Why do we think there's a limitation on ground force, fighters, and shock troop tokens where they always have to be with a plastic unit? My group's been thinking about this one and can't really come up with really strong reasons for this limitation.

a) Ground Forces. We could think that with an actually plastic unit there was a visual represantion of the tokens you had stationed at a planet or moving with a fleet. This way you could easily identify what that stack of tokens were. Another reason is to limit the amount of plants you could occupy with your ground units. There are 12 GFs in each set so the maximum amount of planets you can occupy with GFs is 12. These were the only reasons we could think of. So another question is, are these reasons necessary? We can easily look at tokens to identify which units they are and is there a need to limit the number of planets you can occupy? If everyone can occupy unlimited planets with GFs then it seems this evens the playing board for everyone so this shouldn't be an issue. So are there other reasons that we're just not seeing?

b) Fighters. Same thing above with visual representation but again, we can easily identify tokens. Couldn't think of any other reasons except maybe limiting the number of space fleets that can contain fighters. May be an issue with Advanced Fighters tech but again, if you remove this limitation for everyone, it doesn't seem such an issue. Again, are there other reasons we're just not seeing?

c) Shock Troops. This is the token that really got us thinking about the whole issue. There are only 12 ST tokens, so the most they'll ever be on the whole board are these 12. We've always thought that Hope's End wasn't the greatest because you always had to keep a GF on the planet to produce the STs and also have another GF when picking up the STs so the planet's ability to produce STs wasn't the greatest. Why not just remove the limitation and have STs exist by themselves? STs on their own honestly aren't the greatest units because you've only a 10% chance of producing them in the first place. If they had created a better mechanic to produce STs they would be a lot more viable to play and would be really awesome units. But the plastic unit limitation makes them really unwieldy. Again, there are only 12 of these tokens, do they really need to be with plastic GF units?

So any thoughts?

The reason in all three cases is to keep track of whose tokens those are. If mulitiple players are building enough GFs or FTs to need tokens (or any STs at all) then there's no easy way to keep track of whose tokens are whose unless there's at least one plastic unit with the stack. Therefore the rules require at least one plastic unit with every token stack, to keep clear which player those tokens belong to.

If you wanted to loosen up the limitations of this rule without confusing whose tokens are whose, you could make a house rule to say that token stacks must always be accompanied by any plastic unit, or by a control flag belonging to the given player.

That would allow you to build more than 12 GF stacks without losing track of whose are whose. In our group, we almost never leave planets completely undefended, so control flags are rarely used for their intended purpose (marking controlled planets that have no units on them.) Even so, I'm not sure how much more mileage you'd gain from this house rule.

Potential problems to watch out for:

a) running out of control flags.

b) if you've got a GF stack on a planet and the only plastic unit of yours is a ship in space, you might run into trouble if an opponent takes the space without invading the planet. If you have a control flag you can just drop it on the planet. If you don't, you may be in trouble: it would look like the stack is his now, per this house rule.

Steve-O, the obvious reason of indicating that those tokens were yours, obviously didn't occur to us(!). And we considered your recommendation on using control markers as indicators. Still kinda debating the whole thing and we're still sore about STs being so limited. Trying out some house rules and the Shattered Ascension rules on it.