It looks like ACTA:SF is the favoured option (until the FASA game comes anyway).
The yellow one, front right. Crummy image taken to sell the lot, but thankfully I did not.
What I Like;
Dilithium chambers are mentioned. ADB filled a lot of holes as needed early on and had little to work with, but some things are just mandatory.
The game is not purely energy allocation based, but has “orders” which do a good job of folding in energy and other actions without tracking and feels a lot more Trek to me. This seems more Kirk on the bridge than energy accountant.
It uses minis on a table, but can use counters on a map or a combo of either.
It is flexible and has room for changes, unlike many of the other ADB games that rely on printed resources and are structured around inflexible mechanics that generally lack a looseness that is needed. These I will play as they come, ACTA feels less fixed in stone.
The movement rules are more straight forward and intuitive.
But;
The rules are a hot mess. Specialist functions and terminology are scatterred around the book, seemingly unlinked to their subject matter and the index is not as helpful as it could be. There’s not a lot to the rules, but they still take some wrangling. I have 17 (!) post-it tabs and dozens of hand written notes in my copy and still cannot find some things when needed. You tend to come across a refence to something you were not aware of, back-track to find the rule, give up in frustration, then stumble over it somewhere else.
Things are still more SFU than Trek canon. For example Drones will be dropped from most factions, reserved for Kzinti and/or maybe Gorn. This adherence to the SFU is not unexpected, but I have several games that are linked to it and this is the one that can shift easily enough.
Fixes;
A single well organised weapons table*, even a faction specific one, can absorb about 90% of the key word exceptions. “Accurate”, “Energy Bleed”, “Devastating”, “Multiple Damage” etc are all just overly wordy descriptions for simple mods found not in the combat section, but under “Special Traits”. Some ships can have a half dozen of these and sure they add flavour, but they also clag up the works (why the ship rosters don’t just have pre-modified weapon stats is an oversight easily fixed). When I first gave this game a go back in the day, my opponent and I spent the bulk of the game searching for and applying mods that more often than not netted a big fat “0”. It will also drop some redundency because it seems most weapons have “Accuracy”, so the exceptions are the rule If the designers just shifted the “To Hit” value down one, this entire mod would often be unnecessary. I understand the +/- of mods can stretch past the maximum and minimum range, but this is rare enough to be ignored or these can be the exceptions.
Another unified table of orders, movement and other bits* will effectively make the rules book redundant after the first read. A good table can never be under estimated as a practical resource and this accounts for the other 10% of exceptions. When making my own games I often start here, fleshing out the game in reverse. basically, if the charts are useless and the numbers don’t match up, then there is no point in going further and a good chart or charts should be all you need after a few games.
It turns out everything needed will fit on a single double sided sheet (I will do one for each faction). How hard would it have been to include that and make the whole game vastly easier to pick up and play? The games’ core is clean and simple, but the application of exceptions is excessive when often the paragraph of words represent a simple +/- mod.
Change some ship stats to make the ships less warlike (reduce weaponry). The SFU is a war game in a warlike universe. I want to wind this back a tad to allow for more “Kzinti and mouse” tactics, where a clever captian of a small ship does not get creamed in the first exchange by a bigger ship. This will also allow me to reduce the number or ship variations andm increase the spread between them.
Simplify the facing rules to four, 90 degree angles (F/S/P/A), using square bases, which allow for Fed Comm 1” counters on a smaller mat as a travel or large fleet version and re-align the weapon facings to fit these. I can also use Attack Wing ships on their supplied bases. This will generally simplify measurements and movement gauges.
Expand the orders mechanic and choices to include repairing of systems taken off-line etc and add in some faction specific tactics to add flavour and depth (ala Attack Wing).
Add in Kzinti gunboats (fighters) because I “mistakenly” bought a carrier :). Basically these will be armed shuttles or small police-like ships.
Change the messy and random “Boost Energy To Shields” order and tracking to a replacement of lost shields (possibly a fixed number if the core is on line) up to the current maximum, because shields could recover, but there must be limitations imposed like slower speed, no other special maneouvres or energy weapon fire etc.
I will add in shield emitter damage by facing, effectively giving the game shield “facings” without having to use four different facing tracks. This is a system on/off line or emitter destruction.
Change the crew tests to 2d6, so they are not so twitchy.
The crit table with have a “7” column, so the more lethal weapons have a truly devasting option (which was the 6 column), but removing them from lesser weapon crit ranges. Removing the “tiny ship blew up my Dreadnaught” with a lucky roll. The table will also have some changes of effect and a smoother spread with multiple effects per entry. Precise will also be a shift on the crit table, which is closer to “Target X”.
Toss the book. Just kidding, no but really, when your done…..toss the book.
*The second path was to just do a set of charts with all terms consolidated, but that still required qualifications that amounted to re-wording and repeating much of the book.