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< Tactics | Skills | Bioengineering >

Area Knowledge

• The Spiral Arm
• Young Kingdoms

Area Classes

Here are the Area Classes for Beyond All Horizons. This adds a level between Planet and Interstellar Empire, and another level between Interstellar Empire and the entire Galaxy. It shaves away a few levels below the level of Large Nation. In any event, as the focus of this game is on Space Travel, most specializations for characters will be at the higher levels and so I've added detail there. The elimination of detail at the lower levels serves to help players. Their defaults to know about a specific City or Neighborhood will be slightly better.

• Neighborhood - Mostly used for defaults, but some people might know everything there is to know about a particular neighborhood of their home city, a space station, or somesuch. Characters might also earn dots of this skill in play through the study method, if they spend a lot of time in a given neighborhood.
• City - This will almost certainly be used for defaults, but again, some places might have interesting cities that the player wants to learn about. In which case the character might gain a few dots in this skill to represent such familiarity. Note, some space habitats might count as "Cities", but its largely a matter of population. If a place is particularly large and full of people its either a Nation or even a Planet all its own.
• Large Nation - This is information about a single nation, and will still probably be mostly used from default rather than directly purchased. If a nation is ruled by a single world government, try to find some way to split the planet into smaller chunks, such as by former nations (prior to unification) or geographic zones. A completely unified and undifferentiated population is quite unlikely.
• Planet/System - This is the lowest Area Class you're likely to see players actively pursue. "Planet" and "System" are at about the same level of detail; if you know about Earth, the odds are you know a bit about Mars, Venus and so on as well. This covers knowledge of the planet, its nations and leaders, how its government is set up, any starports and bases, important planets and secondary settlements in the system, known jump nodes, and so on. People who don't travel much have this level of Area Knowledge.
• Cluster/Pocket - This is probably the most common Area Class to see on character sheets. It covers related groupings of worlds, which are grouped together either culturally, politically or simply by association. You know the important worlds, what kind of people and cultures have settled there, important bases and landmarks, political situations, and so on. You'll also benefit from a -2 default to Planets/System within your Cluster, -4 for their Nations, and -8 for their Cities. If going upwards, you can expect a -2 default to nearby sectors in the same Interstellar Empires and Distance modifiers for more distant Clusters.
• Interstellar Empire - Until some new Interstellar Empires arise, this Area Class divides up the Universe by the Space that was claimed by Old Empires. Some of the information will be out of date but it will include a good deal of information on important regions and worlds in the Old Empire, knowledge of where Battles took place and what happened there, Trade Routes through these large Regions, and so on. This also gives a -2 default to the Empire's individual Cluster/Pockets, and a -4 for its Individual Planets. Nearby Interstellar Empires are -2, while longer off ones will have Distance-based penalties.
• Galactic Region - This class basically divides the Galaxy into a few large chunks, and contains information on the Old Empires that filled those chunks in the past and a very rough overview of what those regions of Space are like politically at the moment. You'll know some vague details about pocket kingdoms in the region, the largest trade routes through the region, important organizations in the region, and so on. You'll have -2 defaults to know about the Interstellar Empires in that region, and -4 for individual Clusters within them while having a -8 to know about a specific system.
  • Pan-Orion Region -- the Galactic Region the game itself is set in.
  • Androdyne Sphere -- a Neighboring Galactic Region
  • Galactic Core -- Another Neighboring Galactic Region
  • Trailing Edge -- The fourth, and last, Region
• The Galaxy - This covers very vague information, in general, about the entire Galaxy.