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Good day fellow Dakkaites,

I see posts here all the time about BFG, occasionally F:A, and now Dystopian Wars among other games, but I've yet to see any mention to Full Thrust (or any of its permutations like Extreme Thrust). With a fast array of models and a detailed universal set of rules, its a great spaceship game. The extensive custom ship rules allow for balanced customized fleets (especially with the add-ons).

My question is, how many of you have played it/do play it? Do you own any of the original or new models (which are awesome!)? What do you think of it if you have tried it?

TBH, I've heard it mentioned a few times at the stores I've played at, but I've never seen it actually being played. The general impression I've gotten is that it has kind of fizzled as far as popularity goes. Admittedly, this view is mostly the result of anecdotal evidence .

This is on my short list of rule sets to pick up someday, just to read through if nothing else (others include the Saganami Island Tactical Simulator and Starmada).

I've never seen it played outside my club either. The 'president' of our college club is a spaceship table top veteran who co-authored 'A sky full of ships', but remains to this day deeply enamoured with Full Thrust. I've only played BFG a few times so I'm not well acquainted with its rule set, but Full Thrust when compared to Firestorm is much more of a thinking man's game. Simultaneous movement and shooting as well as plotting movement in advance make it more difficult to accurately predict your enemy, this coupled with 60 degree firing arcs often mean it is imperative your predictions are spot on.

Its a fun game, but will take longer to get through a game than other rule sets.

I play it regularly and own a fairly monster fleet for doing so. It's more popular in the UK than the US I think though I know there used to be a US based weekend full thrust meet up for which the designers have done a unique ship cast in the past.

The rules are free to download from the Ground Zero Games Website Using this LINKY you need Fleetbook 2 for the current editions of the rules.

I have seen it played using BFG ships, Star Fleet Battles Miniatures, Firestorm Armada ships, and a host of other readily available ship miniatures.

Go DL it and have some fun!

Ive played FT a few times. I like it. Right now I dont have any ships, but Ive been tempted to get some of the Firestorm Armada ships to use.

Mad4Minis wrote:Ive played FT a few times. I like it. Right now I dont have any ships, but Ive been tempted to get some of the Firestorm Armada ships to use.

The beauty about any spaceship games is that you can use a variety of models. With FT custom ship builder rules, all you have to do is have models and the ship status display printed off. Plus, the GZG ships are excellent and are sold at a good price. I have about 30 NSL ships, and I love them. Just be aware that Firestorm is in a bigger scale than FT models.

Blacksails wrote:

Mad4Minis wrote:Ive played FT a few times. I like it. Right now I dont have any ships, but Ive been tempted to get some of the Firestorm Armada ships to use.

The beauty about any spaceship games is that you can use a variety of models. With FT custom ship builder rules, all you have to do is have models and the ship status display printed off. Plus, the GZG ships are excellent and are sold at a good price. I have about 30 NSL ships, and I love them. Just be aware that Firestorm is in a bigger scale than FT models.

The creation rules are one of the biggest attractions. Ive had small fleets of this and that over the years (Ive owned the game for 11+ years) and as newer and cooler ship minis came to market the old ones were moved along. It just happens that right now I dont have any. Liek I said I think the Firestorm Armada ships will be next.

As Capt_Bowman said the Full Thrust rules are legally available online for free, which is rather nice of the developers/publishers. Also the fan based Full Thrust Cross Dimension seems like a nice collection of changes and updates.

I've had them for quite a while and so far only run a short test game to get a feel for the system. I'd love to sit down and run something like this guy, but alas. Anyways I like the flexibility and the rich design system, but overall I'm still a fan of smaller scale ships (less on the battleship / corvette, more on the dog fighting end of the spectrum).

It's sad to see a lot of these older games unable to retain popularity. I think it's mainly due to the fact that once the rules are complete some of the company's stop doing releases, so then the fan base wanders away. Compare this to GW's approach of constant re-releases and new editions to inject money and revitalize the community (or at least give them something to complain about). I prefer the former approach because I hate rule changes for the sake of change, but yeah, it'd be nice if games like Full Thrust got the attention they deserve.

I've played Full Thrust with my gaming group and there are a couple of guys who play it more often. We use the FT Cross Dimensions rules.

The link that Bosky put up was a trial game, and here's another one http://rpgdiehard.blogspot.com/2010/12/invading-solar-system-with-full-thrust.html

I'm not a big fan of spaceship combat, but I liked it enough to scratchbuild a small fleet.

One of the neat things about GZG is that they are all about the miniatures. They have a couple of quality rulesets, but they don't update them to force you to buy more rules and miniatures. Rather the rules are now free, and they rely on the quality of the miniatures to get you to buy them.

A few notes about the system.
-It's a written orders system where you declare your degree of turning, and acceleration without premeasurement. That means that it takes a bit of getting used to before you can accurately plot out where your ships are going to end up at the end of each turn.

-A standard sized game takes about as long as a 40k game, but with far fewer minatures.

Full Thrust is a lot of fun, though can be a bit much if you play with the Newtonian (as opposed to standard cinematic) movement rules.

As with all spaceship games, I find it hard to transport though.

The ships are varied and nice, so it's quite likely you'll find something your style.

Ive played with a bit of a change to the game. Instead of the preplotted movement I use a different system.

Before the start of the turn the players secretly assign each of their ships a number. This will be the order they are activated in, first a round of movement, then a round of firing. Players then roll a D6 each, higher score going first, starting with the ship they designated 1, then the other player moves his 1 ship, continuing until all ships are done.

All rules for turns, firing, etc still apply. There are some other minor changes, dont remember exactly what they are, been a while since I played.

It works better than it sounds. Makes movement simpler, but still causes you to think ahead, as you dont know what order your opponent will be activating his ships. Also allows you to adapt to your opponents actions abit more as well.

I've got a NSL fleet that I use when I can get to play it.

Only one of the clubs I play in has people who will give non-GW games a go, and that is because the average age of the members is 35.

As for transport... A rolled up battlemat, and the fleet fits into a small carry case. The club has terrain for the games (planets, asteroids, etc) that are used by ALL of the other spaceship games.

Mad4Minis wrote:Ive played with a bit of a change to the game. Instead of the preplotted movement I use a different system.

Before the start of the turn the players secretly assign each of their ships a number. This will be the order they are activated in, first a round of movement, then a round of firing. Players then roll a D6 each, higher score going first, starting with the ship they designated 1, then the other player moves his 1 ship, continuing until all ships are done.

Wow, I really like that change! I'll have to try that out sometime becuase that is just a lot simpler and accomplishes the same thing.

And the new NSL ship designs are excellent!

FT is a solid, enjoyable gaming experience.

The problem is that many clubs are dominated by one system or another and getting people to try something new is hard. Worst of all are the GW orientated places, spaceship game then it has to be BFG, cos everything else is poo. What is more these narrow minded wargamers are usually also quite vocal and will talk down anything you try that is not GW.

Shame really as FT is a great open ended system and like Starmade is on of the best Sci Fi ship combat rulesets out there.

Hmmm...interesting. I've never been "shouted down" by a gaming club about wanting to play something other than BFG, but then I don't play at GW stores much. Most of the time, when BFG is brought up, I have people tell me how they liked playing it way back when, and that it is a shame that GW doesn't support it anymore.

Trying to get a group to try something new isn't always a problem...depends on the group, I guess. For some reason, FT just doesn't seem to have caught on at the places I've played. Maybe I'll read up on it and try to run a couple of demos at my local store...