As mentioned, no-one told you all the problems, you got volun-told to take charge here. You arrived to find a bunch of dossiers on your desk - your options in the case of things going wrong.
I have an idea - back in a previous life I would have called it the widget to hang a Con game on, now I'll call it a bolt on rules module.The idea cycles back to my previous DIO - your sector, your problem campaign. The player may or may not have combat capabilities but they certainly have command and control.
Inspired by the opening cinematic of the Space Marine game
Core concept - you've got a bunch of planets, each represented on a really coarse hex grid - 4-12 hexes per planet level.
Any given hex has structure and calm scores - stuff there to get damaged and calm where once calm zeros out the locals panic and start degrading structure. Maybe calm is a stress score that builds, instead of calm that degrades, either could work.
Threats appear on your planets, they can damage structure and burn down calm every turn you leave them. They have some sort of toughness stat.
You have a grab bag of assets to deploy against these threats who have three stats - effectiveness, loudness and collateral damage.
With your assets you can do things like attack the threats, move the threats around, return to orbit.
The challenge is that of course you never have enough assets to clear up all the threats any given round, so the game is to pick which ones to zap, which to kite around the planet so they don't burn down the 'calm' in any given place and you can eventually muster enough forces to deal with them.
I see your threats ranging from big loud kaiju, murderous cultists, alien incursion forces, rebel navy ships, on a spectrum of more or less scary (calm damaging) and more or less destructive (structure damaging).
Something will generate threats, maybe there are some additional tags like things are space based vs planetary, tbc.
For the below Assets stats are effectiveness / loudness / collateral damage
Effectiveness - impact against the threats toughness.
Loudness - how much they will spook the local population; things like transforming mecha justify all their nuisance maintenance here because they're just some planes until they get right up close
Collateral damage will range from your Bond-style agent foils a plot to the Navy glasses the threat, and everything around it, from orbit.
d20 ideas for assets:
1. Codename Cataphract - High effectiveness/mid loudness/low collateral damage
- super-soldier program, one-man army
- Near 100% mission success rate
- tend not to obey recall or stand-down orders
- needs to be patched back together before they can be redeployed
2. Orbital defence platforms with nuclear-tipped torpedoes - high/extreme/extreme
- good for ships, planets, anything big that you don't care about afterwards
- strictly, not legal to use
- we have lots of them
3. Mecha-fighter squadron - Hig/low/mid
- pilots are highly-strung subjects of experimental augmentation that barely get along
- air/land/space counterforce to must sub-naval threats
- huge psychological and techno-medical support staff
- endless HR problems
4. Orbital drop kaiju - high/high/high
- a city crushing, civilian eating monster - but our monster
- will stubbornly face down any threat
5. Dubious alien mercenaries - low/low/mid
- easily available for those with coin
- often recognised as harbingers of bad things happening
- not very careful about what is behind the thing they are shooting at
6. BOGEYMAN - High/high/high
- Company of AI mega-tanks on jump-transporter
- famed war-engines, terrifying to see in action
- hit hard, tear up the scenery, put threats in the ground
- can be set on space-borne threats in extremis
7. The Navy - extreme/extreme/extreme
- when you absolutely, positively need everything on that continent gone, call the Navy
- very little survives orbital bombardment
- sometimes tied up dealing with space-borne threats
8. Investigation Team - low/minimal/minimal
- great at discretely rooting out problems, never raise an eyebrow
- only so much can be dealt with using a laptop and a cutting presentation
9. Supers team - mid/mid/mid
- costumed meta-humans, power-suited techno-genii and other high-powered individuals
- familiar through merchandising, don't scare people as much as other responses
- better at managing the collateral damage
10. Liaison team - minimal/minimal/minimal
- when you need to keep tabs on a problem when nothing else is available
- better than nothing
11. Outer system marshall - low/low/low
- knows their patch, can deal with small stuff
- will not spook the locals
- disinclined to tear up their own home
12. Alien militia - low/mid/low
- round up some of the locals to solve their own problem
- requires telling the locals what the problem is
- they tend to avoid damaging their own stuff
13. Hurricane Induction device - high/high/extreme
- targeted weather disruption to create super-hurricanes
- effective as scouring away threats but also infrastructure
- somewhat less terrifying than open deployment of weapons of mass destruction
14. Planetary Defense Brigade - mid/mid/high
- hardware from a generation back but lots of it
- can get away with calling things training exercises
- as destructive as any significant military deployment
15. Orbital drop marines - mid/high/mid
- operates off Navy vessels, only present where they are
- motivated, enough to jump out of a functioning spaceship into a gravity well
- hard hitting and competent enough to just hit the target
- very, very obvious on arrival
16. Mysterious alien monolith - mid/high/high
- recently dug up, the team is positive they understand how to use it to fix this threat
- they promise this won't go like the last time
17. Private Security team - minimal/low/minimal
- can suppress small problems with local resources
- means spreading the word about what the threat is
18. Black Bag team - minimal/minimal/low
- create plausible accidents to make small problems go away
- property damage is an unfortunate side effect
19. Outsystem bounty hunters - low/mid/mid
- messy, outsourced law enforcement
- don't care about the noise or the damage, only that they get paid
20. Consultants - minimal/low/low
- about as effective as having a liason team but ten times the price
- generally make things worse, for the follow-on work
- when you are out of all your own people and you need someone, anyone
External Assistance Options - very few of these will be tolerated before you are stripped of your responsibilities as clearly incompetent to manage your sector
A. Next Power Over - high/high/mid
- calling in a favour from the powers next door
- Galactic Tier ships and millenia of know-how lets them carve problems out with less damage
- Locals can find it hard to distinguish between what you call the threat and the alien ships bombarding the threat from orbit
B. Galactic Main All Points Distress Beacon - high/extreme/high
- protocols left over from the last incursion, only briefing you got from the mysterious galactic powers-that-be
- screaming to the stars that you've got a problem you cannot deal with will spook the populace
- deep galactic powers will respond and will put down the threat with little regard to what is left afterwards
- most won't deploy planet-crackers unless they happen to be the only thing nearby
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