SE IV = Starfire (even > Starfire!)

[Fred]

Wendell,

I own the boxed Starfire and New Empires set too.
Simply the best (especially on a tactical scale) board space strategy game around. I spent more time creating new ships than actually playing this masterpiece

AFAIK the SE series was heavily influenced by Starfire, and this gives us the best computer 4X game around. Thanks to Aaron and his team for this game.
Y 2000 was really a wargamers dream year: WDK2K, Combat Mission and SE IV. All games from small independent companies.

Fred

[markgame]

Wow, Starfire... I also had the boxed Version and the expansion from the 80's. I was especially impressed with New Empires. I even spent some time writing a program in Basic to mimic the game mechanics so the game could be played on a computer, although I gave up at the thought of trying to build a workable AI.

[Seawolf]

Bah! Starfire!! next you will talking about Star Fleet Battles!!

------------------
Seawolf on the prowl

[Narlotep]

FYI, Starfire is in its Fourth edition, which includes streamlined/rationalized tac and strat rules, and there is also a new product available that simplifies the empire-building portion even further. Plus several software shareware products to help with the designing and number crunching.

Check out: starfiredesign.com for more info.

Narlotep

[Azathoth]

Yup, I was an original Starfire owner too. It was the best 4x paper game I ever played.

Always kept looking for a good conVersion to PC play for it on the web. Then, a couple weeks ago, I came across SEIII. Excellent! ...and I was just in time for SEIV. The Series pretty much is Starfire PC to me. I love it.

Good job by Malfador. Excellent open endedness. And nice gaming community that supports the product which makes it even richer. Bugs are bugs, but it also looks like MM/Shrapnel is ready to patch most problems quickly.

Good game.

[Psitticine]

I remember Starfire too. In fact, one of the first things I ever programmed was a BASIC program ("Starfire Shipyard"!) that you could use to design ships and print out those cool alphabetic definition strings.

I tried to follow the Starfire link from MM's page a while back. I don't remember what interfered - a lost network connection or some such - but I should really go back and try it again. I'm curious to see what's new since I played!

[G-top]

Here is their web page:
http://www.starfiredesign.com/starfire/index.html