Copying and pasting the announcement.
It's been nearly a decade in the making, and nearly caused us to believe in actual, honest-to-God curses. Squadron Strike: Traveller is finally shipping!
Squadron Strike: Traveller is "big ship navy" space combat in the Traveller Universe using the Squadron Strike game engine. It is NOT an adventurer-scale space combat system to plug into your RPG.
What it is, is maneuver-centric, tactically rich, and fun. It's got all the details and grace notes you expect from space combat in Traveller:
* Meson guns that ignore every defense on the target other than Meson screens.
* Spinal mounts that offer the risk of death and destruction to anything caught in that narrow cone of annihilation.
* Sandcasters as a defensive paradigm
* Missiles, lasers and nuclear dampers
* Energy beams that do terrifying amounts of damage at close range.
Squadron Strike: Traveller focuses on the ships fighting in the Fifth Frontier War, Zhodani and Imperial with a sampling of Aslan ships. Each ship has a "Book 9" canonical version, in both 2D and 3D versions, and a "refitted" version that, in some cases, corrects a design error (like the Gionetti being armed with a meson gun and lacking a Meson screen) or shows a development history (like refits to the Lightning-class cruiser in the era of the Fifth Frontier War)
In addition to all the spaceship fun, each ship comes with a class history detailing the it's development and some design quirks. We also provide a canonical in-universe explanation for the "cruiser expansion" that happened: The Vlezhdatl is a cruiser because the Zhodani sold it to smaller powers as an export cruiser.
The product has a booklet serving as an Introduction to the Third Imperium with Imperial and Zhodani and Aslan history, and how their navies developed and their naval doctrines.
Finally, there's scenarios: There's a tutorial booklet that will teach you all the rules of the game in stages, layering on complexity with each scenario until you're able to fly any ship in the setting. Because this is Traveller, all the ships are Mode 2 (vector movement). Each of the tutorial scenarios follows the adventures of Commander Carm Sevarg, Imperial Navy, building a complete narrative as the realization that the Third Imperium is at war slowly unfolds.
Once you complete the tutorial, there are plenty of additional scenarios, giving you snapshots of different time points in the war, highlighting interesting matchups and historically significant turning points.
Here's a battle report from the first scenario from one of the Kickstarter backers:
Squadron Strike Battle Report: November 2018
Traveller : Decision of Yebab scenario
Blue Force: An Imperial Plankwell Battleship
Red Force: 3 Zhodani Kefchenzh cruisers, one refitted
The Imperial player started out with an aggressive approach toward the Zhodani cruiser squadron. The Imperial battleship accelerated toward the cruisers with intent to get into range with his spinal meson gun, bay particle beam, and large missile launchers. The Zhodani player took the gamble and turned to meet the charge of the Imperial battleship, putting their forces on mildly divergent vectors -- the goal was to make the Imperial capital ship spend more sand from more facings.
Once at long range, the Imperial player opened fire on the farthest left Zhodani cruiser. The exchange resulted in an ineffective hit with its spinal meson gun, partially mitigated by the meson screen, but a solid hit with its particle bay weapon, and all the missiles launched on the prior turn were intercepted. The Zhodani player chose to return fire with all three cruiser’s spinal particle beams. The result was a lot of expended sand, and minor hits past armor on the the battleship.
As the battle unfolded, the Zhodani player took an oblique formation, and being numerically superior, an attempt at engaging in the vertical. The refitted cruiser took point on the right side of their formation. Midrange saw another exchange of fire, with all weapons being fired by both sides. The cruisers were able to cause damage to the battleship sufficient to score damage against one heavy missile launcher and a bay energy weapon, while the Imperial hits against the leftmost cruiser did seriously damage it, but not knock out its spinal mount.
The imperial player attempted to accelerate further and pass aft of the cruisers, but the cruiser squadron turned into the battleship, and continued building a vertical vector, with intent of a pursuit course. A third exchange of fire all but destroyed the already damaged Zhodani cruiser, but the spinal mounts from the other two cruisers were able to knock out the bay particle weapon of the Imperial.
At this point the Imperial player chose to disengage in direction E/F, accelerating at a full 6 Gs, satisfied with all but the complete destruction of one cruiser, and desiring to take no more damage to his own capital ship.
Note from the players:
Our group playtests a fair bit of stuff for Ken and Ad Astra. We weren't part of the Traveller playtest due to time constraints. I'm partial to the RocketPunk ships, my wife likes Attack Vector: Tactical for the extra meatiness of the power and heat management. The rest of our group varies from old SFB and Starfire players to a Traveller contingent that's now into its third generation of gamers. They all love this implementation of Traveller space combat. In the words of one of them, who's been playing Traveller since 1977: "This is the Traveller space combat game I never realized I wanted until I saw it." They particularly like how spinal mesons manage to both evoke their proper role in Traveller ("One hit can kill nearly anything...") while being challenging enough to use that they aren't the right answer for everything.
Also, letting something with Bay Energy Beams get into their first range bracket is a crowd pleaser.
Each of the weapons in Squadron Strike: Traveller is clearly evocative of something from Traveller canon, even as they get more detail and a richer feel. It's like someone took the recipe implicit in Traveller Book 9's construction system and actually baked the cake.
-- Earl Tower
The only difference between the Deluxe and Standard edition of the boxed sets is that the Deluxe rulebook is printed in full color, and the standard has its rulebook in black and white.
Buy the Folio if you already own Squadron Strike.
The full PDF bundle includes a Squadron Strike Rulebook PDF, the PDF folio bundle just has the Traveller content for people who already own Squadron Strike, and the Quick Start rules are the tutorial booklet and all SSDs needed to play through it at a low introductory price.
You can also buy these products off of Wargame Vault
In addition to the Traveller content, we also have some new Squadron Strike accessories:
These are print-and-play planets with hex grids overlaying them that match the deluxe hex maps in the boxed sets. The hex grids also have the altitudes needed to avoid the planet when flying in 3D.
Finally, several of the scenarios in Squadron Strike: Traveller make use of the Material Conditions Cards we released last May:
For these cards, draw one for each group of ships in a squadron, and see what went wrong before you got to the fight. They add a lot of replayability to open-space battles, and certainly add a lot more character to the fights! (If you're playing in a campaign game, the rules in the Squadron Strike rulebook will give you a more detailed procedure for how to allocate the cards.)