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Post by finarvyn on Mar 2, 2015 21:50:53 GMT -5
I probably should make this a poll, but I'm afraid that I'd miss a good option and I'd like to have folks have freedom to discuss beyond my list if I've missed any. I'd like to deterime which is the "best" rules set for TOS-era Star Trek combat, mostly on a ship-to-ship scale. Some of the options I've owned at one point: (1) Star Fleet Battle Manual (Lou Zocchi / Gamescience) (2) Star Fleet Battles (3) Star Flett Battles with all of the supplements (4) Federation Commander (5) FASA's Star Trek Combat Simulator (6) Star Trek Fleet Captains (Wizkids miniatures) (7) Star Trek: Attack Wing (Fantasy Flight) Semi-random thoughts: The SFBM seems like a fun little game (haven't played it in decades) which was pretty simple. SFB was much improved and a better design, but they had too much rules bloat after a while. I haven't played Federation Commander but it's supposed to be a streamlined version of SFB. I remember that FASA had some sort of boxed set "combat simulator" back in the day; I owned it and recall it being decent but I can't recall much about it. The Fleet Captains game has cool minis but a mix of TOS and TNG era ships is a downer. So, if I'm in the mood to play Star Trek and run some ship combat, which system is the "best" and why? Discuss.  ---------- EDIT: Added Star Trek: Attack Wing to the list, as per aramis' suggestion. |
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Post by Starbeard on Mar 8, 2015 11:36:00 GMT -5
I've played most of them to one degree or another (except Federation Commander and Fleet Captains), and in my opinion they all do different things rather well.
(1) SFBM is quick and to the point, but also requires a very wide and open playing space. I believe one version of the game has rules for playing on a table, rather than on the floor, but I've never tried it.
(2 & 3) SFB is one of my favourites, and the complexity has never really bothered me since I just treat anything that isn't part of the core game optional. That much being said, it can still take the most time out of all of these. These days they produce a free 'Cadet Edition' of the game which is fantastic, designed to teach each element of the game from the ground up using little scenario 'classes' as if you were an Academy cadet. Once you 'graduate', you are capable of playing a stripped down version of the full game. The nuances of energy management in SFB are still my favourite of the lot.
(5) I love FASA too. The 'feel' of energy management I think is done much better in SFB, but the single best feature of FASA that makes it soar above the other games is that it's built out of an RPG, so having multiple players each manning a single station on the ship is built right into the system. A friend of mine apparently was in a FASA Trek wargame club in college, where each team was a six-man bridge crew, and they'd hold ship-to-ship battles with each crew sitting at a different table. Only the helmsmen and sometimes the captains were able to walk over to view the actual playing board, and everything else had to be done using good communication throughout the bridge. In GURPS Prime Directive there's a short section on doing this sort of thing in SFB, but after reading through it I don't think it really captures the same sort of feel that FASA Trek has already going for it, and going for it really well.
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Post by Starbeard on Mar 9, 2015 5:15:45 GMT -5
Another thing I'd point out is that each has a slightly different take on technologies and which parts of Trek are included, and I always flip back and forth on which interpretations I prefer.
For example, If I remember correctly, FASA and SFBM both assume that disruptors are essentially underpowered phasers. In SFB, I believe the disruptor serves as an underpowered photon torpedo—much more energy efficient, but only truly effective at extremely close ranges. The result is that in SFB, a duel between a Constitution-class and a D7-class will balance out quite evenly in terms of firepower. I remember in FASA and SFBM requiring at least two D7s to match a Constitution.
Also, FASA incorporates Movie-era isms into the game, which sometimes is and sometimes isn't my thing.
Really, my ideal Star Trek ship-to-ship game would be the original SFB, but somehow reworked from the ground up to borrow some gameplay ideas from SFBM (quick energy management that requires lots of guesstimation), and was written so that every function of the starship was isolated as its own gameplay element like FASA, printed onto a little station control console. That way, without any need for modifications a ship could be controlled by a single person or a whole bridge crew.
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Post by aramis on Mar 9, 2015 23:10:59 GMT -5
If you're wanting to integrate player characters, Fasa's STTCS is the only choice.
If not, then
... if you want details and a thinking man's game: Federation Commander
... Quick and approachable: ADB & Mongoose's A Call To Arms: Star Fleet (ACTA:SF)
... personal skill to trump luck: Star Fleet Battle Manual (but note the lack of a wide variety of ships makes it far less diverse than the others)
I'll note that the hex-grid version of SFBM is playable, but also adds to-hit rolls in place of the marking angle of fire, and thus MUCH reduces the personal skill aspects.
You also left off Star Trek: Attack Wing. Which I haven't played, but I have read. It's VERY much the same mechanics as X-Wing, and my friends who have played it say it's as good as X-Wing, so it's probably on par with or better than ACTA:SF.
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Post by Starbeard on Mar 11, 2015 10:07:01 GMT -5
I enjoy ACTA:SF (and the original B5 ACTA, too), but for being such a simple game I've always had trouble organizing ship rosters that aren't overly complicated to keep track of everything. It's odd, in the same amount of time it once took me to teach a guy the basics of ACTA:SF and get through one 2-on-2 battle, I was able to teach him the full Cadet version of SFB and get through 2 1/2 games. I honestly thought it would be exactly the opposite. ACTA also has the frustrating aspect of not having any ship stats for the classic Technical Manual ships, which have always been my favourites. I'm not sure if they're present in Federation Commander, but Star Fleet Battles certainly has them. I've had to fudge my own stats and points values for ACTA, and I'm not incredibly happy with them, either. aramis, I have a quick question about Federation Commander. I recall that in FC you simply write off energy expenditures when you decide to do something, but does it break the game to require writing out your energy allocations at the start of the turn, like in SFB? |
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Post by aramis on Mar 12, 2015 18:40:31 GMT -5
Starbeard: aside from the difference in energy handling, FC is SFB.
ACTA certainly had Fed CA's - The one time I played, I faced several.
The Tech Manual ships are the core in ACTA. The CA, the DD, the SC, and the DN.
I found it easily played. More so than FC. I'm an old SFB player, and so I can teach SFB in digestible chunks to just about anyone who can do basic math... but it's not in any way an easy game to learn, and FC isn't any simpler, just less math-bound.
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Post by Starbeard on Mar 13, 2015 7:13:24 GMT -5
ACTA certainly had Fed CA's - The one time I played, I faced several. The Tech Manual ships are the core in ACTA. The CA, the DD, the SC, and the DN. I've only played the 'Revision Two' version of ACTA:SF. It only has ships from the Starline 2500 miniature line, so the only Technical Manual ship listed is the CA. The Technical Manual ships must be in the original edition, I'll have to pick up a copy so I can refer to those. |
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Post by finarvyn on Mar 14, 2015 17:09:54 GMT -5
You also left off Star Trek: Attack Wing. Which I haven't played, but I have read. It's VERY much the same mechanics as X-Wing, and my friends who have played it say it's as good as X-Wing, so it's probably on par with or better than ACTA:SF. I left it off because it somehow flew in under my radar. I know that some of the guys at my local game store play X-Wing, but I don't think I've seen a Star Trek version played or stocked. I'll have to ask around. Not that I've played the X-Wing version, either, so I don't have a good frame of reference in any case. I'm really bummed that I had a chance of buying "Star Trek Fleet Captains" used at a store "garage sale" for next to nothing, but I got there too late and it was gone already. The minis are pretty cool, even if the game may or may not be well done. |
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Post by brigman on Aug 3, 2015 12:24:54 GMT -5
I've played most of the above, except SFBM, which I've read in detail but never gotten a chance to play; and Fleet Captains, which I haven't even read. If you want a great simulation of actual starship combat, with all the myriad options available to a starship commander, SFB really has no equal. But "fast" is not something SFB does. Also, it's been called a "lifestyle" rather than a game for good reason - players that are GOOD at SFB tend to sleep with the rulebook under their pillow (figuratively speaking). If reading rules like "See (G13.7.221) and (H.34.996) for reference" and massive blocks of 10-point Helvetica scare you off, it may not be for you. FASA's STSCS is a great system for supplementing an RPG, i.e., handling the ship combat for an RPG. It's fun, but after SFB, it has a few things that can seem "off". One thing that always "bugged" me was the way you could typically only power 1 or 2 shield facings, and then had to maneuver to keep the enemy facing those shields. Lots of fun, though! Federation Commander, to me, was just "SFB for dummies". Not to diss people that play it or love it, but for me - coming from an SFB background - it was just close enough to SFB to be frustrating. The ships are the same (mostly), but they can't all perform the same as in SFB because of rules changes, and learned tactics from SFB do not port over well to FC. If you DON'T have an SFB background, though, I can see how this game could be the best of both worlds. Star Trek Attack Wing is thriving at my FLGS and it's a fast, fun game. You can play a three-round tournament in 4-5 hours, typically with 3 ships per player in a PvP face-off. I like how you can mix in crew and tech/weapons to customize your ship, and each ship pack comes with a unique scenario relevant to that ship. There is plenty of room for silly shennanigans, though, that may turn some people off; I know at nationals, two Borg spheres captained by Gul Dukat and Jean-Luc Picard, backed by a Fed fighter squadron, dominated. Cross-factioning can be limited, of course, to keep the "WTF" factor down.  One game system that I absolutely loved was Babylon 5 Wars. It was somewhere between FASA and SFB in terms of complexity, leaning towards FASA. Tyrel Lohr did an *excellent* Star Trek conversion for the game (I think it's still available online), with tons of ships for all known races. If I had 6 hours to play a game, this would probably be my favorite choice. |
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Post by aramis on Aug 5, 2015 18:30:42 GMT -5
I probably should make this a poll, but I'm afraid that I'd miss a good option and I'd like to have folks have freedom to discuss beyond my list if I've missed any. I'd like to deterime which is the "best" rules set for TOS-era Star Trek combat, mostly on a ship-to-ship scale. A couple unlicensed ones got missed. The two that come to mind are Battlestations and StarfightHaving played a couple games of ST:Attack Wing - it's very much TNG, and very much NOT TOS. Matter of fact, Looking back on the options.... revising. For doing something that looks and feels like TOS/TAS ship combat: none of the above. For something that's akin to combat as described in the early ST novels: SFBM. In fact, for the feel, Gorilla Games' Battlestations feels more like the onscreen combat... For quick and fun, captures the essence but not quite the feel, and isn't licensed: Starfight. (which said, Paramount and ADB made them change their art.) I like starfight - it's fast and fun. I also like Full Thrust and Starfire 3rd ed - but those don't do trek all that well. |
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Post by captainpike on Jun 18, 2016 0:27:52 GMT -5
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