SPACE VOTING RESULTS:
Voters, By Scale - 1:3000

I played Starmada about a month ago. I had a 500pt size fleet of Arcturan Federation ships, including one Seraphin Class Battlecarrier. A 3-sides battle ensued between friends.

The Arcturan fighters were able to create aerospace superiority, but could not stop the shields 5 transports of the Sssk (a lizard race with boarding parties). The two Ssk transports launched pods which penetrated the fighter defense screens and boarded the ship. I lost one of the escort frigates in a duel with an Imperial Invincible. However the Seraphin was able to diable the two lead imperial vessels with its ion cannons. Easy pickings for the anti-matter beams :)

I would have won the battle except for the valiant, but futile efforts of the crew to fend off the boarding parties. The seraphin was a ship designed from a more peaceful time with greater range weapons. Too bad they could not learn the lessons from Rome and Carthage. The Carthaginians might have won the Cold War. [28 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]

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]

Silent Death battle from the Siguard Archdiocese house book. The Sigurd ships completely destroyed the House Colosia's warhounds and the supporting fighters with only minor losses to their own forces. [29 Mar 99]

The Last game I played was Mekton Z in a invasion of a city scenario, onboard a space station, we kludged up rules for going through airlocks and we had a space fight/ building to building city fight, all in one game. [28 Mar 99]

Essentially I ran an FT 2.0 demo at a local game store. I had a BDN (represented by a AoG Narn heavy cruiser) face two CAs (portrayed by two AoG Hyperions). Unfortunetly, I was only able to find only a single player who would play. After teaching him the basics, we were off! The game ended up with his BDN destroying one of my CAs. However, my other heavily damaged CA was able to take him over the second threshold check where he lost all of his fire cons to bad dice rolls. I won by default. [27 Mar 99]

This was the miniature rules from Earthforce Supplement to Babylon 5 Project. A Narn vs. Centauri battle, and my first chance to play the Narn. I was looking forward to wiping those silly hair fans off their heads with the nifty engery mines. But, things started out bad. The time came to launch the engery mines, so I put out a nice line of them just where I expected the Centauri to move to. Well he turned to his port will I moved straight ahead right on top of my own mines. All my engery mines hit my ships and none of his were touched. There was not much hope after than for the Narns. That tactic has already become know as Tom's bonehead maneuver. I'm looking for a rematch, this time with a, hopefully, wiser admiral. Tom [26 Mar 99]

(oh, yeah, 'required', thanks; that was over 2 weeks ago when I last had time to play :-/ Well, considering that, this is going to be sketchy; I don't have time for a full-blown AAR) Ran a Full Thrust game for a handful of Johns Hopkins Campus students that involved a combined FSE/ESU task force going up against a fairly mobile NAC group who was defending a planet (the ESU/FSE force was to come in, knock aside what defenders there might be, and then initiate planetary bombardment in preparation for invasion - this all takes place during the Third Solar War). The NAC was a hodge-podge collection of ships including a light carrier, a battleship, an AEGIS battlecruiser, some escort/medium cruisers, light cruisers, and a couple of destroyers. The ESU had a similar force, except they had no carrier or battleship; instead, they had a superdreadnought. The NAC learned how hard the SD hits at long range. The battle was fierce, but due to bad planning and bad die rolls on the NAC side, the ESU/FSE Combined Force all but totally swept the NAC from the skies. Only the light carrier escaped, with a few surviving fighters. The ESU/FSE lost 3 medium ships and that..was it! The planet was then bombarded, and the troop transports entered unopposed, landing their troops (and setting up a scenario for Dirtside II) Mk [26 Mar 99]

The last game I took part in was actually more of a demonstration. I supplied the ships and taught the rules for 4 players to learn Full Thrust. This was approximately 4000 pts a side of NAC vs. Sa'Vasku. My last game as a player would have been in Keith Watts' Solar Thrust game at the Ground Zero Games East Coast Convention.

I expect some players will be updating their initial reports after Battlefleet Gothic becomes available. One thing you might want to look at (though it goes against the grain of the page) is whether people are playing by e-mail due to lack of local competition. Also, you might want to distinguish between last game played and last game GMed. I'm slowly assembling a Superior miniatures fleet. My mad friend Jim has even more obscure stuff. [26 Mar 99]

I ran a convention game of Full Thrust as an attack against an escorted convoy. Each team choose an attacking force and scored points for damage to the freighters. The game was run twice with both teams as attacker and defender. [26 Mar 99]

Fighter combat using Full Thrust rules. prior to that was a standard FT game at the East coast Ground Zero Games Co. [26 Mar 99]

Forces: Dilgar - 2 Targath Strike Cruisers 1 Protra Scoutship 2 Ochlavitwa Destroyers 1 Tratharti Gunship 48 Thorun Dartfighters (me) Hyach - 1 Urutha Kal Dreadnought 1 Irokai Kam Battlecruiser 1 Tachila Kor Scout Carrier 1 Senchlat Kes Attack Scout 1 Okath Kat Fast Frigate 25 Dartha Medium Fighters 5 Dovoch Interdict Fighters (2 friends) Period: Late War - all refits in place. We played all known 2E rules, except we didn't use called shots (for the Point Pulsar), as I think they skew the game. In the absence of 2E critical charts, we gave a +4 to critcal rolls caused by Masers (formerly known as Gamma Lasers). The Hyach are in close formation, except for the Okath Kat, which is split off with 2 flights of fighter for cover I have 2 groups: the Ochlavitas, and the Targaths and Tratharti. Each is supported by 4 flights of Thoruns. The Protra trailed behind. For the first three turns, everyone turtles heavily, and closes with no fire exchanged. Turn 3 The 2 Ochlavitas take the front off of the Senchlat Kes, 4 flights of Thoruns maul the Okath Kat, stripping 3 ML, and causing an Engine and a Reactor crit. The thoruns pay a heavy price as they lose 14 of their number to Darthas and Masers. Although about half of my flights are tasked with anti-fighter work, no Hyach fighters are lost (I _hate_ the chart). The Hyach ships hold their fire, mostly. Turn 4 Much fire exchanged, fleets at close range now. The wounded Senchlat kes is killed by Targath 1. The Irokai Kam loses it's fwd. section to the Tratharti and Targath 1, while a flight of Thoruns remove it's stbd. weapons. The Urutha Kal loses it's Spinal Laser to an Ochlavita at point blank range, also suffering moderate structural damage. The Okath Kat's suffering continues, taking another engine crit. , and a C&C crit.from fighters.the Tachila Kor recieves light damage from some Thoruns.Fighter combat is more even this turn, with the hyach losing 7 fighters to 6 Thoruns killed. The Hyach returned fire, killing Targath 2 with short-range hits from a Spinal Laser, and a Mega Plasma Cannon, plus lighter weapons (actually, it took enough damage to kill the facing structure, the primary structure, and the far side structure, with damage left over!).Targath 1 took heavy stbd. structure damage from the Okath Kat. Ochlavita 1 recieves a Spinal Laser hit at 1 hex range, but only loses it'd Main thrust, and some structure (!). Turn 5 Fighters continue hitting the Okath Kat, which loses 7 more power, and it's computer. The Tachila Kor is hit by the Tratharti and Targath 1, but is still mostly okay. Ochlavita 2 takes the main thrust off of the Urutha Kal. In return, Ochlavita 1 loses it's rear hull, Targath 1 loses it's stbd. side, and the Tratharti's rear is hanging by a thread. 15 Darthas and Dovochs remain, and 20 Thoruns. We had to call it here as it was midnight, and snowing, and 2 of us had a 1 1/2 hour drive home. It was a good game, the Dilgar had an edge, but the outcome was by no means assured. Lessons The Hyach should have opened fire at long range - it's their biggest advantage. Dartha / Dovoch flights are *vicious*, plus the ability to interdict a whole flight makes it very hard to hit ships protected by Dovochs with fighters, much less the flights themselves. I used to prefer the Tratharti to the Ochlavita, but as I play, this is changing - The Ochlavita has an impressive ability to get behind an enemy and stay there. One of my opponents mistook the "K" in tachila Kor for an "H", leading to a truly humiliating local sobriquet for this fine ship... . -Kle. [26 Mar 99]

We have been introducing new players to the new Full Thrust movement & weapons systems (in the Full Thrust fleet book). To keep things easy for the new players, we use basic forces for each player, and the ships on each side are almost identical, so the emphasis of the game has been movement & maneuvering for position. IMO, this makes for a better game. [26 Mar 99]