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Looks like it also has solo and cooperative play. Cooperative play is a feature that puts it high up on my list.

There's a company in Germany pushing Full Thrust right now, selling 3D printed starter kits and working on a simplified edition of the rules. It's a great system for small engagements.

Irdiumstern wrote:
There's a company in Germany pushing Full Thrust right now, selling 3D printed starter kits and working on a simplified edition of the rules. It's a great system for small engagements.

What's the firm and are they going to do an English translation?

MechWorld and the light version is available in English

I am definitely still in love with Void Admiral. Not only is the rulebook dirt cheap, but the designer has released three free "fleet expansions" which add 3 new fleets.

So now not only is there the normal "Battlefleet Gothic"-feeling fleets, there are new ones like:

-Lost Colony, who play like you would expect Colonials from BSG, with outdated tech but lots of fighter support.

-Void Wraiths, which are essentially Necrons.

-Pack Hunters, which kind of seem like Reavers from Firefly because they like close fighting and boarding actions.

Really happy to be back to a no-nonsense fleet scale game. Lots of spaceship games out there play more like skirmish games, and/or have all sorts of gimmicks that they rely on, rather than just plain "accessibility" and "lots of ships on the table".

DP9 Jovian wars (whas jovian chronicals lightning strike) looks good to, but very hard to get in europe.
It is a bit of a hardcore scyfi and anime world and got some nice looking models.

Going to throw Snap Ships Tactics into the mix. Alot of fun and actively supported. The rules are straightforward and the customization options are huge. The build a ship toy aspect may be cheese to some but I like it and the integration of customizable ships mechanics between the toys and rules is brilliant.

Really though any spaceship game is likely going to be dependent on what local players you can find. I wouldn't necessarily recommend any until you've seen what your pool of opponents is interested in.

Oh yea Snap Ships Tactics is a great system, we found the black faction way stronger than white tho.

Someone mentioned Star Fleet Battles! I have been summoned!

SFB is a massively underrated game system these days. It's a bit dated these days perhaps, and it's definitely crunchy, but there is some serious tactical depth and a pretty large amount of material for it (probably 1500+ ship classes across 50+ races, and hundreds of scenarios/campaigns), and ADB still releases new things for it every now and then. The miniature situation is a bit sketchy right now, as most of their stuff was on Shapeways, but you can absolutely play the game old school with cardboard counters.

If I had time I'd see if I could get some of the local players interested in SFB, but something tells me most of them will just stick with the various GW games (although Battletech is starting to gain a bit of a following locally...).

R. Priestly just released a rule set, called Space Battles. I have the book but haven't played it just yet. It uses decks of playing cards, it is diceless.

 Shrapnelsmile wrote:
R. Priestly just released a rule set, called Space Battles. I have the book but haven't played it just yet. It uses decks of playing cards, it is diceless.

And that is why i will never play it, it has the same problem malafaux had. using cards instead of dice is a hard no.

I don't mind cards if it's fast but Priestly's game has other accessibility issues that will keep it far from most people's tables... like needing a 2" hex grid? And a bucket of tokens marked in card suits. Something so specific would need to be included on a punch-sheet with the rulebook to not be a massive barrier to entry.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Someone mentioned Star Fleet Battles! I have been summoned!

Should add SFB players are, what is the word, fanatics? Most old clubs have one waiting in the darkness, ready to pounce

...and it's definitely crunchy

It is a delightful example of old school game design before we had common access to computers and people deciding some games belonged there

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Someone mentioned Star Fleet Battles! I have been summoned!

Should add SFB players are, what is the word, fanatics? Most old clubs have one waiting in the darkness, ready to pounce

...and it's definitely crunchy

It is a delightful example of old school game design before we had common access to computers and people deciding some games belonged there

They do like to latch on to people who make a terrible mistake by asking what Gorn ships look like.

I still have some tholian ships around here somewhere...

The_Real_Chris wrote:

...and it's definitely crunchy

It is a delightful example of old school game design before we had common access to computers and people deciding some games belonged there

Indeed. Here we have some average SFB players planning their next turn...

Irdiumstern wrote:
There's a company in Germany pushing Full Thrust right now, selling 3D printed starter kits and working on a simplified edition of the rules. It's a great system for small engagements.

I don't know about the German team's work, but Full Thrust "Cross Dimensions" is definitely worth looking at. It's a fan edit of the 2 Full Thrust books plus supplemental material. It's gotten a few updates over the years, most recently in 2021.

https://laranzu.id.au/fullthrust/rules/index.html

The entire Full Trust miniature range is still in production by Ground Zero Games, but one of the great things about Full Thrust is that it's entirely miniatures agnostic with lots of flexibility. Any model line that you like the look of can find a home in that game. I built a fleet of ships from chopped up MWDA construction mechs. Just to send you down another rabbit hole, here's some fanstastic ideas for making your own fleets of ships. http://www.ironhands.com/starcrashmodels.htm

In the end I discovered I'm not a big fan of starship combat (aside from Snap Ships) but several members of our club really like Full Thrust and Cross Dimensions is the edition they prefer.

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Someone mentioned Star Fleet Battles! I have been summoned!

Should add SFB players are, what is the word, fanatics? Most old clubs have one waiting in the darkness, ready to pounce

...and it's definitely crunchy

It is a delightful example of old school game design before we had common access to computers and people deciding some games belonged there

We prefer the term 'totally insane', thank you...

SFB has a crazy steep learning curve, but also the best indexed rulebook ever. Good for cruiser duels (we played a lot with the tournament pack) but does not scale up well. It functions, but trying to coordinate the EA forms for a fleet of ships taking damage was rough.

Old school crunch. I had a lot of fun playing it back in the day, but honestly I prefer smoother systems now.

I thought there was an updates ruleset for Starfleet based gaming.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I thought there was an updates ruleset for Starfleet based gaming.

There is. Federation Commander. It has entirely replaced SFB in my spaceship gaming corner of the world.

Oh, flick games.

There are a bunch of flick games that are inherently silly (flick dice/counters/ships) but they seem to fit sci fi spaceships quite well.

The Starfleet universe has a number of games that more or less do the same thing: SFB for duels, Federation Commander Squadron for a few ships with roughly half the detail, Federation Commander Fleet for a few more ships (and half the detail of the other version), and then there are official partner games like Starmada and A Call to Arms variants.

I personally like the Starmada rules, but realize that they are still a bit crunchy for some, and like most fleet games totally lacking in command and control elements.