Taking a look at the CC map, what planets look the most interesting for the start of the campaign?

1. Will you put your starting locations on the lucrative inner planets, or the far-flung outer reaches?

2. Do you avoid areas that can be targeted by the enemy's special assault, or go full come-at-me-bro mode?

3. What look to be the best and worst defensible locations?

4. What qualities do you rate most highly in a location? Repair Yards for fleet resilience, Spynet for deployment advantage, resource points for early game snowballing?

im really liking spynet as it can be a way to get superior positions/ solar corona -esqe deployment advantage as first player!!!! picture devastator in rogue one deployment good!

Good topic of discussion.

Your first question is really contingent upon the answers to the second, third, and fourth questions, so I'll start there.

2. The special Assaults are more a question of what you manage to cut off entirely from the enemy's special assault. Per the rules, you cannot declare against a system with a base/outpost/presence sticker on it. The good news is that its really tough to exclude them from the game. There are just far too many systems in both sides' target areas for Special Assaults. So I don't think that's a strategic point of consideration at all. In fact, I'm not even sure with max bases and diplomats you could cut everything off entirely.

3. The best and worst defensible locations depend upon the objectives. There are a few considerations. The base objectives offer fairly good bonuses to the second player. You're either going to want a much stronger fleet match-up, or a much stronger player match-up. That's bound to happen at some point later in the campaign, but maybe not on the first turn. So the question is what systems and what bonuses do you want to lock up early with bases, and then what do you want to be able to fight with the most favorable circumstances later on. The Nebula objective is fairly defensible. I wouldn't want to give my opponent the flexibility advantage. Asteroids gives a huge bonus to the second player. Extra obstacles and no effect for player two is wonderful. Independent Station will also be useful from time to time. Finally, depending upon how you've built your fleet, any system that runs the regular +3 objectives is potentially very strong. You've just got be very built for winning those objectives. Finally, as the game progresses, we'll get some mismatches both in player strength and in fleet strength/composition. That potentially puts a +2 base at a liability, even with the bonuses. In the beginning, you may secure a very good system, but as the game progresses, do you still want that liability on campaign turn 3 or 4?

4. The Imperials start with Corellia, and thus come with Repair Yards. They also get the very first pick for a base. Then, we have an array of Resource values, and strategic abilities.

Repair Yards: These are the most concrete of the strategic benefits. After all, my fleet may or may not need spynet tokens, but I am fairly certain every fleet will benefit from extra Repair points over the course of the campaign. I see five worlds that contain Repair yards, all at varying resource levels. Saberhing Asteroid Belt will end up being the most defensive. Nubia is solid. Xyquine Selonia are close to each other in value, and finally there's Vagran with 8 resource points. I expect all of them to go in the first round of picks in a 6 player game. If the Imperials don't claim two, then you can count on the Rebels putting Outposts or bases on all of them.

Spynet: Potentially a very useful strategic benefit. Most of the objectives pick up a defensive bonus from the special objectives. The Rebel benefit a bit more here in that you can simply plop down an outpost and pick up the special defense objectives if the Imperials come after it. They aren't worth a huge resource amount, and there's only three total planets that pack them. The real question for me is whether the Imperials gamble by putting down a base on one of them. They'll be a bit harder to pick up after placement because their objectives are pretty good for the defender. The extra Rebel presence stickers for an outpost are almost a given on one.

Skilled Spacers: The benefit here is really going to depend upon fleet design, as your objective choices might have one really good objective for your opponent to pick and you could really benefit by changing it out. A couple of the worlds are really good (Duro, Crash's Drift), some are mediocre, and Plympto is outright bad. Rebel presence or base sticker on one could be a useful opening move.

Diplomats: You can block the opponent off from attacking specific unoccupied systems. On paper, this looks like not very good. In practice, I think after placement, you'll see only a handful of really desirable systems for early assault. Only three systems have diplomats. Aurea and Drall both come with 9 resource ponits. Froz has no resource points, so you'd only go here if you were really looking to pick up diplomats. I'll have to play the campaign to get a sense for how diplomats affect it. With 25 worlds, and a maximum of 23 base/outposts in a 6 player game, there's plenty of room for choices on what to go after on early turns.

So that takes us to placement strategy and the oriinal question 1:

The Imperials have the first pick. Now, the benefit here is that for each of the strategic abilities above, there are at least two really good planets that have that ability. There's the question of whether you want to double down on Repair yards, since you have the option of grabbing three of the five. I think there's a beauty here in that you can pick a solid planet with good resources and the strategic ability of your choice without it severely limiting your choices for your second or third pick. For a first game, I'd probably grab two Repair Yards and a Spynet.

Rebels: The real question here is base versus outpost. Bases might help you hold more lucrative worlds, but outposts can work well when the objectives for the planet are good, or you've got an individual fleet whose objectives you like and want to play on that site. Since the Imperials only get two more picks, you've also got an advantage in that they cannot possibly close off all the good spots. For a first game, I'd probably make sure I grabbed one good spacer, one good spynet, and one Diplomat, with as many Repair yards as I could gather.

From studying the map and reading the book several times through, those are my preliminary thoughts. These are probably going to change once I've played through the campaign at least once.

There's certainly a lot to consider, especially if you end up as the Grand Admiral for your team and your teammates mostly check out in between games rather than obsessing over a planetary map. Seems like it also matters whether your team has initiative or not, since the team with the fewest campaign points will be declaring two assaults and the other team will only declare one. That dictates whether you'll benefit from some of the Strategic Effects once, twice, or three times per campaign round. If playing 2v2 rather than 3v3, each team declares on assault per round so these benefits even out and hardly any of what I'm saying matters, though you might consider that the player who gets to declare the first assault has more options.

1. First assault of the round:
   • Declared by a player on the team with fewer campaign points (Diplomat value to the team with more campaign points)
   • Defended by and using objectives from a player on the team with more campaign points (Skilled Spacers value to the team with fewer campaign points)
   • Spynet is useful to both players in the battle, but probably more so to the player who is fighting his opponent's objective. (Spynet value to the team with more campaign points)
2. Second assault of the round:
   • Declared by a player on the team with more campaign points (Diplomat value to the team with fewer campaign points)
   • Defended by and using objectives from a player on the team with fewer campaign points (Skilled Spacers value to the team with more campaign points)
   • Spynet is useful to both players in the battle, but probably more so to the player who is fighting his opponent's objective. (Spynet value to the team with fewer campaign points)
3. Third assault of the round:
   • Declared by a player on the team with fewer campaign points (Diplomat value to the team with more campaign points)
   • Defended by and using objectives from a player on the team with more campaign points (Skilled Spacers value to the team with fewer campaign points)
   • Spynet is useful to both players in the battle, but probably more so to the player who is fighting his opponent's objective. (Spynet value to the team with more campaign points)

The takeaway from this is that I'd say the "strategic effects" of different locations have more weight to one team or the other, depending on how many campaign points that team has at any given time, relative to the other team. This isn't always a straight advantage, but it's just more opportunities to be useful.

• Diplomats: better if you have more
• Skilled Spacers: better if you have fewer
• Spynet: better if you have more

So, if your team is behind in campaign points, look for ways to get Skilled Spacers. If your team is ahead in campaign points, look for ways to get Diplomats and Spynet. And always get Repair Yards because they're fantastic.