The Expansion Box contains:
- Everything needed to take Solar Sphere from a 4 to a 5 player game
- The Robots expansion cards and meeples which act as remote access locations
- The White Dwarf Expansion which adds a new rondel style location
Whether you decide to focus on building up a crew, fighting off Resistance forces, or building the Sphere itself, you’ll find that each aspect of Solar Sphere is highly immersive and thematic.
Your fleet of drones is the backbone of your command centre. They’re used for multiple purposes, including building the Sphere and fighting the Resistance, So manage them wisely!
Your crew morale increases as you achieve objectives. But at some point, you’ll want to call in favours from the Corporation to help you achieve your goals. By when you do, your crew morale will go down. Managing crew morale and calling in favours at the right time is the key to success.
The Solo mode uses an AI system to imitate a second player. The AI represents an autonomous opponent that will occupy locations, hire crew, build the sphere and fight the Resistance.
It has been designed with minimal upkeep and maximum impact, with 3 difficulty levels to suit all skill levels.
We know many of you will know Dranda Games for our previous game, Solar Storm. Solar Sphere is quite different, so we made a handy comparison table for all our returning fans:
Simultaneously roll your dice to determine turn order and gain morale.
Call in favours to gain benefits from the Corporation, such as extra drones or free resources. However, this will come at the cost of your crew’s morale, so timing is key. If you’ve increased your standing with The Corporation, you’ll get double the rewards!
Send your ships to different locations and perform unique actions.
Use drones to visit occupied locations and/or manipulate dice values. But, you’ll also want to use them to build the Sphere and fight the Resistance. Drones are limited, so use them wisely!
As you use your drones they’ll become exhausted. You can recycle drones to reuse them or gain instant benefits by repurposing them.
Balancing your available drones with the ones you use, and recycling them efficiently can be the difference between success and failure!
There are 24 different crew members to hire, each with unique art and abilities.
You can only have 3 active crew at a time. But, you can hire a 4th by retiring an active crew member, and unlocking new bonuses!
The job you were hired for! Compete for the limited space on the Sphere. Deploy your drones, increase your standing with The Corporation, earn morale, and gain victory points!
In each game, there will be a different scoring condition for the Sphere, so there’s a huge amount of replayability.
Fight those that oppose the construction of the Solar Sphere. Commit your drones to battle and maybe other players will come to help. Everyone scores points if the battle is a success!
As you hire crew, build the Sphere, and fight the Resistance, you’ll gain faction icons for end of game scoring. Keep a balance of favour between the factions to optimise your points.
Install advanced control units into your command centre to deploy Corporation Robots. Corporation Robots are stationed at locations and give you remote access to the upgraded version of that location!
Survey the next potential star for a future Solar Sphere, The binary system’s White Dwarf!
Orbit the White Dwarf to gain bonuses. A mixture of resources and other benefits.
The solo mode consists of a card-driven decision deck that is simple to manage but competitive to play against.
The Corporation’s AI imitates a second player, and just like a second player, you’ll begin to see the strategy that the AI is forming as the game progresses but you can never truly be sure of what actions it’ll take.
Discard a card from the AI deck at the start of the game to determine the dice order for the AI for the first round.
This card is removed from the game permanently, allowing you to see what actions the AI is less likely to take in the game.
Once the order of the AI dice is set, you’ll flip a card each time the AI takes an action and follow the action on the card that matches the dice colour.
At the end of the round, the top card of the AI deck is discarded and used to set the dice order for the next round. This lets you learn more about what the AI is less likely to do in future rounds.
Any cards that the AI has used go back into the deck, meaning they’re likely to appear again. As a result, the AI’s strategy becomes more focused as the game progresses.
The solo mode comes with 3 difficulty settings, with a reference card for each difficulty. So whatever your skill level, you’ll find a challenging opponent.
Solo players aren’t being left behind! You’ll be able to use everything from the expansion box with the solo mode. Play with the corporate bots to make the game slightly easier and play with the White Dwarf to give a new location to visit. The expansion box includes 3 new solo cards for use with the White Dwarf location!
