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 mdauben wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Out of curiosity, what is your opinion of the two ships below that I mentioned? I don't know if you're familiar with them so will post pics.

Ah! Those I actually like and agree they do fit in the TOS aesthetic. If fact, they are really good job of looking like they belong in the TOS universe.

When I replied, I was thinking of this USS Archer:

Spoiler:

This one IMO does not fit into the TOS style and while its might look cool as a TNG or later design, it does not look like it belongs to the same fleet as the TOS Enterprise.

Yeah, that one definitely doesn't fit given it's a post-TNG era design with Sovereign style bussard collectors. I collected almost dozen TOS designs for my stat sheets and only one I would say is appropriate to call a kit bash to some degree (the Hood). I just wish SFB would reimagine their fleets with more new lines and shapes keeping with TOS aesthetics and less resized components and tweaked engine placement on tech manual ships.

Looks like ADB put up a bunch more ships on their Shapeways yesterday - can get expensive!

petrov27 wrote:
Looks like ADB put up a bunch more ships on their Shapeways yesterday - can get expensive!

Those prices are nothing compared to the prices a lot of other miniature companies charge. The most expensive ship I saw on there was a Seltorian Dreadnought for US$18. That's nothing when you look at how much Gee Dub is charging for a Primaris Captain for US$35.

This is SFB. You don't need more than a couple ships. Fleet warfare? Hah! SFB is NOT a fleet game, but a one on one dueling game. A duel might only take an hour or two, but as soon as you add more than a couple ships to each side... prepare to play for an entire day. LOL

It's interesting that they have plain, "blank" ships for say, $8, and then much more detailed ships with panel lines and details for $9. At that kind of price point, I wonder if anyone really orders the blanks?

 Tamwulf wrote:
Those prices are nothing compared to the prices a lot of other miniature companies charge. The most expensive ship I saw on there was a Seltorian Dreadnought for US$18. That's nothing when you look at how much Gee Dub is charging for a Primaris Captain for US$35.

That does suggest (possibly unintentionally) that there is any semblence of fairness to a monopose primaris captain being priced at $35. I won't comment on the SFB pricing as frankly I think shapeways in general overcharges IMO which isn't ADB's fault... but comparing to GW character pricing is like asking getting hit on the toe with a hammer isn't that bad because you could have requested a baseball bat to the face. In the end, it's all optional.

 Tamwulf wrote:

It's interesting that they have plain, "blank" ships for say, $8, and then much more detailed ships with panel lines and details for $9. At that kind of price point, I wonder if anyone really orders the blanks?

I think it came down to, when they were posting the initial renderings for those ship on their forum and face book page, some people really liked the extra panel detail, and some really liked the "smooth" versions, so in the end they put both up on Shapeways.


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 warboss wrote:
I just wish SFB would reimagine their fleets with more new lines and shapes keeping with TOS aesthetics and less resized components and tweaked engine placement on tech manual ships.

I think part of the issue is that the game was created by engineers, not graphic artists. Most of the Klingon, Federation, and (early) Romulan ships are just basic changes to the TOS originals. Bigger, smaller, more engines, whatever. Even the "new" empires ships are all fairly basic shapes with no really exciting designs or details.

I agree with your assessment but I'd also point out that they've also had roughly 40 years to hire actual artists with an eye for asthetics to (re)design ships in the meantime. Their designs were likely impressive in the 70's, par for the course in the 80's, nostalgic by the 90's, and something less flattering this millenium IMO. In the end, I see it as a lost opportunity personally but I don't begrudge SFB fans their classic game (and ships) either.

 Tamwulf wrote:


Those prices are nothing compared to the prices a lot of other miniature companies charge. The most expensive ship I saw on there was a Seltorian Dreadnought for US$18. That's nothing when you look at how much Gee Dub is charging for a Primaris Captain for US$35.

Well that would be if printed in the cheapest worst resolution material, right? If you go for the better FUD or Black Hi-Def Acrylic things get mucho more expensive (with the FUD the Seltorian goes up to $29.99 and the Black hi-def $59.99!)

My impression was that the base material (white strong flexible) would result in a pretty rough surfaced miniature with details compromised? I currently dont have any of these minis on hand to compare though - I have some on order in different materials to see what they look like...

Amazed, still have SFB in a box somewhere (and Federation & Empire to go with it), not played in like two decades though.

Never managed to get it off the ground as local group were not interested in a card counters game.

Q: how hard is this stuff to get hold of in the UK?

Awesome! Star Fleet Battles is back in the gaming news (sort of).

I've never gotten miniatures to play my SFB games with, but lately I've been thinking about it. I never really get to play though, as no one around me has ever even heard of the game. I get stuck just playing the solitaire scenarios (which are certainly challenging to a point). I've got a ton of the expansion modules for the game. The Shapeways miniatures are a really cool idea, actually, even if they are fairly expensive. I play 40k so I've got no right to complain about how expensive any other game is, really.

I wish I could generate some local interest in SFB, but I think an earlier poster in this thread nailed it when they said that younger people simply won't want to take the time to actually learn all the complex rules and stuff and do all the bookkeeping. Which says a lot about the younger generation, really (yes, my generation).

OP, please do show us pics of your painted ships when you get them done, I'd be thrilled to see them!

I dug out my old Captain's Edition rulebook the other day (what the hell did I spill on it? Yuk!) and flicked through it.

Yep, lot of stuff in there.

Then, I checked out the Cadet's Edition file that I had lurking around somewhere and it also has a lot of stuff in it! So much so, that I'm not really seeing the point that I'd ever need to go beyond them.

Cadet's Edition is a remarkably thorough ruleset.

Captains edition got me through my A Levels, and taught me more about probability than mathematics lessons ever did.

Great days, a few of us had it, getting various supplements to try and gain an advantage...

Remember a glorious game where a friend of mine had the X ship play test pack he thought I didn't know about (I'd seen it but don't own it so had a rough idea), I had C1, with the Hydrans... Which he hadn't seen in action or studied much.

His X Romulans decided the best way to handle the stinger fighters was to get to point blank range and use the X-Phasers on them...

Ahhh great days...




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 ZergSmasher wrote:
Awesome! Star Fleet Battles is back in the gaming news (sort of).

I've never gotten miniatures to play my SFB games with, but lately I've been thinking about it. I never really get to play though, as no one around me has ever even heard of the game. I get stuck just playing the solitaire scenarios (which are certainly challenging to a point). I've got a ton of the expansion modules for the game. The Shapeways miniatures are a really cool idea, actually, even if they are fairly expensive. I play 40k so I've got no right to complain about how expensive any other game is, really.

I wish I could generate some local interest in SFB, but I think an earlier poster in this thread nailed it when they said that younger people simply won't want to take the time to actually learn all the complex rules and stuff and do all the bookkeeping. Which says a lot about the younger generation, really (yes, my generation).

OP, please do show us pics of your painted ships when you get them done, I'd be thrilled to see them!

Its weird really, SFB has this reputation of being hard to play and learn, its actually very simple and that mahoosive rulebook is large for a reason - its amazingly well structured and written, you also don't really need it to play.

Nor did I ever find the game as being slow, a duel over a lunch break (indeed four/five way duels) were normal, three ship squadron actions didn't take vastly longer...

Fleet game against a mined starbase.... umm... yeah

But an amazing game, I think its problem these days is people don't seem to want to play with card counters, but I found teaching people to play SFB took a couple of introduction games with the basic ships then build from there, heck the Captains Edition had introductory stuff in there - combat with phasers only, then photons, then disruptors, then overloads etc, and if you start with the basic set you are good to go

leopard wrote:
Its weird really, SFB has this reputation of being hard to play and learn, its actually very simple and that mahoosive rulebook is large for a reason - its amazingly well structured and written, you also don't really need it to play.

Nor did I ever find the game as being slow, a duel over a lunch break (indeed four/five way duels) were normal, three ship squadron actions didn't take vastly longer...

Fleet game against a mined starbase.... umm... yeah

But an amazing game, I think its problem these days is people don't seem to want to play with card counters, but I found teaching people to play SFB took a couple of introduction games with the basic ships then build from there, heck the Captains Edition had introductory stuff in there - combat with phasers only, then photons, then disruptors, then overloads etc, and if you start with the basic set you are good to go

YMMV but I think the rep is well deserved. While each individual microstep was indeed logical and easy to follow, I found the sheer number of steps to do a basic thing like complete a single ship's turn to be cumbersome and inelegant and as a whole hard (or more accurately for me not worth it) to learn in totality. There was none of the elegance in abstraction that games started getting in the 1990's as the game was a product of its more sim oriented time. Like classic battletech, I used to try SFB every 5-10 years to see if it changed or if my own tastes had but I've never found either to my liking. Obviously, again, YMMV as it's simply a preference and not a hard fact but what is a hard fact is that games long ago moved away from the multistep hard core sim to more abstracted "arcade" style tabletop games and so did the customers. The first impression a 32 step impulse turn system makes on a modern gamer is usually not positive regardless of whether or not the full tactical understanding of the system renders that first impression inaccurate.... those players will in most cases never give the game a chance long enough to learn that.

It is an amazing game, but it does get pretty deep and complex at points. If you are playing with the full ECM, reserve power, drone builds etc it gets complex pretty fast.

I still recall playing this as a high school student - a friend worked at a local hobby shop and there were frequent tournaments for a number of years that he ran. Turn out was always pretty good - I think the local college students were into it as well as some high-schoolers like I was. These were great times even with just the basic hex map and chits for ships.

Dug out my old mini collection last week - all the smaller line including the Zocchi Federation plastics - dates on some are 1980 - god Im old... Ended up spending a good part of the weekend putting some of them together and painting.

I am pretty excited to see how the larger Shapeways-printed ships turn out - should take delivery of a few this week hopefully....

Think that I was playing around A Levels time as well, leopard!

I have to admit that in this day and age, I'd have a hard time just playing with the counters - the National Cheese Emporium minis would entice me to give it a whirl, as would trying something like a 10 Impulse system - anyone here ever tried something like that?

Oh the game is intimidating without a doubt and certainly more at the simulation end than the abstraction end, to me that was the appeal.

Easy to discover though that while yes there were a lot of steps a lot of them applied to stuff you didn't do all that often and unless your opponent was doing something else unusual the exact order often didn't matter much.

The R1 module with the full reference chart of the impulse sequence helped a hell of a lot though.

Was good though the way it was structured so later stuff jigsawed in perfectly


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petrov27 wrote:
It is an amazing game, but it does get pretty deep and complex at points. If you are playing with the full ECM, reserve power, drone builds etc it gets complex pretty fast.

I still recall playing this as a high school student - a friend worked at a local hobby shop and there were frequent tournaments for a number of years that he ran. Turn out was always pretty good - I think the local college students were into it as well as some high-schoolers like I was. These were great times even with just the basic hex map and chits for ships.

Dug out my old mini collection last week - all the smaller line including the Zocchi Federation plastics - dates on some are 1980 - god Im old... Ended up spending a good part of the weekend putting some of them together and painting.

I am pretty excited to see how the larger Shapeways-printed ships turn out - should take delivery of a few this week hopefully....

The only bits we as a group ever found overly complicated were minefields for how long they took to play and tactical intelligence which was great fun but slowed the game down too much.

Hidden cloak was good but really needed a games master and energy balance due to damage was more trouble than it was worth, thankfully optional though

leopard wrote:
Never managed to get it off the ground as local group were not interested in a card counters game.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
I've never gotten miniatures to play my SFB games with, but lately I've been thinking about it. I never really get to play though, as no one around me has ever even heard of the game.

It has actually been as long since I last played but just recently I found out a couple of local gamers were old players, and we got a couple more interested so we've been doing some games using the Federation Commander (simplified SFB) rules. As far as card counters game, except for my first few games with the original "pocket edition" back in the mid-70s, I've always played the game with miniatures.

Q: how hard is this stuff to get hold of in the UK?

I don't think ADB has a distributer in the UK so while you can order direct from their US headquarters, shipping can be prohibitive. As far as the new miniatures, I know Shapeways ships to the UK and I think they have an EU production facility? Beyond that I can't comment on the shipping costs.

OP, please do show us pics of your painted ships when you get them done, I'd be thrilled to see them!

I've got my first two batches of Shapeways ships primed, but I've been tied up getting some WWII stuff assembled and painted for a league we are running at the local shop. I'm going to try and paint up at least one of two ships this weekend, though, and I'll definitely post some pics when I do.

Figured getting them here would be a PiTA, looked at Attack Vector Tactical and the likely shipping and customs charges just put me off.

May have another go at getting some playing it, aware at least one plays Federation Commander so may work.

Great days, great memories

I started collecting Starfleet Battles ships five years ago. I had gone from collecting Micro Machines ships, to Wizards of the Coast Star Wars Starship minis, to Babylon 5 Wars ships after getting into Babylon 5 as a whole and discovering a group who still played Babylon 5 Wars. One of these people sold his Starfleet Battles minis collection and I nabbed the Federation Ships.

My father told me stories of when he played Starfleet Battles in his College years; one of how he beat a Constitution with a D7, one of how the Hydrans were especially weird, and one of how a Lyran player accidentally blew up his own PFs (gunships) with an ESG from the carrier.

Out of curiosity, I looked up what ships I had, and discovered that Starfleet Battles was still around! I started collecting the 2400 series of ships, as they matched the size of FASA ships (I started collecting them too) and the ships I already had were 2400 series as well.

I've often been unimpressed with the quality over the years; I've had to correct many a blemish, flash, and mismatched mould issue, and there are still several ships in my collection that I am unhappy with. Thus, I am excited for the new Shapeways store. As they're doing "unpopular variants," I hope to see some variants of the ones I would really rather replace. (They would also be good models for me to demo with).

You should try the A Call to Arms version of Starfleet Battles or look for the Orion Pirates Video game since it has all the ships and uses SFB rules.

Arcanis161 wrote:
I've often been unimpressed with the quality over the years; I've had to correct many a blemish, flash, and mismatched mould issue, and there are still several ships in my collection that I am unhappy with. Thus, I am excited for the new Shapeways store. As they're doing "unpopular variants," I hope to see some variants of the ones I would really rather replace. (They would also be good models for me to demo with).

Actually, the latest FB post from ADB indicated that their plan now is to eventually transition all the miniatures to Shapeways. Evidently, as molds wear out, they will drop the metal version of the miniature rather than replacing them. The Hydrans, Lyrans, and Seltorians already have the "core" ships (CA, CL, DD and FF) uploaded. We may see the core uploads for the other Empires trickling into Shapeways as time passes.

leopard wrote:
Its weird really, SFB has this reputation of being hard to play and learn, its actually very simple and that mahoosive rulebook is large for a reason - its amazingly well structured and written, you also don't really need it to play.

The advantage of being written by engineers!

Really, the rules are amazingly well organized and its usually easy to find what you are looking for. IMO the main drawback of the game is not that its hard to lear and play, but that it takes so long. Running each ship is so detailed that trying to fight a fleet battle can take days (Believe me, I've done it!)

 warboss wrote:
I agree with your assessment but I'd also point out that they've also had roughly 40 years to hire actual artists with an eye for asthetics to (re)design ships in the meantime.

I can only offer that they are a small company and a lot of the work is done by dedicated fans. Plus Steve Cole holds on to absolute control of the smallest detail of their product like a miser with his last penny. Nothing is getting done in their product line unless he has his hands in it. I think that was one of the things that killed the Mongoose partnership. Everything had to go back and forth between the US and TX for his approval.



BTW, ADB just uploaded a new batch of miniatures to Shapeways on Sept. 1. They had told us to expect a couple dozen new ships, but they ended up with over fifty new designs, including the enormous Klingon B-10 battleship, the Federation Galactic Survey Cruiser, The Romulan Flacon Mauler, and several other new ships for the Tholians, Hydrans and Lyrans as well as new Gunboats for a half dozen more factions.

leopard wrote:
Its weird really, SFB has this reputation of being hard to play and learn, its actually very simple and that mahoosive rulebook is large for a reason - its amazingly well structured and written, you also don't really need it to play.

Yeah, I remember reading through the FC rulebook when it first hit (never played SFB) and being amazed at how well organized the rules were and how easy it was to cross-reference different rules with the simple chapter/subsection/paragraph nomenclature he uses. It makes a rulebook look more like a school textbook, but it is incredibly handy. I wish more games used that structure, the number-letter-number makes it easier to find rules than even the best index&page# system.

I have a fair number of the Shapeways SFB ships in hand now and they are really nice. I did spend the $$ to get them in FUD and some in FXD - very happy with how they turned out

 warboss wrote:

 mdauben wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Yeah, I know but I keep hoping that they'll sell the license to someone else who will make newer looking ships in the TOS theme like the Archer and Sentinel classes (or pretty much any TOS ship I have in my fan supplement).

I guess its a matter of taste. I know a lot of people (including myself) dislike newer ship designs which supposedly coexist with or even predate the TOS Enterprise exactly because they don't match the aesthetics of the TOS ships. They look good as modern scifi designs, but they don't look like they are several engineering generations older than the TOS Enterprise. I think ADB has generally stayed true to the aesthetics of the old TV show in their expansions of the existing fleets and new empires and I'm quite happy with them. YMMV, obviously.

Out of curiosity, what is your opinion of the two ships below that I mentioned? I don't know if you're familiar with them so will post pics.

Spoiler:

Do you feel they don't stay true (at their core) to AOS asthetics? To me they evolve them but are still quintessentially TOS and not just simple kitbashes or resizes like so many SFB ships imo.

Okay, what is that top ship? I need it in my life like I need air...

It's Bill Krause' s Sentinel cruiser and an actual 1/350 scale model.

https://m.facebook.com/bill.krause.31/albums/10200758560284568/

It's my favorite fan design and TOS era ship and the one that got me back into FASA trek gaming (hence why it's on the cover of my fan supplement).

Can't see the link as I don't Facebook. But is it something I can actually buy, or is it just a one off custom?

Custom build one off so far. He had a photobucket account with pics but that got messed up with their switch a few months back. Some of the pics are still viewable here in his wip thread.

http://www.resinilluminati.com/showthread.php?t=16496

Do wish when companies show CGI renders of something in white they would use something other than a white background..

Loved the SFB book for the organisation, the only game where I've ever seem an expansion that was just an enhanced index, charts, tables and annexes and it was worth buying.

Have used the same alphanumeric system to organise commercial bids & tenders and had it well received by customers who praised the way they could find stuff, of course the sales team hated it as its harder to hide stuff..

As you say, the benefits of being written by engineers and having one individual in overall control.

Pity the models are so gosh darned to heck expensive to get hold of in the UK

leopard wrote:
Do wish when companies show CGI renders of something in white they would use something other than a white background..

I think this is a limitation of the Shapeways website, ADB does not have any control of this. I do know there are trying to post up actual photos of the miniatures when they can.

Pity the models are so gosh darned to heck expensive to get hold of in the UK

Is Shapeways shipping expensive to the UK? I thought I had heard they had a EU printing center? I know the metal stuff is expensive outside the US. After the Mongoose partnership fell apart, they were not able to come to an agreement with another UK distributor.

in case anyone wishes to see what the SFB Shapeways printed minis look like...

Painted and decaled 3125 scale Klingon F-5 scout:


More Klingons and Hydrans primered and ready for paint (the small Klingons - E-4 Light Frigates - are the metal SFB line - the rest are Shapeways printed):