Space fighter rules

[boywundyrx]

Another vote that both Starfighters and Silent Death are good, with the addition that depending on your needs and plans, both could fit your needs.

Starfighters is great for conventions and games with big player numbers. I find it recreates things like Star Wars (specifically TIE fighters) well, the weakest TIE I can create in SD still lasts too long, SF TIEs blow up real good.  SF is also self-contained in one book, and gives you rules for some big ships (or using the rules for a battle between bigger ships, but I haven't tried that).  SF also fits into the Fistful of Lead family of games, which I love, so moving over to it doesn't require rewiring my brain. It has a campaign game.

Silent Death gives more crunch, in the usual good and bad ways, but is still a very playable game and has some neat mechanics. It has more weapon options, and while some are spread through the fluff books, those tend to be pretty setting specific and you can do most of what you want in the couple of core books.  SD also has a wider size range of ships built in, and two of the expansions lets you upscale further, but IIRC the Kashmiri book requires some brainpower and errata to figure that out.

A setting neutral SD ruleset would be pretty kickass, even as pdfs, you're still buying a lot of fluff with every book.  Both rule sets could also be used for things like pulpfighters.

For me, I would use SF at conventions and for one-shots in my basement over an evening, and probably for everything Star Wars, including campaigns. SD would be for when we want to play something that dives deeper into tech and we'd play regularly by patching on some campaign rules.

Chris

[Snowdogs]

Many thanks, everyone!
I have downloaded the core books for Starfighters and Silent Death and will dig out my old copies of Full Thrust, then have a read-through and see what feels right.

Thanks again. 

[Chief Lackey Rich]

I'll agree with the multiple Silent Death recs, but someone ought to provide a link for the DTRPG or WV store page:

 https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/8834/metal-express/category/23888/silent-death

[blacksmith]

Hello, I wrote Fighter Command and a supplement with a full campaing commandir a star carrier for Two Hour Wargames years ago. I designed the game for solo playing and greatly inspired by the PC game Wing Commander. Now it is being sold by Rebel Minis.
There is a review here: http://deltavector.blogspot.com/2013/05/5150-fighter-command-space-fighter.html
and lots of AARs in my blog: http://javieratwar.blogspot.com/search/label/5150%20Fighter%20Command
I also used those Silent Death plastic ships for my games:

cheers,

[Snowdogs]

Hello, I wrote Fighter Command and a supplement with a full campaing commandir a star carrier for Two Hour Wargames years ago. I designed the game for solo playing and greatly inspired by the PC game Wing Commander. Now it is being sold by Rebel Minis.
There is a review here: http://deltavector.blogspot.com/2013/05/5150-fighter-command-space-fighter.html
and lots of AARs in my blog: http://javieratwar.blogspot.com/search/label/5150%20Fighter%20Command
I also used those Silent Death plastic ships for my games:

cheers,

Many thanks! I'll have a look through...
Those ships look fantastic btw 

[Chief Lackey Rich]

The metal Silent Death minis (still available from Metal Express, and still quite cheap) also paint up nicely.  My very incomplete gallery is online over here:

https://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2019/09/silent-death-gallery.html

[The_Beast]

Fiddly? Explain? Not sure I can...

I think I got lost ticking off boxes and applying results.

Of course, I find threshold checks for Full Thrust for large units a bit of a road bump, and am universally decried for same.

Access: is it available on Metal Express? If not, plenty of used floating about, and pay per download abound. WargameVault has Next Millennium for nine beans US, hardly a pain.

I think I had Fighter Command once, but never got around to it. With the number of previous and current THW I have been picking up lately, seems only a matter of time.

FT was offered as a quick start, especially the number of folks familiar with same.

Doug

Edit: Long ago and far away, Jon Tuffley, author of FT, wrote a short starfighter game called Tacship for Ragnarok. NOT FT, but offered for completeness.

https://www.sfsfw.org/a/03/tacship.php

[Rick]

I quite like those 'Tacship' rules. You could always vary the points available (+/- 10) per fighter, as long as the average remained 30 per fighter taken. Simple but lots of potential there - thanks for that, I hadn't seen those before.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

Tacship's an oldie but a goodie.  Still holds up nicely as a rules-lite starfighter game after all these years.  If Jon ever does a proper new edition of FT he really ought to find room to shove those rules into the new book as a special bonus feature.

[The_Beast]

First, the elephant in the spacedock, I missed Dice Roller mentioning Tacship, with link, before I did. Deepest apologies, old bean!

Tacship's an oldie but a goodie.  Still holds up nicely as a rules-lite starfighter game after all these years.  If Jon ever does a proper new edition of FT he really ought to find room to shove those rules into the new book as a special bonus feature.

While I first saw the ruleset on the GZG mailgroup, and not the short time I was a member of SFSFW, I do think in general Jon considers it theirs.

Doug