"Advice on a Star Trek Games" Topic

I am an absolute novice at this. I am thinking about getting into Star Trek ship to ship combat. I am into TOS and those movies including the reboot instead if the others and I was thinking about using micro machines ships. So I'm looking for advice, are the micro machines a viable option and what would be a good rule set?

Don't play star fleet battles. But if you do I have a stack of books I could sell you cheap.

Micromachine ships mostly scale well to the Starline 2400 range. The micromachine Enterprise also provides cheap parts that will stick together with lactate (which keeps autocorrect to lactate) plastic glue so you can make other classes of ships.

The rules kind of depend on whether you want to play one on one engagements (thus highly detailed rules are viable) or fleet actions (where you need simpler mechanics so you can run multiple ships).

I like fleet actions so I like Full Thrust or the starship rules for 5150AD.

My personal current choice is (despite its warts) Call to Arms Starfleet. Our group requires a game that can be done in a couple of hours in most cases, and this fits the bill nicely without having to go through the effort of statting out our own ships. We also prefer the Star Fleet Universe to the jumbled canon that is the "official" paramount version.

Several people have done Star Trek conversions for Full Thrust.

GOBS and Sky Full of Ships are both (I think) still free and provide a quick game, but didn't quite feel "trek" enough for us.

There is also the Starmada expansions for the Star Fleet Universe. They offer a mid range game that would handle 4-6 ships nicely as would Federation Commander from ADB.

As far as miniatures go, the nicest ones (In my opinion) right now are the Starline 2500 line originated by Mongoose, but now under the guiding hand of Amarillo Design Bureau. They run from $10 USD-$15 for a Cruiser (half that for smaller ships) but are beautiful. The castings are finally getting a decent QC and I think they'll be the standard going forward. The only nicer trek mini I own is my old FASA Excelsior.

If you want even more variety go to shapeways and look for one of the stores that does "not quite Trek" ships. You might also be interested in Studio Bergstrom. They sell several Not-trek designs including the very nice (though next gen-ish) Xuvaxi.

Some links:
A Sky Full of Ships
web.295.ca/danabbott/fleet.html
GOBS
thegobspage.com
A Call to Arms Starfleet
link
Starline Miniatures
link
Studio Bergstrom
link

I hope that helps.

If you are engineer or mathematician starfleet battles might be right up your alley. Otherwise, you may find it to be a cumbersome rule set that caters to rules lawyers. Some of their new miniatures lines are nice, however the people at ADB can be real jerks. I won't give them any money ever again.

FASA used to have a rules system for ship to ship combat, but it's out of print now. Other than that, there are several other space combat games that are very popular. The ones I have heard good things about are full thrust, silent death and starmada.

I'd recommend Starmada from MJ12 Games. There are two versions for Star Trek in the SFB universe, and the Starmada rules are pretty darn good.

mj12games.com/starmada

As for minis, there are some micro-scale ones on my Shapeways store here:

link

link

I've also been working on a not-Romulan set and some starbases.

</shameless plug>

best star trek game is star trek: fleet captains by wizkids. it feels like the show and movies.

Colonial Battlefleet does a good job of trek but at the moment you have to design your own ships (although some forum members have posted their own versions to save you some effort). Harry (the creator) has promised a not trek supplement sometime but no date yet.

Robert

My suggestion is Amarillo Design miniatures and Klingon Armada by mj12 games.

Well, there's also Attack Wing. Solid, simple rules with lots of support, based on the wildly successful X-Wing system.

I would recommend Federation commander

It is an excellent system for dueling ships as opposed to Squadron/fleet battles. I enjoy that a few ships can make a real good game.

link

Here is a link to the free starter rules

PDF link

Good luck

Though I've never tried either of them I like the idea of Star Fleet Battles or Federation Commander… having only one ship with detailed second-to-second managing of resources/personnel. That feels more like the action in TOS than moving entire fleets around.
I'm not sure which other games get into that sort of single-ship detail. Has anyone made a Trek version of Battlestations?

For any larger groupings of ships I'd most likely choose a Full Thrust , because it's what I have, what I like, what I know.

I'm using 5150: Star Navy as a campaign generater and Firestorm Armada for battles. Seems to work and has a Trek feel to it.

I would also recommend Federation Commander. It gives a good feel of commanding a ship in detail but is fairly quick to play.

I liked it so much I'm stocking the starter sets!

Mike

Starfight, simple rules, but has really easy and clever energy management for shields, weapons etc.

Number of expansions covering not Klingons, Romulans and Borg.

link

Would handle single ships to fleets.

I like the Starmada system, myself, along with the "XXX Armada" expansions. I keep meaning to give Federation Commander a try, though. For minis, I'd go ADB.

Doug

"Back in the day" when I was a college student with a lot of time and like-minded friends, we played loads of Star Fleet Battles.
Today, I wouldn't have the time to put into it.

Federation Commander is a streamlined version of Star Fleet Battles. If you want to capture the one-on-one ship battles from the show and movies of TOS then this is a game system you will want to take a look at.

A Call to Arms is a faster playing, big-battle system developed by the SFB/Fed Commander company and another one. I have used this system for Babylon 5 and it is fast and fun.

I don't have any experience with others.

A friend and I enjoy Federation Commander for its accurate Trek-feel; I don't think anyone has mentioned it has two 'scales'; detailed records sheets for small duels and simplified ones for larger battles. But more than 8-10 ships per side and it becomes difficult to track everything (unless you have multiple players per side).

A Call to Arms is at the opposite end – good for large fleet actions but not really enough depth for small or one on one battles.

My friends and I play the FASA rules which aren't that bad.

We also use the Fasa Star Trek minis with the StarBlazers rules and they work very well.

well, I think this just goes to show you…. you cannot swing a dead cat around here without hitting a set o Star Trek rules :P

Seriously, the first thing to do is figure out, Ship to Ship, or Fleet Action?

There are a lot of great rule out there….

Heck of a lot of free-to-download things you can look at.

As a proper fanboy, I'll second Full Thrust as mentioned, which I consider on the border/overlapping both S2S and FA mentioned by Dervel. Off the GZG website.

Have to hunt for fan-based ship designs, though.

Federation Commander has small demo set, still more fiddly, therefore a duel set, but if you're willing to play Enterprise against D-7 forever, it'll keep you from getting mired in ever expanding rules lawyer-ing, AND at the right price. This is on the StarFleetGames website.

If you want to do The Battle of DS9, or Wolf 359, there's a small version of Sky Full of Ships for download, and GOBS can also handle gobs of ships. ;->=

Both need fan-designed ships.

Doug

The original fasa rules had multiple roles played by multiple players on one ship. You could be engineering with power allocation, or helmsman with navigation… etc

It was a great game…

Thanks, Maddaz, some folk don't believe me when I tell them that. I was a role playing game with starship combat, but you could role play right into it.

Your character skills were used as well, right?

Cried for a computer interface; I think I've heard of folk trying to make a lan version, but not sure anything came of it.

Doug

Edit: EONS ago, Interface Age had a series of articles, later a book, of a description of a starship bridge simulator, but I'm talking about a specific fan port of the FASA game.

If you are doing TOS duels (1-4 ships per side) then I would say Federation Commander is the way to go.
starfleetgames.com

link

The rules are simple to learn, but it is a very tactical game. Fed Com uses a point system that is fairly balaced and each race/empire has certain strengths as well as week points to be explointed.

The starter boxes have everything you need, including countersheets with ships.

link

javelin98 any idea of when we will see those pointy eared ships?

I'm interested in large scale fleet actions---what is the difference between Starmada and Call to Arms?

A Call to Arms Star Fleet is strictly hexless. It is definitely miniature-driven, although you can use counters.

Starmada is designed for a hex map. Minis or counters work well.

If you visit Amarillo Design Bureau's page on Facebook, you'll find pictures of many of our miniatures. (I am the main voice there and I try to keep the page informative, yet welcoming to all.) Link: link

I hope you try out one of our games -- I think you'll find either game lots of fun. :) And for one-on-one, I usually do suggest Federation Commander with its streamlined rulebook. I come from an RPG background and I can grasp the rules.

Jean

Thanks to all, almost too much info! I should have said that I'm looking more for small groups (1-4 ships) but it seems that fleet actions can be cool as well. I didn't realize that there were so many ship choices. Or rule choices!

I also favor Charles Oines' "much like Star Trek" ships (Xuvaxi, etc.) over those from ADB because I don't have to assemble them. I've tried attaching engine pods on the Starline 2400 series and I can't get them lined up.

The Shapeways ships won't need assembly, and only a few of the pewter ones from Bergstrom have any part at all that needs gluing.

A few months back I played A Call to Arms Star Fleet and for me that was the first and last time that I'll play that.

I have my own reasons which I won't go into for not for my displeasure of this game.

I'll stick with FASA and my Starblazers variant.

Back in the day I bought a plastic Enterprise and a metal Klingon Battlecruiser and Romulan warbird. I think they were sold by Lou Zocchi. The Enterprise is missing an engine but maybe I can adapt a part from a more modern molding. My group back then was going to get into Trek gaming but we got sidetracked and never did.

I carry all the Zocchi miniatures in my store. The Klingon battlecruiser is the best on the market in my opinion.

I also have almost all the FASA stuff there.

Starfightershipyards.com

Darkrazor I just checked out your site and your prices seem very fair.

The Fasa ships you have are they in metal?

I have some of Lou's ships, they are fantastic..

Resin for the most part.