Movement
Movement is how fleets cross the universe. Close to home it is a matter of stepping between neighbours on a local grid; reaching anything further means passing through a gate.
Local Movement Within a Region
A region lays its orbital systems out on a sparse grid, and a fleet travels across it one system at a time. Each step goes to an occupied neighbour directly north, south, east, or west — never diagonally, and never into an empty cell.
From any system a fleet can thread its way to any other in the region, as long as a chain of occupied neighbours connects them. The gaps in the grid are what give a region its character: they form corridors that funnel traffic, chokepoints a defender can hold, and dead ends that lead nowhere.
See Regions for the grid itself and Orbital Systems for the systems on it.
Crossing Between Regions and Galaxies
A region boundary is not a wall. A fleet can always cross from a cell on one side to an adjacent cell on the other without any gate at all — region to region, and galaxy to galaxy in the same way. Crossing like this simply takes a meaningful amount of time, so no region or galaxy is ever sealed off; the most isolated places are only slower to reach.
A gate changes the speed, not the possibility. Where a fleet reaches a system that hosts a gate, it can jump near-instantly to any eligible system within the gate's reach — leaping a distance that ordinary cell-by-cell travel would spend a long time crossing. Because a gate runs one way, the journey back waits on a separate gate built from the far end.
See Gates for how gates reach their destinations.
Rules
- Within a region, a fleet moves between orthogonally adjacent occupied systems on the local grid.
- A fleet can cross a region or galaxy boundary by ordinary movement between adjacent cells, without a gate; doing so takes a meaningful amount of time.
- A gate lets a fleet jump near-instantly to any eligible system within the gate's reach.
- A gate carries movement outward only; returning requires a separate gate built at the far end.
- No region or galaxy is unreachable through ordinary movement; a missing gate only makes a place slower to reach.
- Visual proximity on a map does not by itself make a gate jump possible; a gate must be in reach of the destination.
Player Actions
- Move a fleet between adjacent cells, including across region and galaxy boundaries.
- Launch a fleet through a gate to an eligible system within the gate's reach.
Constraints
- Ordinary cross-boundary movement is always possible but slow; gates trade resources and a slot for near-instant reach.
- Travel cost, travel time, fuel use, and combat during movement are defined in a separate feature.
- Access control over who may use a gate is defined in a separate feature.