Whats your favorite spaceship combat game (and why)?

[Daeothar]

Maybe we should play a game, once the plague has passed?

You'll be more than welcome in my still new gaming room 

[nozza_uk]

There's two that I regularly play. For Star Trek ship gaming I play Attack Wing. For all other spaceship gaming, I default to 5150: Star Navy from THW.

[NurgleHH]

A vote here for Wiley Games 'Starfighters'.

It's very cinematic, has a fleet rules expansion and I believe can be played solo 

Available here in the UK and Europe.
https://oshiromodels.wixsite.com/oshiromodelswebshop/rules

+1, simple and fast. Worth a look

[Storm Wolf]

Well for me I started with Star Fleet Battles (SFB) which had masses of paper work, 32 impulses per turn (I think?) and large Ship SSDs. This would make my head spin nowadays I fear

More recently if would have been Fullthrust II which I preferred to the updated version and Battle Tech Aerospace (I think it was). I have also played a brief smattering of the 40K space game (but I don`t remember what it was called?).

So for me its FT2 all the way, an oldie but a goodie

Glen

[warlord frod]

Another oldie (1990) was "Silent Death" It was not overly complicated and came with a lot of starships. I sold my copy a couple of years back. Still use full thrust have Star Trek clixs as well as Battlefleet Gothic and I love Red Alert the C&C game (Lovely components in that one)

[sundayhero]

full thrust looks like very interesting : an official range of minis available, free rules, physics...I may give a try !

[Storm Wolf]

Another oldie (1990) was "Silent Death" It was not overly complicated and came with a lot of starships. I sold my copy a couple of years back. Still use full thrust have Star Trek clixs as well as Battlefleet Gothic and I love Red Alert the C&C game (Lovely components in that one)

Ah Battlefleet Gothic that was the one, thank you.

Glen

[Malebolgia]

full thrust looks like very interesting : an official range of minis available, free rules, physics...I may give a try !

We played the game with the physics rules (vector-based movement) but felt this really made some fleets way too strong. My NSL fleet had incredible shooting and with vector-based movement it became too easy to just pivot and blast everything else to bits. There was no challenge at all. When we used cinematic movement this way way harder to do and gave much nicer combats.

[Daeothar]

Shame; all space combat games I've played so far were all cinematic, and I've really wanted to play something simulating Newtonian physics for a while now (basically since I started reading the Expanse).

Are there any alternatives out there for this type of play?

[n815e]

Shame; all space combat games I've played so far were all cinematic, and I've really wanted to play something simulating Newtonian physics for a while now (basically since I started reading the Expanse).

Are there any alternatives out there for this type of play?

There are a couple of games I know of that try to give a sense of this while still being playable and largely two dimensional.

For fighters, there is Battlestar Galactica Starship Battles. This one just lost the license. Small number of units but the maneuver system is great.

For ships, there is the old Babylon 5 Wars. Out of print but I think there are places online where you can download the rules.

There was a game that I never played based on Honor Harrington that used a more complex system of movement that looked like it includes vector movement, simulated three dimensions and even angles in three axes.

[pixelgeek]

There was a game that I never played based on Honor Harrington that used a more complex system of movement that looked like it includes vector movement, simulated three dimensions and even angles in three axes.

That was the Sagamani Space Combat Simulator system IIRC

Lets not forget that the OP has a lot of large scale ships so they need a system that can handle cruisers, batlleships etc

[Commander Roj]

... I love Red Alert the C&C game...

Totally agree except for the ships. Fantastic game, but I bought the components and am using my own ships.

[williamb]

That was the Sagamani Space Combat Simulator system IIRC

Lets not forget that the OP has a lot of large scale ships so they need a system that can handle cruisers, batlleships etc

https://www.adastragames.com/  is the company that developed the Saganami rules.   They continue to publish the same system under their own name.

[aktr]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

I forgot to say originally that I'm looking forward to A Billion Suns so that seems like a good bet, squadron strike sounds like it could be interesting so I might get the PDF of that for a read

Thanks to selling them some old WFB miniatures I now have a chunk of credit at TT Combat so I might buy a 2nd faction for Dropfleet so I can either run demo games of that or a different space ship game

Cheers

[YPU]

I think this is a interesting litmus test for Billion suns. These are the ship stats, there are a couple of extra rules (carriers can spawn fighters and utility ships) and there should be campaign rules where you can expand your tech for your corp (stuff like auxiliary getting 360 degrees fire) but by and large, this is the depth of unit stats in this game.