Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

[Shadow Hawk]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

And do you use the nuclear option' date=' where any time someone rolls all 6s, one country gets nuked, killing all armies there, and destroying half of all armies that move through there for the rest of the game?[/quote']

 

That sounds like our house rules for "Settlers of Cataan"...

[Old Man]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

I never saw any of them. Of course they may have come out when I was deploying a lot and had to put gaming on hiatus. Another reason is I was never really interested in Star Wars as a wargame. Unlike most people out there I do not count novels and after market 'lets make thing up' as part of a setting and Star Wars had their capitol ships running around with antiaircraft weapons. It would be like seeing the New Jersey armed only with 40mm Pom Pom's and 5 inchers. Anyway, because of their fighters SW was never that interesting.

 

Of course that attitude may have made me miss out on a good system. I'll need to dig around and see if I can locate any of them. Do you recall any titles?

 

 

The current miniatures one is Wizards' Star Wars: Starship Battles, which looks interesting, if a bit simplistic. http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=starwars/article/SBrulebook

 

Prior to that was West End's Star Wars: Star Warriors, which seems to be pretty underrated, but almost entirely devoted to really crunchy fighter combat.

[Old Man]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

So here's the trillion credit question: has anyone here tried to use Hero for starship combat? The last time I tried was in pre-4th ed. Star Hero. I was... unimpressed.

[Old Man]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

So' date=' in Risk, do you play that the first set of Risk cards earns 5 armies and each succeeding one earns that plus 5 more, or do you play that the first one earns 4 armies and each succeeding one adds 2? And do you pick countries during set-up, or assign them randomly? And do you use the nuclear option, where any time someone rolls all 6s, one country gets nuked, killing all armies there, and destroying half of all armies that move through there for the rest of the game?[/quote']

 

I've played Monopoly with a nuclear option. Seriously.

[Jhamin]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

So here's the trillion credit question: has anyone here tried to use Hero for starship combat? The last time I tried was in pre-4th ed. Star Hero. I was... unimpressed.

 

I ran a brief Master of Orion II inspired Star Hero game that included ship combat. I found that the key was building ships in such a way that you had to worry about your power supply (aka End Reserves) as much as you had to worry about your Ship's remaining body. I handled shields as extra body & regeneration that cost End (which is how the source material treated it)

[GoldenAge]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

So here's the trillion credit question: has anyone here tried to use Hero for starship combat? The last time I tried was in pre-4th ed. Star Hero. I was... unimpressed.

 

Yep!

 

Not too bad as long as you're really just buying time to get to the boarding action. Ship to ship felt very similar to flying character v. flying character.

[Sweeper]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

Not too bad as long as you're really just buying time to get to the boarding action. Ship to ship felt very similar to flying character v. flying character.

 

Would be one explaination of why SFB tends to bog down when you control more than 3 ships on a side.

 

It got more in depth when the folks I played with gave Module M-Marines a shot. Hoo! game within a game.

 

Fortunately, SFB is rather scalable and you rarely use more than 20% (at it's most in depth) of the rules at any given time. What folks tend to forget is that around half of the text consists of examples, interactions, and refrences to other rules that may interact with said rules (ESGs vs Hell-Bores, anyone?) Kinda like a certain Role playing system we all know and love.

[Old Man]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

Yep!

 

Not too bad as long as you're really just buying time to get to the boarding action. Ship to ship felt very similar to flying character v. flying character.

 

That's what I figured. In fact I was thinking of picking up a copy of Battlestations! just to see how I could apply that concept to future Star Hero games.

[Doc Shadow]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

Am I the only one who used to play the computer version - Starfleet Command?

 

I loved that game. Wish I could get it to install correctly on XP.

 

Flying a Fed Heavy Drone Cruiser with fast drones I could kill just about anything, up to and including the Klingon B10. I'd be a hurting pup when the fight was over, but he'd be dead.

[Sweeper]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

I have. And enjoyed it. Fed Heavy Drone Cruisers rock! Some Code-savy fans made a patch for the first SFC to run on XP, IIRC . But they're concentrating more on getting Fan updates for SFC II and Orion Pirates these days.

[RexMundi]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

Yeah my SFC 2 won't load up/install on the computer, and Orion Pirates is a tad limited solo. SFC, SFC II, and Orion Pirates were all great games. SFC 3, not so much. Fed Heavy Drone Cruiser for the win though, cept for the Mirak (aka Kzinti).....Their end run ship. Tough to beat.

 

~Rex

[Spence]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

So here's the trillion credit question: has anyone here tried to use Hero for starship combat? The last time I tried was in pre-4th ed. Star Hero. I was... unimpressed.

 

We tried in a Star Hero game and the ship-as-a-character was what actually killed the game. It was a gritty version of a space opera where we were free traders that took in a fair share of mercenary work out on the fringe. Everyone was used to playing games where the general ship technology available has been designed and as your players get the funds the try and upgrade. But since the GM didn't have the time to create all the various components of the vast variety of ships from scratch, it became the "what do you want to do?" followed by the magic we can build anything via the points and this is what it will cost. Instead of "the only jump upgrade we could find was an old Djanus Mark IV, but it take so much volume and tonnage, we need to pull something out to make it fit, will the hull take the stress?".

 

It really doesn't capture the feel off any of the grittier space stories out there where the tech details are half of what makes the ships interesting.

 

Some people like it, but ships-as-characters has always been a big fail in all the games I've been in.

[Spence]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

Am I the only one who used to play the computer version - Starfleet Command?

 

I loved that game. Wish I could get it to install correctly on XP.

 

I enjoyed the game for a while, but the lack of a single player campaign and a very predictable AI made it pretty boring after a while. If they could have done something to make it more than it was, I would have loved it.

[Shadow Hawk]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

Am I the only one who used to play the computer version - Starfleet Command?

 

I loved that game. Wish I could get it to install correctly on XP.

 

Flying a Fed Heavy Drone Cruiser with fast drones I could kill just about anything, up to and including the Klingon B10. I'd be a hurting pup when the fight was over, but he'd be dead.

 

Yes, I played Starfleet Command. Any ship that could launch/control more than 6 drones could kill any computer operated ship. So I only played them when I wanted to just blow up things.

[RexMundi]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

We tried in a Star Hero game and the ship-as-a-character was what actually killed the game. It was a gritty version of a space opera where we were free traders that took in a fair share of mercenary work out on the fringe. Everyone was used to playing games where the general ship technology available has been designed and as your players get the funds the try and upgrade. But since the GM didn't have the time to create all the various components of the vast variety of ships from scratch, it became the "what do you want to do?" followed by the magic we can build anything via the points and this is what it will cost. Instead of "the only jump upgrade we could find was an old Djanus Mark IV, but it take so much volume and tonnage, we need to pull something out to make it fit, will the hull take the stress?".

 

It really doesn't capture the feel off any of the grittier space stories out there where the tech details are half of what makes the ships interesting.

 

Some people like it, but ships-as-characters has always been a big fail in all the games I've been in.

 

I'm having far better luck with the 6e set up......once I get around to the "sci fi" arc of my campaign set up I could be tempted to post it. It's far more....hmmm....tech block, and less Ship as a character sort of thing, while retaining elements of both. Seems to work so far but I haven't hard tested it yet. Need me some players that can play more then once a month, heh.

 

~Rex

[Curufea]

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

 

That's what I figured. In fact I was thinking of picking up a copy of Battlestations! just to see how I could apply that concept to future Star Hero games.

 

I'm quite keen on the boardgame Battlestations - so much so I've made quite a few fanworks for it- http://www.curufea.com/Wikka/wikka.php?wakka=GamesBattlestations which impressed the designers so much they named a planet after me in one of their supplements