I hate to be the asshole before we actually play, but I do want to bring to the IR's attention a couple of issues in the interest of having a fair game:
1. Orbital bombardment cannot nuke ground troops, only facilities. Do you plan on invading all of our systems with just 2 meager Lambda Shuttles?
2. While it is not specifically stated in this rule set, in the AJ game players were required to fully load a capital ship with support units upon initial purchase, even if they had no intentions of actually housing those units in that capital ship (in effect sending them elsewhere). The NR's finances were constructed with this mindset, whereas I see that IR's were not.
Honestly I am fine with dispensing with the support unit requirement if the IR is, but in the interest of fairness that would mean we should have the opportunity to revise our finances. Likewise, on account of the possible rules oversight with respect to the extent of orbital bombardment (I take it you probably assumed you could just nuke everything from orbit and call it day), it would seem that you need to go back the drawing board with respect to finances as well. The potential issue with being able to nuke ground troops is that this would in effect create a space-only game. Ground PDF would be pointless, because both factions could simply commit to an orbital bombardment game plan and we'd both wind up nuking each other. We may as well remove ground units from the game if that's the case, and just do space battles.
Here is my offer:
1. We can keep things as-is, since technically both finances are above board in terms of budget.
-OR-
2. We can go back to the drawing board and re-do finances.
The issue with 2 is that we've in a sense already revealed our intended strategies (for the IR it's a VSD spam, for the NR it's a balanced fleet) and thus going back to the drawing board may change our strategies (we may spam RAFs now that a VSD spam is coming). As is the case with table top games with "meta-gaming," OOC knowledge often spoils the IC setup. But if we keep everything as-is, then the IR has already lost the game from the outset because 2 Lambda shuttles vs our collective ground PDF is just a joke. So it seems we have to take option 2.
If we go back to the drawing board, we can either
A. Suspend the support unit requirement.
-or-
B. Uphold the support unit requirement.
Let me know how y'all would like to proceed.
