Federation Commander

[Marauder]

Hi All,

Played a game of SS-SF on Wednesday of Klingon vs. Kzinti, as we wanted to see how drones and ADDs would work in a semi-large game. Here's the battle report:

http://members.shaw.ca/Marauder/ss/border_patrol.pdf

-Tim

[archon96]

my only question are.
1. how much tracking is involved in this game.
2. how fast does it play. (most of my players dont hold up well past three hours.)

[Marauder]

There are two pieces of paper for each ship. One is the ship SSD the other is the movement card. Both are well designed to minimize the work it takes to keep track of stuff.

1) AP (action points aka power). Typical ships have from 4 to 15 power (CA's around 8). You have to keep track of how much you spend, but you don't have to figure it all out at the start of the turn. There is a spot on the movement card for you to "tick off" when you use power.

2) Plot movement - there is only one "impulse" in SS, and you must plot movement for it. This is done by "drawing" both your ships pivot/roll in the AVID and then drawing on the horizontal/vertical movement plots. IMHO this is by fare the least painful game to plot movement in.

3) Plot fire - combat is simultaneous as well, and you must assign where your weapons are firing before getting the benefit of seeing what happens with other fire. The movement card again has boxes for each weapon mount for you to simply write down the target's ID in. If your weapons have cool down, there are little check boxes just above to keep track of that.

4) Tracking damage. You keep track of your damage to shields and internal systems on this sheet.

I'd say overall record keeping is less than FC but more than Starmada. The play aids really do take much of the burden off the players.

As for speed of play - once you are familiar with the game you will be able to play with about 2-4 ships per play at 15 minutes a turn. Most games last from 5-7 turns.

-Tim