Is the board mainly used as a tracker or are the game pieces moved around it for battles and such?

The existing pics of the game are fairly vague at showing gameplay.

LeBlanc13 said:

The character pieces are moved around the locationa to active their special ability. There is no "point to point" combat within the ship. This is generically represented by the boarding party track within the ship. The only combat that exists is between ships in the surrounding space around Galactica.

LeBlanc13 said:

The board is actually used for all three things you listed: it's used as a tracker, to move game pieces around, and for battles. The game tracks all the resources on dials that are incorporated right on the board, then there is the giant Galactica in the center of the game board which is where all the characters will move around to different rooms each turn to activate abilities, and there is also the space locations all around Galactica which is where space battles will be taking place.

The board is very well thought out, and seems almost like there isn't much to it at first. But once you get into a game you will see the elegence in it, while you have characters moving all over, resource dials moving down, Vipers firing at Cylon Raiders all around Galactica, Basestars surrounding you, etc, etc. It becomes almost a marvel to look at. A controlled chaos of sorts.

Awesome.

The only thing the game board I think needs are spaces to put the Crisis and Destination decks and the corresponding discard piles.

Another dial for the total distance travelled would be nice too. Lots of times decisions are made cause some players forget what distance we are at cause the distance total isn't seen easily by everyone at the table. But what can you do, the gameboard is big enough as is. Maybe I just get a marker board to put down the current distance for everyone to see.

But yeah, other than a few minor problems, I really like the board as is.