Alternate Ground Combat

The Stars Without Number title, Starvation Cheap, has a mass combat system that is substantially less complex than the Ground Combat system currently under development. The source is provided here.

The rules below are at a very early stage and should not be considered grounded (no pun intended) with any hard procedures or values.

Building the Forces

The Federation has the ability to create as many ground forces as it requires. However, other non-superstates are limited in this capacity primarily by population. The first step

War Turn

The term war turn is unique to ground warfare and represents a fluid amount of days, generally a week, but can be redefined to be more or less, as the circumstances require. It is the only unit of time in ground combat, with one exception: planetary invasions are comprised of several phases in their war turn. One landing zone may have a war turn that does not equal that of landing zone, but they all progress through the same phases that comprise one war turn.

Following a planetary invasion, a war turn refers to one full round of combat engagement between large military units. The first event of the war turn is the assignment of action to each combat unit. These are determined simultaneously for all the sides (no initiative) and are not revealed to the opponent (yet). The selection of assignments are: attack, defend, recovery, or reserve:

• A unit with an Attack order is assigned to capture or destroy a Vital Point. More than one unit may attack the same Vital Point and they are considered as relocated to the relevant planetary region once the order is given.
• Units that are kept "on the line" at a Vital Point they have already fought for are considered to have Defend orders. They may not move from that assigned location for this war turn.
• Recovery allows the assigned unit one war turn in which they are pulled from their current Vital Point and moved to the rear, where they may regain some capability that may have been lost. Roll 1d6: on a 3+, the unit regains one lost level of readiness, up to Fresh. Units that have been battered down to a smaller effective size by battle damage cannot normally regain their lost size in the available timeframe of a war. If new sources of recruits or supplies can be found, this limit might be sidestepped. Units in recovery may not attack nor defend a Vital Point.
• Units held in Reserve are removed from any Vital Point they may be occupying or brought back from recovery status to serve as a defensive force that will quickly deploy in the defense of a targeted Vital Point under attack by the enemy. They have been pulled from the line but kept close enough to the fighting to respond to any enemy incursions. Units in reserve can’t effectively repair combat damage, but they’re assumed to be fast enough to get to any Vital Point in time to make a difference.

The second event is the reveal: opponents indicate their decision for each unit under their command. This is the point at which reserves are allocated to the attacked Vital Points.

third event: determination of possible special operation missions relevant to each Vital Point (friendly- and enemy-controlled).

fourth event: assignment of special forces units to selected vital points and resolution of those missions

fifth event: attacking a vital point (p. 67)