Star Fleet Battles
Boldly Going ...
During my years of reviewing games, I came across a theory1:
“The fewer pieces you control in a game, the more complicated each piece becomes.”
Go has hundreds of stones …. all the same. Chess has sixteen pieces … six different types. The extreme example were role playing games. You control a single character; but describing it takes a full sheet of paper for stats like Strength, Dexterity, (etc) plus all your character’s skills/spells/equipment. And that doesn’t even cover backstory.
It’s not a perfect theory; but I think about it from time to time.
In Star Fleet Battles you often control … one starship.
Does that theory nail Stephen V. Cole’s Star Fleet Battles. On the map, each ship is represented by a single counter. You’ll maneuver and fire photon torpedoes or disrupters. Each ship has a sheet representing the internal state of a ship just as complicated as an RPG character sheet.
Take a gander at this Neo-Tholian Dreadnaught ….
As ships take damage, boxes are checked off and systems are destroyed. Each type of box has its own rules — shields, warp and impulse engines, phasers, weapons, transports, tractor beams, shuttle bays, cloaking devices, the gamut. The full game is … complicated.
The other sheet each ship has (not shown) is Energy Allocation and that’s Star Fleet Battles secret sauce. Based on inspecting the (working) SSD you can figure out just how much energy each ship can muster. Every turn you distribute it.
Do you want to go faster2? Well, what are you going to skimp on? Overloading those Photon Torpedoes? Tractor Beams3? You did remember to raise shields, I hope. Maybe you should reinforce them? The energy allocation is simultaneous and secret, so … is your opponent going slowly because they have fully overloaded weapons (which are short range), or are they planning to jump their speed up mid-turn?
Star Fleet Battles captures not just Star Trek replicating all the technologies shown; it captures the Balance of Terror in fighting an enemy with known capabilities, but hidden plans.
Star Fleet Battles has garnered a dedicated following since it first appeared in the 70s. I got involved with the Captain’s Edition, by which point most of the development issues any large game goes through had been sorted out. Yes, the rules sections were numbered like 16.A.2.b.iv sub paragraph a), but they were immaculate. Everything organized perfectly.
For all the complexity, rules could be grasped on the first read, and after a few games I could teach enough for the classic “Enterprise vs Klingon Bird of Prey” battle in ~30 minutes4. Not all the subsystems, but enough.
Two beginners fighting a ship battle might take 30 minutes or an hour; as they’ll likely just run their ships together, blast away, and let some god-like-alien-race sort it out. Battles between experienced captains take longer (3+ hours) as ships jockey for position, both on the board and with energy.
All of which makes Star Fleet Battles a “lifestyle game,” the sort of game where people might be willing to play it to the exclusion of all other games (like Chess or Bridge), because it is a game that doesn’t really shine on first playing.
Partially that’s because the SFB universe is so big. Once you know the rules for the Federation (Photon Torpedoes) and Klingons (Disruptors) you can add another dozen or two races (including those from the Animated TV show, like the Tholians). Each race adds few more rules and weapon systems. Plus rules for terrain like Nebulas, Black Holes, and the like. Solitaire? How about fighting the Planet Killer?
Star Fleet Battles has a 100+ page Tactics Manual and it is brimming with advice and discussions.
SFB also spawned a very good computer game, Star Fleet Command whose primary flaw is that it’s so faithful to the game that it’s basically impossible for an old-timer like myself to issue the commands in real time5. But my local-at-the-time gaming store got a LAN primarily so that we could play Star Fleet Command when we weren’t playing Star Fleet Battles.
Battles too large for the board game could resolve in minutes via computer, at the cost of needing to have good reflexes instead just issuing commands from your chair.
Star Fleet Battles influence looms large over space-ship-to-ship combat games with many newer games like Federation Commander or Talon trying to streamline SFB down into a more manageable, modern gaming lifestyle. Or going in the other direction, you could play Federation and Empire to deal with grand strategy (and fight each battle in SFB!)
Would Star Fleet Battles be remembered today if Star Trek itself hadn’t come back from the dead with movies? Possibly not, but the care and loving taken by the designer and developers to faithfully make a playable game captured my attention for years. It might be I’m looking at this game through Rose colored glasses, but I do think that Star Fleet Battles is worthy of consideration for 100 Most Influential Games of the 20th Century.
Sadly, I do not remember who said it.
“Speed is Life” — Ancient Gorn Proverb (according to the Tactics Manual)
“Use your Tractors, Dammit!” — Sign above the doors leading to the simulators, Star Fleet Academy
The licensing rules for SFB preclude them from using names (except for races and technologies) from the TV show, so its just a “Federation Heavy Cruiser” instead of Enterprise, and a “Legendary Captain” instead of “Kirk.” The license was negotiated for a song before the movies, and Paramount would love to revoke it to resell to a higher bidder, so the owners are careful to color inside the lines.
The player aid was dense; probably every key mapped to a command you could issue.
I think FedComm is superior in many ways to the original. It may be more accessible, but it is also more interactive. Being able to spend energy to tweak your inter-turn speed (speed up AND slow down) and direction was a brilliant design decision.
I played an SFB game for hours. In the end, my ship traced out a half circle. The same amount of turns in a FedComm game, going the same speeds, you have more options, and your paths can become very interesting. It feels more cat and mouse I guess.
I have played this once or twice with fans of the game. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience because they loved the game so much. Its probably not something I would seek out on my own, but I absolutely appreciate it as a game. It is very much worthy of a spot on this list or a hall of fame. Though my lack of knowledge here has me wondering about its influence on more recent fare.