Whats your favorite spaceship combat game (and why)?

[Pijlie]

I played a lot of Full Thrust and can heartily recommend that. It is however a classic game with the administartion that entails. If you don't mind checking boxes, the game is fantastic and basically miniature agnostic, although it does have its own fluff. Ship design is possible. It is a Capital ship game, with swarms of fighters operating as a unit. I don't think it had aliens IIRC.

Silent Death is also very good, designed to play on a hex map but can be converted to tabletop with simple tools. It is basically a fighter game, with only the smallest of capital ships. Very entertaining. Also classic in terms of bookkeeping. Ship design is possible. It has a strong Alien faction, the Night Brood.

Star Wars Armada is also a superb Capital ship game, with many similarities to (but a LOT more depth than) X-Wing. It has a very influencial meta game, which you can see as an advantage or a disadvantage depending on your taste. It s (of course) also limited to the SW universe and needs its own range of miniatures. The SW canon is, of course, crawling with aliens.

[AdmiralAndy]

Full Thrust did have Aliens Introduced in later supplementary material.

There was also a Babylon 5 Version of Full Thrust in The Babylon Project Earthforce Sourcebook.


The Honor Harrington Wargame Rules are available on Wargame Vault.

[racm32]

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?

I am slowly working on a set of rules specifically to capture Newtonian physics based fleet battles in the near future (100-200 years).

[pixelgeek]

I am slowly working on a set of rules specifically to capture Newtonian physics based fleet battles in the near future (100-200 years).

That is quite a lead time for publication. Are you still going to be around?

[racm32]

That is quite a lead time for publication. Are you still going to be around?

Sorry its set in the near future, less then 200 years from now. I have most the base rules done just need to start play testing and adjusting. Then will add optional complex rules and a campaign system. Will also try to come up with some SOLO rules.

[fred]

Billion Suns is now up for pre-order from Amazon and Caliver, with a mid-Feb release date.

[Daeothar]

Wonderful; I'll be getting me a copy for sure...

[YPU]

I've had my head in billion suns so much that I forgot about Stars and Steel! Which is a game specifically designed for huge fleet battles, using small ships "microfleet" and the rules are available for "pay what you want" prices!

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/313886/Stars-and-Steel--main-rules?src=hottest_filtered

While billion suns has a lot of interesting ideas, the whole game is very much tied to its setting, in that your bottom line profit is all that matters. Stars and steel is much more grand scale fleet battles in the classic sense.

[precinctomega]

Just popping into mention that Horizon Wars: Infinite Dark will be released later this year.

It seeks to have a flavour of Newtonian physics without getting too bogged down in the mathematics of it, has rules to play at one of three "command levels" (fighters, traders/miners, battleships) and includes solo rules.

Currently it's in beta testing with my patrons but I hope we'll be putting the rules more or less to bed in the next month or so and I can get to laying out the rulebook.  My original hope was to be published by the end of March, but that's looking more like the end of May, now.  The upside of having such great beta testers is that I get lots of feedback and suggestions.  The downside is that I have to respond to a lot more feedback and suggestions! 

[Wellington]

My favorites are Star Wars Armada, Babylon 5: A Call to Arms and Battlefleet Gothic.

Even if a combat game has the perfect rules, the background stories are very important for me. This three game combine the stories and good rules.

[Sir_Theo]

I really liked the Halo Fleet battles game, its a lot of fun. Obviously it disappeared when Spartan games went pop. It was the right level of complexity for me (not very)

[Simlasa]

Full Thrust is my go-to most of the time. The right amount of detail for me and I like the vector movement. There have been lots of content tweaking it to various settings... Traveller, Star Trek, Babylon 5, etc.

BFG and Silent Death are great fun as well and a bit more 'pew, pew, pew' in their playstyle.

The 5150 space games are something I'd like to try... if I can make it through the author's writing, which has been a bit off-putting for me in the past.