"The best Hex & Counters Sci Fi game....." Topic

What Sci-Fi games that came in the old school hex-n-counter format were your favorites?

Ogre & Starship Troopers are the first that come to mind for me.

Pretty old school, but not hex.
4000AD.
It attempted 3D movement with different diameter circles for the planetary system.
You would fly between stars by going into a "warp" drive by using a tray to hold your ships and traveling along a 1-10 grid. When and where you came out you dumped your tray on an empty (or not) star. The only caveat is that you came out as many spaces away from your destination as turns spent in the warp.
I assume my explanation is incomprehensible. But doing it was much easier than explaining.

I liked Battlesuit

and to a lesser extent GEV

Does anyone remember 'Invasion of the Air Eaters'?

My favorites are Starship Troopers, and God's Fire (no hexes, though chits and a map).

Mike

Starship Troopers

Starfleet Battles (before all the additions/variants)

Fifth Frontier War
Imperium
SST (AH)
Mayday

I thought Hammers Slammers was pretty decent.

Imperium (the GDW and Conflict versions-ignore the horrible Avalanche redesign) is certainly one of the best sci-fi games ever made. The period between wars where the winner of the previous war cuts back on defense and the loser rebuilds for another war is sheer genius. Dark Nebula was a Series 120 game that uses the same system, but in a much smaller footprint.

Outreach from SPI is criminally underrated as is TSR's Revolt on Antares. If you want to try an interesting "race to the bottom" game, SPI's The Sword and the Stars shows how civilizations rise and fall with a pretty unique system.

The main issue with many of the sci-fi board games from the 70s and 80s was that many of them just weren't that great or fairly average at best. I own a lot of them, but back then there weren't many options and no one really complained about the procedural aspects of these games as there was little to compare them to!

Awful Green Things from Outer Space? Snit Smashing?

Fan of GEV in particular – but also liked Warp War and Ice Age

I've spent hours wracking my brain for the name of this game. I came up dry.
But, it's played with discs. Each disc is a system owned by a particular race. The rules are quite simple, but each race has a "power" that allows it to violate the rules in a specific way.
Later additions added planets, moons, more races with freakier powers that broke rules added in previous additions.
Frankly, it okayed much better in 1.0 and 1.1.
The rest were just gilding the lily of a fine tight game.

I'd like to point out that one later add on race was the Sniveler. His power was to whine and complain how unfair it was that he had "only" one X. We had a player who was rather good at whining. It wasn't a "power" power, but he played it well.

Help me out here. Can anyone remember the name?

Illuminati?

Amoeba Wars
Starship Troopers (a game better than its source material)
Starfleet Battles

Dune (not hexes though)

Bughunter – the scifi version of Sniper!

OFM, is the game you're describing Cosmic Encounter?
Here's a list of the alien powers from the original game.
link

Sniveler is listed as one of the aliens on another search. The players have to give in to the sniveler if he is complaining about being behind in various things like cards, ships, etc.

OGRE/GEV

OGRE/GEB and Revolt on Antares (one of the old TSR pocket games).

I got plenty of use out of Gev and Battlesuit.

Hammers and Slammers I might rank up there if it came with more scenarios. Still fun though. It could certainly be remade and be a good game.

SPI's Star Force: Alpha Centauri is probably my favorite.

GDW's Fifth Frontier War is probably my second favorite.

Ogre
Amoeba Wars I only played once, but it was fun.
Triplanetary is one I have, but haven't ever played. Of the hex-and-counter games I own, it's probably the highest on my "want to play" list.

I created my own game, Starcrusher, which is a take on Ogre in space (though there are differences so it's got a unique style of play). I think it's pretty good for a simple space combat game, if I say so myself.

I've got a lot of the others mentioned here, but haven't played them.

Also for consideration:

Star Fist (SJG)
Brilliant Lances (GDW)
Battle Riders (GDW)
Azanti High Lightning (GDW)
Belter (GDW)
Asteroid (GDW)
Mayday (GDW)
Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks (TSR)

Haven't played any of the above, and I've only ever owned three of them.

@privateer
Yes! Cosmic encounter!
Thank you.

Sure thing.

Ogre
StarForce

Talon!

Ogre.

And this is from someone who likes complex games :S

Seriously, if you like spaceship games, check out Talon. It's … elegant. Star Fleet Battles stripped down to its core for fast, furious action that still forces constant hard choices on you. Having all of the information tracking right on the counters is brilliant.

I don't know if this counts but we had a lot of fun with "Cosmic Encounters." Still have the game.

Fifth Frontier War
Imperium
SST (AH)