![]() September 20, 2012 - 1:45am | It seems that many of you are looking
around for great ideas WOW does it bring back some great
memories. number of rounds in a turn etc
etc..
HETs, High Energy Turns are an optional
game rule that even allow a Amarillo
Design Bureau Inc. . I tossed out a lot of the luxury that a
ship has for more
So, if anyone is looking for a truly
great game, one that A few recommendations. Photo Copy your
SSD's so that
Put the Impulse Chart in a sleeve with the Damage Allocation Chart on the back facing the other way for fast reference as needed.
When you put your ship in a sleeve put
the
Use various plastic sleeves for each
ship you are using
You can do the same for Star Bases,
Base Stations, Monsters
Here are links to the basics:
Website: http://www.starfleetgames.com/starfleetbattles.shtml
Rules, http://starfleetgames.com/sfb/sfin/CadetHandbook.pdf
Training manual and a few SSD's to get you going. http://starfleetgames.com/sfb/sfin/CadetSSDs.pdf
Ship, Drone Shuttles, Fighter etc Counters. http://starfleetgames.com/sfb/sfin/CadetCounters.pdf
Last notes.
Federation: Don't let a Klingon
get behind you if you are
Klingon:
The reason you have weak read shields is You are
Romulan: The
plasma torp can be split up as weaker the
way. Do remember the torps lose strength the more
Everyone
else, RUN from torps or shoot them down
In a
last ditch effort over load your space probes and Cogito ergo sum; I think therefore I am. Batty [Blade Runner] I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die. |
![]() September 20, 2012 - 4:01am | Yeah I played the bejeezus out of Star Fleet battles- first edition, back in the day. bought a copy and tried a few years ago, it was 5 or some other editon, and I couldn't make head or tails of it. Call it impatience of a 40 year old- I just didn't have the energy to sort out the newer edition. But you are right it was "sex on wheels" hands down when it came to ship to ship combat. Big battles could be another thing, though if you massed all you fire on one small ship so that it was totally destroyed and blew up it would damage all the ships around it- Those tactics could shorten a fleet game pretty fast. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
![]() September 20, 2012 - 7:41am | I remember playing this back in the day. It was a great time! |
![]() September 20, 2012 - 9:49am | Well Stelk, I'm gonna have to disagree with you on one point I'm afraid. In my opinion, SFB is not just the best tactical spaceship game out there (was and still is btw), but I think it IS THE best tactical game of any genre out there (was and still is). :D ...though I also liked Panzer Blitz, Panzer Leader, Squad Leader and Arab-Isreali Wars (all Avalon Hill btw) quite a bit too - still, not as much as SFB! I spent an awful lot of time playing SFB...fun times. :) I don't have to outrun that nasty beast my friend...I just have to outrun you! ![]() |
![]() September 20, 2012 - 3:10pm | To think I was a little worried about posting the "best ever ..... " part in the title. Cogito ergo sum; I think therefore I am. Batty [Blade Runner] I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die. |
![]() September 20, 2012 - 5:39pm | Yes I remember Star Fleet Battles. I remember confirming the rule in book 2 in both book 23 and 17B so that I could legally move one ship move two inches instead of one and three quarters inches. Seriously it was a fun game but also made at the time of games like Squad Leader where the rule books just kept coming. Sometimes I miss those days. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
![]() September 20, 2012 - 6:31pm | I loved Car Wars after I burned out on Star Fleet Battles, though the rules were much much much lighter than SFB. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
![]() September 20, 2012 - 6:55pm | I am, and always will be, a Star Fleet Battles fan. I've been playing since the first boxed set (Designer's Edition), and all the ones up to now. I can remember my brother and I making the decision to stick with SFB over FASA's Star Trek Tactical Combat Simulator. Even though it was linked to the RPG, we talked through it, and decided to stay with SFB and its "kitchen sink" rules. In high school, I taught it to my friends, some at my school, one at another. Together, we played what may have been the one and only inter-school SFB game (my team lost, sadly). In college, I taught some more people, including my then-girlfriend-now-wife, to play; she liked Romulans. For a while, it was tradition that whenever any of my friends moved out of an apartment, we'd play SFB in the emptied apartment on its last night. Games faded during the '90s, but I found a group and have been playing with them for 10+ years. I'll be playing it on Sunday afternoon, in fact; I belong to a once-monthly group. I'm also involved in a PBEM game of Federation & Empire, the strategic-level game. I've got Federation Commander, the easier & quicker game, but I've not tried Starmada or Call to Arms, the even easier & quicker games. |
![]() September 20, 2012 - 7:28pm | The thing that made SFB so good, IMHO, is that at its base its a game of decisions. Just the engery allocation proceedure is rife with decisions and then the actual game is about movement decisions and choosing the moment to fire over all the other moments on the impulse chart. Any good tactical simulation will be about decisions. KH's has only the movement/fire decisions. Car wars had that too but also had the decisions made during car design if you went in for that portion of the game (and I did in a big way). The problem is that SFB is so distinctive that the minute you add energy allocation everyone will say that you're copying it. But SFB rocked as a tactical game, I would criticize it for time consuming damage proceedures and that it didn't handle large fleet actions well, especially where one player needed to handle multiple ships. I would priase it for the distinctive weapon mixes per race and how different weapon's mixes benefited different strategies- that was cool. There was no flexibility of system to build your own ship- that was fairly tightly controlled by the publisher and probably just as well as it kept the game ballanced. i loved the challenge of taking a seamingly weaker ship against heavier opposition. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |