is destroyed. An additional step is required if a flagship is destroyed or withdrawn: if a replacement flagship lacks the requisite command rating to command the number of ships in its battleforce, then the battleforce must be voluntarily reduced to the new flagship's command rating. Combat resolution is different in battle hexes involving bases and/or planets. Here the attacker must offer the defender an "approach battle" in which the attacker's battleforce can be engaged at a distance from the base/planet by the defender's mobile units. The base/planet cannot participate in combat directly but can lend EW support and send attrition units. The advantage here for the defender is that the base/planet cannot be fired upon until and unless the attacker destroys or drives off the defender's battleforce. The defender may decline the approach battle in which case the base/planet may be included in his battleforce, at risk of destruction (or in the case of a planet capture or devastation). In Capital hexes of each of the races/empires (all containing several homeworld planets and the all-important Shipyards), a special pre-combat procedure involves the defender having to divide his fleet into separate battleforces for each homeworld/shipyard in the strategic battle hex. After inspecting the defender's order of battle at each location, the attacker likewise forms independent battleforces for each of the defender's locations; from there the usual base/planet procedure is implemented involving the mandatory offer of approach battles. The main focus of the game is the General War, an 18-year-long conflict set in the Star Fleet Universe that involves all the major powers of the Alpha Octant. The scale is extremely large compared to board games in a terrestrial setting, with each hex on the map representing 500 parsecs. As the rules point out, this reduces the Milky Way Galaxy as shown on the map to a two dimensional object, because only the core would have a cross-section greater than one hex and the core is not rendered on the map. Units are typically individual ships, each with its own combat rating. Each of the interstellar governments or "empires" can have dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ships, leading to a game with a potentially very high number of counters used, on a map that is only as large as a "small" strategy game. However, significantly larger maps are available for purchase directly from ADB that greatly reduce this problem. Player aids also permit