Tutorial 3 – Getting Ready for the Mission

Continued from => Tutorial 2 Ship Phase

Now that the Ship Phase is complete, we are ready to get ready!

The Logbook directs us to Log 620:

Remember, in the previous tutorial we chose TOI-2 as the next system to travel to… specifically to Pellucid. Well … as this tutorial begins we just arrived at this new destination and it’s time to prepare and equip for another planetary exploration mission. This time the mission will be unguided so we need to be ready to handle things on our own now as the tutorial introduces three new elements of the game to us:

1. Lander Tray
2. Leads and Discoveries
3. Limited Supplies

To get us started, the tutorial will guide us in our preparations:

First we Rank Up the four crewmembers from our successful mission! Move their cards into Rank 2 sleeves. The tutorial says that they now need to rest (must have been a stressful mission!).

Get the Rank 1 Section Cards ready for each of the four sections (they each will have their own deck). If you play with a Rank 2 crewmember, add the Rank 2 Section Cards to their Section deck.

Choose a crewmember from the New Recruits for each section. See article=> Help Me Choose My Crew. Each chosen crewmember is placed into the “available crew” part of their Section Storage Compartment.

Science Section: Petra Sedlackova (Lucky)

Security Section: Theo Tsiakalos (Storyteller)

Engineering Section: Samarth Ramprakash (Pilot)

Recon Section: Galit Yadin (Searcher)

After choosing the four crewmembers, the Logbook says we now can spend our seven success tokens acquired on our last mission to add one more die to the dice for each of the four sections. The tutorial suggests choosing the die with a “wild” (Vanguard symbol) on three sides (but an exclamation point (bad) on the other three sides). Following their advice I add one of the triple “wild” dice to each section based on the color that is most favored for the Section.

But remember … while there are two sides with one wild symbol and one side with a double wild symbol … there also are three sides with the Exclamation Point (bad) symbol:

Each section now has six dice. And these are placed on the Section Trays.

Science Section (favors green):

Security Section (favors red):

Engineering Section (favors blue):

Recon Section (favors green):

Once the dice are placed into each Section tray, each Section chooses one crewmember from their Available Crew in their Section Storage Compartment (which, for now, is just the one that we just placed there)!  We place each crewmember card into the slot on the Section Tray. Then we fill the “charges” slot with the number of charges indicated by the Crewmember card (the infinity symbol means the skill is always available thus no charges are placed in that slot).

Next, we get our Lander ready for the mission!

The “Space Ranger” is the only lander available to us at this time, so (of course) we choose it!

The Space Ranger has Armor level 3, Sensors level 3, Agility level 3. To this we add our Heavy Armor Plating:

This will bump up the Armor by +3 to level 6.

However, it also requires us to roll one extra Danger Die during landing … but the tutorial indicates our rolling LESS Danger Die later during the landing, so I’m not sure if the +1 means add a Danger Die or if it means the Armor takes the place of a Danger Die, or acts like a Danger Die?:

And it reduces by 2 our supplies:

The Lander itself has a limit of 6 for supplies, so with two less, we will only be able to bring FOUR SUPPLIES with us on this mission! Our supplies may be a critical part of the mission!  So … here is our Lander with the Armor card on one of the three slots:

When we start the landing I will place a blue cube marker on the 4 supplies spot to remind us that we have just 4 supplies!

Next we have to consider our Equipment.  There is Personal Equipment and Mission Equipment. Additionally, some equipment can be used only by those properly trained with it, and so may be restricted to use by only one Section! Once on the planet, each crewmember may carry as many Personal Equipment items as they wish with them… but can only carry ONE Mission Equipment. Each Lander itself also has Load Restrictions on what we can bring down to the planet with us. Space Ranger’s LOAD LIMIT is 4 Personal Equipment and 2 Mission Equipment.

With these limits in mind, we need to look over our available equipment and decide what to take with us on the mission.

This is the equipment that is available for this mission:

We have THREE of these Medkits available (it’s icon indicates that it is “personal equipment”) that is available for all Sections.

We also have the following equipment available that are restricted to just ONE Section’s use as noted by the Section color stripe at the top and the Section logo in the top right corner:

Security Equipment: Breaching Charge (mission equipment)

Recon Equipment: Jetpack (personal equipment)

Science Equipment: Portable AI (personal equipment)

Engineering Equipment: Mining Probe (mission equipment)

The list equipment includes 2 Mission Equipment and 5 Personal Equipment. We can take ALL of our Mission Equipment with us since it does not exceed the limit imposed by our lander. However, we have 5 Personal Equipment available and the lander only will allow us to take 4, so we need to leave one behind on the ISS Vanguard (to use on a future mission).

I think that Awaken Realms gave us the four Section specific Personal Equipment items so that we learn about them, so let’s take all four… plus two of the three Medkits!

Phew … I think we got this!

The end of Log 620 says it this way:

You’re ready to go!

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