All Out Assault is declared during the Strategy Phase. This causes the "Strategy Phase to immediately end and the campaign culminates in an epic battle." (per RAW)

Diplomats: No need - no effect as the All Out Assault is not defined as taking place at a specific location.

Skilled Spacers - no effect as there is no objective card used in an All Out Assault.

Spynet: These are distributed at the beginning of the Battle Phase to allow players to use their effect.

My question stems from the timing of the All Out Offensive. Is it a special event? Does it take place during the "Battle Phase"?

"Normal' sequence: Strategy Phase ends and Battle Phase begins

"All Out Offensive" Strategy Phase ends and campaign culminates in an epic battle.

Since Diplomats and Skilled Spacers are pointless during All Out Offensive, I am not sure whether Spynet token use is allowed during an AOO.

Probably picking nits...

Valid question.

To put it another way, the Strategy Phase ends, but does the Battle Phase then begin? Or does the statement "and the campaign culminates in an epic battle!" mean that there is no Battle Phase?

I am bumping this because we are doing our All-Out Assault and this will invariably be a hot topic in my campaign. By my reading, the Battle Phase never happens, so it appears to me that Spynets would not be distributed, and since Skilled Spacers are useless in the All-Out, it would appear to me in keeping with intent. If my reading is right, I am predicting some Sodium Chloride from my rebel opponents as they have all three.

Anyone else have input here?

I'd say that you never enter the Battle Phase. When someone declares the All-Out Offensive attack the Strategy Phase immediately ends and then as I understand it ends in a special event that has nothing to do with the Battle Phase, which has its own rules that are not followed in this situation

This is fully in the foggy realm of not explicitly defined . I'm not sure there's a way to arrive at a clear ruling on this based simply on a reading of the rules, as I'd guess there was an oversight in their rush to use exciting non-rules language "and the campaign culminates in an epic battle!" That line reads more like ad copy to me, and that makes me disinclined to treat that sentence like part instructions.

I totally understand where those of you may be coming from who see "the Strategy Phase ends" and conclude that the campaign goes into Limbo for one last event which occurs totally outside of the normal steps of play. You may very well be right. However, there's a problem. The "no Battle Phase" interpretation suddenly opens up a weird undefined pseudophase of the campaign which is in all ways identical to the Battle Phase, except that it is ontologically not a Battle Phase, doesn't have a name, and isn't described at all. That's a lot to extrapolate from the single word "ends."

Isn't it more parsimonious to treat the All-Out Assault as a Battle Phase, because it functions just like the Battle Phase except for the differences that are specifically defined in the rules? Given the two interpretations, this seems simpler and more logical.