SPACE VOTING RESULTS:
Rules Regularly Played - Starfire

It was a 1500 point Battle Fleet Gothic Game between Imperial and Chaos fleets. Imperial won. [3 Nov 1999]

StarFleet Battles. 2 Constellation Class cruisers vs 2 Klingon D7's, upgraded with missile packs. A few asteroids for terrain (10..all moving 1 hex per turn in the same direction). The two Federation ships concentrated their fire on one D7 until it exploded. The other then left rather quickly. I like the detail of the game, but many ships in an action slows the game down greatly. Its also hard to get a "kill", since a badly hurt ship can usually get up enough speed to get off board. [15 Sep 1999]

A past game of Full Thrust (2nd edition) took place around an unnamed planet, smack in the middle of two nebulas. My opponent and I chose 1000 point fleets, and set course to engage. My tactics were to overwhelm him with fighter squadrons; he concentrated on missiles and larger ships. Several turns later, I had missed with too many torpedoes, and he had destroyed the engines on an otherwise undamaged heavy cruiser with a well-timed pair of needle missiles. I finally conceded when his point defense batteries eliminated my last effective fighter squadron, and my lone carrier was about to appear around the planet in front of his 2 relatively unscathed cap. ships. Next time, I'll make sure to use torpedo fighters that can actually damage a ship through multiple layers of screens. Or maybe his missiles are the way to go... [27 Apr 99]

Played the Star Wars game at Historicon '98..lost of fun, the game used Full Thrust...the rules were simple and easy to use and rewarded good tactics...I like rules like that. [24 Apr 99]

We had a battle of two battlecruisers on 8 destroyers in a playtest for "Exordium Tactical". The chief designer managed to pilot one of his battlecruisers into a planet, and the destroyers were able to quickly put an end to the rampaging ruptors of the surviving BC. [19 Apr 99]

I only recently bought Battlefleet Gothic, so my most recent game was an "exploratory" to try out the rules. We used only the four Imperial and four Chaos cruisers included in the basic game, and played a fairly straightforward "head-on" engagement between the two squadrons. It was a fairly entertaining experiment, even given that we were VERY slow, as we were more or less learning the rules as we went. Both sides were considerably less than expert at their maneuvering (didn't have any familiarity with the nuances of maneuver in the system, as you'd expect), and we ended up pounding each other pretty severely: the Chaos ships' faster speed let them close faster, but this played into the Imperials' seemingly heavier weapons batteries (at least, for the ships we selected). The Imperials won, but just barely: there were two badly damaged Imperial cruisers against a single shot-up Chaos ship when we ended the game by mutual consent. I'm very interested to see what an engagement with escort squadrons (and the commanders' adaptations to the previous slugfest) will be like; we plan to use some Full Thrust ships to mimic the two fleet's escorts for our next match, as we won't have any of the proper GW escorts painted and ready to go for a little while yet. In all, an enjoyable game so far! [13 Apr 99]

I played Starmada with my friends at the local game store. We like Starmada for its simplicity, yet fun. Consider me a reformed Star Fleet Battles player - don't like games with too many rules. [10 Apr 99]

A Dilgar war playtest for Babylon 5 wars. Earthforce vs Dilgar. EF: 2 Hyperion, 2 Olympus, 12 Tiger Starfuries. DL: 1 Strike cruiser, 3 frigates, 24 fighters. Earthforce destroyed 2 Dilgar frigates for exchange of minor damage. Dilgar concede. [30 Mar 99]

While deployed to Bosnia from July 1998 to January 1999, I took my Full Thrust rules with me because it is fast, simple and exciting in comparison to other games that have become way to complex for even a mathmetician to understand. The last game we played was an all out action involving 6 ships in a starship duel. [29 Mar 99]

Hosted a demo. game of FULL THRUST at a friend's Book/gaming store,had five peole show up,did the cruiser demolation derby.lasted 5 turns won by my 11y/o son because he started out all along on one end of the table,everybody else started out in weapons range and began to pound on each other so weaking themselves.And then one of then decided to try to engage his ftl drive making himselve a wounderful fireball.That's when my son moved in killing the cripples and winning the game. [28 Mar 99]

Earth Aliance vs Non-Aligned
Babylon-5 Wars

Roughly 1850 pts each
Earth Alliance starting forces
2 Artemis frigates, 625pts apiece
1 Olympus corvette, 600pts

Non-Aligned
2 Brakiri Avoiki class Heavy Cruisers, 680pts apiece
1 Drazi sunhawk Battlecruiser, 500pts

Turn 1

EA
Artemis 1&2
went turtle with EW
speed 6

Olympus
went turtle with EW
speed 6

NA
Avoiki 1&2
went turtle with EW
Speed 12

Drazi Sunhawk
went turtle with EW
speed 10

Both fleets moved to engage. The Non-aligned player was trying to close the gap between the fleets. He didn't realise he had the range advantage with his Avoiki's -1/4 hexes with his Graviton beams

The EA player railguns on all three ships were -1/2 hexes and had to close. Turn 2 didn't see much more manuevering the Sunhawk swung out and slowed down. With the Avoikis continuing at great speed, no fire exchanged yet. EA just kept plugging on.

Turn 3

Avoikis sped past the the lighter Earth ships while the Drazi Sunhawk engaged the three EA ships. Artemis 1 didn't allocate any EW onto locking on to the sunhawk so didn't fire. Artemis 2 fired on the sunhawk and with rear weapons on Avoiki. Olympus fired on sunhawk, scoring a hit onto the C&C - killing the ship. More minor damage occured. Sunhawk fired on the Artemis, destroying 1 railgun and forward interceptor Avoiki recieved a destroyed rear Graviton pulsar and major damage to rear thruster

Turn 4

Avoikis flew off map. EA declined to pursue (couldn't catch them if I tried). NA decided next time would not close with EA ships and feels the Artemis rail frigates may be under-pointed. [27 Mar 99]

Two Kilgon D7's protecting an advance sensor station Vs 2 cloaked Romulan war birds (as per my full thrust conversion :)

I actually refefed more than played in this one as I was constructing rules for cloaked ships. 1 D7 would swing out in a wide orbit to attempt detection on the cloaked ships they KNEW were out there when suddenly a romulan uncloaked and fired upon the outermost D7! The D7 unleashed a furious series of blows to the Warbird, crippling it, as the inner D7 rushed to his buddies aid....

Straight into the fireing arc of the second Warbird as it uncloaked to strike the sensor station. At this point it was discovered that a full up D7 will NOT withstand the blow from a Plasma Torpedo, but it will stop the shot from hitting the station. The remaining D7 managed to get and hold a sensor lock on the Warbird and proceded to destroy it before it could get another shot off. [27 Mar 99]

I was playtesting a skirmish and retaliatory strike with Starfire rules between the Khanate of Orion Tax Patrol and heavily armed slaver ships lurking in an asteroid belt. I am writing some Starfire fiction and needed to fine tune the battle I was writing on for accuracy and make any adjustments necessary. Small KOTP Escort goes looking for it's missing companion and finds it's wreckage. Later gets attacked by two hostile Frigates while searching the outer system for hostiles with it's only remaining companion Escort. New KOTP squadron on maiden voyage hypers in just in time to catch the hostiles from behind and desdtroy them, no surrender, no survivors. (first 4 chapters summary)

While STARFIRE may be known to some oldies (like myself) as SFB's "other" game, it is still far superior and far simpler to use at both the tactical and strategic level. I really hope to see a BIG revival in it's play. See the computer game "Space Empires 3" on the internet for a very close adaptation of Starfire rules. [26 Mar 99]