Star Fleet Battles types, here is a question

[morvwilson]

What was your favorite ship to run?

For me, it was the Romulan War Eagle. I know, only four type I phasors, but that one type R plasma, and a cheap to run cloak. Of course, if the drones kept lock after reactivating the cloak...

[jvgfanatic]

Klingon Bird of Prey and any Romulan ship pretty much. It's been SOOO long though that I'm probably forgetting all of the great alternative ships I used to play with. Damn what fun. If I only had that kind of time nowadays!

[EUBanana]

War Eagle was very cool.  The crappy warbird was cool too just for the tactical challenges of flying something with so little power... and besides "Romulan War Bird" is just tradition, thats got cool factor.

Aside from that I liked the Federation ships for traditions sake.  :/

[morvwilson]

Which fed ship?

Kinda liked having armor, so the old cl was fun for me

[FlashfyreSP]

Always liked the smaller Kzinti warships...lots of drones to spread across space! With a little practice and a lot of luck, you could "swarm" a typical Fed or Klingon cruiser and make them expend all their energy firing at the missles, while you came in behind the swarm and let loose with your energy weapons.

[morvwilson]

That's why I never fought a Kzin ship without having a wild weasel. Or as a Klingon I might target the Kzin drones with my drone.
Still, with the right people, lots of fun, can remember several all nighters sorting out fleet battles[8D][8D]

[Nikademus]

Have always been partial to the D-hulls. But I especially liked the Romulanized D-hulls with their Phaser 1's and Plasma torps. War Eagle were popular with me as well for their very heavy all-round shielding and of course....the famous R-torp.

[Skipjack]

Ah, I remember the Starfleet battle all-nighters.  My favorite was the Klingon D7 - goad your enemy into turning his weak shield away from you, then overfly him and fire all your phasers aft - won 1 game at 2:00 a.m. that way [:D]

[ilovestrategy]

I loved the Klingon D-7 Command Cruiser. It was basically everything a D-7 should have been [8D]

All nighters? I assaulted a Fed Starbase once with a Romulan Fleet. Had mines and everything.  I lost....[:(]

Did you guys free play or pre plotted?

[morvwilson]

We did both, free play and preplot. Liked free play better.
Never did the assault on Star bases tho, looked too tedious.
Had a lot of fun with Pseudo fighter deuls. quick and deadly

[ravinhood]

Any of you guys that played the Starfleet Battles series ever get into "Starfleet Command"  PC game? Also "Renegade Legion Interceptor" was pretty good also for a computer version of turn based space combat sim. I like that game most because if you can survive long enough you can customize a really awesome ship to fly.

[RedArgo]

I enjoyed the first Starfleet Command game, but it just isn't the same because of the real-time play style. Is Renegade Legion Interceptor a turn based game? I may have to check that out.

I'm suprised no one has made a computer version of this kind of game play. The last ones I am aware of were Warp Factor and Cosmic Balance which are both ancient. I wonder if the company that owns SFB doesn't want to license a computer version to compete with their board version?

Bill

[ezzler]

Great games.
Just a shame that renegade leader was imbalanced on points costs for ships.
Great game with the starbase assault and everything.

As for SFB the Gorn CA
If I remember it has 8 phaser 1's arranged in good arcs.
The heavy plasma are just a bonus. It was fast too in that it had a lot of power so could maintain good speed + very good shields and could take a lot of punishment.
Only weakness was poor turning and as long as you remembered not get into a turning fight it was awesome.

[marky]

i never got to play SFB, probly too young for it. tho theres a few star trek games worthy of mentioning, in general theyre pretty bad, victims of bad developers, like the Legacy game.

Starfleet Command was pretty good though

i do participate in Star Trek clan, which has a few ST games

http://www.starfleetcommand.st/forums/

[Jevhaddah]

I have been emptying my attic for the past 6 months and have just rediscovered my SFB Captains Edition with all the trimmings, including The Cadet Guide. Sooooo now that my girls are 14 I am going to inflict it on them this winter [:D]

As for my favourite ship...... it's tricky...

I like playing an early Klingon D7 for the challenge, but I like plasma based ships as there is so much that yoo can do with them.. PLasma Torps, Plasma Bolts, Plasma Shotgun, Dummy Plasma to name but a few [8D]

I would love to see an accurate PC converstion of this game, but the rules, including optional rules can be quite comlex.

Cheers

Jev

[Erik Rutins]

I was always a Federation fanboy, so I guess I'll go with the Federation Command Cruiser.

Regards,

- Erik

[darken92]

Am a Klingon fan from way back.  While I tend to prefer smaller battles the best ship I have flown would be a D7X or one of its variants.
 
I still own and play the last in the Starfleet Command game.  Its based more on TNG but is quite decent.

[sysrkm]

Hello all, and Morvwilson,

When I arrived in Houston TX in 1981 I didn't know that I would fall into SFB (Star Fleet Battles) face hands and feet 6 months later. I was fortunate enough to join Amarillo Design Group's "A" Playtest group, which helped Mr. Cole design and test for SFB. It was pretty cool either getting new toys first to test for ADG or creating toys that would later be used in the game. Henry Triplett, Charles Henley, Jack Chappellear, Robert Cottingham, Joseph Davis and others were all instrumental in developing a lot of stuff you see in the game.

If you have one of the older rule books or Captain's books, you'll find my name in the back with a design credit, for the Tholian Command Cruiser.

But my favorite ships to play were the Kzins. Just swarming your opponent with drones was a blast.

I was also fortunate enough to play test Star Fleet Command for Erik Bethke, probably based on our previous experience with SFB. It was fun to tell Erik that during our load testing scenarios that it only two 100 Hydran fighters to bog our machines and the network to a crawl!

But I have ALWAYS wished for a direct, turn based, conversion of the game to PC, that would hopefully use a 'WEGO' system for turn resolution. Sort of a SFB meets SPWAW or along those lines.

But I doubt you'll EVER see that happen. Mr. Steven V. Cole doesn't have the limitless vision he once had and seems now to be satisfied to milk as much money out of a pretty much dead gaming franchise.

I did recently purchase 'SFB for Beginners' or 'Federation Border, ' as it's called, designed to introduce the attention span limited youth of today to space combat board gaming. My friends and I played it one evening and had a good time, but even being for beginners, I could not see trying to teach it to my 10 and 12 year olds, they'd be asleep before the second turn was over.

If you're interested, save your dubloons, Federation Border is $60 retail, I think.

Sorry for being so long winded, but playing SFB 'back in the day' introduced me to intensive boardgaming and a wealth of life long friends.

Regards all,

Rob, aka sysrkm

[ilovestrategy]

Good post! Thanks!

[ravinhood]

ORIGINAL: RedArgo

I enjoyed the first Starfleet Command game, but it just isn't the same because of the real-time play style. Is Renegade Legion Interceptor a turn based game? I may have to check that out.
I'm suprised no one has made a computer version of this kind of game play. The last ones I am aware of were Warp Factor and Cosmic Balance which are both ancient. I wonder if the company that owns SFB doesn't want to license a computer version to compete with their board version?

Bill

Yes, RLI is turn based and quite fun and entertaining. You can play either side good or evil and hire alien pilots to pilot your extra ships in your fleet as wingmen or you can control them all. I tend to play as one individual pilot and hire various aliens and get them the best ships I can with their "random" reputation points. As you win battles you gain experience and awards and eventually you can use those points to customize a bad a$$ ship, takes awhile though and of course you'll have to survive in some form of fashion every battle to get to that point. To start out I found the PEACE KEEPER the ship of choice for me and I'd find myself rerolling myself until I could afford one, the HT Peace Keeper is ok, but, the full blown one is much better.

There are all kinds of battles you'll face from patrol missions to outright outpost destructions or defenses, to recon and escourt, you'll also be ambushed from time to time and one of the worst things that can and does happen is you HAVE to go on another mission without being able to repair all your fleet, those are the real nail biters especially if you got shot up pretty badly from the previous mission.