Minireview: Tactical Space Support: Space Warfare (Heavy Gear)

Up to around this book, most of the Heavy Gear game line has been quite planetbound. This is a deliberate design decision, and a good one imho. However, at this point in the storyline things are starting to heat up in space, too, with the Black Talon teams doing missions to Caprice and the CEF continuing to send spies and resources to Terra Nova via micro-Tannhauser gates. As a result, the game starts to need rules for space operations and combat… and that’s exactly what this book provides. Despite the title, Tactical Space Support isn’t a miniatures supplement (the word “tactical” usually means that in HG books), it’s a rules supplement for the roleplaying game.

Despite being a fairly thin book, it’s crammed full of info – like most Heavy Gear books. We’re given details on the most common ships in the Terra Novan fleet, some basic details on gate travel, and lots of nitty gritty about equiment, operational detail and training. Also included are additional rules on how to handle vacuum exposure, microgravity environments and such. As par for the course for Heavy Gear, it’s firmly in the “hard scifi” department and fairly realistic – well, assuming you allow for “physics cheats” like the Tannhauser Gates that make interstellar travel possible in this game. There is no artificial gravity, and space is utterly deadly to those without proper equiment and/or proper training.

This is a fairly straightforward book. Very useful if you want to send your PCs into orbital environments or even further out, and in the “interesting read” category even if you intend to stay planetbound. […]