja'ed by Squark.

Those kind of black holes are known to come and wash away the rain...

Spehss stations would be my guess. Nebula are generally too vast... gas pockets perhaps?

Just call black holes "cosmic anomalies" or some such. Though a fighter battle set in the Maw could be pretty interesting.

The CR90 is 150 m. So, to clarify, a black hole's event horizon is larger than the playmat,

To try and make this a little more explicit. The size of the play mat has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the scale the miniatures are modeled in. Our little pretend spaceships are not zipping about a battlefield that is only 800 feet across. The guns on an X-Wing do not have a maximum range of 270 feet. The scale of the play area (including obstacles) is abstracted and NOT THE SAME as the scale of the ship. In the fictional, made up reality of the game, which is based on the irrational rule-of-cool fantasy universe of the movies, the play area is much, much bigger and it is perfectly acceptable to have black holes, nebulae, planets and even intact stars as terrain features in the game if suitable rules can be devised for them.

Space Stations!!!!

so. . . not small moons?

Err... Black Holes are former stars. Even though they've been compressed a lot, the gravity is still the same, so getting anywhere close to the star they once were's radius is a very bad idea (In other words, a black hole's danger zone would be... enormous)

And the scale of movement, play area, range and so on on this game is highly abstracted so that doesn't really matter.

The sun's schwarzchild radius is about 3 kilometers, and it's almost 4 times smaller than the smallest known black hole. The CR90 is 150 m. So, to clarify, a black hole's event horizon is larger than the playmat, and it would probably crush anything that got within kilometers of that due to gravitational force.

Not that FFG couldn't create such a thing if they wanted, I'm just saying such a small black hole is... unlikely to say the least (It also wouldn't last long due to Hawking radiation, but that's another matter)

But the earth's event horizon (schwarzchild) radius is about 3/4" if I recall correctly. The gravity well would still be present though.

3/4" would fit on the map and could swallow a fighter if it was caught in the gravity well (event horizon)

Squark is right. Black holes and planets next to starfighters as terrain pieces would look dumb. The scale issues should be obvious to anyone. If a star destroyer is too big, then what makes a planet suddenly acceptable? Bad idea.

No more so than a laser having the same range as a thrown football.

It is a regrettable fact that in (as far as I know) every miniature wargame the battlefield scale and the model scale are not even remotely the same.

I'd like to see large ship debris clouds (broken firesprays, YT's and the like, or chunks of capital ships) that would count as two obstacles during the setup phase.

Another idea is nebulae that cause sensor interference (cannot target lock through them for example)