Some time a few years ago, I discovered the venerable Amarilla Design Bureau or ADB.
ABD exists for only one reason. It is the commercial side of a quite old and specific agreement going back to the early days of the Star Trek story. Using the licence granted for the Franz Joseph “Star Trek Technical Manual”, it allows ADB to use any generic, non specificly character named elements of the Star Trek galaxy covered by the original series and the short run, rarely remembered cartoon series only.
They can apparently use any race, planet, ship class and technical reference, just no character names.
Yes, you can have the Enterprise, but no you cannot have Kirk. Good trade off in my book.
From here, ADB developed a series of Star Fleet Battles rules sets going from a simple “pocket” game along the lines of the Steve Jackson stable of zip lock mini games to a set of rules similar to the operating instructions of a jumbo jet, which is apparently it’s appeal. This was also the spring board for an entire alternate history and universe.
Weighed down by its own history and a perception of being impeneterable to most, SFB became a niche within a niche. Blind loyalty aside, it’s retro styling and old school mechanics were just not going to gain many new followers, nor retain all the ones it had, but for those swallowed up by it, there seems to be no substitute. It’s almost a challenge rather than a game..
To address the massive gap between the SFB fans and the rest of the gaming community, in recent times, ADB has offerred several alternatives.
Apart from a simplified introductory “Cadet” SFB rules set, they have had a good hard look at the game and the companies future.
FC on the left and top, Starmada in the middle, ACTA bottom right.
Federation Commander is an attempt to simplify and strealine SFB, but stay basically in line with its principals. Basically a semi-modernisation. It attempts to keep the feel, the basic ship mechanics and tactical choices, but drops a couple of the big time eaters, like energy pre-allocation and 32 discreet phases per turn. Some say it did not go far enough, hanging on to too many SFB anchors, some say it lost that “something extra” of SFB. Many more though are relieved that the universe can now be accessed as just a game, not a life style choice.
To me FC feels like SFB without the semi role playing feel. With SFB you actually do feel like KIrk, transporting yesterdays lunch over to the enemy infected with Tribble spawn. Short of a genuine free-form RPG, SFB tackles the same level of detail through its comprehensive coverage of anything and everything considered “battles between ships in a Star Trek setting”, at least as much as any game has ever before.
FC retains the bones, cleaned and polished, but for better or worse, there is just not as much to know. Is it deep enough? It is tactical and immersive, requiring commitment and experienced players will always have an edge over newbs, but it is not impenetrable and can be picked up reasonably easily.
Next came mj12’s Starmada. This game has had its own problems, offerring just as many editons as SFB, but over a quarter of its life span. Rather than an escalation of difficulty and comprehensiveness, Starmada has just changed. It started well with a solid offering, then it was refined, then greatly simplified and finally refined and combined. It is one of those games like DnD that has its fans of every edition, with probably Admiralty edition is the most popular (=3.5e/Pathfinder equiv), beating out over simplified Nova (=4e equiv), with the newer Unity (=5e) which is taking the mantle now, but even Starmada X and the Compendium (=Old school DnD) are also still in the frame for many.
I have the near full set of “Admiralty” editon books for Star Fleet (no Battleships). This was the favoured one until the newer Unity, all available from DTRPG. It is tempting to get the newer one, apparently a steamlined Admiralty, and even printing off a pdf appeals as the production values of the ADB systems are plain black and white text and drawings in a basic colour cover, but Admiralty is probably fine. I think most of the changes to Unity effect the ship design rules, especially abused weapon combinations, something I won’t be touching on.
Starmada has many similarities to SFB/FC as regards ship stats and the universe, but with much simpler and slightly different mechanics, meaning that even though you can play a squadron game in the same time as a 2 on 2 FC game, or a couple of turns of SFB, you first have to be ok with the differeneces.
Some like it more, as movement apparently harkens back to older editions of SFB, using “Vector movement” and combat is detailed enough for quick one on one duels. Tactics come from multi ship manoeuvring with pre-plotting movement, a bit like X Wing etc.
Starmada Admiralty also has a simplified “Fleet Ops” expansion that allows for 20+ ships a side. This is not specifically Star Fleet based, just generic conversions, but it works and adds another layer.
The last one, also with a troubled history, is A Call To Arms Star Fleet. The Call To Arms series include several historical and other sci fi ship combat games including Victory at Sea (my WW2 favourite) and Babylon 5. The first attempt at converting the system to SFB was poor. The game was undecided which gods to worship, resulting in a Platypus monster no one liked. The second was better received. This one is aimed at minis on a table top, no hexes needed (although all of these games can be converted either way) and even came with its own ABD made fleets, now long gone.
This game annoys me. I find it overly cumbersome and poorly explained (is it only me?), but still desirable either re-written or even completely changed. I have a nice collection of metal ships, nothing near my comprhensive 1” counter range, but all the ships in ACTA are covered, so these two seem well matched.
Where do I fit in this universe?
FC is a comprehensive collection of counters and laminated ship tables as far as faction coverage goes, but not all possible ships (seriously not that committed). My metal minis are not even close to comprehensive, but that is a bridge too far and to be honest, I like the more realistic table presence of the 1” colour counters. They look small, even insignificant in the vastness of space as they should, and I can get on with it immediately.
ACTA is a work in progress. I feel it can be greatly streamlined, even partially re-designed, but that may be more effort than it is worth. More likely, I will just write my own, drawing from all of these.
Starmada is the favourite as I can play and teach it quickly enough, it feels Star Trek enough for my tastes (not tainted by years of SFB) and the predictive movement is a short route to tactical depth. Going in to Unity is not super appealing as I only just completed my Admiralty edition, but it may come painlessly enough (under $100au for the pdf’s and some printing). The main draw of Unity, is the ship rosters being printable from the pdf. If I do Starmada, I will re-write the rules for consistsney. Annoyingly, the reules presented are universal, then the Starfleet stuff has to be pasted over, changinf terminology and some elements are even irrelevant.
Between all three, every available resource is used.