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 their slogan is FLY FASTER, and when I wanna roll dice in IADS: The Game, I’m all about that FLY FASTER 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 flying faster.

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