After the early periods, lets look at the bulk of the collection.
I so very easily managed to go from the sweetest little representational sets back to the monster that is TNG battle and DS9 skirmish scale. Like many, I struggle with the scaling and even though I cannot truly fix it, I can draw a line in the sand with smaller or “skirmish” ships from DS9 on one side (ships with less than 200 crew), the Intrepid class being the biggest* and larger “battle” scale ships, the Romulan scout vessel being the smallest.
*The Intrepid class is 340m and 140 crew or about half the length of the Galaxy at 600m+ and 1000 crew, but the same length model ship, while the Romulan scout is a small model for a small ship with little hard information available (about 100m long and under 100 crew), so I can deal. The huge D’Deridex however is problematic, but what ya gonna do?
The TNG battle range is huge in every way.
I have a 3 inch tall stack of Federation cards with 14 ships to match (all metallic finish), at least half that many for the Romulan, Klingon and Cardassian fleets, with a decent Borg and Species 8742 showing.
After shedding all my Ferengi (not a fan), I did re-buy the Kreechta and Quarks Treasure expansions cheap to have a “representation” in both scales (with about 20 upgrade cards) and the option of adding an “acquired” ship into their fleet.
For battle scale I have two options, generic fleets which I prefer, a well balanced set that generally uses the newer low point costs and the named or unique fleets, using a mix of old and new points costs, but I can live with the few inconsistencies (or fix them).
The general feel of this game is less agility, tougher, more upgrades and fire power.
Still not an even fight, but it gets worse in generics, I have two Warbirds!
The named fleets are a little unbalanced and considerably smaller, the Cardassians in particular feeling thin, but I have some Jem’Hadar (old paint job) and a single Breen, so I use these in the named fleets to bulk up the Dominion offer.
A house rule I use when using the generic fleets is, “any ship may have as many upgrades as it wishes (and has icons for) up to the cost of the ship and/or the squadron limit, but may only have active, upgrades equal to its captain and ship icons”.
After dials are placed, upgrade cards may be changed and they may be hidden until revealed.
This allows ships to have a decent spread of options (too many only have 1 of a type, especially crew), but removes upgrade bloat in play and with weaker ships, overloading ships is probably not wise.
Battle scale in generics is generally a 3-5 ship, 100-150pt fleet tactical game with a secretly drawn objective or a 50-100pt ship v ship scenario game with named.
From 1 Galaxy, 1 Nebula and a blue Excelsior, to this for “battle” alone. I also picked up several deep cuts.
The generics also have a pair of Jem’Hadar cruisers (metallic paint) and four Galor class to play in solo/AI mode from two Dominion War II sets. I would love the third set, but it looks like it is long gone.
*
The small scale DS9 or “skirmish” set is the reverse.
High agility, low resilience is the norm in this set, so more dog fighting and hi-jinx.
In skirmish scale, I prefer named ships (some generics where needed), with old points costs, so a few have been adjusted, the set covering the pre-Dominion war with Feds with the Robinson, Bajoran, Marquis, Ferengi, Romulan fighter and small ships, some Cardassian Hideki fighters and the Dreadnaught, and the ubiquitous Klingon/Cardassian/Rogue/Ferengi B’rels. House rule is the Ferengi can “acquire” almost any ship.
For the Dominion War, there are also six AI Jem’Hadar attack ships.
I held on to much of this and the buyer of my old collection had no interest in DS9, so I only had to flesh it out a little (although I did let the Defiant go-WTF!). The ISS Defiant has been re-flagged as USS and I prefer the 4 attack of that version. It is a nice foil to the Sao Paulo which has better shields. I would not be using the mirror version anyway and have stripped it for cards.
My favourite new ship, the metallic Intrepid getting the drop on three Dominion attack ships run by the capable AI.
I can also use generics here, using old points costs, but the ships line up better with uniques after a few small mods.
I have enough cards to keep these two sets separate, putting the duplicates I have to use.
There is some cross-over with the Voyager and DS9 sets (imagine the harm a few stray Ferengi could do in the Delta quadrant), the Val Jean for example being represented in both, the Intrepid is used with DS9, Voyager in the Delta set with plenty of hypotheticals for both.