Silent Death: The Next Millennium is structured precisely for the level of play you're looking for. The core rules are about as complex and difficult to master as Monopoly. There are plenty of Optional Rules the most commonly being used is the Easing of Target Speed Restriction caps on cannon systems.
Warhounds (escort vessels) will slow the game play down due to player inexperience (and sometimes dithering – Arrgh!!). The solution is to use the 30 Second Rule for movement decisions; fail to decide where to move your ship and execute same within the 30 second limit causes your ship to fail to move save for one hex forward as per the mandatory Drift rule. This forces all the players to be decisive, think on their feet, and keep the game moving.
As historically escort vessel captains have been chosen for their willingness to charge into harm's way, the imposition of the 30 Second Rule for movement only adds to the flavor of the game's level of play, as fighters, gunboats, and escort vessels can be found tearing after one another through hard vacuum trying to blast one another to atoms.
The key here is how you play the game including your ship choices for both sides will determine how complex or simple your game will be as much as the decisiveness of the players themselves. Quite simply, the more you limit the number of torpedoes on the board, the faster the game can flow. Emphasizing cannon-armed or cannon and missile armed fighter designs over those that carry numerous torpedoes will force the confrontation very quickly into a classic dogfight. Ships with more than a single pilot onboard will have another advantage with multiple cannon or weapon systems to bring to bear, and/or the ability to engage opponents in different directions. Throw in heavy fighters and/or gunboats, and you get even more firepower to the party without adding too much more complexity.
The official ship minis are 1/450 scale for the fighters, and smaller for the metal escort vessel minis. This is a practical consideration on more than one level, including the fact that Silent Death is played on a hex mat (although it *is* adaptable to a hexless movement system). You could easily use larger or much smaller models for your fighters with the metal excort models for example, or do as I do and adapt larger existing starship models or even kitbash original proxies to suit your needs (see our latest Instagram photo shoot for an example of a 1/1000 scale Yamato 2199 anime kit from Bandai adapted as a Draconian frigate-class commerce raider: link )
For assorted AARs, articles, and other ongoing discussions, I invite you to visit the Metal Express home page and our forum.
Hope this helps!
Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net
P.S. The Yamato 2199 anime kits from Bandai are an excellent value for the money to be perfectly honest. Given the scale at which you wish to operate, I highly recommend that you look at the 1/1000 scale three-deck Garmillas carrier models, as these come with a fistful of 1/1000 scale space fighter often of more than one type along with a larger 1/144 scale model of the principle fighter type depicted with that carrier in the anime series Yamato 2199. At the current exchange rate this could get you an excellent jumping off point for your venture into this genre:
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Also, as you're after escort vessels in the same scale, these Earth Defense Fleet ships are smaller than their Garmillas antagonist counterparts, and come in a set of two of each of two types of warship:
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Finally, there's a growing horde of "box scale" Yamato 2199 Mecha Colle kits from which you can cull all sorts of suitable escort vessel models for your purposes, and at the current exchange rate they're less than $3.00 USD a pop:
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takes a gamble on a blurry image in an auction.
