fasa star trek federation ship construction manual

I'm going to suggest the Cadet version of SFB, small ship control sheets, fewer impulses per turn, fewer special case rules.įederation Commander is really two games, a fleet game and a captain simulator. I wish there was a simplified Star Trek ship-to-ship game, but I'm wondering if it would be a few decades too late.Īre we looking at a detailed captain level space combat simulator, a Star Trek based fleet combat game, or what? I never got into FC because by the time they came out with this game most of my Star Trek fan friends had moved onto other things. They finally scaled stuff back with Federation Commander, which is a much better way to play but is still 'really slow' (to quote Stan). There was a 'cadet's edition' attempt to simplify things into one smaller rulebook, but it was too late and still thicker than the old Lou Zocchi Star Fleet Battle Manual, which does much of the same stuff as SFB but in a much smaller rulebook. It's complex and it's overwhelming and I had a bunch of potential players look at the notebooks and say, 'no, thanks.' The problem is that anyone who takes the time to keep up with the game finds that it gradually grows more complex, but heaven help the newcomer who wants to start and finds a monstrosity that is not remotely user-friendly to a newcomer. And I'm not sure how many versions after that, because I dropped out. Then a 'commander's edition' with three three-ring notebooks full of three-hole punched rules. Then they added in a few supplement booklets, each around the size of the original. It started as a microgame in a little baggie and was pretty easy to play. The entire SFB franchise evolution shows the problem with this sort of game. The problem occurs as you start to add in more ships and more rules. Scale the rules back to use the original ziplock game or maybe the boxed set and ignore the huge stacks of rules options that have been published.

Fundamentally, Star Fleet Battles isn't a bad game if you are only dealing with a couple of ships.

Fasa star trek federation ship construction manual