SPACE VOTING RESULTS:
Voters, By Scale - 1:3900

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]

we use full thrust to fight our tactical battles but use an out of print game called LAN 4000 to to plot strategic movement of fleets. In our latest installment of our campaign game we fought for the vega system. The number of ships in the tray (see lan 4000 rules) was kept to a maximum of ten per fleet, and whenever opposing fleets met, you had 1500 pts to divide up any way you wanted among your fleet of up to ten ships. No Nova cannons were allowed and the advanced fighter rules in More thrust were not used except for endurance. The no weaopons facing the rear arc rule was upheld as well. fleet vega 1 was defending with 8 ships of light cruiser and below. fleet antares 4 was attacking with 7 ships ( we did away with lan 4000's combat resolution as full thrust took it's place) including one light carrier. battle resulted in vega 1 withdrawing to anearby star in the same sector to await reinforcements with the loss of two cruisers and a destroyer. antares4 lost t!

he a light criuiser and had moderate damage to the battle cruiser and light carrier. One flight of fighters was mauled in an adaf crossfire ( one survivor). that's all for now. [5 Apr 99]

My last SF starship combat game was a B5 scenario I ran at our local club, set during the Narn-Centauri war and using the TBP variant of the Full Thrust rules. An EarthForce squadron was recovering a covert science team from a system in a backwater near the Narn-Centauri border (unspecified research was going on). A nasty three-way action ensued which saw the Earthers getting away largely undamagedbut with the CO of one of the cruisers facing a court martial for opening fire contrary to orders. [2 Apr 99]

My last game involved a playtest of B5W, flying EA dreadnoughts against a mixed force of Non-ALigned worlds ships, slaughtering equal sized forces of Hyach and Cascor ships in a close range slug fest...gruesome. [1 Apr 99]

The FSE (Federal Stats Europa) under the command of Admiral Fulton entered a so called friendly system to find an ESU (Eurasian Solar Union) fleet orbiting the gas giant. In a moment of sheer lunacy the FSE frigates and corvettes raced in an break neck speed only to disappear in clouds of expanding gas before doing much beyond minimal damage to the dasardly ESU. Then the main FSE group (carrier, heavy cruiser etc.) swung around to the port and proceeded to pepper the ESU escorts with SMs (missiles) while some torpoedo fighters went in for the kill... unfortunately the ESU have damn fine PDS and Interceptors (fighters made to dogfight) so not too many SMs made it in and only two (out of 42) fighters made it to their target. Then the ultimate insult... Admiral Fultons penchant for rolling ones surfaced and zip damage was inflicted. At this point the ESU were slowly plodding forward (and had to get home for dinner) and the FSE was fast running out of munitions and table...erm solar system so the FSE made the decision to gracefully withdraw (and buy some dice that know what a 6 looks like!) [30 Mar 99]

Competition: 2750 pts Full Thrust each side, My Star Fleet Battles Andromedans (masquerading as Neu Swabian League) vs New Anglian Confederation. The initial missile strikes were dissipated by my opponent's excellent temporary withdrawal of the anti-missile ships outside my beam-armed ships range, followed by a swift advance exactly at the time they were needed. Having shot my bolt, my opponent methodically dismantled my fleet in a war of attrition I couldn't win. Good game, I enjoyed it immensely. [29 Mar 99]

Last Space Game I played was a Star Fleet Battles tournament deul, played FtF with someone in our local gaming group. I was flying ISC vs his Hydran, who conceded after 4 turns, mostly due to his ship being more damaged than mine. [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]

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]

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]

Babylon 5 Wars by AoG is the most recent I have played. I played a loyalist EA fleet against a Minbari player. I look forward to the second edition rules, as this has promise to be a very good system. It would be much better as a campaign however (which I have written adhoc rules for that we use). I did just purchase Battlefleet Gothic today, and it looks very good, much better than the first rather lame version.

I really wish Fasa would bring back the Tactical combat simulator for another setting, as they lost the Trek license. Perhaps their Battlespace game setting which is NOT a very good game in itself. The Tactical Simulator is one of the best ever done. Pity it is so hard to find now. I do plan to convert a great deal of universes over to it in the future. [27 Mar 99]

Battle Station Assault - A Klingon D7C, F5lL and Lyran CL attack a Federation base defended with a monitor. A mistake on my (Federation) part leaves the base destroyed and the monitor untouched while the Klingon force is crippled. Kept the monitor too far back...should have let it take a few hits. [26 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 space game I played was a "Fly 'Til You Die" scenario for Silent Death at a local game store.

I was doing rather well, having just upgraded my ship to a "Dolphin", when my so-called "friend" decided that, if he was going to lose (which he was), he was going to take me down with him.

I spent the next five turns losing the initiative roll to my "friend", who proceeded to follow me around the starmap, taking pot shots at my behind.

By the time someone rescued me (with the strategic application of a Mk. 50 torpedo... =), I had taken enough damage and wasted enough time that victory was no longer within my grasp. That's okay though; revenge can be a wonderful thing... =) [26 Mar 99]