Star Fleet Battles

Star Fleet Battles
Wargame published by Task Force Games, Amarillo Design Bureau
No. of Players	2-6
Session Time	1 hour to weeks (~ # of ships)
First Publication	1979

Still in publication after 40 goddamn years, Star Fleet Battles is based on the original Star Trek teevee series, and includes the Kzinti from the animated series (because they had the rights to it because Larry Niven recycled one of his stories in TAS). It's regarded as the most detailed simulation of ship-to-ship interplanetary combat, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. The five-inch thick starter book has rules for damn near everything, but it reads like the lovechild of your car's owners manual and VCR instructions. For those grognards that love Advanced Squad Leader, this is awesome, but for those who think of Axis & Allies as a serious wargame, these rules are impenetrable. (You won't need 90% of those rules for an average game, though.) For some bizarre reason, nobody's ever tried to make a vidya of SFB, despite the fact that the rulebook already reads like a computer program.

Actually there WAS a video game series created based on SFB, Starfleet Command

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The game is played on a hex-map, no terrain other than the odd planet you might be flying around, or asteroid counters for hiding behind, but there are rules for fighting near a black hole that keeps pulling all the tokens, or nebula clouds that give automatic ECM defense.

Among the win you can find in this game are:

• Impulse-based turns instead of the I-go-then-You-go typical of tabletop wargames
• Transporter bombs and fake transporter bombs
• Using ship's laboratories to out-science monsters
• loading up one of your shuttle craft with anti-matter and ramming it into other ships
• Wild Weasels ... where a shuttle gives off sensor data that fools electronics into thinking it's another full-sized vessel (this is the "Picard maneuver" that actually WORKS instead of just looking cool)
• High energy warp turns with a dash of break downs and tumbling uncontrollably thru space
• Boarding parties for Capturing or dishonorable Hit and Run attacks
• Surprise buttsecks in the form of Scatterpack shuttles and cloaked nuclear space mines
• Rules for fighters, torpedoes, mines, drones, probes, and the bestest weapon ever; the Mauler. Seriously if someone has thought of something there IS a rule for it already.
• Effects of having legendary officers like having Scotty as your ship's engineer.
• What happens when the slaves on a Klingon ship stage a mutiny during a ship battle.
• Q-ships ...for those who aren't navy nuts, that's what looks like a civilian cargo ship, but when pirates show up it blows off the camouflage and all the cargo is missile-racks.
• C'mon, who doesn't want Federation versus Klingons, Romulan cloaking devices and attacking starbases?
• Gorn AND Tholians! And Hydrans and Lyrans and Kzinti and Andromedians and... well you get the idea
• Cocaine fueled pirates. Seriously. And it's exactly as awesome as it you think it is, until it kills you.

There was a full 3d motion version based on the Squadron Strike engine in the works, but was apparently dropped.

See Also

• Amarillo Design Bureau, current publishers of the game, plenty of free *.pdf files for download.
• The Star Fleet Battles Open Community, Open and uncensored discussion about Star Fleet Battles.