Star Fleet Battles ( best ever tactical spaceship game? )

It seems that many of you are looking
around for great ideas to
use for spaceship battles and
warfare. Well sorry I did not post this sooner. Star
Fleet Battles was and still is the game that comes to mind as
the BEST ever created spaceship battle system. If you are like
I am, in that you love a true tactical game, then look no further
then this wonderful game. I shelved it a long time ago and I
recently found it again, in a box in my basement.
WOW does it bring back some great
memories. This game has it all! Set in the Star Trek Universe
the game has all the major space races from original Star Trek
Universe and a few beautiful extra's. The game uses the
typical Hex Map for space and counters or miniatures. Then you
have SSD's that are the various layouts of all the ships etc. You
and the others playing then decide how you are playing, Klingon’s
against Feds. Orion pirates against everyone etc etc.. You can
even play the game solo. There even space monsters to fight, like
the Planet Killer, aka The Doomsday Machine episode #35 OT. The
game allows a lot of flexibility for play and you can pick and
chose rules, tech level, year of the game ships, monsters,
fighters, drone type,
number of rounds in a turn etc
etc.. Ships from Dreadnoughts to frigates, even the USS
Enterprise, Fighters, Drones, Plasma Torps you name it, this game
has it.
 Weapons have firing arcs and ships
have facings so different shields get hit. Energy allocation is a
must before the next turn and how you allocate the energy has a
huge impact on the game. Batteries allow you to carry over some
energy or allow you that extra energy store for 
emergencies!

HETs, High Energy Turns are an optional
game rule that even allow a ship to do a 180 in space! Oh wait, I forgot to
mention there is a risk that can cripple
your ship or even destroy it if you
make a HET and do it wrong. This is one of, if not the
original, SSD space game. SFB's was created in the
late 1970's by Task Force Games. later
it was bought out by
 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarillo_Design_Bureau_Inc.">Amarillo
Design Bureau Inc</a>. The game has lived the test of
time and it is a tried and true
Tactical Simulation Game in the very
best since of the name. ------------ My brother and I use to play this
game for hours upon hours.
We have tried almost every possible
combination of battle that one could think of. We eventually made
it a Universe Game,
with turns an economy, race shipyards,
 race planets, fleets,
government negotiations etc etc.. We
created our own ships from scratch with the points system that is included in the original game, with
only a few slight mods of
our own. “I once created
an Orion Pirate Ship that had a great front attack
shield and light to almost no rear
shields. This is a design that I borrowed from the Klingon’s
.

I tossed out a lot of the luxury that a
ship has for more weapon mounts
and basically "welded" an
extra warp engine onto a Frigate size hull.
When done with the magic that the Orion
Pirates do so well. I could had the
power of a Heavy Cruiser in the little
ship and I could fly at fast speed and still overload all the
weapons for a one, maybe two time HUGE
punch that I could devastate the front
shields of a Dreadnought or even take out a Heavy Command Cruiser. I
loved its cloaking device
too, < evil grin >.
 

So, if anyone is looking for a truly
great game, one that you can enjoy over and over, again and again. This is
the game for you! ---------------

A few recommendations. Photo Copy your
SSD's so that you have
tons of them so that you can have even
bigger and better Fleet battles.
Find and use those plastic sleeves, the
heavier plastic ones so that you can use a grease pencil on the
plastic ( plastic is the clear plastic ) and then you can simply wipe away the
marks and never mess up your SSD's.

 

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 Energy Allocation Form for that ship behind it, facing the
other way, so that you can simply
flip the plastic sleeve over to see the
chart on one side and the
ship SSD on the other.
 

Use various plastic sleeves for each
ship you are using with the Energy Allocation Chart on the back of each as
mentioned above.
 

You can do the same for Star Bases,
Base Stations, Monsters etc. This way you can wipe the marks away with a
paper towel and you can reuse
everything again the next time.
 ----------------

Here are links to the basics:
 

Website:
<a href="http://www.starfleetgames.com/starfleetbattles.shtml">http://www.starfleetgames.com/starfleetbattles.shtml</a>
 

Rules,
<a href="http://starfleetgames.com/sfb/sfin/CadetHandbook.pdf">http://starfleetgames.com/sfb/sfin/CadetHandbook.pdf</a>
 

Training manual and a few SSD's to get
you going.
<a href="http://starfleetgames.com/sfb/sfin/CadetSSDs.pdf">http://starfleetgames.com/sfb/sfin/CadetSSDs.pdf</a>
 

Ship, Drone Shuttles, Fighter etc
Counters.
<a href="http://starfleetgames.com/sfb/sfin/CadetCounters.pdf">http://starfleetgames.com/sfb/sfin/CadetCounters.pdf</a>
 
 ----------------------
Last notes.
 

Federation: Don't let a Klingon
get behind you if you are a Federation Ship, you will never lose them, they
can out turn and out HET you and they can shoot disrupters, ouch!
 

Klingon:
The reason you have weak read shields is You are NOT a cowardly
Federation ship, you don't run, you attack and attack well. Should
you fail to attack well.. well then you self destruct on the Federations
weakest shield and take him out with you. Remember, 
“It is always a good day to die!”
 

Romulan: The
plasma torp can be split up as weaker torps unless it is the
weaker torp to begin with or is one in a Stasis device launcher. Firing
many smaller torps like this at fighter and fast attack ships can
make it easier for you to make it a one on one match against the other
guys main ship and not have to worry about all the little guys in

the
way. Do remember the torps lose strength the more distance they travel.
 

Everyone
else, RUN from torps or shoot them down with energy weapons
like phasers. This weakens them so you can stay alive.

In a
last ditch effort over load your space probes and use them as weapons,
and remember you can use those shuttles as suicide shuttles they
are not just cute little things out in space. They also are great to launch
to help bring down drones, fighters or plasma torps. If anyone has any questions just let me know. ( I don't work for them, I simply love the game like how I love SF's )

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