Core Gameplay Loop for Sector Defense Game

Pondering on how to run "Your Sector, Your Problem" - "SHIELD or Stargate Command but you are responsible for a sector of inhabited alien worlds" - it lurks in my mind like a splinter.

Questions I have been having are 'what exactly is the fun here', 'why is this not a board game',and then 'what is the minimum viable game to get going'. I have written about this before in 'DIO - Cosmic Defense Brigade' and d20 Sector Defense Assets - the high concept is that you are responsible for holding down a sector your corporation has newly acquired protectorship of and have a scarce amount of assets of varying levels of effectiveness and you have to deal with all the problems that come across your desk with those.

Looking at the first of the questions - 'what exactly is the fun here?' - the core gameplay loop I have in mind is:
- "spot the problems" - gather info, figure out what is going on across your sector
- deploy your resources - typically not enough for easy answers
- resolve incidents
- recover/maintain your resources

I think 'spot the problems' involves some random elements, some unknown elements and then some assessing what this means in the context of what you already know. My thought was some random events or randomised chance of 'problems' spawning, things first appearing as space-hulk style 'blips' - you are aware there is something there but lack detail on what it is and how big a problem you have. Finally you need to match what you know about your 'terrain' - is that a kaiju appearing in a desert? Probably not a critical issue yet. If it is approaching a city, this warrants extreme action to try and prevent a disaster.

Deploying the resources then is the big agency lever - what do you put down against what, what do you keep as reserve and where, if anywhere the players get personally involved. These are the d20 Sector Defense Assets previously described ranging from investigators to planetary bombardment ships.

Resolving incidents is then good old dice rolling, with the zoom level depending on whether or not there is someone on the ground.

Recover/maintain the resources is another loop of player engagement running through things like deciding whether to task reserve transport to recover ground forces, where to deploy search-and-rescue, triaging refuel, rearm and maintenance along with talking down your highly strung and traumatised supers, mecha-pilots, secret agents, etc. I see this playing out with running the organisation incurs 'issues' that go on a stack and you deal with them as a mini-quest every recovery phase. Incur too many issues and fail to deal with them promptly and overall effectiveness degrades, hence maybe sometimes you will want to hold the line out in the field with some bunch of expendables (or just let the kaiju chew on your citizenry) so that you can get your assets back to fighting effectiveness.

As to 'why is this not a board game?' - to allow the flexibility of 'getting involved' in the deployment phase and going hands-on with problems but also to allow for a range of 'recovery/maintenance' bits - and massive latitude in player solutions.

Coming to 'what is the minimum viable game to get going' I think we need have players twiddling three dials
- the shared infogathering apparatus - "the big board" where the group collectively tries to build a picture of what they need to deal with
- the pool of resources - in particularly during recovery/maintenance
- themselves and their own abilities which suggests it should be a simple character sheet.

To keep character sheets simple - my thoughts were a GLoG-style 'four ability' characters but simplified a bit more into 3 stats. I also loved the idea of 'tell the setting through the saves'.

Conceptually I think the model is something like SHIELD or Stargate Command - you are not far off baseline humanity dealing with a universe that seems to have a different copy of the rulebook.

Trying to think through character classes, my first instinct was to lean towards something like Pandemic as a model - less fine gradations on how they sling magic around but more their core expertise and organisational affiliation. For SWN, a guidestar for 'keep it simple sci-fi' we have 'expert, warrior, psychic'. I feel everyone would be an expert with that set so I need something else.

I think the key 'interfaces for challenges' where PC expertise would come in handy would be
- terrain - moving things around, dealing with distance
- aliens - dealing with the aliens themselves and their stuff
- humans - upholding duties, rooting out bad apples

Spliting that out into those who deal with the People-side or Stuff-side of those challenges and we get something that serves for an initial set up; yielding the following 'class/template' ideas:

For People/Human
- organisational fixer can get things done within your own org
- investigator - good at unpicking 'people' problems

For Stuff/Human
- Machine wrangler - keep constructs, AIs, wardroids, sentient missiles etc. on side
- security/military person - good with planning/acting on kinetic solutions

For People/Alien
- xenopsychologist/negotiator who can smooth things along with living aliens

For Stuff/Alien
- xenoarchaeologist/ruin whisperer who is good at interacting with all the stuff

For People/Terrain
- logistics person can see things deployed/recovered

For Stuff/Terrain
- infrastructure/construction - get things built/repaired/fortified

An alternative approach would be to forgo classes completely and just have everyone pick from a list of feat-like abilities but I in the interest of keeping complexity down to start kits or standard builds should probably available to get started.

Stats might be unnecessary - Saves and a perhaps GLoG Delta progression with abilities unlocked through achieve in-world goals might be the quick way to do things. Needs more pondering.