500,000,000 BCE: Ancient alien civilization constructs network of instantaneous wormhole conduits throughout this region of the Milky Way galaxy, then disappears forever.

2,000,000 BCE: First hominid tool use on planet Earth.

1969: Neil Armstrong walks on the moon.

2034: Space elevator completed on Earth, colonization of solar system begins.

2352: Development of ansible and hyperdrive allow faster than light communication and travel. Inception of first galactic empire.

2676: Corruption and administrative incompetence lead to the development of a number of factions, which seize control of various planets throughout the empire.

2694: With collapse of central authority on Sol III, factions vie for control of mankinds tiny corner of the galaxy.

Your goal is to unite each planetary system and eliminate all opposition to your faction's arbitrarily chosen but undeniably correct way of life.

Scenario Modifications

- Megastructure Tech Tree: four distinct but interdependent technological paths are available. Dotted lines indicate autocapture. + diamond indicates autocapture contingent on controlling a wormhole. + circle indicates autocapture contingent on controlling local orbital observatory (OO1). + square indicates autocapture contingent on controlling local planetary railgun (PR1).

- Orbital Observatory (OO): Billions of semi-autonomous microsatellites transform the entire solar system into a megascale interferometric observatory.

- OO1: View local hyperspace and near space/ planets in neighboring systems.

- OO2: View hyperspace and near space up to 1 sector distant.

- OO3: Autocaptured with OO2 and any wormhole. View all wormholes and adjacent near space and hyperspace territories.

Planetary Railgun (PR): Orbital linear accelerator system accelarates a military payload to near lightspeed, with devastating effect. When integrated with wormhole technology, capable of targeting ships in hyperspace.

- PR1: Autocapture system PR1 installation with tech tree PR1 and local near space. +10% artillery attack on local near space and planets.

- PR2: Autocaptured with PR1 and NF2 in tech tree box - in turn, autocaptures system PR2 installation with local near space, local wormhole, and local PR1. +10% artillery attack on neighboring near space and hyperspace territories.

Nanofactories (NF): Improved production of advanced metamaterials. Supports further research and military activity.

- NF1: +2 factory on self. Fortifies to near space and research/development.

- NF2: +3 factory on self. Fortifies to near space, research/ development, planetary railguns, and sabotage.

Sabotage (ST): Disruption of enemy technology and political systems.

- ST1: Disrupt enemy research and development efforts. Artillery border to research/ development in other tech trees.

- ST2: Disrupt nanofactory production. Artillery border to enemy NF1.

- ST3: Disrupt tech installations and enemy sabotage programs. Artillery border to planetary railguns, ST1, ST2, and NF2.

- ST4: Subversion. Gain control of tech installations and planetary governments through corruption of political and computational systems. Attack only border to planets, orbital observatories, and planetary railguns.

- Introducing the Quantum II hyperdrive: travel more quickly and at much greater risk through EMPTY space sectors! You can now travel ACROSS hyperspace hexes to opposite vertices, but with a -90% attack modifier, so this technology is best used for exploring empty space where risk of encounting enemy ships is low.

- Homeworlds: Player seats are assigned randomly to their particular homeworlds (capitals) - if you lose your homeworld your cause is lost. Sol III (Earth) is an additional neutral capital.

Solar Systems

- Each solar system is profiled along the sides of the board, and labelled with its name and sector designation (location in the central hex grid). Solar systems are outlined in a green frame.

- You must capture all planets (green circles) and near space (blue square) in each solar system to gain the continent bonus written in green. Each planet can attack its nearest neighbors at no penalty and next most distant neighbors at -15%.

- From near space, one can attack any planet in-system or the local space of other star systems in the same sector (outlined in blue), or jump into hyperspace (central hex grid) to move to other sectors.

- Profiles for solar systems in the same sector are placed next to each other around the board edge, and can be identified by the sector designation prefix in their name (written in blue).

- Capturing all solar systems in a sector as well as the 6 hyperspace territories surrounding it (blue circles in central hex grid) gives a sector bonus. This bonus accrues to the near space territory (blue square) of the solar system with the largest shipyard - this system will have the sector bonus written in blue next to its solar system bonus label.

- One can also bombard a system at significant disadvantage (artillery border) from interstellar space.

- Number of attacks is limited to 30.

Central Hex Grid: The Sirius Supercluster

- The central hex grid depicts the Sirius Supercluster, the group of stellar companions surrounding Sol, mapped to a two-dimensional hyperspace grid. Hyperdrive fails catastrophically upon encountering a certain threshold of equipotential thermonuclear flux, so it is impossible to travel between the blue and red giant stars labelled in white.

- Main-sequence dwarf stars with habitable planets and moons are labelled in blue, and the sectors are labelled on a grid system in green along the edges of the board, from I to IX top to bottom and alpha to lambda left to right. Thus, Sol can be found in sector V-Zeta, along with Fomalhaut and Alpha Centauri.

- You can't build capital ships in open space, so unit placement on hex grid territories is disabled.

- The sectors with habitable solar systems are outlined as blue hexagons. The 6 vertex territories (blue circles) surrounding each habitable sector as well as all contained solar systems must be captured for the sector bonus.

- Hyperspace territories adjacent to solar systems may attack the planets in the solar systems contained in the adjacent hexagonal region via artillery only borders, with a significant attack penalty. This represents long-range hypervelocity bombardment. Colonization requires a closer approach via system near space.

Wormholes

- Once you've conquered near space, you may choose to activate the ancient wormhole gate system found throughout this region of the galaxy. Reactivating the ancient technology and overcoming the automated defenses will be no small task, but once activated these wormholes allow instantaneous transfer of ships to any other friendly, activated wormhole.

- That is, any wormhole (orange diamond) can fortify any number of units to any other wormhole on the board. The wormhole can only be reached or viewed from the system near space territory.