Editing Star Fleet Battles (section)

==Sequence of Play==

1. Energy Allocation Phase

Your ships engines only produce so much power and it will never be enough, so how will you spend it? How far will you move and how fast? What weapons will need power to fire? What shields will you re-enforce with how much of your ever dwindling power reserves?. Will you use ECM or ECCM to shift the odds in your favor? That cost power too. Don't forget life support or your battle will be over before it starts! You want Tractor Beams? Shuttle-craft or Transporters? Pay up! Most of the game is won or lost in the EA phase as you can't spend power to react to your opponents moves during your turn, with some exceptions, it all has to be planned out beforehand. There are different types of power being; warp, impulse, reactor and batteries. Each has uses and restrictions (as an example photon torpedoes need warp power while phasers can draw upon any energy source. Movement faster then speed 1 always requires warp power)

2. Impulse Movement Phase

Ships move depending on the speed they paid for and the distance they want to travel. Slower ships move less often and speed changes are allowed if planned out during the EA phase. Ships may move at the same time and the faster ship gets to move after his opponent. Depending on your ship and your speed turning can only happen at certain times.  Maneuver is the heart of combat in SFB due to weapon arcs. Just cuz your got yourself a tonne of photon torpedoes don't mean you can fire them willy nilly!

3. Combat

After the end of any impulse you may declare an intent to fire. You must say which weapons you are firing then calculate range, roll the dice and pray to the RNG gods.  The catch is that most weapons, unlike in the movies, have restricted arcs on where they can fire. If your opponent isn't in the arc of the weapon all the snake eyes in the world won't make a difference.

As an example;

A FED CA (think TOS Enterprise) has 4 photon torpedoes which, if they hit, pack quite the punch but are not only energy intensive to charge up (2 points of power each for 2 turns on a ship that will have about 24 total power) but also have a limited forward (FA) firing arc. So if your opponent isn't in front of your ship at the end of turn 2 your sitting on those puppies until your lumbering Fed CA can trundle is chonky ass around to get that naughty Klink D7 into arc. Fed ships are know for decent forward shielding and heavy forward firepower but turn like overweight hippos after a night of raunchy sex. To be fair the Feds have poor turning rates but there are much worse ships out there. (Say hello Mr Gorn!)

The Klink D7 cruiser is the exact opposite. It has great arcs (some are so good they can somehow fire THROUGH the ship itself) for its Disrupters/phasers and great maneuverability but Disrupters do half the damage the photons do (but can fire twice as often) so the Klink has much less trouble keeping the Fed in arc to plink away but has to work to keep himself out of the photon's arc or he's not going to like the results when 4 overloaded photon torpedoes cause his ship to have a rapid unscheduled disassembly event.

Phasers are more flexible being mounted all over the ship to give some coverage in all directions with differing races having differing idea's about what "proper phaser coverage" looks like.  Phasers are incredibly energy efficient but damage rapidly drops off with range (except the bastard ship killer PH-4 which can and will reach out to touch your no no bits at range 100! But they are only found on Starbases and certain monsters thank Jeebus)

Most ships carry Drones (think missiles) as a secondary weapon but so named Seeking Weapons have a rule set all their own and can fire in any direction but must move according to the Impulse chart and can be shot down by phasers. The Hydrans have a nifty little weapon called a Gatling Phaser that yes does exactly what you think it does. Plus they stuck it on their shuttles, fighters and bombers!  Woe to the fool who ignores a incoming Hydran fighter group cuz how much damage can 1 shuttlecraft do right?

4. Damage Allocation

So you've managed to get your weapons in to arc and have put the pain train on your opponent. So now what? Well each ship will have shields to adsorb incoming damage to a limited amount. Shields trade strength for damage reduction point per point. (we're not going to talk about Andro's and PA's cuz that too in depth for a summary) Shields start the game fully charged but damage is not repaired unless you spend power to repair said shield and for various game rule reasons it's better to re-enforce said shield then repair it. As so long as a shield has at least 1 point left it's still considered to be "up" for game rules. Each ship has 6 shield each facing one of the cardinal directions.  You can "knock down" one shield without affecting any of the others as each shield facing is treated independently with it's own shield rating.

So your Fed CA has successfully got that clueless Klink D7 into your FA arc and have now delivered what SFB players call the "Great Mace to the Face" (ie 4 overload photon torpedoes right in the kisser). No doubt the Klink shield you struck is now nothing more then a vague memory and your follow up phaser salvo has opened up the Klink hull like a tuna can. So now what? Well there is a chart for this! The Damage Allocation Chart in fact.  You now take all the extra damage that the shield didn't manage to adsorb and roll on the DAC to see what systems were hit and so on. Each system/weapon/engine has a certain number of "boxes" on the ship to represent itself and once each of those boxes are gone the system is no longer usable until it is repaired. If you apply enough damage the ship will just explode though most players will concede once their ship has been rendered combat ineffective.  No point in dragging events out to the bitter end.

Once the combat phase in that Impulse is concluded you go back to the Movement Phase and repeat until one ship either gets destroyed, surrenders or many hours have past and you both hate each other.

That's a game of Star Fleet Battles in a (very small) nutshell.