Federation Commander

A little background:

A friend of mine is a huge SFB fan going back many, many years. He also likes boardgames, but does not play miniature war-games.

I'm a board gamer and miniature war-gamer (Infinity, as of late). I prefer larger scale games.

I have tried to give SFB a chance, but it doesn't really click with me.

We've tried ACTA:SF as a middle ground, which has it's own issues, so now we're waiting for Steve's revision, with our Fleet boxes of ships relegated to the shelf for the moment.

We've tried FC as well, but it plays too much like SFB for me, and has quirks which annoy my friend. While we'll probably give FC some more tries, I have a feeling it just won't click with me.

Since Klingon Armada isn't too pricey on Drive Thru RPG, I've considered picking that up to give it a try, but I'm uncertain which edition to go with - Admirality or Nova. I've read some about Admirality edition, and an overview of the non-SFU Nova update.

Does anyone have any advice on picking between the two editions?

It may be worth asking over on the Majestic 12 forums, or perhaps on the ADB BBS. (There doesn't seem to be a very active Starmada contingent here on the forums.)

From what I've seen of Nova so far, it seemd to be more abstract than Admiralty is, at least in terms of how each ship is represented. While Admiralty ships show each weapon and firing arc separately (as shown in this example), Nova seems to group each type of weapon into a single battery, as shown here.

Games with larger fleets are much faster with Nova than with Admiralty.

In my opinion Admiralty Edition has lots of dice rolling and a bit more detail than Nova. If you like to roll lots of dice then AE is your game. Nova Edition has been streamlined and plays faster. It would work better for larger battles.

It all comes down to taste. For example, based on everything I've heard, Admiralty is the system for me. Large fleets are nice, but AE's level of detail hits my 'just right' almost dead on.

On the other hand, Nova's streamlining works for some people. If they're having fun, more power to them.