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I looked around on Dakka and I noticed that there wasn't a thread specific to Star Fleet Battles, so I figured I'd start one and see if it catches on.

For those who don't know, Star Fleet Battles is a simulation-level board game of space combat set in an offshoot universe from the original series of Star Trek. And it is extremely detailed. You literally control nearly every aspect of fighting a starship, from energy allocation to maneuvers to firing weapons to damage control. The rulebook is a pretty hefty tome, and it gets bigger if you pick up any of the various expansions for the game (there are quite a few), but most of it is covering situations and rules interactions that won't come up super often. That's one major upside to the rules IMO; they've covered all the bases so that you don't have to house rule any odd situations. There are a very large number of different playable factions in the game, each with their own technology, tactics, and fluff. Some of these are familiar to fans of Star Trek (Klingons, Romulans, the Federation), while many others are unique to SFB (Lyrans, Hydrans, Andromedans, etc.). There are no races from the later Star Trek series, so you won't see any Cardassians, Borg, Ferengi, or anything else from TNG-onwards. In addition to all of these rules and factions, the game has a great number of scenarios to play out, categorized as general scenarios (situations that happened often, between multiple different adversaries), historical scenarios (which, as you might guess, detail a specific encounter between specific ships/fleets) and monster scenarios (which usually pit a single ship against a dangerous space creature, some of which are player-controlled but others are controlled by the scenario rules and thus can be played solitaire). There are also various campaigns of differing lengths and complexities.

The game itself is played on a hex grid with old-school cardboard counters (like most classic war games of the 1970s-80s, when SFB was first developed), but it can also be played with miniatures, and the game's developers (Amarillo Design Bureau) do produce a bespoke line of miniatures for the game. Miniatures generally require a larger hex grid than the standard one used with the counters, and ADB does make a map like this (complete with hexless tabletop rules). Having recently picked up a few of the miniatures, I can attest that they are generally decent quality, although the stands for them are kind of annoying. In addition, each player will have an Energy Allocation Form and a Ship System Display for each ship they command. This is the part of the game some might find offputting, as there is a fair amount of bookkeeping to track things down (and many optional rules add even more, like drone construction and minefield rules).

As far as game length goes, it depends on the scenario and number/type of ships. Single ship duels can take an hour or less, but a large fleet battle is an all-day affair and could get tedious real fast since you have to do energy allocation for each and every ship in your fleet.

With the game's description out of the way, I'd like to hear about other people's experiences with this awesome game. Show us pictures of any miniatures you've painted, or tell us about an awesome battle you might have played, or maybe just tell what your favorite ship/faction is. I'd really love it if we got a good discussion about the game going, as it really is a classic and there's a reason it's still going 40 years after its initial creation.

Oh man, SFB is one of my all time faves. I have everything produced for the "Doomsday" edition (that is, the latest edition), and grabbed many, many models when ADB did the partnership with Mongoose, as well as a few off Shapeways (mostly all the tournament cruisers). And as they've been releasing new digital versions of old stuff, as well as some new things (helooooo Master Starship books), I'm picking those up, too.

I have actually introduced the game to a few friends in more recent years. A couple really like it, even though it's very, very crunchy by today's gaming standards. One of the more fun recent (pre-COVID) games was 6 players, half playing some Federation ships and the other half the classic match up of Klingons. Everyone had a blast, and it's really interesting to see how important coordinating tactics and so on becomes in fleet games.

Perhaps later I'll see if I can dig up some photos to post.

 Valander wrote:
Oh man, SFB is one of my all time faves. I have everything produced for the "Doomsday" edition (that is, the latest edition), and grabbed many, many models when ADB did the partnership with Mongoose, as well as a few off Shapeways (mostly all the tournament cruisers). And as they've been releasing new digital versions of old stuff, as well as some new things (helooooo Master Starship books), I'm picking those up, too.

I have actually introduced the game to a few friends in more recent years. A couple really like it, even though it's very, very crunchy by today's gaming standards. One of the more fun recent (pre-COVID) games was 6 players, half playing some Federation ships and the other half the classic match up of Klingons. Everyone had a blast, and it's really interesting to see how important coordinating tactics and so on becomes in fleet games.

Perhaps later I'll see if I can dig up some photos to post.

Very cool! I also have pretty much every module for the Captain's Edition except, oddly enough, for the Tournament module (since I don't have any local opponents I haven't seen the point in picking that one up). Pretty much all I do is occasionally play one of the monster scenarios, and I haven't even done that for a couple of years now. I'm really wanting to get back in though, hence this thread. I might see if I can get some local interest in the game going once the pandemic is over, too, although I'm worried that the local gaming community won't have the patience to learn a "crunchy" game like SFB, preferring instead games like X-wing with very basic, arcade-style rules (nothing against X-wing or those type of games though).

I also have gone out of my way to try and find all the solitaire scenarios for the game as that's most of the play I get from SFB. Managed to track down a few of those scenarios in older Captain's Logs, which I downloaded digitally. Pretty cool that you can get that stuff digitally now instead of having to deal with the bulk of all those books, although I do like to have print copies of the actual game modules.

Probably the most recent scenario I played was the Sun Snake monster, using an Iridani ship (from Omega). Kind of made it a bit too easy as the module I chose for the ship was a survey module which makes information-based monsters a breeze. I'm kind of wanting to try the Banshees scenario next, but we'll see.

I actually really like the tournament cruisers (even if you're not doing a tournament), and usually use those for teaching. They tend to be pretty well balanced to each other, and if you take it in stages for introducing mechanics based on just those ships (and the T module rule pack actually helps there, since it tells you what rules are used in tournaments, so you can use that to help trim the fat), it's a little easier to get a feel for each empire and so on. Tournament cruisers are also good for "pick up games" when you don't want to sift through 100+ SSDs to pick a ship based on BPV.

My group had blast with SFB way back in the 90's. It can be crunchy, but then it was less so. It is a more tactical game than a lot of the modern ones, which is a trade-off situation between speed of play etc.

One of my groups all-time favorite moments was our friend Sang, known for doing off-the-wall things and losing constantly, finally...FINALLY!!! about to win a game by firing 6 overloaded photon torpedoes at point blank range...only to somehow miss with every one of them (by rolling all 1's or all 6's...I can't remember). Overloaded Photon Torpedoes! has since been the battle cry for every critical roll in any game we play,.


Sadly, the introduction of shuttles, fighters, mines etc turned the game into Stopwatch battles instead of Starfleet Battles.

Nice to see someone remembering this.

I was into it, until the creator started poisoning it with his personal views on some topics we can't discuss here.

Messes of fighters and PFs definitely make the game a slog, IMO. One of the guys in our group really likes Hydrans, so fighters are unavoidable, but we still usually keep it somewhat manageable.

We did do a couple of games with the full blown dogfighting rules just to see how they were. They were kinda neat, but added a lot more time to the game and not an equal amount of fun, so we just stick with basic fighter operations.

I still haven't put these fools through a starbase assault yet, though. Maybe after covid and when we all have a 3 day weekend...

 Valander wrote:
Messes of fighters and PFs definitely make the game a slog, IMO. One of the guys in our group really likes Hydrans, so fighters are unavoidable, but we still usually keep it somewhat manageable.

We did do a couple of games with the full blown dogfighting rules just to see how they were. They were kinda neat, but added a lot more time to the game and not an equal amount of fun, so we just stick with basic fighter operations.

I still haven't put these fools through a starbase assault yet, though. Maybe after covid and when we all have a 3 day weekend...

I've always imagined carrier group battles could be fun, but labor intensive, especially with the dogfighting rules. I'd still like to try it sometime.

I actually wonder how many SFB players have ever actually done a full-blown starbase assault, especially one with all the minefields, special modules, and maybe make it a Tholian one with defensive webs for extra lolz. Sounds excruciating, and probably the closest thing to the Battle of Wolf-359 that we could get in SFB.

I did a full blown starbase assault once, back in the early 90s, with like 6 of us. Base, minefield, some patrol ships, against a full blown invasion fleet (complete with minesweepers even). It was kind of fun, but very, very intensive on the bookkeeping. I cannot imagine not having it divided up in teams (we had 2 controlling starbase and its support ships, the other 4 were handling 2-4 ships each).

Fleet actions are cool and all, but SFB really doesn't deal well with them if you're trying to manage more than like 3 ships or so each. I tried to get into Federation Commander, which was supposed to be a little lighter game, but it was just too different and yet too similar for me to get into--I just wanted SFB. Did pick up the Call to Arms version by Mongoose with their partnership with ADB, but was not my thing either.

Edit: And oh god, I can only imagine a Tholian base assault. It was bad enough just dealing with a decent Tholian player who effectively used pinwheels and a good layered web. I can't imagine doing it against a starbase.

I've played both Starfleet Battles and Federation Commander.

FedCom is good for players who want a similar game, but that's designed to play faster. On the other hand (imo), the attempts to keep the game simpler but similar created a few problem areas. I haven't played FedCom in quite a while, so it's possible that things have changed. But I always felt as if there was the occasional odd bug in the system if you took it too far out into the weeds.

SFB itself is a pretty good game. I haven't played it in ages, and doubt I'm likely to play it again anytime soon (all of my stuff is long gone). But yeah, it can bog down pretty quickly depending on what you're doing. One of the explanations given for why ADB created FedCom was the comment - "Did anyone ever actually finish a battle between a CVA and C8V with full escorts for both sides?" It's a game that's very rewarding if you're able to properly handle allocating scarce resources (specifically, energy). But that same level of reward means that there's a lot of very careful management required in order to make the most of your ship and its systems.

Should also toss a nod to the Star Trek: Starfleet Command games. The first two games were pretty much video game versions of Starfleet Battles (the third was not).

Yeah, the Starfleet Command, SFC II, and SFC: Orion Pirates were great games, and pretty good for a SFB on video game (they developed them based on SFB rules after all). SFC 3 was just garbage.

I still occasionally play SFC, too. There's actually been some community development on it with updated models and so on, and it can actually run at 4k! Still fun.

Played SFB a ton when I was in high school - friends were into it, plus the local hobby shop had tournaments fairly often. Sooo long ago though like mid 80s (i am old.)

I think eventually it died out in our group due to rules overload, errata, rules lawyering and trying to get everyone on the same page with what all rules/systems would be used for any given game.

I got into SFB miniatures again somewhat recently as they have a ton of offerings on Shapeways that print up very nice in their high def materia. Don't really intend to play again but the minis are nice and I have painted a few up....

 Valander wrote:
Yeah, the Starfleet Command, SFC II, and SFC: Orion Pirates were great games, and pretty good for a SFB on video game (they developed them based on SFB rules after all). SFC 3 was just garbage.

I still occasionally play SFC, too. There's actually been some community development on it with updated models and so on, and it can actually run at 4k! Still fun.

I've been toying with buying SFC as it is available on Steam. I played a little bit of SFC2 and SFC: OP back in the day, but never got real good at it. One thing I do remember was how cool it was to see both the factions/ships and the game mechanics from Star Fleet Battles in a computer game.

Did those games use SFB rules? I missed the golden era of Trek PC games for some reason that I can't fathom... going from the 25th anniversary PC game to Legacy on the xbox 360.

 warboss wrote:
Did those games use SFB rules?

It was in real time but for the most part yes.

 Ahtman wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Did those games use SFB rules?

It was in real time but for the most part yes.

Interesting. I wonder how accurate to the pen and paper version they were... I suppose automation would solve the most common complaint that people have with the game (complexity leading to slow play).

It was fairly accurate to the point where knowing the pnp would help you. For instance Photon Torpedoes are just like they are in the pnp from their shorter range to the effects for overloading them. You can even make suicide shuttles. The ship overlays used a lot of the pnp imagery for things as well.

 warboss wrote:


Interesting. I wonder how accurate to the pen and paper version they were...

It was accurate enough that they basically did word of mouth advertising of it as SFB on a computer (with ADB's permission; there was even some licensing involved, iirc)., and the players - who include a number of crusty old space grognards - openly accepted it as that.

The biggest "non-SFB" thing in the game is that the developers weren't allowed to use the SFB designs of the Gorn ships. A Gorn appears in TOS, but his ship is never shown. So ADB designed the ships on their own. Paramount forced the developers to use a different design, instead (either one that they came up with on their own, or one that had been used in the Starfleet Academy games that came out around the same time). There are also some other differences, such as the Bird of Prey being used for the smaller Klingon ships (such as the E4 and F5). But those differences are purely cosmetic, and don't affect the gameplay.

Cool! That's an interesting mechanic to use in a real time space sim then.

Eumerin wrote:

 warboss wrote:


Interesting. I wonder how accurate to the pen and paper version they were...

It was accurate enough that they basically did word of mouth advertising of it as SFB on a computer (with ADB's permission; there was even some licensing involved, iirc)., and the players - who include a number of crusty old space grognards - openly accepted it as that.

The biggest "non-SFB" thing in the game is that the developers weren't allowed to use the SFB designs of the Gorn ships. A Gorn appears in TOS, but his ship is never shown. So ADB designed the ships on their own. Paramount forced the developers to use a different design, instead (either one that they came up with on their own, or one that had been used in the Starfleet Academy games that came out around the same time). There are also some other differences, such as the Bird of Prey being used for the smaller Klingon ships (such as the E4 and F5). But those differences are purely cosmetic, and don't affect the gameplay.

Actually most of the Hydran ship designs are quite different from SFB as well. And (in SFC2) they had to replace the Kzinti with a new race called the Mirak (who use the Kzinti ship designs from SFB).

Star Trek Online also plays similar to SFB. It's more "tactical simulator" though. It's not too bad.

I remember playing a lot of SFB in High School as well (mid 80's). It was a... complicated game with some ships way better then others. The later expansions... whew! Loved the Andromidans, but man they were broken as ! I played the Lyrans and LDR (Lyran Democratic Republic). But in the end, it was the ISC (Interstellar Concordium) that won me over. Plasmatic Pulse Generator. Oh yeah! LOL When they dropped the X-Ships, it was "Game Over, man! Game over!"

We used the free movement and free fire system. We tried the pre-planned movement and shooting, but games would just take too long and were boring at best. I'm not sure I'd want to revisit the game. Lots of rules. LOTS of rules.

The thing about the giant tome of rules for SFB is that you really only use about 10% of it in 90% of your games. I mean, sure, there's rules covering what happens if you're near a black hole and a pulsar goes off while trying to tractor an enemy ship, but that doesn't show up exactly "often."

X-ships are, meh... I feel they take away from a lot of the interesting part of the game that is the power management. Generally X-ships have the power to do a lot more, and their weapons are more efficient, do more damage, etc., so you're not having to think as hard about the tradeoffs between movement, shields, systems, weapons, etc. We generally stick with "General War" era stuff, as that seems to be the most interesting as for that management portion of the game, and you still get most of the neat tech to play with. We tried the early years stuff a couple times, but that didn't feel as fun either.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I mean, don't get me wrong. I love the game, but will be first to admit it is not the game for everyone, and fully understand why some folks don't like it.

That's one thing I've heard about the earlier editions, that Andromedans were completely busted OP. Something about they could fire all their weapons and then displace away before the opponent could retaliate. Nowadays they are much more reasonable while still feeling completely different than the other factions.

Andros in pre-Doomsday were completely broken from everything I've read. I have run them fairly regularly in Doomsday, and while they're strong and behave differently, I have lost with them, and they didn't seem totally broken. They require different tactics both to fly and fly against, but they weren't "wtf this is impossible" like I heard they were in pre-Captain's Edition.

The Andromedans didn't have shields, they had these energy absorbors and energy desipitators. They had very little energy generation themselves. So they would be slow as slugs moving on the map until you started shooting at them. THEN the energy absorpers would act like huge batteries. They would have to take a ridiculous amount of damage to overwhelm the absorbers. So next turn, all that energy stored in the absorbers would be moved into the desipitators which would act like a warp engine and you would use that power for the ship. Any energy you didn't use stayed in the desipitators. Which meant next turn you wouldn't be able to transfer as much energy from the absorbers into the desipitators. When the absorbors were full, they couldn't negate incoming damage, and that's how you defeated Andromedans. Overwhelming firepower. Problem was, it took a LOT of firepower. While other ships had degraded performance as the battle progressed, the Andromedans would just be awesome right up until they blew up. The bigger ships had armor, but the ships themselves had less systems and internal boxes, so once the absorbors and desipitators were overwhelmed, the ships themselves went down very quickly.

Yeah, the energy dump on Andros in Captain's Edition isn't quite as horrible, and there's a continual degrading of the PAs over time as they absorb damage (some becomes permanent damage to the PAs preventing further absorption, like shields behave). Still, yes, you have to hit them really hard and keep hitting them to keep those panels full (they can only dissipate so much and use so much for batteries) so that further hits just go straight to internals. They tend to have a cascading effect once you do get some internal damage (ooh, took out one PA section, all that energy stored is released and auto internals). They're strong for sure, but definitely beatable in Captain's.

I went full force into FedCom during college, mostly to collect ships. I believe I have over 200+ in the 3788 scale. No other players (or even general interest) in my area though.

At some point soon here, I'm planning on shrinking my collection, and by that I mean replace most of the 3788 scale stuff with the 7000 scale stuff on Shapeways. Just taking up space now for other games people in my area actually play, but I still want some stuff in case I move to an area where people are interested in playing.

Eumerin wrote:Should also toss a nod to the Star Trek: Starfleet Command games. The first two games were pretty much video game versions of Starfleet Battles (the third was not).

This has been my only exposure to SFB (other than people mentioning the game on forums like this). It seems to have more than is needed for games of big fleets, and I say this as one who played Battletech. I would imagine a lot of naval games of that time were equally as complicated as the reasoning behind it. It surely is no Attack Wing, that's for sure.

Eumerin wrote:The biggest "non-SFB" thing in the game is that the developers weren't allowed to use the SFB designs of the Gorn ships. A Gorn appears in TOS, but his ship is never shown. So ADB designed the ships on their own. Paramount forced the developers to use a different design, instead (either one that they came up with on their own, or one that had been used in the Starfleet Academy games that came out around the same time). There are also some other differences, such as the Bird of Prey being used for the smaller Klingon ships (such as the E4 and F5). But those differences are purely cosmetic, and don't affect the gameplay.

I do prefer the Gorn ships in SFC more than the models I've seen for SFB. The SFB ones just look like odd Federation designs rather than the more unique look of the SFC models.

 Charistoph wrote:

Eumerin wrote:Should also toss a nod to the Star Trek: Starfleet Command games. The first two games were pretty much video game versions of Starfleet Battles (the third was not).

This has been my only exposure to SFB (other than people mentioning the game on forums like this). It seems to have more than is needed for games of big fleets, and I say this as one who played Battletech. I would imagine a lot of naval games of that time were equally as complicated as the reasoning behind it. It surely is no Attack Wing, that's for sure.

The game was first created back in the late 70s, when those type of naval combat games were very popular. It is definitely influenced by them.

Eumerin wrote:The biggest "non-SFB" thing in the game is that the developers weren't allowed to use the SFB designs of the Gorn ships. A Gorn appears in TOS, but his ship is never shown. So ADB designed the ships on their own. Paramount forced the developers to use a different design, instead (either one that they came up with on their own, or one that had been used in the Starfleet Academy games that came out around the same time). There are also some other differences, such as the Bird of Prey being used for the smaller Klingon ships (such as the E4 and F5). But those differences are purely cosmetic, and don't affect the gameplay.

I do prefer the Gorn ships in SFC more than the models I've seen for SFB. The SFB ones just look like odd Federation designs rather than the more unique look of the SFC models.