Space Station Zero extra gear

I've been playing a lot of Space Station Zero by Adam Loper and Vince Venturella. It's a simple system and a relatively small book at just 120 pages, and a side effect of that is that the potential war gear your crew can carry is pretty minimal. But the premise of the game is that a bunch of different ships full of a bunch of different species and cultures have ended up docked at a mysterious space station in the middle of nobody-knows-where. Seems to me like it wouldn't be surprising for you to trade gear with some of your new neighbours, resulting in a huge variety of potential gear.

I contacted the authors through their website about writing an expansion product containing more wargear, but never heard back from them (I suspect my email got filtered out as spam, given that I don't use "typical" email providers) so I'm posting what I started here, for free. Some of the items I came up with haven't been playtested, and others would be better with some additional rules.

Homebrew rule requirements

To use my list, you must be willing to make minor additions to the official rules. For example, my Tactical Jammer allows you to penalize an enemy's Combat stat by -4 once per challenge. The problem with that is, when do you trigger it? I've been playing with a sort of "react" rule: at the moment the enemy declares an attack, you can react and impose a penalty. It works, but it's not a mechanic that actually exists in the official rules.

Getting the gear

If you're just playing a battle scenario with a friend, then you can just take war gear from my list as if it were standard technology in the rulebook. Talk about the rules changes you intend to make before the game starts.

If you're playing the campaign in the back of the book, then I suggest creating loot drops.

• Roll on the terrain table on page 44 before starting a Challenge.
• Each piece of terrain is also a loot drop, containing exactly one item.
• Any character in base contact with the terrain can make a Reaction (Spot Hidden) 4 test to discover one item of your choice from the war gear list.

It'll seem like a lot of loot, but given how slow you level up in the campaign, and how brutal it is, I find the extra bonuses significantly beneficial.

Enjoy!