coffee
Lieutenant
"My chicken sandwich...and coffee." - James T. Kirk
Posts: 84
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Post by coffee on Jan 6, 2010 14:59:20 GMT -5
I've never gotten a look inside the pocket edition, but if it's anything like their pocket Starfire game, then it's going to be really easy to pickup. As I understand it, the original pocket edition was basically the same as the first half of the first boxed set. It used the left half of the counter sheet (the right half was added for the boxed set). It only dealt with cruisers, and didn't include the Orions or Tholians. The only problem with it was its popularity -- everybody and their dog wanted to add stuff to it. And that's why we have the behemoth we have today. (Gee, where have we seen that before?)
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Post by putraack on Jan 6, 2010 21:28:53 GMT -5
I've been a huge SFB fan since the early '80s, and haven't given it up yet. Odd, I found guys to play this in high school and college, who were normally RP'ers, but they wouldn't play ST:RPG. Now, I have new group for SFB, and some of the older group, with whom I play D&D, but still no ST:RPG (or any other flavor).
I do recommend FedCom to start with, it does flow fast & easy. The feel is not quite the same as SFB-- faster, fewer options to worry over-- but it is a good game.
As for the FASA ship game, I liked that, too, but I stayed with the girl I fell in love with first.
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vulcanridr
Lieutenant
I am in your Enterprise, haxoring your tubes...
Posts: 64
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Post by vulcanridr on Jan 7, 2010 6:40:10 GMT -5
Fanatically. Well, in the '80s anyway. This was probably our 2nd most played game behind AD&D. We started off with the basic game in 1980, and then as each supplement was released we'd snatch it up and add the new rules, ships and races. There would be as many of us around the battle table as there were around our RPG table. The hex maps that came with the game weren't nearly large enough. We'd spread out really jumbo sized hex grids and each of us would have fleets worth of ships. The biggest and baddest scenarios were the carrier duels. Each side has 2 or 3 carriers, with the expected escort ships and many dozens of fighters to control. When the drones (missiles) started launching, there would be hundreds of pieces on the board, gatling phasers trying to knock out as many nuke-tipped drones as they could and Romulans with their nasty killah plasma torpedoes doing their best to annihilate whatever they contacted. Yeah, I used to play it a lot back in the '80s too. I never really liked the drone combat, for the very reason that the board would quickly become unmanageable, plus you never really saw drone combat in the show. Having become a big fan of David Weber's Honor Harrington books, I have nightmares back to SFB, and imagining trying to play some of the battles from the later books in a boardgame -- tens of thousands of missiles in a single launch, hundreds of ships, countermissiles -- you could easily have 50,000 or more objects to track. SFB wasn't quite that bad, but it still had its management problems when you started incorporating carriers and drones. But still, I remember many hours of fun playing SFB. Anyone remember the Kaufmann Retrograde? It was in one of the SFB magazines. Basically the theory was that four Federation CA/DN class ships moving backward at a moderate clip could never be overtaken, because they would have enough photons to peck away at the front shields of anything pursuing them...
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vulcanridr
Lieutenant
I am in your Enterprise, haxoring your tubes...
Posts: 64
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Post by vulcanridr on Jan 7, 2010 6:41:37 GMT -5
My friends and I played this a lot for a while. They would play Federation ships, and I would attack them with various Klingon vessels. I can't remember ever beating them. Ah, the famous Klingon "glass" rear shield. If you ever got in behind them, they were done.
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vulcanridr
Lieutenant
I am in your Enterprise, haxoring your tubes...
Posts: 64
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Post by vulcanridr on Jan 7, 2010 6:47:54 GMT -5
As I understand it, the original pocket edition was basically the same as the first half of the first boxed set. It used the left half of the counter sheet (the right half was added for the boxed set). It only dealt with cruisers, and didn't include the Orions or Tholians. The only problem with it was its popularity -- everybody and their dog wanted to add stuff to it. And that's why we have the behemoth we have today. (Gee, where have we seen that before?) Yeah, I remember when The Motion Picture and Wrath of Khan came out and they had to try to incorporate the changes for the upgraded Enterprise. It turned into a nightmare. As I recall, they ended up incorporating a shiatload of batteries into the new design, to power the upgraded systems.
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Grendelwulf
Lt. Commander
Second star on the...no... To Infinity and..no.. Ah-ha! Never give up, Never surrender! THAT'S it!
Posts: 147
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Post by Grendelwulf on Jan 7, 2010 8:48:31 GMT -5
Star Fleet Battles was the greatest thing since sliced tribbles! I found it when it was in the small plastic pouch and stayed with it until the Doomsday Edition. I don't thiink it was that difficult to keep organized. I loved dividing the rulebooks into large reference binders (it mayed for a better Game Master's screen -- my players tended to throw heavier objects than dice). I couldn't get into the FASA Combat Simulator, and supplemented my ST RPG with SFB. It was a good mix and kept a greater sense of tactical play in my games when alternating with the role-playing. Ciao! Grendelwulf
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Post by Falconer on Jan 18, 2010 21:16:05 GMT -5
Star Fleet Battles is something I’d like to get into, but it seems daunting. Where do I start? From what I have read, I can think of three ways: 1. Seek out the original “ Pocket Edition” of Star Fleet Battles. 2. Get the current edition’s Basic Set. 3. Try their newer Federation Commander game instead. So I’ve been working on #1 with little success. At this point I would be happy with the Pocket Edition or the Designer’s Edition. I saw one copy of the Designer’s Edition available on eBay, but the bidding ended when I was on a plane and I didn’t place a bid beforehand. It went for under $11! So it must be possible to acquire. The Pocket Edition would still be better, just because I’m interested in the beginnings of things.
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Post by finarvyn on Jan 19, 2010 20:19:42 GMT -5
Hey, Falconer, I have both the pocket and designer's editon. Maybe I'll see if I can get one of them near a Xerox machine.... :-)
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Post by Falconer on Jan 20, 2010 6:59:38 GMT -5
Cool! Now that I think about it, if I just had the rules for the Pocket Edition, getting counters that would work really should be no difficulty...
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coffee
Lieutenant
"My chicken sandwich...and coffee." - James T. Kirk
Posts: 84
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Post by coffee on Jan 20, 2010 23:42:59 GMT -5
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Post by chgowiz on Feb 2, 2010 11:10:10 GMT -5
I played Star Fleet Battles this weekend at Winter War. The guy running the session had printed out a "Cadet Training" manual, which felt a lot like the old training scenarios for Squad Leader. Man, if I had done it this way back in the early 80s, I may have stayed with SFB. We had a blast on Friday - went through the scenarios up to allocating energy, dealing with shields and internal damage, then the other player and I went at it. Succumbing to my old nostalgia for playing the Klingons in FASA SCTS, I ran a D7 vs. the other guy's Constellation class. The Klingon won. I punched a 2 disruptor/3 phaser shot into him, took down his shield and wrecked his interior. He tried to jink away and slow down to "spin around" to fire his photon torpedoes but I used my speed and my drones to my advantage and finally forced him to conceded - he had lost almost all his internals. The Cadet rules can be found here, along with the SSDs and counters. I have to tell you, I wish more companies kept these rules light versions of these games rolling. Beer and pretzels seems to rule the day, at least for me.
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Post by aramis on Feb 3, 2010 21:04:54 GMT -5
Really, Fed Commander is the way to go. Designer's edition has some major flaws. Especially with the Hydrans and Andromedans in the supplements.
However, that said, the SSD's from later editions can be used easily with the older edition rules, or with Fed Commander...
And the Cadet Training Manual is awesome. Always has been. The cadet cruisers are a fun way to get into the game...
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Post by rsaintjohn on Feb 3, 2010 21:16:51 GMT -5
Has anyone here given MJ12's Klingon Armada from last year a shot yet? I'd intended to pounce on it immediately, but when it was released I delayed for some reason. Perhaps waiting for some errors to be fixed/incorporated? I'm not really a fan of SFB, but all this talk has me hankering to pull out my FASA minis and Federation Commander. And I still have to sit down and translate and play the two Japanese Trek games I have, Invasion of Klingon Empire and Star Trek II : The Wrath of Khan. The translation is such tedious work, though.
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Post by allensh on Feb 4, 2010 7:58:16 GMT -5
Fanatically. Well, in the '80s anyway. This was probably our 2nd most played game behind AD&D. We started off with the basic game in 1980, and then as each supplement was released we'd snatch it up and add the new rules, ships and races. There would be as many of us around the battle table as there were around our RPG table. The hex maps that came with the game weren't nearly large enough. We'd spread out really jumbo sized hex grids and each of us would have fleets worth of ships. The biggest and baddest scenarios were the carrier duels. Each side has 2 or 3 carriers, with the expected escort ships and many dozens of fighters to control. When the drones (missiles) started launching, there would be hundreds of pieces on the board, gatling phasers trying to knock out as many nuke-tipped drones as they could and Romulans with their nasty killah plasma torpedoes doing their best to annihilate whatever they contacted. Yeah, I used to play it a lot back in the '80s too. I never really liked the drone combat, for the very reason that the board would quickly become unmanageable, plus you never really saw drone combat in the show. Having become a big fan of David Weber's Honor Harrington books, I have nightmares back to SFB, and imagining trying to play some of the battles from the later books in a boardgame -- tens of thousands of missiles in a single launch, hundreds of ships, countermissiles -- you could easily have 50,000 or more objects to track. SFB wasn't quite that bad, but it still had its management problems when you started incorporating carriers and drones. But still, I remember many hours of fun playing SFB. Anyone remember the Kaufmann Retrograde? It was in one of the SFB magazines. Basically the theory was that four Federation CA/DN class ships moving backward at a moderate clip could never be overtaken, because they would have enough photons to peck away at the front shields of anything pursuing them... We did that (with a force of 6 DN's) to one of those big Klingon battleships once and it worked great. We actually got the things front shield all the way down. The guy playing the Klingon ship was so disgusted he disengaged from the battle. Allen
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Post by captainpike on Jun 4, 2010 12:08:59 GMT -5
My story is the about the same. Played the hell out of it back in the day but gave up as it got ever more complicated and, I'll say it, stupid. Introduce weapon A. Introduce Counter Measure B. Introduce Counter/Counter Measure C etc. Ad Nauseum.
Now the Cadet Manual is good. Ships are half the regular size. Most of the rules are not needed. If I were to play again I'd scale everything back to the Cadet Manual level and go from there.
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