Star Fire New Empires

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David Johansen

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So this game came up elsewhere and I was going to write a description and thought it needed its own thread as it was too big of derail. So, like Star Fleet Battles, Star Fire was a minigame from Task Force Games. It came with a blue hex map and a sheet of blue and red die cut counters to represent opposing fleets. Each ship class had a simple silhouette that was used by both sides. The ship classes were Escort, Corvette, Frigate, Destroyer, Light Cruiser, Cruiser, Battle Cruiser, Battleship, Super Dreadnaught. The game was a simple, alternating activation movement and fire game with each ship being moved one hex at a time. Ships had a stat line like Ct (2) - SSSSAAWWLIIII (4) which would be a corvette with turn mode 2, four shields, two armour, two gun/missile launchers, a laser, and four ion engines for a move of four hexes. Damage was marked off from left to right so systems failed. There were various weapon systems with different ranges and defenses. Lasers went right through shields and energy beams pierce armour. There was a simple design system for ships giving each class a number of spaces to fill with systems which had different space requirements and costs. There was also the Terran / Khanate war which showed the introduction of new technologies through a number of scenarios.

Star Fire II introduced fighters and carriers. Fighters were very simple but could be rearmed with Lasers, Guns, or Missiles by returning to the carrier. A further war against the Rigellians starting with a Pearl Harbor attack and bringing the Khanate or Orion and Terran Federation into alliance against a new threat. Star Fire III Empires introduced a campaign system which allowed technology to be developed and worlds to be explored. A small chart set up the jump point lines on the map as exploring ships passed thorough the warp point.

Task Force revised the game in a new boxed edition to which New Empires was the first supplement. The new rule book integrated Star Fire I and II and expanded on the technologies available but New Empires was the crown jewel. A two part solar system and intercept map allowed battles to be fought across entire star systems.

The game introduced planetary incomes and populations. Ship yards to build ships and technological development tracks. The interstellar map became more abstract, with the players rolling d1000 to find an address for each warp point's destination. There were rules for generating star systems, exploring them, non-player empires, diplomacy, and of course, ledgers for military budget expenditures. The basic campaign started with each player rolling up a random star system and spending an initial build budget on their fleets. Having tried to run it a couple times, I'd suggest giving each player three warp points in their home system. It's too easy to get boxed in with just one or two. We always used d100 for a shorter game but still never got very far. The other scenario is basically multi-player Imperium. The referee plays a vast interstellar empire and the other players play small upstart empires on its boundaries.

The game play used monthly turns with transit times linked to system map level of play, intercept play for when the fleets got into the same hex, and then battle map play. I think it wound up being overkill but I'm always toying with the idea of a simpler space empire jump point campaign game.

Starfire was a major inspiration for my Galaxies In Shadow star system design rules. I wanted the in play, physical detail oriented kind of system rather than Traveller's random and abstract approach or GURPS Space's intricately detailed math simulation. I wrote an Amiga Basic program to do that once but I generally feel a game's subsystems should be able to be applied in play, at the table.

David Weber and Steve White wrote and published four Starfire setting based novels, Crusade, In Death Ground, The Shiva Option, and Insurrection which is chronologically last but was published first. These are fun milsf but do show the key problem of the design. Fortified warp point assaults where ship after ship is blown to pieces coming through the warp point which isn't the most interesting tactical experience.

Anyhow, if anyone wants to talk about space battle campaign games like Victory By Any Means, Federation and Empire, Imperium, or Twilight Imperium that'd give some depth to the discussion.
 
How long did it typically take to play a game of Star Fire?
 
Well, the smaller scenarios take less than an hour, the big ones with massive fleets could take all afternoon. New Empires was open ended, we never got quite that far but I suspect that like most map based campaigns, someone eventually becomes overwhelmingly ahead of everyone else and the game fizzles out without an official end.
 
I liked Starfire when it was the little books (1+2, I thought there was even a SF3 but its been a long time), never played it after the revision.

Kind of simplistic with the left to right "stats", but it worked and I liked that you had to put some thought into your layout, shields vs armor, and using lower value components as adhoc armor. The considerations between making large, more efficient cargo / aircraft bays vs multiple small ones which were less efficient but more durable (large ones could "chain react" losing multiple spaces from one hit).

It was a significantly faster playing and easier game than Star Fleet Battles.
 
Minigames were great. I know there's some companies that make them but they're generally $30 rather than $10.
 
I googled Starfire and there is still something out there. Do you know anything about this current variant? Comments refer to a new edition in 2012 and the website shows a copyright date of 1998-2013 so not sure if it is really still active or not. There does appear to be a somewhat active form with posts from at least 2020, which is a good sign there is some life.

Starfire

Had a look on Ebay and the older print versions are quite a bit pricier that the old days. :shock:
 
They kind of have three variants over at the Star Fire Design Group. The most recent being a restatement of the third edition, IRRC. The earlier revision attempt was pretty dry reading but used 1d10 instead of 2d6 to hit which would speed up missile volleys a lot since you could just throw a handful of dice. The middle variant was one of those direction schisms that happen with things when people disagree on what would be best for the game.
 
I didn't know that there was a board games version of Drivethru RPG, Wargame Vault at least it looks related anyway. They have all the variations of Starfire. I will have to revisit this, so many options.

I like the idea that they built a larger game around it, too bad it sounds like it is still almost entirely combat oriented. Would be neat if there were some benefits to colonizing worlds or "sciencing" stuff. It seems like almost all Civ games eventually come down to blow up or subjugate the other civs.

Wargame Vault Starfire Design
 
Well, your colonies generate revenue and grow so you can build bigger warships and you have to science stuff to build better warships so you can blow up and subjugate other civs.

Starfire inspired a lot of things in Galaxies In Shadow because I wanted to be able to run that kind of exploration and growing civilization game. The best idea I've had as far as loosening up the warp point fortifications is to have a sensor dead zone for a light minute or so around the warp point and for ships to be able to enter and thus exit from any direction.

I've played around with tighter and more focused systems. Especially last spring when everyone was off work and couldn't come into the store to play I had the notion of running a new empires / mercenaries and merchants type game of some sort on-line.
 
I didn't know that there was a board games version of Drivethru RPG, Wargame Vault at least it looks related anyway.

Definitely related- stuff I've bought on Wargame Vault shows up in my DTRPG library.

This Starfire game sounds neat.
 
Well, your colonies generate revenue and grow so you can build bigger warships and you have to science stuff to build better warships so you can blow up and subjugate other civs.

Starfire inspired a lot of things in Galaxies In Shadow because I wanted to be able to run that kind of exploration and growing civilization game. The best idea I've had as far as loosening up the warp point fortifications is to have a sensor dead zone for a light minute or so around the warp point and for ships to be able to enter and thus exit from any direction.

I've played around with tighter and more focused systems. Especially last spring when everyone was off work and couldn't come into the store to play I had the notion of running a new empires / mercenaries and merchants type game of some sort on-line.


Ok, so it sounds like there is enough to do something a bit like Master of Orion.


Definitely related- stuff I've bought on Wargame Vault shows up in my DTRPG library.

This Starfire game sounds neat.

It doesn't accept my DTRPG user name or password, so interesting that it will show purchases in your library.

I can't speak to the later versions but the original game reminds me a bit of Carwars, although much lower rules complexity. It still has that fun building aspect trying to come up with the perfect design, and enough options that there really is no perfect design.

There are both shields and armor which are more effective against certain weapons, and equal against others. Lasers, missiles and slug throwers each have their own characteristic advantages / disadvantages. As I recall there is some sort of damage control as well for making repairs.

It is a simple game to learn but complex enough that you don't get into a rut of doing the same thing over and over. Also simple enough that it is possible to play fleet battles without losing your mind.
 
Kind of simplistic with the left to right "stats", but it worked and I liked that you had to put some thought into your layout, shields vs armor, and using lower value components as adhoc armor. The considerations between making large, more efficient cargo / aircraft bays vs multiple small ones which were less efficient but more durable (large ones could "chain react" losing multiple spaces from one hit).

It was a significantly faster playing and easier game than Star Fleet Battles.

Yea, it wasn't realistic but it still had design strategy. I never had the chance to play a bunch but, after playing SFB, I appreciated the ability to do squads. In SFB, one large hit took 10 minutes to resolve, if you were efficient with rolling and allocating damage. Squad level play in SFB wasn't worth, to me.
 
For my abortive RuneQuest in Space I did a ship design system inspired by Starfire (though really it would look more like Universe, but I didn't have that at the time...). The ship design system and space combat system were retained when I switched the campaign to Traveller.
 
Silent Death's damage tracks are basically the same as Star Fire, just blocks with damage results marked on some of the blocks. I've fiddled with a number of systems where letter codes were laid out on graph paper but here, let me illuminate you on my insanity:

Over Thinking Vehicle Hit Locations
If you visualize your vehicle inside of a 20 x 10 x 10 cube with the very front at 1,1,1 and the very end at 10,10,20 you’ll realize that there are 2000 possible hit locations, with six corner points, 16 edge spots with two external sides, 108 squares that are not corners or edges and 704 internal cubes. At this point either you’re visualizing your vehicle crushed into a cube or that cube has been stretched out over your vehicle. While the idea is to keep hit location tables small and simple, being able to map out hit locations in more detail can be useful. Just remember that things on opposite sides can generally have the same location as each other because the one facing the attacker will be hit and that most vehicles are basically symmetrical in at least one dimension.
 
I haven't played Starfire in decades. I think I have books I, II, and III still but maybe not the board or counters. I do remember it as a much easier game than Star Fleet Battles and I remember playing it a lot with some friends way back in the day. Brings up good memories. :grin:
 
I had the little books: I and II and played them a lot. Starfire is a simple, but great game. I remember designing fleets of ships and trying to outguess what my friend's strategy would be. We modified ship system layout such that hits could start on either the left or right side, depending on the direction from which fire came. I also remember playing Starfire in a tournament at an Origins convention.
 
I expect you could arrange the systems into a square or rectangle but coverage would be difficult for that Escort with 2 shields.
 
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