Scanning phase: Space Travel

During the Scanning phase, your ship travels toward an unknown planet using its veilspeed engines. Your Pilot's abilities, and the flying strategy you selected will be determinant for the (short term) future of your ship and crew.

Depending on its type and technology, your ship will have a Base Ship Speed (BSS), this speed will then be modified by two main factors: the flying strategy and your Pilot's abilities.

A local modificator, caused by the surrounding space objects and gravity, as well as by the safety measures can also modify your resulting speed.

The Base Ship Speed is determined by the quality (QL) and power of your ship engines. The engines QL is usually the same as the ship QL. The BSS value can be calculted as:

• BSS = Engines QL x 0.5

Some ships are equipped with specific technologies allowing them faster speeds. These technologies are:

• Racer: any ship with the Racer trait doubles its BSS. (note: this may change depending on balance tests)
• Turbo: ships with the Turbo trait can activate a special temporary mode called “turbospeed”. While activate, the BSS is doubled or up to tripled but the fuel consumption dramatically increases and fluctuates too. In turbospeed mode, additional Piloting tests are needed to prevent additional damage to your ship.

You can select between different techniques for your travel toward your new home, each strategy has a different impact on the speed and on the discretion of your ship. Some techniques may be restricted depending on your Pilot skill and personality.

• Activate Veilspeed [Default, Speed +, Stealth -]: default flying technique, unfortunately, aliens seem to track veil technology better.
• Warp Bursts [Fuel -]: Hard technique. Controlled speed sequence below veilspeed. Consume more Fuel, and about 2x slower than Activate Veilspeed.
• Imitate Space Objects [Stealth +, Speed -]: Very hard technique. Imitate space objects confuse detection but is very slow (Speed –). However, it makes countermeasures more effective.
• Hazardous paths [Stealth ++, Speed –, Ship Integrity -]: Very hard technique. Goes through dense nebulae, asteroid fields and interference area. Very slow and may damage the ship.

During the space travel phase, the speed of your ship will be impacted by the abilities of your Pilot. Your pilot will do 4 different Piloting test at different difficulties (Easy, Normal, Hard and Elite). Depending on the number of success, your ship's speed will be reduced or increased:

• 0 success: Speed reduced by 40 %
• 1 success: Speed reduced by 20 %
• 2 success: Normal speed
• 3 success: Speed increased by 20 %
• 4 success: Speed increased by 40 %

Note: Your Pilot will roll a test for each difficulty, even if he/she failed an easier difficulty.

The ship speed is also affected by the surrounding spatial environment, would it be space objects (asteroids, space worms, etc.) or gravity fields. In addition, safety measures, due to the damage received, may also affect your ship speed. These two factors are covered by the Local Speed Modificator (LSM) which value is determined randomly.

The Actual Ship Speed (ASS) is then determined as follow:

• ASS = BSS x FTB x FSB x LSM

Alien fleets are still after you as you travel toward the planet, in order to avoid destruction, your Pilot will need to keep the ship stealthy and evade the incoming threat.

• Your Ship Evasion will be determined with an Evasion test, using Piloting (Primary) + [Spaceships + Awareness] (Secondary).
• Your Ship Stealth will be determined with a Stealth test, using Piloting (Primary) + [Spaceships + Stealth] (Secondary), will be used to avoid being detected.

Note the selected Flying Technique may give you a bonus or a malus on your Ship Stealth ranking. If you assigned a Veilscan officer, you may receive another bonus to your Ship Evasion ranking. Some technologies or module, like the Tatscan module, can provide you a support to evade attacks or be more stealthy.

Every event can induce space exhaustion, mostly due to Veil effects, which can disturb all pilot effectiveness further. In addition, space flight itself (and the hypergalactic jump) already induces a low amount of space exhaustion.

Travelling at veilspeed is exhausting for your Pilot, leading to a reduction of his/her effectiveness by the value of his/her exhaustion. Example: in case of a 20 % exhaustion, your Pilot's skills will be considered at 80 % of their original values.

If you assigned a Shield officer, your shields may allow you to deflect some incoming threats (not implemented in the current version).