A Space Director and Hypersonic House Rules!🚀

Traveling for work, I ended up with a great airline seat neighbor: the Director of Space Programs at a propulsion company that designs and produces the engines that make advanced weapon systems work.

A big part of long range weapon system development is the move to hypersonic weapons, and when I wanna roll dice in IADS: The Game, I’m all about that MACH 5+ life.

Nerding out on propulsion systems with her for the whole flight impressed upon me that I’d been broadly thinking about munitions as a single unit, when in reality they’re made up of many subsystems -- propulsion being just one of them. Each subsystem has its own room for technological advancement, and that’s a neat way to think about what “next-generation weapons” development really means.

Bringing those ideas into IADS: The Game, I’ve played a couple VULs with a house rule for hypersonic weapons that gave upgraded Cruise Missiles +1 Speed. The rule worked well enough that I’d like to informally formalize it with two modifications:

Cruise Missiles get +1 Speed per Upgrade.

Investing an entire Upgrade Card into something that blows up should come with a real payoff. This is a simple way to represent hypersonic capability. As companies like hers work on better, more efficient engines, stacking speed bonuses to move speeds of 4 and 5 feels like a natural way to capture the idea of realllllly doing some fast flying.

Upon the first Upgrade of a Cruise Missile during the DEPLOY phase, search the deck for 1 additional Cruise Missile Unit Card.

Discussions with a real-life Space Director -- and senior leaders at that same work event -- highlighted the importance not just of weapon performance, but of acquisition, sustainment, and logistics. In IADS: The Game, this rule represents a notional industrial base delivering additional, not-yet-upgraded munitions to the fight. It should also make coordinated Cruise Missile waves more feasible.

Even with these bonuses, the hard part remains finding, fixing, maintaining track, and targeting -- especially if you’re using the Target Custody house rules. Guess you’ll still need to team intelligence and operations if you want your super-munitions to get valid targets on your tabletop ATO!

Issue Orders!

– Ric