"What size are your fleets?" Topic

Every so often I start thinking about scratch building a space fleet. The only game I played a lot of was RL Leviathan. No models for it but it has good guides to various fleet sizes. I played a bit of Full Thrust years ago and would likely use it for this. I've got a rough idea of what sizes I want to build the ships so they kind of match commercially available ships like GZG. What I'm kind of wondering about is there any rough guides for fleet composition? How many of each class and what sort of ratios do you like?

I realise this is a pretty wide open question but I was just trying to decide how many of each ship I should try to make. I'm a sucker for building all options armies for the games I play. So far I've made 3 escorts and 2 frigates plus I could throw in a bunch of ships from Twilight Imperium. I'd like to make at least 2 fleets.

Our usual full thrust battles are 2500 points a side . this will give a good afternoon of combat . GZG starter packs are a good deal for full thrust . That said I must have over 12000 points of NSL and ESU .

The 2 Space games I play are FASA Star Trek and Star Blazers.

I have 4 Fleets for the Star Blazers and all told I have over 500 ships for this game.

Some of our Star Blazers games have had over 50 ships per side and a player could run 20 ships if not more it all depends on how long the player has played Star Blazers.

For my FASA Star Trek collection I have around 200 ST minis mainly they're Federation Klingon and Romulan with a small number of other ships.

In some of our Star Trek games a person could handle 2-5 ships some can handle more and others less but the games are still pretty good.

I play Full Thrust, homebrew rules, and the Babylon 5 fleet actions rules. Regardless of the game I have fleets of between 15 and 25 ships. All rules have been modified as needed to give each player (two player games) a fleet and the game should finish in under three hours. In total I have 40+ fleets but not all are painted and based.

Full Thrust for sure. My buddy Lloyd NAC and UN fleets. Our buddy Dan FSE and NSL fleets. Myself a massive ESU fleet and a massive Phalon fleet. We used the old board game Imperium as a campaign scenerio generator. Many many games played out. Accessory items like Merchant ships are always nice. Those I like to mix and match manufactures. Adds some variety.

I usually have 4-8 ships on either side. I have played Full Thrust, but I'm mostly a Starmada player.

No matter the rules… I try to build my fleets with 1-3 squadrons of escorts( destroyers/ frigates) per cruiser/ heavy cruiser then have 2-3 of the heavies for each capitol ship. This makes a nice rounded fleet and serves up options for engagements of various sizes.

@ ming31 – it sounds like your NSL and mine are quite similar. I'm currently at just under 9000 points (plus fighters and tenders/tankers) painted and about 4500 points still to paint.

I've also got the NAC and FSE megafleets painted up, an ESU megafleet waiting to be painted, Japanese megafleet with a lot of extra ships still waiting to be prepped and the Crusties starter fleet. Oh, and a bunch of civilian ships.

A clubmate and I managed to play out 2500 points of NSL vs FSE in just under 2 hours recently (only our 3rd game) – it might have taken longer if my dice rolls with the FSE hadn't been so bad.

Cadian's composition makes good sense for a "realistic" fleet, but for a task group I'd reduce the escorts to 1-2 per cruiser.

Thanks all. Gives me an idea for a starting point. Most likely will go with 2 of each type of ship except the battleship/dreadnought as I'm making them. Depending on how difficult it is and how they turn out I can add in some more of the smaller escorts. I'm thinking 1-2 battlewagons, 2 heavy and 2 light cruisers for each battleship and a destroyer, frigate and corvette for each cruiser. Just need to see what's in the scrap/bits pile and get at it.

Another idea may be to look at the composition of current naval task groups to give an idea of how many cruisers and escorts you need.

My main fleets (ESU;NSL;Nordic) based on one or two capital ships,battleship and/or carrier with an escort group of destroyers and frigates…..a capital ship gets an escorting cruiser or two with each 'big' vessel getting 2-3 escorts, allow a scout/screening flotilla of frigates and smaller too- this is good for a convoy escort or system defence force…………I have several smaller contingents too – a pirate group with a half a dozen destroyer types and several 'tramp' merchant hulls….my Kra'vak raiders are based on two cruisers with a mix of 6-8 escorts…..very fast and hard hitting…..I look at modern and historical 'fleets/groups' to establish a proportional mix…..

My FLEETS are huge, but what I take to a game varies quite a bit.

I do tend to have two of the largest on the table, and a ratio of three to one each 'step' down. Exceptions are I almost never have more than one SDN or attack carrier.

I'm a simple man, and tend to get feeling crowded if more than a dozen or so ships, mind you. A couple of cruisers and half a dozen DD's seem a nice fit for me.

Games are seldom, so I could see me working up to more ships if otherwise.

Doug

My ESU fleet started as a 'battlegroup' -centred on a carrier and heavy cruiser combination…….I now have more vessels for this fleet than all of the others combined….the result of a simple 'arms race' between my main opponent at the time with his FSE forces……..