Arctic Lynx Games
Space Lane Trader is coming - a strategy game of Trade, Opportunity and Piracy
Noel Best put the ship – his newly accuired Hyperion cargo transport into reverse and began to slowly back away from Terra station, the biggest trading hub in the known universe hanging in orbit around Earth. This was an odd direction for him to take he thought, being a preacher all his life, but the lord works in strange ways. He looked down on his trusted sledgehammer leaning against the operations console at the commanders position where he was seated, and reflected on all the occations when he had been forced to use it to bring the word of the lord to the unbelivers of the universe.
The Terran Federal Logistical Service had announced a few months ago that they were opening up the supply routes to all the colonies to private enterprise. The reason, they said was that it was now safe to delegate this job to others to that they could concentrate on the more perilous trading routes, but Noel belived that this was government bs… more likely lack on ships with enough transport capacity. Being as it may, Noels followers had collected all the money they had and together they had bought this rustbucket of a ship, hoping to bring the word of the lord to new corners of the Terran Federation, but first they had to try to earn what seemed like a small fortune in this new trading business to repay the gigantic loans that they had to take.
Looking out of a side window he saw a small fleet of badly mantained transport ships leaving the station at the same time they were – undoubtedly captains as green as him, wanting to make it….. good luck, he thought, your gonna need it.
Space Lane Trader is finally coming to Kickstarter. After years of design, preparation, covid and playtesting we are launching our campaign in october. Sign up below if you want to get a notification when the Kickstarter campaign is launched.
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In Space Lane Trader, you are playing a character in control of your own ship, trying to make a fortune in the newly opened up shipping trade. You buy and sell goods transporting them between planets within the Terran Federation, preferably to where demand and prices are high. The main objective of the game is to earn money (credits) faster than your competitors and return to show off your sucess.
During the course of the game, you can fit your ship with upgrades that will make it go faster, attack harder and defend better – all with the goal to ensure that you manage to beat your competitors to the goal. You can also buy new ships with better capabilities, that can carry more goods for you, go faster or fit more upgrades.
Your character will develop during the game – from the inexperienced person starting play at Terra station in the Solar system, to a grizzeled space ship captain with much improved skills. You develop your character by spending Experince Points (XP), that are earned by drawing Event cards as the game progresses.
The most obvious way of earning money is byuing goods, transporting it to another planet and selling it there. Another way however, is attacking your competitors and take what should have been yours anyway. Winning combat against another player will allow you to either steal cargo from your opponent or take loot in the form of Debris cards. Debris cards can either give you valuable salvage that can be sold on planets, or the best equipment in the game that will improve your ship beyond the capabilities of your competitors.
Not all parts of space is safe. Planets away from the most busy parts of space is characterized by a wild west mentality and the Terran Federation security forces dont have the capacity to uphold law and order everywhere. This is refelected by two different security levels in the game – green and yellow. Green security level planets are safer, and although bad things can happen, the negative consequences are not so extensive. On security level yellow planets however, the dangers are higher but also the rewards.
The Characters
You can play with one of eight characters in the game – each one with its strenghts and weaknesses.
From left to right in the upper row are – The Soldier, The Android, The Engineer and The Entertainer. In the lower row you can find – The Merchant, The Pirate Captain, The Preacher and The Scientist.
The Soldiers main strengths are combat and the debris cards that can be eraned from them. The Soldier can also interdict other players that passes her on the same space lane.
The Android are great with ship upgrades and can use these well beyond their normal use. The Engineer can optimize the use of his ship is ways no other character can.
The Entertainer uses her charm to put her on the right track. The Merchant is all about money and how to get more of it. The Pirate Captain is the best combat character in the game and is very competent when it comes to stealing other players goods and selling it without complications. The Preacher is a jack of all trades that uses the word of god and his sledgehammer to bring salvation to the unbeleivers. Finally, The Scientist is all about experience points and how to get as many of them as possible. She is the best character at training in the game.
A character board features a picture and a description of the character and more importantly his or her special rule and starting credits on its front side. On the backside are 4 rows of squares on which experience points can be used to unlock different capabilities and bonuses. The first three rows are common to all characters and focusing your investments in different rows means that your game will provide you with different strategic advantages that will affect how you play your game. The first row – Piloting, delas with your ships capability to move through space – most often by providing bonuses to Speed. The second row – Combat, increases your capabilities in combat – both on affence and defence. The third row – Trade – focuses on money and how to get as much of it as possible. The fourth and final row – Special is unique to each character and provides a set of bonuses that only that character can benefit from.
The Ships
In Space Lane Trader, you can play commanding one of four available ships. You can choose between two smaller cargo transports at the start of the game – The Aegir or The Hyperion.
Having earned enough money, you can buy a bigger, faster and better ship – either the faster Taurus Cargo Freighter or the even bigger but slower Atlas Cargo Carrier.
Buying a better ship will enable you to carry more cargo and travel faster across the sector, thus giving you the potential to earn your credits faster, but take your competitors actions into account – too many players making the same strategic decision may cause you to be without any cargo to transport.
Each ship is represented by a ship board, such as the beautiful one shown below – The Aegir Mk II Cargo transport. The ship board shows the ships upgrade control system and feautures a blueprint of it with its main systems highlighted, as well as a picture of the ship. More importantly however, it displays which locations of the ship that can be upgraded, how many upgrades that can be fitted to the ship in terms of weight- and power capacity as well as the ships original Speed, Attack, Defence and Cargo stats.
Displayed is also the special rules that applies to that particular ship.
Whats in the box?
There is a lot of stuff cramped into the game box, and in this section we want to give you an overview of everything that is included:
– First, there are eight double-sided ship boards (two per player) – one featuring The Aegir and The Hyperion and the other featuring The Taurus and The Atlas.
– A 24-page rule book containing rules for team- and solitaire play, and also a short campaign where your chosen character will develop over a number of consecutive games.
– 4 reference sheets – one for each player, that convieniently shows you where all the different goods can be bought and sold and also will help you to calculate the profit from sales.
– One double-sided game board featuring two sectors – sector Terra and sector Omega, that can be played together, thus making it possible to play with up to 8 people, provided you
have two games.
– 130 beautifully designed credit bills, that will keep you well supplied during the entire game.
– 60 Event cards that will provide you with positive or negative short stories of what is happening to your character during his or her travels. The cards will also provide your character with
experience points that you can use to develop your character in the strategic direction of your choice. There are also special market event cards that will affect the demand for
different goods.
– A double sided demand board where the demand for all of the different goods are tracked. One side for sector Terra and one for sector Omega.
– 32 Debris cards, that are earned mainly after winning a combat and can be valubles that can be sold for credits or high quality equipment that can be fiitted to your ship to increase its
capabilities.
– 30 Equipment cards that can be bought to increase your ships capabilities.
– 24 Trade Route Permits, that is neccesary for you to legally trade with different goods.
– 33 Boost tokens, that are used to give your ship a one-time boost to Speed, Attack or Defence.
– 24 Smuggling tokens, that are used to keep track of which good your ship is carrying while smuggling.
– 16 Ship tokens, used for representing your ships location on the game board.
– 6 Not-in-play tokens, used for taking planets out of play, when playing with two or three players.
– There are also 8 character boards (not shown below), mainly used for tracking and investing the experience points that your character receives during the game.
So - what are we doing at the moment?
It is important to stress that Space Lane Trader has been in development for years and that it is now a complete and finished game. This means that the Kickstarter campaign will be more focused on nice to have features that we can include if the campaign goes well, which means that the price per game can be reduced.
So, what are we up to at the moment? We showed the game at the Essen Spiel fair in Essen, Germany in 2019. We received some feedback that we felt we wanted to take into account before we finally released it, then covid-19 happened and we got horribly delayed. In the last few months, we have finally been able to finish the graphical design, save the back of the box, the rulebook has been updated and a few prototype games has been ordered.
We are now updating this and the Kickstarter campaign page, before sending the game to a few selected game influencers for review. We are also looking into how to best market the game and the Kickstarter campaign, getting the final numbers for the cost for manufacturing and deciding which logistic partner and fulfillment center to use.
Among all this, we are preparing for Essen Spiel 2021 – we will be in hall 5 again this year. Look for us in booth 5B121 if you want to have a go at playing Space Lane Trader.
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