This is a list of things you can do that are kind of different. Spending your action to help somebody else get a -1 difficulty this turn or preparing to get a bonus of -1 difficulty on your next action can be valuable. These slightly advanced rules make the game feel more natural and provide a little more tactical texture.

(Relevant skill vs. 8 )

You can spend your action to try to help another character in their action they take this phase by making a skill check in the skill they will be using for their action against a target number of 8. The assist reduces the difficulty of the assisted character’s action by 1.

You may assist a non-battlestation action only if you are adjacent to the character taking the action or the square that is being acted upon.

For a battlestation action you may assist locally if adjacent or at another battlestation in the same module or assist remotely at a +3 difficulty from a battlestation in another module. This assist will last until used or the end of the phase whichever comes first. A character may benefit from at most one assist on a given action.

Anything that would give you a benefit had you been taking the action yourself will aid you in your assist attempt. Having a ToolKit in hand reduces your skill check difficulty to repair by 1 so it reduces your skill check difficulty to assist a repair by 1. Assisting to pump power in an upgraded Engine will reduce your skill check difficulty to assist by 1 even if remote.

You may spend your action cowering and huddling in a defensive posture. This allows you to reroll one of the dice of damage any time you would sustain one or more dice of damage until your next action.

You may hold ready an action until your next turn but you must declare the action. This is called going on overwatch. You need not declare a trigger. The action must be specific but the target need not be. You can interrupt anything to complete your overwatch action.

Typical overwatch actions:

1. “I’m on overwatch with my Blaster.”
   You can shoot it at any time before your next turn. If no targets present themselves, you can forgo the shot or fire into the deck of any spot in line of sight in hopes of breaking the module.
2. “I’m on overwatch to dodge at a Helm battlestation.”
   During ship movement on the next phase, you can take a dodge action to attempt to avoid a missile, ship, asteroid, etc.
   
   Note that since going on overwatch doesn’t spend your next phase action, that pilot who dodged the planet with his overwatch action from the previous phase may take his action on this phase to decelerate the ship.
3. “I’m on overwatch to transfer power.”
   You can take a transfer power action and decide at the time how much power to attempt to transfer and between which systems.

Characters on overwatch have priority over those not on overwatch. Heroes and their allies on overwatch have priority over enemies on overwatch.

In a firefight, you might want to pop out into a corridor to take a shot and pop back out of line of sight. This is called “Popping”. Your hurried action will be at a +1 difficulty penalty. This same rule can be applied to ANY action. You could pop into a battlestation and use it or pop one square while you draw your blaster. Note that in the latter case, there is no skill check involved so the +1 penalty doesn’t affect you.

You can add a single space of movement to an action by “Popping”. This gives you a +1 penalty to the action and allows you to do any of the following:

• Move one square, take the action and move back.
• Move one square, take the action and stay.
• Take the action and move one square.

Note: you can’t pop in a move action.

If you spend your action to prepare for a specific action, you essentially do nothing now but on your next action, you will get -1 to your difficulty. You must specify what equipment and skill you will be using when you announce your prepare action. There is no benefit to preparing multiple phases.