Monday 15 June 2015

Starship combat rules

A lot of answers to yesterday's post - the common thread seems to be GZG's Full Thrust rules, which I shall check out.

Ashley, however, asks:
what type of space game do you want to play?;
  • Low record keeping?
  • Streamline play?
  • Size of fleets?
  • Fighter or capital ships?
  • How real?
to which I answer:

  • yes please,
  • yes please,
  • 10 or so a side,
  • the latter
  • fairly
So, Ashley - have at :D



8 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. OK, so it's fighter combat you're looking at. You could take a look at Squadron Commander (free!) from Brigade Models:
    http://www.brigademodels.co.uk/SquadronCommander/index.html

    I don't know how well they'd match with your other requirements/preferences, but may be worth a look given the price ;)

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    Replies
    1. Obviously far too late - I misread your preference. So, 10 or so capital ships per side. Full Thrust Light can do that and isn't too complex; record keeping is quite light as well but ship designs are limited (and no actual design system for home-brew fleets).

      Delete
  3. Full Thrust all the way - lots of fun for what you want.
    Many happy hours had here and still to be had

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  4. You might be pushing it a little with full-complexity Full Thrust, but you should be all right at that sort of scale, especially if you've got someone who knows the system. Things that slow it down: vector as opposed to cinematic movement, huge swarms of fighters, slow dice rollers. (When the ship reaches a damage threshold, you need to check for every system to see if it fails: the fast way is to have your pencil in one hand, die in the other, but many people roll the die, pick up the pencil, tick off the system, put down the pencil, pick up the die…)

    Starmada can be an enjoyable game but its spaceships feel like tanks: if you turn off the drive, they stop dead.

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  5. You know I'm going to be radical and ask another question.

    Franchise or non-franchise universe.

    If the former I'd be tempted by Star Wars Armada.

    If the latter then for me it would be a choice between 5150: Star Navy or Squadron Strike.

    Its not that Full Thrust isn't fun, but unless you have an established group who are into it my guess is that you'll have a hard time selling players on a set of rather old fashioned rules. I say this from the experience of trying to get people to play BattleTech, and even when you do there is the tricky question of house rule variants; which rules to use or not?

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    Replies
    1. Armada at ten ships on a side? Only if you have all day.

      Squadron Strike might well be doable, though I haven't played it for years. I don't know 5150.

      Delete
  6. I am going to clone a my reply to the previous question and suggest Starfire (classic) as an option.

    Record keeping is just a string of letters you strike off as damage is taken.
    Because of this play is quick even with large ships.
    Ship designs are easy to customize and cover all types from merchants to space stations.
    Fighters are included but need not be used and are not integral to the rules i.e. BB on BB slug fests are very playable.

    If you use the system scale rules, you can simulate multiple fleets maneuvering in one star system.

    ReplyDelete

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