I think I kinda want to push my S&V game to be a little bit more Traveller-ish, with more deep space encounters (derelict ships, distress beacons, Way creatures, patrols, piracy, juicy undefended freighters), but I'm finding that the way the Engagement roll covers both space travel and actually engaging with the target kinda brushes over the bits I think are cool.

I'm thinking what I could do is basically add another Engagement style roll, based on the approach (e.g. dark hyperspace lanes, flying casual, taking the "interstate" hyperspace lanes, avoiding attention or flying close to other ships for safety) when the Job involves space travel, and throw a space encounter at the players based on the result and the narrative situation, and once that is resolved, roll the actual Engagement roll to engage with the target (as long as there is still some risk to it). The deep space encounter could be very quick - the crew fly past a seemingly unprotected convoy of deuterium transports but choose to ignore it; the ship is tagged by an automated Hegemony listening post and they gain a heat etc - or it could be a fully fledged scene or multiple scenes (maybe this is more like a Complication roll than an Engagement roll?), and may even be skipped for very routine travel. Similarly, the second "Target Engagement roll" could be skipped if the only risk & challenge was en route, or may be a full roll if it makes sense.

So, for instance, if you're sneaking an illegal bomb onto a criminal syndicate's space station in another system, you might have both rolls - one for getting the bomb across the system and through the jump game, and one for actually getting onto the space station. If you're popping from a moon down to the surface to hunt some dangerous wild beasts, then you'd just do the "target engagement roll". And if you're trying to break a blockade and then land on a friendly planet, you'd just do one engagement roll as well.

I was wondering if people had any thoughts on this sort of thing, or if they'd like to adopt the idea? It really is just for people like me who want more space action without trying to make a roll do double work. I guess it could also be done by splitting up a score, but I think that slows things down too much.