It’s clear at this point that my Saga Edition group has dissolved. Alas, but it seems we were too busy for too many months and now the will to go on playing has gone. Also, some people appear to have stopped using Discord entirely. To memorialize the occasion, I’m posting my house rules for the war system. It’s fairly easy to adapt to other systems, but very notably it’s also untested. I had originally planned to post a refined version after it saw actual use in the later stages of the campaign when the wars in the stars got going, but that never happened, so instead you get the prototype version. Caveat emptor.
Towards the end of Birth of the Republic, the war system saw several overhauls based on the bizarre results (RIP Corellia) and discussions between the group. The current thread on that system technically contains the complete house rules for mass combat being used in the system, but they’re split up between a bunch of different discussions and revisions where I’ll make a post like “these are the rules” and then someone else will say “we should change [thing]” and I’ll say “that’s a good idea, let’s change [thing]” but then the original post still has the original rules, so if you want to know what the rules are you have to hold the entire discussion in your head at once. This is a headache to reference, so let’s make a new thread about how war works in 9ToX containing all of the rules in one spot.
War and Strategy
Planets have a certain amount of defense power, represented by a green bar, and a certain amount of marine power, represented by a red bar. A planet can split off its marine power into a fleet, but its defense power can’t go anywhere. Each guard or marine unit needs to be counted separately, as they have different supply chains, they each individually heal one point of power (up to their maximum) every turn they’re not in combat, although they don’t necessarily have to be represented as separate tokens, and because a planet can have as many guard units stationed on it as it has undrained population units, although it does not matter what the total defense power of those guard units is and neither militia nor paramilitaries count towards this maximum.
It’s worth noting that nothing is stopping you from reassigning a starships resource from one unit to another fifty million times in a turn, so if you want to turn guard units into marine units just long enough to shuffle them around to different planets before giving those starships back to your actual marine units, you can and there’s no penalty. What you can’t do is assign that starships resource to two or more units simultaneously in order to have them both act as marine units while attacking a planet (or defending one that’s over its ten unit limit for guards). It’s also worth noting that Coruscant has the hidden superpower of being able to hold somewhere close to the entire Republic’s military forces on its surface at once. That wouldn’t be a very smart strategy, but you could.
When a battle occurs, each side chooses a strategy and rolls a pool of d10s. The size of this pool is, by default, equal to the amount of total power (both guard power and marine power) that side has. Every result of 6-9 is a hit and removes one point of guard and/or marine power from the enemy side. Every result of 10 is a hit and also explodes. Every result of 2-5 is a miss and does nothing. Every result of 1 is a botch and cancels one hit. The roll20 syntax for this is {Xd10!}>6f1.
The size of the dicepool is modified by the strategy used. Strategies may be aggressive, cautious, or opportunistic. Each of these three strategies has three different names depending on whether it is used as part of attacking a planet, defending a planet, or in space, but when picking a strategy, what matters is whether it is aggressive, cautious, or opportunistic. Whether it’s called “counterattack,” “deep strike,” or “armada,” it’s an aggressive strategy (there are some exceptions, but don’t worry about them for now). The aggressive strategies are counterattack for planetary defenders, deep strike for planetary attackers, and armada for space battles. The cautious strategies are fortification for planetary defenders, bombardment for planetary attackers, and interdiction fleet for space battles. The opportunistic strategies are rapid response for planetary defenders, general advance for planetary attackers, and strike groups for space battles.
Aggressive Strategies
An aggressive strategy gains a +50% bonus to the dice pool, rounded up, when used against a cautious strategy, overwhelming the slow-moving defenders before they can bring their lumbering strategy to bear. For example, if a deep strike (aggressive) is used against fortification (cautious) and the aggressive attacker’s army has 50 points of marine power, the +50% bonus allows him to roll 75d10 instead of the usual 50d10 for this battle. If an aggressive force gets enough hits to totally wipe out the enemy and has some leftover, the leftover hits may be used to soak enemy hits. The deep strike strategy specifically will also limit the damage caused to a planet by the battle.
A planetary attacker’s deep strikes use orbital drops to land behind enemy territory, rendering their cautious fortification strategy useless. A planetary defender’s counterattack seizes the heavy artillery and bomber air fields used by the cautious bombardment strategy, breaking through the forward attack positions before they can be properly entrenched and seizing large amounts of slow-moving material. In space, an armada dense with heavy firepower doesn’t mind being interdicted at all – they drop out of hyperspace, blow the enemy fleet to smithereens, and then finish their jump to their destination, which is pretty much what they were gonna do anyway. When an aggressive strategy meets an aggressive strategy, the result is a bloodbath. A deep strike landing behind the lines of a counterattack results in lots of confused battles with no clear front lines and constant fighting across the entire planet. Two major armadas confront one another and the destruction is catastrophic. Both sides get a 50% bonus to their dice pool, which works out great if one side is much stronger than the other and can use excess hits to soak.
Cautious Strategies
A cautious strategy gains a +30% bonus to the dice pool, rounded up, when used against an opportunistic strategy, avoiding giving the enemy any opportunities to exploit and letting the high costs of their strategy catch up with them. A cautious force may also use up to half their hits to soak incoming damage, even if the enemy force is not destroyed. This can allow a relatively small force hold onto a planet against a larger one – although it should be remembered that being predictable in using a cautious strategy is a very bad thing, because it means your enemy can safely use the high-value aggressive strategy. If the planetary defender uses the fortification strategy specifically, this will also limit the damage to the planet’s economy for this battle, while a cautious attacker using bombardment will increase it. A marine fleet may be placed in interdiction mode on a hyperspace lane (but not on a planet) to prevent enemy strike groups from passing it by, in which case it will automatically attack any strike groups attempting to hit any targets that can only be reached from the strike groups’ position via the hyperspace route the interdiction fleet is guarding (see the section on opportunistic strategy for further details on strike group raids). This interdiction fleet does get the +30% bonus against opportunistic attackers used by the strike fleet and can sacrifice half its hits for soak, however only the interdiction fleet benefits from this bonus. The main armada’s dice pool is unaffected and cannot sacrifice hits for soak (unless the strike groups are wiped out completely and the armada has hits left over). The interdiction fleet does not have to be destroyed for the strike groups to move on to attack planets past the interdiction fleet’s position, it just gets to roll an attack on the strike groups as they pass. Hits rolled by the strike group may be used to damage the interdiction fleet (just like they can be used to damage every other marine unit in the galaxy).
A planetary attacker’s bombardment pounds the defender’s opportunistic rapid response teams into rubble, while those teams are too small to overcome the entrenched fortifications of the bombard positions. A planetary defender’s fortifications breaks the attacker’s opportunistic general advance like waves against a rock. In space, the interdiction armada intercepts small strike groups and overwhelms them with superior firepower, using the gravity well to prevent them from escaping. When both sides use a cautious strategy, the battle becomes slow and plodding. Bombardment slams into fortification and in turns into a siege, or both sides set up interdiction fleets and wait around for a major confrontation that never comes, instead just occasionally skirmishing with one another. Both sides take a 50% penalty to their dice pool for the turn.
Opportunistic Strategies
An opportunistic strategy gains a 10% bonus to the dice pool, rounded up, when used against an aggressive strategy, spreading out to find weaknesses to exploit in the enemy’s attack while simultaneously ensuring that only a small fraction of their forces will be affected by the initial assault, and then concentrating their spread-out forces on those weakspots to shatter the enemy. An opportunistic force requires two leftover hits to soak one from the enemy if victorious, as these highly-mobile strategies are costly, but they have the advantage of guaranteeing that an enemy will not have the massive benefit from an aggressive strategy. In space, using strike groups against an armada allows hits to be applied against any enemy marine force anywhere in the galaxy. While interdiction fleets and enemy strike group interceptions can prevent these shenanigans, armada tactics very much cannot, allowing strike groups to jump from one system to the next unopposed until they hit whatever target they’re after. Likewise, a strike group attacking an armada can deal economic damage, tapping or draining enemy population units, over any undefended planet anywhere in their territory, including planets whose marine defenses were destroyed during the battle. These distant marine forces do get to retaliate, however, rolling their dice in addition to any used by the armada to try and damage the strike groups. They do not get any bonuses (they are assumed to be using the same armada tactic as the main fleet).
The general advance meets the enemy counterattack and uses close air support provided by orbital superiority as well as having plenty of reserve units to commit to trouble spots, something which the frenetic enemy counterattack can’t rely on, in order to break the enemy momentum and then overwhelm their nearly-empty defensive positions. A rapid response defense finds and destroys deep strike units before they can orient and entrench themselves. In space, small strike groups pick off the supply convoy keeping the enemy’s large armada running and hit enemy space stations, ship yards, and planetary defenses before making a quick escape to hyperspace before the armada can show up to retaliate. When two opportunistic strategies collide, there is no bonus. A general advance is able to take light garrisons and turn their fortifications against the rapid response teams in some locations, while in others, the rapid response team shows up to reinforce the flagging garrison while the attacking forces are still exposed. In space, strike groups find and engage one another and slip past one another to hit targets unopposed with equal frequency, leaving both sides harried by raids and engaging in dozens of minor ship battles without ever committing forces to a single massive one.
Supply and Healing
In the aftermath of a battle, the damage inflicted can be distributed amongst the units involved however the owner of those units likes. Each damaged unit recovers one unit of power every turn it is not in battle. If supplied with medicine, in addition to upgrading that unit to a higher class of troop, it will also recover two marine power every turn it is not in battle. Because of this, it is usually better to try and keep damage as even as possible across units so that they will all heal together, which increases the total healing per turn, to concentrate damage onto units supplied with medicine since they heal twice as fast, and if units must be destroyed, better to destroy weak units first, as they will be faster and easier to replace.
When a unit is destroyed, the resources supplied to that unit by the planet(s) in its logistics chain are freed up, and the obvious thing to do is to raise another unit and give it those resources. This requires tapping a population unit. A tapped population unit is still perfectly capable of producing resources like normal, but only just. All the spare people have been levied. For that population unit, it’s now total war, everyone is part of the war effort. A tapped population unit can be levied again, but this will drain the population unit, at which point they can no longer produce resources. Any military unit supplied by the resources they used to produce will begin taking attrition damage. A military unit can be levied from any planet, regardless of where its supplies are coming from. If a Corellian unit has just been destroyed, it’s perfectly fine to levy some Khils and have them supplied by the Corellian resources that just got freed up – until you run out of Khils, anyway. Some sectors get special bonuses applied to their units. For example, Corellian units get a 20% bonus when using strike groups against an armada, instead of the usual 10%. This bonus applies to units raised from the Corellian Empire specifically, regardless of who’s supplying them. Khils supplied by Corellians don’t get the bonus, and Corellians supplied by Khils do get the bonus.
Only one resource can be invested in a military unit per turn. For example, a freshly levied unit starts out as militia guard, with no resources invested at all. That same turn, it can have a single resource invested, either upgrading it to paramilitary guard or, if the resource was starships, to militia marines. This means that it takes a total of five turns just sitting around collecting resource upgrades before a freshly minted militia can be turned into an elite marine unit.
Each planet provides supplies to certain units. Often, a single elite unit will be supplied by multiple different planets, each of which is specialized to providing one of the many resources required for that elite unit. If a unit is cut off from the source of its supplies, it stops healing defense or marine power and instead loses one point of defense or marine power every turn (whether it’s in battle or not) until it has marine power equal to a type of troop that can be currently supplied. So, for example, an elite marine unit that’s lost its supply of electronics loses one point of marine power each turn until it has eight or less, at which point it stabilizes, as that is the amount of marine power an advanced marine unit has. It still counts as an elite marine unit, and if the electronics supply is restored, it will begin healing back up to thirteen. Marine units in fleets who don’t have access to starships always count as unsupplied, no matter how many other resources they have access to, and will continue taking damage until they hit zero, run out of fuel in the middle of space, and starve. Marine units that are currently landed on a planet do not need access to starships to remain supplied, they just can’t join fleets (basically, they are downgraded to guard units until their supply of starships is restored).
A particular lack of rules should be noted here: Supply lines are not interrupted by any amount of enemy planets between the supply source and the supplied units. They are not even interrupted by enemy fleets between the supply source and the supplied units, unless that fleet is specifically interdicting a hyperspace lane. Supply lines can only be interrupted by an interdiction fleet blocking a necessary hyperspace lane (or multiple interdiction fleets blocking all available hyperspace lanes) or else by a blockade. Blockades only intercept supply lines that start from or end at that planet. Supply lines that start and end at another system are not interrupted by a blockade even if they must go through a system with a blockaded planet to get there. It’s just one planet – the system in general still has tons of empty space, way more than could ever be blockaded.
Battles have an impact on a planet’s economy. Planets ordinarily have ten population units (each representing approximately one billion civilians). For every two hits used for damage by either side in a planetary battle, one population unit is tapped. If all population units are tapped, they start becoming drained instead. Hits used to soak enemy attacks are not counted. If the defender uses the cautious fortification strategy, add one to the number of hits required to tap or drain each population unit. If the attacker is using the deep strike strategy, add one to the number of hits required to tap or drain a population unit. This bonus does stack with the fortification bonus. If the attacker is using the bombardment strategy, subtract one from the number of hits required to tap or drain each population unit unless the defender uses counterattack, in which case ignore it (the counterattack overwhelms the bombard positions before they can do much damage). It is worth noting that while I haven’t gotten into logistics in this post, a reasonably well-optimized sector can easily raise about 50 points of marine power. Against a similarly sized opponent, that is an average of 45 hits, which will completely drain every single population unit on the planet. Even in a best case scenario, deep strike versus fortification, the kinds of titanic battles that arise when two armies each with the resources of several optimized sector economies throw their marines into one planet can easily result in the planet being utterly devastated to the point where its economy is non-functional for the rest of the war.
Space battles do not result in any damage to the economy, with the exception of a strike groups versus armada result, in which case for every four hits of damage dealt by the strike groups, the strike groups’ player may tap a population unit of a planet of their choice allied with the armada player, provided that planet does not have any marine units stationed in it (including if all marine units stationed over the planet were destroyed during the battle). Population units may be drained only if there are no untapped population units left on that planet. This represents the economic damage dealt by the strike groups as they hit targets that the slow and lumbering armada cannot defend – targets that may be very deep in enemy space if they don’t have any local patrols, or if those patrols were small enough that the strike groups were able to destroy them during the battle.
Wars in the Stars
There is no inherent limit to the number of battles you can fight in a turn, nor to how far you can move a unit in one turn. Even with very slow, early Republic hyperdrives, it takes only about two months to cross the entire span of the galaxy. Since going from the tip of the Tion Cluster to the southern end of the Inner Rim is less than that, and since the length of a single turn is three months (or a quarter, as in a quarter of a year), you can go to any place you like, assuming no resistance. Of course, seeing as how there is presumably a war on, you will most likely meet some resistance eventually. If a marine fleet engages in a battle and is unable to totally destroy the enemy force, then their travel is halted. This is true whether it’s an enemy fleet they can’t break through or ground forces they could’ve flown straight past. Land invasions may sometimes be bogged down when resistance is heavier than anticipated, seeing a marine force nailed to the planet for much longer than they might have liked. The marine force can still leave on the following turn if they like, declining to fight another land battle and instead going someplace else.
Marine units can also do a couple of things besides fight wars. Firstly, they may interdict a hyperspace lane. A marine unit that interdicts a hyperspace lane must use interdiction tactics if attacked. Interdicted hyperspace lanes block enemy supply lines. Any enemy strike groups that attempt to pass through (after successfully engaging an enemy armada or in order to use the raid action, see later) will suffer attacks from the interdiction fleet as they pass. If they pass through while raiding, they may choose to either break through, in which case they roll no dice and deal no damage but may raid with surviving forces as normal after the battle, or else they may fight a full-on space battle in which case they can make attacks of their own as normal, but if they fail to destroy the interdiction fleet they will be bogged down at that hyperspace lane.
Second, a marine unit may raid enemy space. While raiding enemy space, a marine unit attacks the enemy’s economy directly. The marine unit may be stationed anywhere, and if the enemy does not have any interdiction fleets there is no reason for raiding units not to have bases deep in their own friendly territory. Wherever they’re positioned on the map, a raiding fleet may directly attack the economy of any enemy planet at any point in the galaxy. However, if reaching any of the targeted planets requires passing through an interdicted hyperspace lane, they will have to either break through the interdiction, suffering an attack from the interdicting fleet’s normal dice pool without returning fire in exchange, or else they can try to wipe out the interdiction fleet, in which case they may roll their attack as normal, but if they fail to destroy the enemy fleet completely, they will be bogged down in the battle as normal. If there are no interdiction fleets in the way, if all targets are on the near side of them, or if they have successfully broken through the interdiction fleets, the raiding unit may roll their attack. Each and every hit rolled can tap a population unit on any enemy planet that does not have marine defenses, or drain a population unit if that planet has no untapped population left. Once a unit commits to raiding, they can take no further actions for the turn, although they may still move around. If a raiding unit broke through an interdiction fleet during the raid, they may position themselves on the opposite side of that fleet. Although the raiding fleet may adopt any tactic they like while breaking through an interdiction fleet (they can form up into an armada briefly and then split apart again to raid once on the other side), a raiding fleet must use strike group tactics if attacked after raiding but before the start of their next turn.
Third, a marine unit may blockade a planet held by the enemy so long as there are no marine forces above that planet (if there were marine forces in the system, there’d be a battle instead). A blockaded planet is immediately cut off from all trade. Any production on that planet that relies on trade immediately ceases. For example, if a planet uses metal to create machines and imports the metal from another planet, blockading the planet immediately shuts down the planet’s entire machines production. Production is restored immediately after the blockade ends. A blockade also interdicts supply lines, which means any guard or marine units on the planet which require supplies from anywhere else but the planet will immediately begin taking attrition damage. A fleet left to blockade a planet must use armada tactics if attacked.
All of these options make your fleets very predictable if attacked. Generally speaking, it is best to leave a normal fleet on a chokepoint, then have other fleets break off to raid or blockade behind the safety of that chokepoint until the sector has been pacified. Alternatively, leaving a large armada as a blockade on a critical planet can be a safe and effective option if the enemy’s marine forces are significantly smaller than yours, but the guard units on their sector capital (which are almost always powerful elite units who rely on supplies from the sector’s outlying worlds) would be too powerful to overcome. The 10% bonus enemy marine units get for using strike group tactics against you is only likely to be decisive if they had comparable forces to begin with.
Getting Involved
Generally speaking, the closer to the actual day of battle you are, the less helpful the actions of six guys and a bunch of mooks on a corvette are going to be. Things you do weeks or months in advance have time to reverberate forward and cause serious disarray, while things you do in the battle itself are generally limited to killing a few hundred doods on a battlefield that contains millions. As impressive as killing several hundred stormtroopers is, it doesn’t really make a difference. Here are some things the party can do that can make a difference, though:
-Being in charge. Convincing people to adopt whatever strategy you’ve settled on means that you have a chance. I pick which strategies the NPCs use in advance (NPCs fighting battles I did not anticipate use certain repeating patterns or simple, mentally computed algorithms varying complexity based on who’s in command), which means if you’re the one picking the Republic’s strategy, you can go ahead and discuss that in front of me and it won’t change which strategy the enemy is using. That only works if you’re actually choosing the strategy, though. If you’re not, then I get to pick both strategies which can be very similar to just deciding who wins. Convincing leaders on your side that you are geniuses/badasses who should be listened to can be very important. Doing things that would otherwise be pointless (like killing assloads of stormtroopers) can be worthwhile if it’s a necessary step to convincing General Bumblefuck to step aside and let you handle things. Being in charge also lets you make Knowledge rolls that can add a couple of percentage points of bonus to your side if you roll well enough (or take some away if you mess it up). You may have picked a deep strike when the enemy has a rapid response waiting, but if you’ve masterminded a particularly flawless execution of that deep strike, you might be able to reverse that bonus. Even if you went with bombardment and the enemy’s counterattacking, a really good Tactics roll will at least take the edge off the pain.
-Assassination. Named NPC enemies get to make Tactics rolls, too. Unless they’re dead.
-Espionage. No matter what strategy the enemy’s chosen, knowing what it is in advance can give you an enormous advantage. Even if they’ve chosen aggressive, which means going opportunistic gives you only a barely-significant 10% bonus, stealing enemy plans doesn’t just mean you can select the right strategy, it also means you can avoid the wrong strategy. When the enemy plans on an aggressive attack, it’s very helpful to know that you should under no circumstances choose a cautious strategy. It is worth noting that espionage of this sort requires not just getting in and out, but also not being detected. If the enemy knows you’ve stolen their plans, they will make new plans with the knowledge that you’ve seen the old ones. If they were aggressive before, maybe they’ll change to cautious, because now they anticipate you’ll switch to opportunistic. Maybe they’ll stick with their current aggressive strategy because they anticipate you’ll anticipate their anticipation of you switching to opportunistic. If you get detected spying on enemy battle plans, you’re stuck solving the exact same “clearly I cannot choose the wine in front of me” problem you had when you started.
-Reconnaissance. You can see the position of enemy fleets and their power bars, so you know how well fortified planets are and roughly how powerful enemy fleets are just from looking at the map. What you don’t know is if they have certain units and what those units’ abilities are. Remember how Corellians get a bonus to using strike groups? Knowing that the enemy fleet is mostly Corellians means you have reason to suspect they’re going to use an opportunistic strategy in any space battles. If you scout an enemy planet and find that they have pre-existing defensive structures that give them a bonus if they use the fortification strategy, you know you’ll be safer using a deep strike strategy in response. This is especially true when a certain unit is worse off using certain tactics. If the enemy gets a reduced bonus for using rock, you can safely play scissors. Of course, they know you can safely play scissors, so they might play scissors to, to keep things even, in which case you might play rock in order to counter them, but they know you know they know you can safely play scissors so clearly I cannot choose the wine in front of me. So reconnaissance doesn’t solve the wine in front of me problem the way espionage does, but recon is successful whether you’re detected or not.
-Raids. Destroying a single critical and hard to replace piece of infrastructure or supply ship can put serious strain on the enemy economy, tapping a population unit or even several or cutting off supply to a powerful enemy unit. Naturally, these things are very heavily defended, because the enemy knows damn well how valuable they are. Raiding a single supply convoy can deal attrition damage to elite enemies who are relying on the replacement electronic parts in that convoy, or deny the rapid healing from medicine to a certain enemy unit you’re hoping to finish off in the next fight. If an enemy is already tapping population units to create a second wave of soldiers, that leaves planets vulnerable to raids that will permanently drain population units, and if you can drain even a single population unit from a sector capital producing high-tech resources, that permanently decreases the number of high-tech elite units the enemy can maintain. Population units don’t come back, so capturing or draining them is some of the most critical damage you can do to an enemy.
-Morale boosting. It made a difference to the Macedonian conquests that Alexander the Great led from the front, and that had nothing to do with the raw number of people Alexander killed. Although wading in to attack random storm troopers is going to be lost in the noise, if you’re in the thick of things with your men, that makes them less likely to rout. Joining in the fray on the frontlines won’t give you extra dice to attack with, but it can give you one or more auto-soaks, depending on just how much Hell you end up going through before bugging out.
-Bombing and demolitions. As Schlock Mercenary tells us: Infantry only exist to paint targets for the people with real guns. That’s not quite true, in that infantry also exist to garrison things and go on patrol, but it is true that you could replace infantry assault rifles with laser pointers and retain like 60% of their battlefield efficacy. The point here is that while killing a hundred stormtroopers may be small potatoes, blowing up a hundred artillery pieces is a big deal, and if those guns aren’t actually on the battlefield yet, they’re often positioned fairly close to one another. Close enough that Grumpy-sized explosions can take out quite a few all in one go. Weakening enemy divisions with these kinds of raids can donate an extra die or two to the battle when it comes. That’s not much, but if you do it in several different battles, it can quickly add up to being as helpful as choosing an opportunistic tactic at the right time, or even a cautious tactic. Getting a +30% bonus is way more visible than the enemy having 15 fewer points’ worth of fighting power because you’ve been shaving them off one or two at a time for the last eight missions, but those kind of 2% advantages adding up over time worked for the Moneyball guy.
-Critical locations. Holding a few hundred yards of trench is not generally very important. If it’s the few hundred yards of trench where the enemy is focusing their attack, then that few hundred yards could end up being the nail that holds the horseshoe that supports the cavalryman who holds the flank which wins the battle. This is especially true if it’s the few hundred yards of trench directly in front of orbital defense cannons that are keeping enemy cruisers from deploying a few hundred bombers all over your front lines. While personally wading into wherever is only worth a few auto-soak hits (although it’s still a perfectly reasonable thing to do in the battle if you want), if I’m building up a specific set-piece battle as important, you can be reasonably certain that it’s going to have a bonus at least on the same order as the 10% bonus provided by a successful use of an opportunistic strategy, sometimes more (and these critical locations are usually given percentage bonuses, rather than flat +X dice bonuses the way others are, which means they’re just as useful no matter how many troops the enemy has, whereas blowing up 100 artillery pieces is much more helpful if the enemy only had that 100 to go around than if they’ve got 10,000 more where those came from).
These are only examples. You may be able to come up with more, and a decent Knowledge (Tactics) check will let you know what effect it would actually have on the battle.
There’s no limit to the amount of stuff you can do in one turn except the fact that you can’t level up until the end of a turn, which means you will start to bleed yourself dry for Force Points and/or Destiny Points after a while, plus you may eventually get to the point where you just want to resolve these battles and level up already. Also, remember that your turn isn’t over until either you say it is or all of your units are committed to an ongoing battle. If you fight a battle and the enemy is completely wiped out, you can use the victorious unit again somewhere else.
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