"Ruleset for Star Wars Squadron / Fleet based battles?" Topic

So, what ruleset would work best, in your mind, for Star Wars space battles in a scale larger than X-wing minis from FFG?

I want at least squadron vs. a cap ship or two, but a good fleet action game works too, of course, as long as there is enough room for emphasis on the starfighters (which are, of course, the core of Star Wars space combat and can take down any size of ship or station!)

Have tried Firestorm Armada (1st) and seen BFG in action.

Speaking of which, what line of miniatures do you recommend? No preference for a scale yet.

Unless you are building a racial fleet (including Imperial) that is recognized from the movies etc, the ships of the SW universe are all over the map appearance wise. As such, get some real SW stuff where you can but buy one or two of random lines, never staying in one line for long. Go ragtag and unify through paint, or not.

Based on the battle that opens Ep3 and the Battle of Endor, cap ships don't move a lot once the fighting starts. This may be due, in both cases, to the fights being over planets, or it may be the tactical doctrines of those forces. As such, you can use one of the wet navy ports (such as FA or BFG) and get the feel right, or you can use Full Thrust in cinematic mode (vector mode won't feel like SW).

Yeah, I want Rebel / NR vs Imperial / IR to start with. The iconic fighters and ships I grew up with in X-Wing and Tie Fighter games.

Don't really understand what you mean by random lines? You mean some random CMG boxes of random ships? I don't like those. I understand WOTC had a SW game like that. I guess if it was really cheap to buy a collection from someone, I could do it, but as I understand they are expensive as heck now that they're OOP. So metals it is likely.

Random lines mean you pick whatever ships you need from whoever provides it, instead on sticking on one miniaturesline.

Rules-wise, I'd lean toward A Sky Full of Ships. Simple, fast-play, good for large fleet actions with swarms of fighters. Not very realistic, but who wants that in Star Wars?

Oh yeah, I hear you. I haven't actually been able to find any SW miniatures lines on sale yet, but I'll keep looking. I guess it's understandable given the big license, but there must be old stuff out there!

Head over to Starship Combat News and ask in the miniatures board there. There are lots of "not Star Wars" ships out there.

I'd start here:

link

and here:

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along with these:

link

and these:

link

Try G.O.B.S.! using the "Evil Tyrant Lackeys" and "Freedom Fighter" factions (for obvious reasons ). I know that some here have definitely used it for Star Wars gaming (even convention games).
thegobspage.com

The fighters rules are meant to mimic the various types from Star Wars, and the origin of the "Fast Freighter" and "Planetsmasher" ship classes should also be rather obvious.

It's intended for very big fleets, and is designed for minimal record keeping and fast play.

If you try it, let me know what you think.

I love the 1/10,000 scale line from Odyssey Slipways – they're a little pricy, but not horrendously so, and offer a good range. Rules-wise it's Full Thrust for me; that's very much a small fleet set, but starfighters are pretty powerful in it.

I want at least squadron vs. a cap ship or two,

sounds more like ships against a base or facility.

A lot of action in films has a cap appearing almost motionless, center screen, with fighters buzzing around. Reminds me of the FASA's Battlestar Galactica game.

I think I've seen a Full Thrust adaptation for it somewhere, and I'm sure you could do the same with other rules. Silent Death also is a possibility, with REALLY BIG WARHOUNDS. ;->=

Now, if more than one or two ships at the center of the table, you go to movement of/combat between ships, and fighters tend to be swarms.

Doug

The Star Wars Starship Battles line is OOP but can readily be found on ebay. Don't buy the fighters as they are grossly out of scale to the cap ships but the caps are nice and come prepainted at a fairly reasonable price through buy it now. Alternately you can bid on them and get some good deals. These ships are also available through various sellers like Miniature Market, Popular Collections, etc.

For fighters I would go with the ones Dan Wideman II linked.

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Agreed on the fighters – the Studio Bergstrom ones are excellent; I have a ridiculous number of them and am very happy with 'em. For Star Wars Full Thrust there are several conversions around, but very little work is needed; only ion cannon rules really. I use the ship stats from Indy's "Crossover" games which can be found here:

star-ranger.com/SRStuff.htm

Actually, I meant using FT as a fighter game, which should be fine; I was thinking there were fighter designs already made up.

I even have fond memories of WEG's Star Warriors, though I thought the cap ships should have been represented by a board side instead of a group (7?) of hexes.

I use the ship stats from Indy's "Crossover" games which can be found here:

Pretty sure Dean ran the games, though, I've no doubt Indy may have made one or two memorable with his terrible 'ones'.

Doug

Edit: Just refound the archive copy of Star Wars into Silent Death. Long URL; may have to paste parts into browser.

PDF link

Dan Wideman II takes the cake on the mini department. That'll get me started very nicely on the basic collection, as soon as I can find an European supplier that is.
I just need a some Nebulon-B:s and Corellian Corvettes for the Rebel side.

Pretty sure he only deals direct, so no European supplier. Well worth it though.

Starmada Admiralty Edition has WONDERFUL rules for designing custom Fighters. I have used the Spreadsheet to built TIE fighters, X-Wings, Y-Wings, B-Wings, A- Wings, TIE Bombers (All used with Bergstrom Fighter minis).

The rules let you build and design custom Starships and weapons to fit em. Want to do Ion Cannons? Weapon design rules cover that. Super fast to build, Super fast to play.

For Full Thrust here is a SW fighter conversion:

link

Also did my own standard FT battle of Hoth scenario:

link

Explained what my basis was for ship stats in the scenario.
Hope these help.

Hmm, good stuff. Now to find scenario material…got the official Prima X-Wing / TIE Fighter guides, but of course many of the scenarios are very lopsided against the human side, so wouldn't work as a minis game unless outrageous "Special Ace"-rules were added to compensate.

I also forgot to mention that skill level, from rookie, regular, veteran, ace, top ace or similar needs to be included for fighters at least.

The Rebellion won't survive if everything is based on hardware alone, they'll always be outnumbered, routinely three to one, often by more.

Hmm, I wonder if Aerotech / Strategic Operations wouldn't actually fit my needs? Hexes are no problem, at least if the bigger ships taking up multiple hexes in the game system isn't.

Knowing the Battletech universe, it's bound to have construction rules and separate gunnery / piloting values. As long as the squadron rules are good…

I'd probably go with the Admiralty edition of Starmada, as Only Warlock suggests.

Doug

I also forgot to mention that skill level, from rookie, regular, veteran, ace, top ace or similar needs to be included for fighters at least.

Hmmm. When you start building that level of detail into a game, you quickly reduce the number of ships you can effectively expect to play with.

G.O.B.S.! takes the approach of general faction benefits or penalties, while allowing for limited "elite crew." This suits the level of detail in an "admiral's" game.

For example, the Tyrant Lackeys faction can purchase more fighters at lower cost, but suffer a -1 attack penalty. They do gain the ability to re-roll one die per turn (but one die only, not one die per vessel).

The Freedom Fighters have better, more motivated pilots, so they gain a +1 attack bonus, and also have the re-roll ability.

And you can add elite crew like a Psychic Wonder (boosts fleet initiative), a Legendary Pilot (boosts a single ship), or so forth to your fleet to represent those unique individuals like Obi-wan or Luke (or Darth Vader, for that matter).

Along with some fleet construction restrictions for each faction, this allows for the differentiation you mention, without becoming overly complex.

For a squadron vs. a capital ship or two with emphasis on starfighters you could use 5150 Figher Commander ruleset from Two Hour Wargames that is going to be released soon.
Here you can see some AARs and how it works:
link (attack)
link (boarding action)
link (patrol)

Parzival, faction wide bonuses are acceptable, what you posted (-1 to the other, +1 to the other) sounds ok, as well as the extra crew benefits, it'd just be fun to allow for differences in scenarios (The Empire might field an elite formation like Avenger Squadron whereas the Rebels might have rookies).

The 5150 game seems to be based on Chain Reaction, which is actually an ok idea, but would it be enough of a scale up from the FFG game that my friends will probably get soon?

How much fighters per player are we talking about?
Fighter Command is more complex than X-wing but not too much I think. I think each player can handle a squadron of three flights comfortably.
You have to count how many missiles or decoys you have but damage system is pretty straight away.
Reactions of many fighters can slow the game but some tests can be done by groups and the received fire test has been reduced to one response as opposite to other THW games where figures shoot each other until they duck for cover, are wounded or dead or out of ammo.
Some testers have played with one carrier and a few destroyers each without problems.
I'll try to play and publish a big battle in the blog in a few weeks.

Parzival, faction wide bonuses are acceptable, what you posted (-1 to the other, +1 to the other) sounds ok, as well as the extra crew benefits, it'd just be fun to allow for differences in scenarios (The Empire might field an elite formation like Avenger Squadron whereas the Rebels might have rookies).

As a matter of fact, I've written scenarios for G.O.B.S.! that include special rules; it's really not hard to do, and the system allows the flexibility. (I even did a not-Star Wars scenario featuring two unique fighter craft with special abilities to represent "Baron Blacktalons" and "Gordon Lightskye" taking part in the battle.

All it really takes is a tweak here or there. For example, your scenario could easily be done simply by waiving the Tyrant Lackey penalties for the "Avenger Squadron" and waiving the attack bonus for the Freedom FIghter rookies. But you'd need to limit the "Avenger Squadron's" numbers by making those fighters full cost, and establishing a maximum percentage— say only 1 Avenger Squadron fighter for every 3 normal Tyrant Lackeys, or some such rule. And they'd need to be limited to a single support carrier/base, which would naturally limit the numbers. The Avenger Squadron would need to be both a rarity and a serious threat. (I think they'd also demand a Legendary Pilot as a leader— maybe they can't be fielded without one. Ups the threat, but also ups the cost.)

I previously played SW Capital ships combat with both Starmada and Full Thrust. I would love to imtroduce my local gaming group to either. However the fomer baffles me wit it's frequent new ruleset whilst for the latter I have the opposite problem- I am just praying for a new edition of Full Thrust.

I bought some of those SW fighters from the original caster before Studio Bergstrom acquired them- I have to say tey are beautiful models and the level of detail is amazing for such small figures.

Have a mixture of 1/20,000 and 1/10,000 SW Capital ships together with usual mix of Micro Machinesand Hasbro Titanium models to round out fleets.

Look forward to seeing what the OP goes for.

Cheers

James