Do you play non-PC/console space combat games ?

[Joachim]

Originally posted by Erax:

I am curious about Full Thrust, I have heard nothing but praise for it.

Full thrust is an excellent minatures game. It is deceptively simple yet horribly addictive (I have a large painted fleet). While the mechanics of the system are easy - all d6 driven and check a box for damage - it gives the feel of space battle. You can knock over 20 v 20 ship battles in a couple of hours - with or without beer

The rules are easy to read, understand and well set out. If people want a figure space game without the nightmare complexity of say star fleet battles (own all that too) which give the correct feel then I cant recommend Full Thrust enough.

[Parasite]

I am a big fan of SFB (Star Fleet Battles). In fact, I was searching around in the SFB web site where I found the link for SEIV which effectively changed my life.

I have also played Silent Death, AeroSpace, and a few other less known boardgames. I even have a game called "Rebellion on Mars" or "Battle at Mars", something like that. It has hidden fleet movement around the solar system. When ships do fight is uses REAL Newtonian physics to move the ships. i.e. your ship has a speed vector and your engines only adjust that vector as you move and apply thrust. The map then moves at the average of all the vectors. I played a few games of it solo, but it is not much fun playing solo against yourself using hidden fleets. It was too complex for most other people to play. It was fun and used realistic physics for everything.

[Ed Kolis]

Never actually played this one (and neither has my dad!) but my dad has a really weird game called "Starforce Alpha Centauri"... how weird, you ask? OK, first of all, propulsion in this game is not done using engines... instead, specially trained crew women (only women, it doesn't work with men) use their psionic powers to move their "Starforces" (all ships are tracked in fleets of 4, unless you're playing the advanced game, in which you can split them up into "Fakerforces" of 1-3 ships) around... combat does not involve cannons or beams or missiles or anything, but instead "combat casting", something akin to the Telekinetic Projector... and - get this - the game's in 3D, but the Z position of your opponent's ships is hidden from your view, so an enemy Starforce could be one "lite-zulu" away on the board, but really be 20 "lite-zulus" away on the Z axis!

Now you see why we never played that game?

[SpaceBadger]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
Never actually played this one (and neither has my dad!) but my dad has a really weird game called "Starforce Alpha Centauri"... how weird, you ask? OK, first of all, propulsion in this game is not done using engines... instead, specially trained crew women (only women, it doesn't work with men) use their psionic powers to move their "Starforces" (all ships are tracked in fleets of 4, unless you're playing the advanced game, in which you can split them up into "Fakerforces" of 1-3 ships) around... combat does not involve cannons or beams or missiles or anything, but instead "combat casting", something akin to the Telekinetic Projector... and - get this - the game's in 3D, but the Z position of your opponent's ships is hidden from your view, so an enemy Starforce could be one "lite-zulu" away on the board, but really be 20 "lite-zulus" away on the Z axis!

Now you see why we never played that game?

I had this game - still do, I guess, in a box somewhere. It was part of the StarForce Trilogy from SPI. I remember the ground combat game of the trilogy had one scenario where you had to send your squad out to kill or capture a marauding alien beast that teleported randomly around the map. The beast was called a dinkblog, but we didn't get the joke until later, when we started playing D&D. (This was mid-70s, and we didn't discover D&D until 1978.)

The third game of the trilogy was a large-scale strategic colonization game, with the map representing about 1/4 of the Milky Way galaxy. I'm not sure what scale that made each hex, but it was huge. No individual star systems at all, just vast stellar regions of varying density and value. Not a very detailed game, but it was the best we had of its kind at the time. I seem to recall adding a lot of homebrew rules to make it better.

Hmm, ya know, I don't think we ever actually played StarForce Alpha Centauri, either.


SpaceBadger

[Ed Kolis]

Dinkblog? I'm afraid I still don't get the joke...

[SpaceBadger]

I haven't played them in years, but I do have quite a few non-PC space games, mostly stored away in boxes "somewhere".

WarpWar - fantastic game, played it a lot back in high school and college. It was a minigame from the Metagaming company - the whole map, counters, and rather small rule book fit in a pLastic envelope about 4"x6" that you could carry in a hip pocket. The map was just some dots (star systems) connected by lines (warp lines) - sound familiar? Ship design was the most important part of the game, choosing a balance of missile weapons, energy weapons, shields, engines, and powerplant. In combat you had to choose how to allocate your power supply (which varied depending on the size of your powerplant) to different components. You could also make some of your ships be system ships without warp engines, which gave more room for weapons etc but required a warp ship to carry them to other star systems. Lots of fun, for a fairly simple little game.

StarForce Trilogy - from SPI, discussed in my response to Ed.

Outreach - another SPI game, I don't remember much about it except that it had a very cool map, each hex one light-year across, representing local space in about a 15 ly radius around Sol System. The map was a 2D representation of 3D space, using colors and size of dots to indicate whether a particular star system was above or below the plane of the map. I don't remember if we ever actually played the Outreach game, but we used that map as the basis for a lot of homemade games!

Space Viking - don't remember much about it except that it was a disappointment, as I was expecting something based on H. Beam Piper's novel of the same title.

Star Smuggler - sort of a solo RPG kinda thing, a little booklet that directed you to different pages depending on choices you made - like one of those choose-your-path books, except that it had actual combat determined by die rolls, and then you followed the path indicated by whether or not you were still alive after combat.

Probably others as well, but those are the main ones I remember.

SpaceBadger

[SpaceBadger]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
Dinkblog? I'm afraid I still don't get the joke...

Blink Dog - they travelled in packs and could do a kind of short-range teleport. Are these not still in D&D? I know they were in the Monster Manual, and I think in the Beginners boxed set as well, but all of my books are 20+ years old.

SpaceBadger

[larrybush]

Your right! My friends and I have played Warp War many times, I have created a 2 large pegboard maps based on the maps in Aplha Centauri Starforce. We use lead minature starships mounted on wooden dowels to move about. I repeatedly posted and written Arron to include provisions for a warp engine movement system and system ship racks for SE5, It would MOD into SE4 but the warp components self destruct when used.
Played Star Viking allot too. I own 2 copies of AC Starforce so we could play double blind, modded the heck out of it--kinda turned it into Warp WAR! Tried to take the maps out of Space 2300 the GDW role playing game and mount them on sheet metal for double blind (did'nt work though)Also played GDW's Imperium, 5th frontier war (Solomani rim war) from the Traveler universe. Played allot of Star Fleet Battles using lead and pLastic minatures. Have Freedom in the Galaxy by SPI but never played it. Played allot of Starfire, remember the Khanate! Played Starship Troopers, O.G.R.E. Just threw out my copy of Reach for the Stars, with 5 1/4 floppies (I'll see it on Ebay now with a 500$ bid) but all the rest I still own along with a couple hundred board wargames too!

[Erax]

I own Imperium too, but it's the Version that was released in Portugal (it's probably identical to the original except for the rules being in Portuguese). I only played it once though.