Starfleet Battles

[Neopeius]

Are there any aficionados of Starfleet Battles out here? I grew up with the game and found it a delightful sandbox for building ships, campaigns, adventures. I'm not really a fan of any of the expansions or its current incarnation, but the original game was lovely.

We've even turned it into a quasi-rpg, with navigators at the actual game map and captains sequestered in their own rooms, only getting information via phone/intercom. We've been playing this way for about 25 years.

Anyone else have experiences to share?

(please don't move this to Trek Gaming -- I'm specifically talking about SFB as recreating and expanding upon TOS. )

 

[Albertese]

I like the SFB Klingon ships as a companion to the Franz Joseph Tech Manual Federation ships. Though I never cared for their Romulan ships and I'm on the fence about the Gorn and Orion designs.

That's my esthetic review, though as far as the game itself.... I like reading through my copy of the rule book and imagining that I'm a real captain studying how to operate the ships, but it's just too baroque of a rule set for me to actually play. I always leaned toward the lighter (and arguably not as good?) FASA Starship Combat Simulator. I also like the look of their ships better than SFB.

Although, FASA never had rules for Tholians, which I felt was a loss. SFB has good rules for them.

I recently picked up the original original Star Fleet Battle Manual which is unaffiliated with either SFB or FASA. It uses the original Zocchi Star Fleet miniatures (now sold by SFB) and is played by crawling around the floor and aiming a 5 foot long length of fishing line at your enemies as phaser fire. It only includes the Franz Joseph ships and the enemy ships from the show (Klingon D-7, Romulan D-7, Romulan Bird of Prey, Tholian webspinner) but does a great job capturing the feel of the Show. Or at least the show as depicted in the Franz Joseph manual (The circles are measured in quadrans rather than degrees, because that's how FJ did it. (400 units instead of 360)). It's worth hunting down a copy.

As far as RPGs, ADB has made proper RPGs of their Star Fleet settings, though it definitely departs from the look and feel of TOS.

--Alex

 

[Neopeius]

I like the SFB Klingon ships as a companion to the Franz Joseph Tech Manual Federation ships. Though I never cared for their Romulan ships and I'm on the fence about the Gorn and Orion designs.

That's my esthetic review, though as far as the game itself.... I like reading through my copy of the rule book and imagining that I'm a real captain studying how to operate the ships, but it's just too baroque of a rule set for me to actually play. I always leaned toward the lighter (and arguably not as good?) FASA Starship Combat Simulator. I also like the look of their ships better than SFB.

Although, FASA never had rules for Tholians, which I felt was a loss. SFB has good rules for them.

I recently picked up the original original Star Fleet Battle Manual which is unaffiliated with either SFB or FASA. It uses the original Zocchi Star Fleet miniatures (now sold by SFB) and is played by crawling around the floor and aiming a 5 foot long length of fishing line at your enemies as phaser fire. It only includes the Franz Joseph ships and the enemy ships from the show (Klingon D-7, Romulan D-7, Romulan Bird of Prey, Tholian webspinner) but does a great job capturing the feel of the Show. Or at least the show as depicted in the Franz Joseph manual (The circles are measured in quadrans rather than degrees, because that's how FJ did it. (400 units instead of 360)). It's worth hunting down a copy.

As far as RPGs, ADB has made proper RPGs of their Star Fleet settings, though it definitely departs from the look and feel of TOS.

--Alex

All good points, thank you. I remember Battle Manual! SFB definitely is overly complex and falls down in the ship designs, but as you said, it tracks closely to Franz Josef which makes it feel more "real". We made our own simplified 8-impulse version for the rpg version described above. We also made different ships. The Gorns have heavy phasers rather than plasmas. The Romulan ships have warp pods. The Tholian ships don't have phasers but shoot these cool web balls that increase your turn mode and cost per hex. They have weak plasma-Ts as their offensive weapon.

 

[publiusr]

I like SFB and FASA both

 

[Dukhat]

Star Fleet Battles and FASA were gold at the time for fans like myself who were obsessed with the ships of Star Trek. Aside from Franz Joseph's Tech Manual, these were the only main outlets for any kind of quasi-official starship designs, including not just Starfleet, but the Klingons, Romulans, Gorn, Tholians, Kzinti, Orions, and several other races and groups who either only had one ship design in the show, or none at all. And the metal miniatures were awesome, especially when the TOS films came out and they were actually painted rather than just metallic. It was basically what counted as 'canon' back in the day, or at least what we would now call an 'expanded universe.'

It's a shame that Roddenberry terminated the licenses for all that stuff because he wasn't making any money off of them. Some of those designs showed up on displays in early TNG season 1, but imagine if they'd used the designs as the basis for new filming models for the show. I would have loved to see the Romulan Z-1 Nova class battleship as an actual studio model, or the Klingon L-24.

 

[Nerroth]

For my part, I'm invested in the Star Fleet Universe as a distinct and vibrant setting in its own right. (Before I go any further, I should note that I don't work for ADB, though I have had a number of articles published by them.)

-----

In game terms, Star Fleet Battles is but one of a number of ways in which to bring this setting to the tabletop. There is Federation Commander, a faster-playing game system which uses colour laminated Ship Cards in place of SFB's SSDs - although there are a number of "low toner" Ship Card options out there.

For example, SFB tends to incorporate a given empire's refits - such as the "plus" or phaser refits for the Federation CA - into a consolidated SSD. In contrast, Federation Commander splits the "pre-refit" and "post-refit" incarnations of that ship into distinct "Middle Years" and "Main Era" Ship Cards.

Beyond SFB and FC, there is Star Fleet Starmada and A Call to Arms: Star Fleet (which adapt game engines developed by Majestic 12 Games and Mongoose Publishing respectively); the strategic-level board game Federation and Empire; the Prime Directive RPG (which is available in a number of role-playing game systems, such as GURPS); as well as a large number of miniatures available from ADB's Shapeways storefront.

-----

But so far as the Star Fleet Universe is as a setting, there is much more to that than the material derived from the pre-1979 on-screen Franchise - or, for that matter, that sourced directly from the Star Fleet Technical Manual.

For one thing, the SFU does not use the galactic "quadrant" system as outlined in the post-1979 Franchise. in this setting, the Milky Way is divided into 24 sectors, from Alpha through to Omega; these are in turn grouped into five "octants", in which life as we know it may thrive. The Alpha Octant is where the "TV empires" (such as the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire) can be found, along with certain SFU-original empires such as the Inter-Stellar Concordium.

Also, In the Y-calendar used for most Star Fleet Universe products, the Middle Years in the Alpha Octant runs approximately from Y120 to Y160; a certain highly-dramatized five-year mission took place from Y154 to Y159; whereas the prior incident at Talos IV took place in Y142. The "Main Era" partially overlaps with the General War, which was waged from Y168 through to Y185.

Within the Alpha Octant proper, the timeline extends both forward and backwards from the Middle Years and Main Eras. In one direction, there are the Early Years - in which there were distinct Terran, Vulcan, Andorian, and other "pre-Star Fleet" ships, but no NX-01 (which is not covered by ADB's licence). In the other direction, there are the first-generation X-ships which led the charge against the Andromedan invaders, plus the long-range survey missions which opened up a host of new frontiers in the subsequent era of second-generation X-technology.

Beyond the Alpha Octant, there are other regions of the Milky Way (such as the Omega Octant), plus other extra-galactic settings (such as the Lesser Magellanic Cloud and the Triangulum Galaxy) which feature in one or more of ADB's tabletop systems.

-----

In short, while part of the Star Fleet Universe's appeal is in how it frames the "TV empires" relative to what the Franchise has done with them, the broad range of new species, empires, and settings native to the SFU are a key draw for me in and of themselves.

 

[Dukhat]

An excellent summation of SFB. I do want to reiterate what I said earlier, about them and FASA (and the early Star Trek novels, to some extent) representing Star Trek's 'canon' at the time (as the only official ST pre-1987 was just TOS and the first four films) before 'canon' took on a whole new meaning. Of course, SFB is completely incompatible with the Star Trek canon as it now exists, so yes, it inevitably must be its own thing now unconnected with its source material.

 

[Neopeius]

In short, while part of the Star Fleet Universe's appeal is in how it frames the "TV empires" relative to what the Franchise has done with them, the broad range of new species, empires, and settings native to the SFU are a key draw for me in and of themselves.

I can appreciate that. SFB allowed one to take the TOS universe and spin off their own AU. The SFU is one of them (it has things I like, it has things I don't like), ours is another. There may be better games out there (FC introduces a lot of the innovations we ended up developing ourselves) but SFB was the big one released during the pre-Movie era.

I used to pore over the SSDs when I was a kid like they were word-of-God actual blueprints. Loved those things.

 

[fireproof78]

Of course, SFB is completely incompatible with the Star Trek canon as it now exists, so yes, it inevitably must be its own thing now unconnected with its source material.

Which is for the best. To me Star Trek does best when it eschews canon in favor of exploring different facets rather than neat and tidy categories. SFB provided a good example of what could be done in a different format.

 

[publiusr]

For the longest time..I thought FASA dropped Trek on its own in favor of Battlemechs.

The ISC is a great concept.

 

[Albertese]

For the longest time..I thought FASA dropped Trek on its own in favor of Battlemechs.

....

My understanding is that FASA was taking the Trek license in a direction the actual TV show runners didn't like. FASA was starting to develop a ground war game (troop combat, anti-grav tanks, artillery, and so on) and Rodennberry et al weren't having it. The idea of Starfleet being that much militarized was not what TNG was about. You can see this in the TNG Sourcebook for the FASA RPG. There is a bunch of material showing Starfleet heavy weapons and similar which was a huge departure for the show.

For an example of a franchise going the other way, look at Star Wars. Lots of material that people assumed George Lucas invented (like alien race names and a lot of background material) was actually made up by Bill Slavicek while writing up the Star Wars Role Playing Game for West End Games. The game material was used in the novels of the 90s, as well as on cardbacks for action figures and finally even in the TV show and later films. Heck, the phonetic value of the Aurebesh letters where assigned in WEG's Star Wars Miniatures Battles game so gamers could write that script on their models, and now it's what is used in the official LFL materials as well.

--Alex

 

[Noname Given]

My understanding is that FASA was taking the Trek license in a direction the actual TV show runners didn't like. FASA was starting to develop a ground war game (troop combat, anti-grav tanks, artillery, and so on) and Rodennberry et al weren't having it. The idea of Starfleet being that much militarized was not what TNG was about. You can see this in the TNG Sourcebook for the FASA RPG. There is a bunch of material showing Starfleet heavy weapons and similar which was a huge departure for the show.

For an example of a franchise going the other way, look at Star Wars. Lots of material that people assumed George Lucas invented (like alien race names and a lot of background material) was actually made up by Bill Slavicek while writing up the Star Wars Role Playing Game for West End Games. The game material was used in the novels of the 90s, as well as on cardbacks for action figures and finally even in the TV show and later films. Heck, the phonetic value of the Aurebesh letters where assigned in WEG's Star Wars Miniatures Battles game so gamers could write that script on their models, and now it's what is used in the official LFL materials as well.

--Alex

What happened was that FASA printed and released a TNG sourcebook based on an early version and description of the TNG characters and setting without actually having a explicit license or clearance from Paramount to do so; and they did so a few weeks prior to the actual airing of the first TNG episode, and also the information contained in the Sourcebook was not accurate to what was finally filmed and released for TNG as things had changed from the time FASA had obtained the info to when the production decisions of TNG were finalized.

Paramount demanded that they recall the Sourcebook and not print any more. FASA's response was to claim that since they had the Star Trek license to produce role playing game products, that they were fully within their rights to create a TNG sourcebook. They didn't recall the sourcebooks they had distributed, but they didn't print or distribute any more after the initial run.

However when the license FASA had for Star Trek role playing merchandise came up for renewal, Paramount declined to renew their option.

 

[PCz911]

What happened was that FASA printed and released a TNG sourcebook based on an early version and description of the TNG characters and setting without actually having a explicit license or clearance from Paramount to do so; and they did so a few weeks prior to the actual airing of the first TNG episode, and also the information contained in the Sourcebook was not accurate to what was finally filmed and released for TNG as things had changed from the time FASA had obtained the info to when the production decisions of TNGG were finalized.

Paramount demanded that they recall the Sourcebook and not print any more. FASA's response was to claim that since they had the Star Trek license to produce role playing game products, that they were fully within their rights to create a TNG sourcebook. They didn't recall the sourcebooks they had distributed, but they didn't print or distribute any more after the initial run.

However when the license FASA had for Star Trek role playing merchandise came up for renewal, Paramount declined to renew their option.

Wow. Thanks for the background

 

[publiusr]

They should have stuck to the lost years pre TMP…

Now Starfleet Command and Klingon Academy were more SFB based. Why some changes there?

 

[Noname Given]

They should have stuck to the lost years pre TMP…

Now Starfleet Command and Klingon Academy were more SFB based. Why some changes there?

Star Fleet Battles was licensed from Franz Joseph (now his estate as he's deceased) and the info used for those games is the material from the Star Fleet Technical Manual (Circa 1975). He sued and got his work on that declared his based on how the contracts for it were done at the time Paramount commissioned the work.
^^^
It also lead the GR's "two nacelle" rule because originally, GR wanted to show a FJ type scout/destroyer in ST:TMP - but when he contacted Franz, Franz wanted the production to pay a fee for the use of his work (after all, he owned those designs and fought for that in court years earlier) - so of course GR was really upset - instituted said 'two nacelle' rule; so in his mind the FJ designs could now BEVER be 'canon' and the ships were subsequently just referred to in audio background radio traffic in ST:TMP.

 

[publiusr]

That’s sad.

 

[Unicron]

Star Fleet Battles was licensed from Franz Joseph (now his estate as he's deceased) and the info used for those games is the material from the Star Fleet Technical Manual (Circa 1975). He sued and got his work on that declared his based on how the contracts for it were done at the time Paramount commissioned the work.
^^^
It also lead the GR's "two nacelle" rule because originally, GR wanted to show a FJ type scout/destroyer in ST:TMP - but when he contacted Franz, Franz wanted the production to pay a fee for the use of his work (after all, he owned those designs and fought for that in court years earlier) - so of course GR was really upset - instituted said 'two nacelle' rule; so in his mind the FJ designs could now BEVER be 'canon' and the ships were subsequently just referred to in audio background radio traffic in ST:TMP.

Just for my own curiosity, is there a source for this? I've read some of the behind the scenes stuff over the years about the various productions and also about the difficult relationship between FJ and Gene, and I haven't heard of Roddenberry actually wanting to use a single nacelled FJ type ship before. I'm genuinely curious and would like to hear more info.

I also seem to recall from some sources over time that the basic concept of needing twin nacelles might have originated during the production of the original show (as Gene thought it was like a helicopter needing two rotors to maintain balance, essentially) and that the idea of inventing "starship rules" to effectively disparage FJ's contributions mainly occurred after TMP had been completed. My understanding is that the only direct nods to the Technical Manual were the dialogue chatter (which Andrew Probert and Rick Sternbach contributed to adding, as they felt FJ deserved something for his work) and the occasional screen graphic. And even those were fairly subtle, as Paramount (not specifically Gene) wanted FJ to help with TMP as a consultant and he declined, because he felt it would be like him messing with Gene's concept in a sense. Roddenberry and FJ were already on somewhat bad terms by then in regards to arguments over both Star Trek and Planet Earth, and the knowledge that he didn't control the designs FJ had licensed from the TM meant Gene would have had little direct interest in working with him.

Again, my fuzzy memory might not be entirely perfect. But I can always use more info.

 

[PCz911]

Just for my own curiosity, is there a source for this? I've read some of the behind the scenes stuff over the years about the various productions and also about the difficult relationship between FJ and Gene, and I haven't heard of Roddenberry actually wanting to use a single nacelled FJ type ship before. I'm genuinely curious and would like to hear more info.

I also seem to recall from some sources over time that the basic concept of needing twin nacelles might have originated during the production of the original show (as Gene thought it was like a helicopter needing two rotors to maintain balance, essentially) and that the idea of inventing "starship rules" to effectively disparage FJ's contributions mainly occurred after TMP had been completed. My understanding is that the only direct nods to the Technical Manual were the dialogue chatter (which Andrew Probert and Rick Sternbach contributed to adding, as they felt FJ deserved something for his work) and the occasional screen graphic. And even those were fairly subtle, as Paramount (not specifically Gene) wanted FJ to help with TMP as a consultant and he declined, because he felt it would be like him messing with Gene's concept in a sense. Roddenberry and FJ were already on somewhat bad terms by then in regards to arguments over both Star Trek and Planet Earth, and the knowledge that he didn't control the designs FJ had licensed from the TM meant Gene would have had little direct interest in working with him.

Again, my fuzzy memory might not be entirely perfect. But I can always use more info.

Wow, I did not know all this either.

honestly, it truly saddens me since the FJ tech manual was such an important part of my youth.

and, ironically, I just bought some of the small starfleet battle models and am busy painting adding decals to them.

 

[Unicron]

There's an old interview (1999) with Franz's daughter Karen that can still be read, and it provides some interesting insights into the evolution of FJ's work with Gene's projects and there is a timeline of events as well, based on communications and other things she saved over the years. Karen came to feel, over time, that a lot of the souring of the relationship came from Roddenberry's end, as he resented the fact that he couldn't persuade FJ to initially use Majel Barrett's business (Lincoln Enterprises) to be the source of the Starship Plans and Technical Manual, as that would have allowed Gene to directly profit from their sales. Part of the problem seems to have been that, from FJ's perspective, it was not entirely clear who actually owned the rights to the series (as Gene had created but Paramount owned it, if I understand correctly, which is why they helped Ballantine publish the TM independently of Roddenberry). There were a lot of miscommunications and mixed messages flying around, compounded by the then hectic production of The Motion Picture that was evolving. The whole story is fairly complex, and it is indeed unfortunate that FJ and Gene didn't have a more amicable relationship.

 

[Neopeius]

In the 1980 Trek Spaceflight Chronology, there's the "Tritium", a Warp 4 (intended) cruiser with three engines. It didn't work out. Was that book authorized? Was the failure of the three-nacelle design part of Gene's master plan?