Full Thrust might be in print, but if not the books are available as PDFs from Ground Zero Games (
www.gzg.com, I think).
You've got:
Full Thrust (the core rules)
More Thrust (expansion, but almost totally obsolete due to the Fleet Books)
Fleet Book 1 (stats for the first four human fleets that GZG did miniatures for, a new ship design system, tweaks to some rules and a new vector movement system)
Fleet Book 2 (stats for the three alien fleets, and additions to the ship design system to include their unique weapons and systems).
In my experience, the game handles a dozen or so ships; fewer, and there's not enough going on to make an interesting game, more and it gets unwieldy.
Ships range from corvettes half an inch long with three or four damage points to 6"-long or more superdreadnoughts with a hundred or so (officially, that is - there's no real limit in the design rules).
Movement is pre-plotted; at the start of the turn, for each ship you write down a movement order, saying how much it will accelerate/decelerate by, and if it will turn (something like speed +3, S3, although the precise notation isn't important; that's increase speed by 3"/turn and turn 3 clockface points to starboard). Movement is done using a 12-point "clockface" while fire arcs are in six equal arcs; Front is 11 o'clock to 1 o'clock, Starboard front is 1 to 3, Starboard rear is 3 to 5, etc. If your ships are on 6- or 12-sided bases this is easy to visualise, although not necessary; all measurements are to and from the supporting pole anyway.
Once you've written movement orders for your fleet, you launch fighters, torpedoes, missile salvoes, that sort of thing. Then all ships move simultaneously. There's no such thing as an accidental collision, and even deliberate collisions are difficult to do, if at all. Once the ships have moved, you check to see if any missiles or fighter groups are close enough to enemy ships to attack. Then you do shooting; by the book it alternates between ships on each side, although I think we've always just counted it as simultaneous - if a ship gets destroyed it can still attack that turn.
Most shooting is a matter of counting up how many attack dice you get and rolling them. 4 or 5 is one hit, 6 is two hits and you roll another die; keep doing that as long as you roll sixes. The target ship ticks off damage boxes. The damage boxes are organised in four equal rows; when you get to the end of a row, you make a "threshold check" for each system (weapons, engines, launch bays, fire controls, point defence, etc) to see if it's knocked offline. When you run out of damage boxes, you're dead.
Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty quick. The writing of orders doesn't take any longer, IME, than fiddling with the dials in X-Wing or Star Wars: Armada.
As well as basic beam weapons (which lose attack dice as the range increases), you've got:
pulse torpedoes: short-ranged, with a to-hit roll that gets harder the more the range increases, but always do the same damage if they hit (
D6 damage points).
salvo missiles: launched and positioned
before ships move, so you need to have a good eye for where you think the enemy will end up. If you position them right, a salvo of six missiles homes in on an enemy ship. That ship can try to shoot them down with point defense fire (as can nearby friendly fighters), and any that make it through do
D6 damage points
each - a couple of well-placed salvoes can gut a battleship.
Fighters - they're launched from carriers and move before big ships, like missiles. However, they stay out on the board, and can make a numberof attacks before having to land and re-arm/refuel. They can also attack each other.
Point defence batteries, which can only be used to shoot down attacking fighters and missiles.
shields, which reduce the effectiveness of beam weapon damage dice (l1 shields mean that 4s don't hit; l2 shields mean that 5s don't hit and 6s only get one hit, although they stil get re-rolls)
The first Fleet Book has four fleets, each one of the original spaceship ranges from GZG;
The New Anglian Confederation - English-speaking North America, the
UK and some other conquests, and their colony planets, all under the British crown - your bog-standard "generalist" fleet, with plenty of medium-weight beam weapons and shielded ships
The Federal Stats Europa - the western and southern European states - France, Spain, Italy, Greece, etc. They have large, fast ships with heavy missile armaments.
The Neu Swabian League - Central and Eastern Europe; mostly Germany, Austria, etc. Slow, massively armoured ships with heavy armament.
The Eurasian Solar Union - Russia, the ex-Warsaw Pact states and China - Their ships tend to feature fewer, larger beam weapons, and their superdreadnought mounts the largest beam weapon in the official fleet lists
Fleet Book 2 adds three alien races:
The Kra'Vak - aggressive warrior aliens who look
nothing at all like the Predator.
Their ships have advanced drives so they're more manoeuvrable than a human ship of the same overall thrust (basic drives can only use half their thrust rating to turn; advanced drives can use the full rating). They use railguns rather than beams or missiles (these have a to-hit roll like a pulse torpedo, although are longer-ranged, and do a fixed amount of damage if they hit, ignoring shields and punching through armour).
The
Sa'Vasku - a fleet of living ships. These ships also have advanced drives, and can regenerate lost hull points.
The Phalon - roughly equivalent to humans in technology, although they use organic technology (unlike the
Sa'Vasku, their ships aren't living, just made from organic materials). Their signature weapon is the plasma bolt, which fires like a missile salvo then explodes, damaging all nearby ships.
Since the publication of those books in 1998-2000, a few other fleets have been added; the UN Space Command, Japanese, New Israeli, Islamic Confederation, Scandinavian and new fleets for the original four human fleets.There are unofficial stats for all of those (and a few new systems) floating about the internet.
Of course, you can make up your own ships and fleets (even combining the four different technologies, although it advises against it). The owner of the Starship Combat News website used to put on big participation games at GenCon featuring the Star Wars Galactic Empire vs the Federation, Colonial Battlestars and the like.
There are a few flaws; firstly, the official points value system tends to under-cost large ships, although there's a suggested fix. If you're using home-designed fleets, it's probably worth checking with your opponent; some combinations will lead to unbalanced battles. The rules for fighters are a perennial issue, too; if one fleet loads up on fighters, they'll either totally dominate (if the number of fighters overwhelms the enemy's point defence fire) or get crushed (if they don't). Either way, it can lead to a rather one-sided game if you're not careful.
11527pts Total (7400pts painted)
4980pts Total (4980pts painted)
3730 Total (210pts painted) 
