From: rob@amstel.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere)
Subject: Re: Star Fleet Battles
Keywords: SFB
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Electrical Engineering
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 22:10:21 GMT

In article <6361@rosie.NeXT.COM> robert_walton@next.com (Robert Walton) writes:
>Some SFB Questions:
>
>1) How does one get started in SFB?  It seems everyone posting to the net  
>is an expert who started playing a decade ago.  I read one post the other  
>day so full of acronyms and jargon as to be meaningless to a potential  
>entrant!  Is this a game with high barriers to entry?

It's a big game, but one that subsets well.  That is, you can start with a
(small) subset of the rules and work your way up.  There is a special product
(title slips my mind right now) that is specially designed to do this.  Like
with most games though, there's nothing better than being walked through the
system by an experienced player.

>2) Why hasn't the game improved its graphics?  Seems like such a popular  
>game would have no trouble keeping up to date on graphics quality, but  
>this doesn't seem to be the case.  The current materials in the store look  
>to me like they're published out of a garage by amateur artists.  Is there  
>some war with Paramount over publishing rights?  To add insult to injury,  
>the games seem to rely on ships and equipment illustrations from the TV  
>version (hokey) rather than the movies (much improved).  Look at new  
>entrants like Battletech.  I have no real interest to play this game (the  
>whole premise seems pretty silly), but the graphics of some of the recent  
>stuff make the SFB stuff look pretty feeble.

The game (not just the illustrations) is based only on the old series
material, and not on the movies or new series, because that is all they have
license to for from Paramount.  Not to mention that Paramount rather majorly
screwed consistency in going from series to movies and then again from movies
to new series.  There's already enought plot holes in the old series; I'd much
rather have a playable game with hokey illustrations than a fashionable game
that breaks apart.

They definitely could use a decent artist, though.

Part of the problem is that ADB (the designers) and TFG (the publishers) are
just emerging from, err, major financial difficulties.  As someone else
already said, for now at least, all their stuff is being done on a shoestring
budget.  These problems were the result of a combination of a string of bad
luck and some questionable business decisions; hopefully they are now well
past them.

>3) Why hasn't there been an aggressive inclusion of the ST:TNG period?   
>Seems like this would be a hot item...

See above.  They don't have the license, and besides, what Romulan would allow
himself to be seen flying _disruptors_??

>4) Weren't there some miniatures out for this awhile back?  What happened?   
>This seems like a natural for miniatures. God knows if people buy  
>miniatures of big robots for Battletech I'd think the Star Trek stuff  
>would go like gang busters.

There were miniatures.  They have been discontinued.  I think ADB (the game
designers) are still looking at a way to revive them, but it's a back burner
project at best.  Since I never was interested in the things, I don't know the
scoop too well, maybe someone else can fill in the gory details.

>Can anyone enlighten (as opposed to flame) me on these issues? 

What's to flame?  Your questions sound completely reasonable to me.

>I'm a big fan of the genre, and I've always been interested in the gaming
>concept, but have been put off by the seeming complexity or rules, and the
>amateurish execution of the materials (yes, I place a very high premium on
>graphics quality -- it's a personal peeve).

Like I said, the complexity isn't as bad as it seems.  The rules subset pretty
well, and you rarely come even close to needing them all at the same time (for
example, if you're playing Federation vs Klingon, you don't need the plasma
torpedo rules, and so on.)

As for the art, that's not my pet peeve, but I do have to agree: professional
quality it ain't.

SR
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