Posted on: January 1, 2020
hibitdrifter
Verified ownerGames: 768 Reviews: 11
OK holdout until SFC: Orion Pirates
Based on the boardgame Starfleet Battles, this meshes in a real-time aspect to combat. However, that combat is more similar to sailing ships than aerial fdogfighting. So, for example, after firing your various weapons, you may be left maneuvering for some time until those systems are ready to fire again. There is a speed adjuster, so you can speed up or slow down combat as you like. At its higher settings, it's very near an arcade. Where at the slower settings, it gives to time to consider things as if you were playing a boardgame. The three rating is due to the fact, as others have noted, is it gets extremely repetitive. And in the campaign game, the enemy ships upgrade as you do. So there can be weird situations where you're at a disadvantage because of that as some ships are better at some missions. You also really don't have a huge effect (if any) on the campaign map, so events can seem very arbitrary. If you just want to fight in skirmish mode you can set up some truly grand battles. SFC: Orion Pirates is a standalone expansion that is better in every way save one - that being SFC Gold has officers that increase in experience. SFC:OP does not. I'm not sure why they removed that feature. But if you're OK with sailing ship style combat in space, you'll have fun killing time. (Each combat typically lasts around 10-30 minutes.) As an aside, in the "SFB" subdirectory of the game, you get the "cadet" version of Starfleet Battles in PDF. The counters are crummy looking (lots of artifacts - like a 90s era jpeg saved at extreme low quality), but usable.
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