| lordsith | 29 Jul 2014 3:23 p.m. PST |
It is finally available! You can get it at RPGNow, DrivethruRPG, and Wargames vault. link Please spread the word since Lou won't advertise.
Michael link |
 Inari7  | 29 Jul 2014 6:44 p.m. PST |
I might have to down load this edition, I have the original edition, and think Lou's rant about computers is "Charming". What has changed with this edition? |
| TheBeast | 29 Jul 2014 6:52 p.m. PST |
link I was going to suggest back tracking through the blog, and search TMP by author for 'lordsith', but the above blog entry with the sample pages is a good start. Doug |
| War Panda | 29 Jul 2014 6:52 p.m. PST |
I'll be getting this for sure. Looks the bizz! I'll be sure to post an AAR after my first game. |
| DesertScrb | 29 Jul 2014 8:53 p.m. PST |
In a nutshell, what are the differences between this game and Starfleet Battles? |
| Rich Bliss | 29 Jul 2014 9:34 p.m. PST |
It would take a coconut shell. They are very different games. If SFB is Harpoon, Battle Manual is Fletcher Pratt. |
| lordsith | 30 Jul 2014 4:55 a.m. PST |
Good answer Rich. As a player of both systems from their beginnings I've always told players that the Star Fleet Battle Manual is the original series – it plays as close to what the television show depicts as combat as any game. You will only find weapons and ships seen in the series. No attack shuttles, missiles, fighters, etc. With no board, you can play all over the floor, maneuvers and weapon fire really open up. The best part, to me, has always been figuring out the correct firing angle to hit the target; small ships like the warbird definitely have an advantage. And of course there is always the player who cuts his course to fine and runs into an asteroid – I mean the couch.
Michael |
| TheBeast | 30 Jul 2014 5:30 a.m. PST |
AND, you can't mix SFB ships with Alien Space… ;->= @DS I've not checked out Galactic Knights play, yet, but I get the feeling there's similar level of differences between it and StarFleet Wars. Somebody correct me? Doug |
 javelin98 | 30 Jul 2014 8:42 a.m. PST |
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 Parzival | 30 Jul 2014 10:20 a.m. PST |
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| TheBeast | 30 Jul 2014 10:53 a.m. PST |
More to the point, WHO was Fletcher Pratt: link Blue Sun young whippersnapper… ;->= Doug |
Chef Lackey Rich  | 06 Aug 2014 12:25 p.m. PST |
No, warp drives don't use inertial movement. Play Full Thrust or Galactic Knights for that. Doesn't fit Trek settings at all, where the ships move like clumsy aircraft. Star Fleet Battles has nothing to do with the SFBM aside from the fact that they both use some of the ships from the early part of the Trek franchise. They only get away with it because of a weird legal loophole involving the Franz Joseph ship designs. Neither game can use the terms "Star Trek" in their products, ironically enough. |
| TheBeast | 07 Aug 2014 6:05 a.m. PST |
Also, opening up my old Starfire Rules from Task Force Games, I saw an ad for "Star Fleet Battles" – is this a new edition of that same game? My recollection was that SFB evolved from a game created BEFORE Starfire, but not sure. They have some similarities, but are different enough I'll call them different games. Course, we've grown used to 'new editions' being total workovers. ;->= Doug |
| Nerroth | 07 Aug 2014 6:08 p.m. PST |
The Constitution-class starship from TOS was designed by Matt Jefferies, as was the Klingon D7. (Some of the articles on Memory Alpha cover more detail on what Jefferies' design philosophies were when creating these models for the original series.) Franz Joseph Schnaubelt created some of the other Federation designs seen in the Star Fleet Technical Manual (which was first published in 1975), such as the Saladin-class destroyer and the Federation-class dreadnought. But those ships owe much of their design heritage to the template which had been laid out on-screen beforehand.
Star Fleet Battles is a separate game from Star Fleet Battle Manual; the former was developed by Amarillo Design Bureau and was originally published by Task Force Games. TFG has since gone away, though ADB currently publish SFB themselves (alongside other games in the Star Fleet Universe, some of which were created long after the TFG era was over).
(The current "Captain's Edition" of SFB has been around since 1990, but a number of the older versions of the game have been made available electronically as of late.) |
| TheStarRanger | 15 Aug 2014 1:10 p.m. PST |
Star Fleet Battles is a full on old style wargame with square chits and hex map and Ship Status Displays with lots of boxes and rolling dice. Star Fleet Battle Manual is a less detailed game but with the unique feature of fire resolution by stating a specific heading to fire the weapons at and then using a string or whatever to actually follow that heading out to see of the fire hits. Early on people were known to use the just released large plasic models and play the game on the floor of a gymnasium. |
