The Breakdown of Mass is the next installment for System Vector, which is becoming a favorite game of mine in general.
The expansion does not focus much on a large amount of new units or system cards. Instead, it adds more depth to the game it's self by adding more elements to game play and strategy. The expansion includes 6 new high-resource system cards, a Black Hole system, and an Unknown system.
In addition to these, the game also features a new building aspect, where you can build structures such as factories, science institutes, and mobile shipyards. Each of these structures improves different aspects of your empire, making the games focus wider and your empire larger. With these buildings also come the chance to research and develop new technology and advancements in your empire. There will be a military technology tier, and an economical technology tier. These tiers will have 2 options per level of advancement. This will give players 4 Research Management Cards and 48 Research counters (12 for each player).

That makes 13 new cards to print out, which at 25 cents a print, comes to $3.25.

8 System cards (including the Black Hole and Unknown System)
4 Research Management cards
1 Research Counters sheet

I am really excited to be getting another System Vector game off the ground. I am lucky to be able to pop things like this out within a couple of days, while still being able to test play Armed Legion AND learn/play RftG. fun fun.

After a few solid test plays, including a 3 day game (which only actually lasted for a couple hours) at work, I have found a few weaknesses and unbalances in the researches. The Economical research is WAY to under powered. I'll be changing this before the release. I also (after playing 20 some games of SV), have discovered the Dreadnought to be way to powerful for it's own good. Rather than making it more expensive, I will simply lower it's defense to 3 rather than 4. It is still the most heavily defensive ship in the game, but not quite so hard to kill. The reason for this is that if a player has more than 1 or 2 of them on either side, it is nearly impossible to get ANYWHERE in the attack/defensive, and it always comes down to a few Dreadnoughts fighting it out for 3 or 4 turns which reinforcements are able to come. I find this very annoying, as battles tend to get stuck.

Here are the links to the files needed to expand the System Vector base game.
http://cid-bb82dbe2d8b378a3.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Games/Breakdown%20of%20Mass.zip
And the BETA rule set for the game in .doc format. PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE ARE BETA RULES AND WILL BE REPLACED SHORTLY WITH A FULL VERSION. If you have any questions at all, feel free to ask in the Breakdown of Mass forums. Thank you.
NOTE: AS OF 12.13.09 I UPLOADED A PDF WITH A COUPLE EDITS I FORGOT TO ADD, PLEASE DOWNLOAD THIS VERSION:
http://cid-bb82dbe2d8b378a3.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Games/Breakdown%20of%20Mass%20Rule%20Set%200.5b.pdf