Reserve's job is to model extra effort, pushing your limits, concentration, time, dirty tricks, and energy (in some cases literally) that can be put into an action. They're things one runs out of eventually and that need to be replenished.
Most of those can be separated. Extra time can easily work into the rules in other ways. Concentration can be assumed at some level. What's left in the old definition of Reserve? Pulling out all the stops.
Let's give people Escalation tokens instead of Reserve points. (Probably fewer of them.) When you spend them you make the conflict more dangerous. This might be heavier weapons, stronger metatech tools, expanded nanobot swarms, cognitive accelerators, anything that's an extreme extension of what you normally do. It gives a different feel from Reserve. It also lets other people know what they're getting into if they decide to join in a conflict. We can also define good ways of getting Escalation tokens back, like resting your body and mind, recharging the microbots, or picking up some weapons.
Any opinions?
