Star Fleet Battles

Star Fleet Battles
Wargame published by Task Force Games, Amarillo Design Bureau
No. of Players	2-6
Session Time	1 hour to weeks (~ # of ships)
First Publication	1979

Still in publication after 40 goddamn years, Star Fleet Battles is based on the original Star Trek teevee series, and includes the Kzinti from the animated series (because they had the rights to it because Larry Niven recycled one of his stories in TAS). It's regarded as the most detailed simulation of ship-to-ship interplanetary combat, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. The five-inch thick starter book has rules for damn near everything, but it reads like the lovechild of your car's owners manual and VCR instructions. For those grognards that love Advanced Squad Leader, this is awesome, but for those who think of Axis & Allies as a serious wargame, these rules are impenetrable. (You won't need 90% of those rules for an average game, though.) For some bizarre reason, nobody's ever tried to make a vidya of SFB, despite the fact that the rulebook already reads like a computer program.

Actually there WAS a video game series created based on SFB, Starfleet Command. Which is available on Steam. While SFC3 is preserved on GOG. Dynaverse sells SFC2 and Orion Pirates on their own store. It's a bit ass that not all available on the same storefront but its the best your going to get with old PC games.

The game is played on a hex-map, no terrain other than the odd planet you might be flying around, or asteroid counters for hiding behind, but there are rules for fighting near a black hole that keeps pulling all the tokens, or nebula clouds that give automatic ECM defense.

Among the win you can find in this game are:

• Impulse-based turns instead of the I-go-then-You-go typical of tabletop wargames
• Transporter bombs and fake transporter bombs
• Using ship's laboratories to out-science monsters
• Using your Tractor Beams to push another ship into a asteroid/planet/black hole
• loading up one of your shuttle craft with anti-matter and ramming it into other ships
• Wild Weasels ... where a shuttle gives off sensor data that fools electronics into thinking it's another full-sized vessel (this is the "Picard maneuver" that actually WORKS instead of just looking cool)
• High energy warp turns with a dash of break downs and tumbling uncontrollably thru space
• Boarding parties for Capturing or dishonourable Hit and Run attacks
• Surprise buttsecks in the form of Scatterpack shuttles and cloaked nuclear space mines
• Rules for fighters, torpedoes, mines, drones, probes, and the bestest weapon ever; the Mauler. Seriously if someone has thought of something there IS a rule for it already.
• Effects of having legendary officers like having Scotty as your ship's engineer or Sulu as your helmsman
• What happens when the slaves on a Klingon ship stage a mutiny during a ship battle.
• Q-ships ...for those who aren't navy nuts, that's what looks like a civilian cargo ship, but when pirates show up it blows off the camouflage and all the cargo is missile-racks and phasers.
• C'mon, who doesn't want Federation versus Klingons, Romulan cloaking devices and attacking starbases?
• Gorn AND Tholians! And Hydrans and Lyrans and Kzinti and Andromedians and... well you get the idea
• Cocaine fuelled pirates. Seriously. And it's exactly as awesome as it you think it is, until it kills you.

Play-styles

Oh yah this games got you covered fam!

How will you play? Which race best suits your style and attitude towards combat?

• Will you play the noblebright Federation? The great overloaded photon torpedo salvo to the face at range zero? Turn your opponents into dust via the application of diplomacy thru superior firepower!
• Will you be a true warrior as a skilled Klingon captain who must fight every turn with his fast firing but weaker weapons? Where one mistake can mean death but the victory is ever much sweeter. Honor goes to the victor remember and dying shows no honor.
• Are you a sly and crafty Romulan who chucks homing plasma torpedoes at your opponent from long range and retreats into your cloak every time your opponent so much as looks in your direction? (until he get so annoyed he either makes a mistake and dies to end the game or physically picks you up and throws your ballet using ass out onto the street where it belongs)
• Will you be a furry Kzinti? Throwing nuclear tipped missiles at your opponent until you overwhelm his defences and he dies in a massive explosion or you run out of missiles and bravely run away?
• Or maybe your a Lyran the anti-Kzinti. Charge up your ESG feild to max and scream RAMMING SPEED as you plow into your enemies (and friends so watch out!) with frenzied laughter. Cloak? What's a cloak? just nail EVERYTHING in the same hex as you. Aiming is for monkeys.
• Are you a stalwart defender of the Hydran Kingdom? Who's brave but not so bright fighter pilots will die gloriously in your opponents ships explosion after they empty their fusion beam cannons into him at point blank range because how much damage can some silly little fighters cause right?
• Will you be a massive, sessile Gorn? Who tanks everything to the face until you get your opponent is locked in your tractor beams at zero range where you will beat him to death as he futilely tries to escape? You may be slow but you've got the endurance to last. And he who laughs last, laughs best.
• Will you play a Tholian? Who are scattered refugees from another galaxy desperately fighting to keep your race alive? Your Webs will help you control the battlefield and dictate where and when you fight. Plus you know the frequency of the webs so your weapons are unaffected when firing on those trapped inside...your opponents? Well not so much. Sucks to be them.
• Are you a cocaine fueled pirate? Who, for 4 turns, can out run, out fight and out maneuver any ship in the galaxy! But only for 4 turns as each time you double your engine output they get more and more damaged until your left with ashes and some very angry escort ships heading your way. Just remember there is no profit in dying and your green skinned Orion waifu wants her cut of the booty when you get home.
• Will you play as the mysterious and unknown invaders called Andromedians? Whose bizarre and outlandish technology is beyond anything the galactic powers know. Shields? What are shields? Use the incoming fire to power your ship and move like lighting! Warp speed? Whats Warp Speed? Teleport around like a spastic epileptic on crack and never give your enemy a clear shot! Just make sure to use that power up faster then it comes in or you'll be the next champagne supernova in the sky. The locals may be primitive but they know war and your a long way from home bub.
• Are you a champion of the Greater Good? Play as a ISC captain trying to bring sanity to a galaxy consumed by insanity. Fight in formation with your fellow brother captains as you try to bring peace to a galaxy forever at war. You have the best of all weapons due to sitting on the sidelines and watching your neighbors go at each other like rabid dogs for decades but now your outnumbered and your enemies will put aside their differences (temporarily!) to make sure you never see your home cluster again. Fight smart and fight together or you'll be nothing but a footnote in history.

Sequence of Play

1. Energy Alloction Phase

Your ships engines only produce so much power, even less when damaged, so how will you spend it? How far will you move and how fast? What weapons will need power to fire? What shields will you re-enforce with how much of your ever dwindling power reserves?. Will you use ECM or ECCM to shift the odds in your favour? That cost power too. Don't forget life support or your battle will be over before it starts! You want Tractor Beams? Shuttle-craft or Transporters? Pay up! Most of the game is won or lost in the EA phase as you can't spend power to react to your opponents moves during your turn, with some exceptions, it all has to be planned out beforehand.

2. Impulse Movement Phase

Ships move depending on the speed they paid for and the distance they want to travel. Slower ships move less often and speed changes are allowed if planned out during the EA phase. Ships may move at the same time and the faster ship gets to move after his opponent. Depending on your ship and your speed turning can only happen at certain times. Maneuver is the heart of combat in SFB due to weapon arcs. Just cuz your got yourself a tonne of photon torpedoes don't mean you can fire them willy nilly!

3. Combat

After the end of any impulse you may declare an intent to fire. You must say which weapons you are firing then calculate range, roll the dice and pray to the RNG gods. The catch is that most weapons, unlike in the movies, have restricted arcs on where they can fire. If your opponent isn't in the arc of the weapon all the snake eyes in the world won't make a difference.

As an example;

A FED CA (think TOS Enterprise) has 4 photon torpedoes which, if they hit, pack quite the punch but are not only energy intensive to charge up (2 points of power each for 2 turns on a ship that will have about 24 total power) but also have a limited forward (FA) firing arc. So if your opponent isn't in front of your ship at the end of turn 2 your sitting on those puppies until your lumbering Fed CA can trundle is chonky ass around to get that naughty Klink D7 into arc. Fed ships are know for decent forward shielding and heavy forward firepower but turn like overweight hippos after a night of raunchy sex. To be fair the Feds have poor turning rates but there are much worse ships out there. (Say hello Mr Gorn!)

The Klink D7 cruiser is the exact opposite. It has great arcs (some are so good they can somehow fire THROUGH the ship itself) for its Disrupters/phasers and great manoeuvrability but Disrupters do half the damage the photons do (but can fire twice as often) so the Klink has much less trouble keeping the Fed in arc to plink away but has to work to keep himself out of the photon's arc or he's not going to like the results when 4 overloaded photon torpedoes cause his ship to have a rapid unscheduled disassembly event.

Phasers are more flexible being mounted all over the ship to give some coverage in all directions with differing races having differing idea's about what "proper phaser coverage" looks like. Phasers are incredibility energy efficient but damage rapidly drops off with range (except the bastard ship killer PH-4 which can and will reach out to touch your no no bits at range 100! But they are only found on Starbases and certain monsters thank Jeebus)

Most ships carry Drones (think missiles) as a secondary weapon but so named Seeking Weapons have a rule set all their own and can fire in any direction but must move according to the Impulse chart and can be shot down by phasers. The Hydrans have a nifty little weapon called a Gatling Phaser that yes does exactly what you think it does. Plus they stuck it on their shuttles, fighters and bombers! Woe to the fool who ignores a incoming Hydran fighter group cuz how much damage can 1 shuttlecraft do right?

4. Damage Allocation

So you've managed to get your weapons in to arc and have put the pain train on your opponent. So now what? Well each ship will have shields to adsorb incoming damage to a limited amount. Shields trade strength for damage reduction point per point. (we're not going to talk about Andro's and PA's cuz that too in depth for a summary) Shields start the game fully charge but damage is not repaired unless you spend power to repair said shield and for various game rule reasons it's better to re-enforce said shield then repair it. As so long as a shield has at least 1 point left it's still considered to be "up" for game rules. Each ship has 6 shield each facing one of the cardinal directions. You can "knock down" one shield without affecting any of the others as each shield facing is treated independently.

So your Fed CA has successfully got that clueless Klink D7 into your FA arc and have now delivered what SFB players call the "Great Mace to the Face" (ie 4 overload photon torpedoes right in the kisser). No doubt the Klink shield you struck is now nothing more then a vague memory and your follow up phaser salvo has opened up the Klink hull like a tuna can. So now what? Well there is a chart for this! The Damage Allocation Chart in fact. You now take all the extra damage that the shield didn't manage to adsorb and roll on the DAC to see what systems were hit and so on. Each system/weapon/engine has a certain number of "boxes" on the ship to represent itself and once each of those boxes are gone the system is no longer usable until it is repaired. If you apply enough damage the ship will just explode though most players will concede once their ship has been rendered combat ineffective. No point in dragging events out to the end.

Once the combat phase in that Impulse is concluded you go back to the Movement Phase and repeat until one ship either gets destroyed, surrenders or many hours have past and you both hate each other.

That's a game of Star Fleet Battles in a (very small) nutshell.

There was a full 3d motion version based on the Squadron Strike engine in the works, but was apparently dropped.

See Also

• Amarillo Design Bureau, current publishers of the game, plenty of free *.pdf files for download.
• The Star Fleet Battles Open Community, Open and uncensored discussion about Star Fleet Battles.