Sector Difficulty is actually local to current Sector and inherited from the global Region Difficulty. It represents the current landscape and harsh environment of this sector. It is to consider as an attribute of the permanent landscape, not something to be present on a day and then not on another. Some construction efforts by engineers can permanently lessen a Sector Difficulty.
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Away Teams: Survival
Away Teams follow a Survival and Progression system instead of the Rest and Contribute system of Colony Teams.
Survival and Progression means they must first roll for survival before they are able to score Progress toward their objectives.
This article will cover the Survival Test.
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1. No survival test is necessary the first day as the team was present at the colony at the beginning of that day.
2. At the beginning of every day in subsequent days, we'll make a survival phase.
Current Survival Difficulty is first estimated from sector difficulty 1) added to climate difficulty 2). This gives a value of usually 3 or 4, meaning you should beat 3+ or 4+ with at least one die of your entire dice pool to succeed against it. This value can also go further up.
3. Away teams have a Team Situation which starts at 100 points when they leave the colony. This Team Situation will deteriorate. Deterioration is determined by testing the team basic pool against the difficulty mentioned above. This test does not affect Resilience. 3)
4. Team Situation can never get below 0. If Team Situation ever reaches 0, then the Team immediately becomes LOST 4).
Being in GOOD STATUS
5a. Teams in GOOD STATUS are all teams which are not stranded or lost.
They can continue with their members Survival Phase.
Being STRANDED
5b. If the team is STRANDED 5) then it must test its Team Situation against current difficulty.
If it misses that test, the team will become LOST instead of STRANDED. Current day will continue with members survival tests, but following days will force a LOST survival sequence first.
Being LOST
5c. If a Team is LOST this will reduce the level of clear communication the player receives from it: every information will first have to be tested by Team Communications first.
It also immediately forces all its members to roll against Injuries and against Disappearance from colony radar.
Once done with these tests for all members, the system can move on with regular member Survival Phase.
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Once done with Step 5, we continue with the members survival phase.
Members Survival Phase
6. Every Member loses 2 Stamina + 1d6, +1 for every consecutive days the Away Team has been away.6)
Supply Run
7. If the character is designated as having a SUPPLY ROLE, he will spend again 2, 4 or 6 more Stamina to make a Supply Run. Then he will make a supply Run.
If he has zero success, no supply is found.
If he has only one Success, 1 or 2 supplies are found, and in addition the character would have eaten something else on the way, regaining +2 Stamina. This also ends any FAMISHED status the character may have had.
If he has two or more successes, 2 to 5 supplies are found (actually 1 + 1d4), and the character also regains +2 Stamina. This also ends any FAMISHED status the character may have had.
The supplies from Supply Run are then added as Base Supplies to the team storage.
Eating
8. Then character will see if the team has supplies.
He will try Base Supplies first, then if none are available, he will start eating Team Rations.7)
Eating consumes one unit.
Eating base supplies does not restore Stamina but removes any FAMISHED status and helps to continue for another day.
Eating Travel Rations restores as much Stamina as planned by the effect of that ration, in addition to removing FAMISHED status.
Famished?
If no food unit can be found for that character, the character becomes FAMISHED and loses 10 Stamina.
If a character was already FAMISHED before, this adds one consecutive famine day. Instead of losing 10 Stamina, the character loses as much Stamina as (10 * number of consecutive Famine Days)
Needs Help?
9. Once character ended his food cycle, system will check if he is at negative Stamina, meaning if he lacks Stamina to compensate for the loss.
If he is, this character will try to find a “Helper” with positive Stamina in the team. This Helper needs to have enough Stamina to help and still be positive in Stamina after.
If found, that Helper will lose double the negative amount of Stamina +1 point, and then the original character will be restored at 1 Stamina.
If no helper is found, the team becomes STRANDED, which will take effect in the survival phase of the next day.
This ends the team and character Survival Phase. The team then continues to score its Progression!
1)
2)
Climate Difficulty is related to day/night cycles, wind and weather, temperature, comfort, visibility, season and planetary cycles, all seen as temporary environmental factors which also affect the difficulty of living there and moving through that environment. Climate Difficulty can change at any time, but its value if present can also be lessened thanks to armor modules and equipment.
3)
Every day, Teams lose 15 points in Team Situation ; this is called the Situation Drain. They can compensate against it with a basic team test against the current difficulty. Every success in the team test will reduce the situation drain by 3 points. As five successes is the big maximum of this roll, a very lucky team could very theorically stay a very long time outside by reducing Situation Drain to zero repeatedly. But such luck cannot happen (unless in very easy sectors to begin with), but also that's without taking events and supplies into account. In real life in EXODE, a good team will be able to remain 10 or more days in the exterior and a bad one 6 days or less. It can be less days in case of events.4)
Being LOST is a status the team can never recover from on its own, it will need another team to Rescue them.5)
STRANDED is a team status which usually occurs when some members are at zero Stamina and other members also fell at zero Stamina after trying to carry them over. This status means the team can no longer score any Progression and will need to be rescued. However, the team is not LOST, so they will not have to roll for injuries or disappearance from colony radar. A Team can remain Stranded as long as they can keep their Team Situation relatively high, because once their Team Situation is low then they are at risk of failing their roll and end up LOST.6)
If we take 70 Stamina as a average for a character, and they don't recover their Stamina, they have enough Stamina for about 7 days or more. The main risk of falling at zero Stamina is that you have then to be carried over by other teammates, and once they are also at zero Stamina, the team becomes STRANDED.7)
The player can also reverse that priority by making sure members start eating rations. Note however that Base Supplies have 10% risk every day for every unit to become spoiled and be lost. Travel Rations cannot spoil that way.