Starfire

I had a brief discussion the other day on Reddit with someone who was chatting about the old Starfire spaceship game from Task Force Games. I remembered that I had a copy of this at one stage and wondered if it was still in my old games pile.

And it was. 

This was a pretty good game back in teh day. I don't recall that we played it a lot, but it was something we dragged out from tome to time. But I don't think I've had it out of the ziplock bag in 40 years. On Saturday I set it up and had another go.

The scenarios are quite well done (up to a point) in that they tell a continuing story of the first war between the Terrans (who are beginning to expand into space via the discovery of wormholes called Warp Points) and teh Khanate of Orion, the first hostile race they have come across. As the war continues the game introduces new weapons and new classes of ship and the battles get bigger. A third force joins in so the final scenario is a gigantic three-way fight using every counter.

However the first scenario is a simple first contact between a Terran exploration vessel (which the ever pragmatic Terrans have still ensured is armed) against a small Khanate escort vessel. The Terrans have popped through a wormhole and must scan both the enemy vessel and a planet before escaping. The Khanate is trying to stop them.

In this scenario the Terran vessel had a gun (literally a weapon firing an explosive shell) and some lasers, whilst the Khanate vessel has a gun and some missiles. Guns and missiles score low damage. Guns are effective at close range whilst missiles are better at long range. Laser (and other beam weapons) have variable ranges depending on how powerful they are, hit better at closer ranges and also score more damage at close ranges.

The key to Starfire is obviously engaging the enemy at the optimal range for your weapons. In this first scenario, for example, the Khanate can stand off and shoot missiles. However the Terran vessel is bigger and also faster, so can close the range to where its lasers can score some real damage. And, obviously, the victory conditions require a close approach in order to use the scan.

The damage system is pretty nice. Each ship is made up of a number of systems (shield, armour, weapons, engines and so forth). These are represented by a code letter, and listed in the order in which they will take damage. Shields are always first, then armour and then internal systems. A hit crosses off systems from the left (although some weapons systems modify this - lasers ignore Shields, for example)

So in the first scenario the Khanate ship is listed as: SSAIGIRII (4) 2

S is Shields, A is Armour, G is the Gun, R the Missile Launcher and I the Engines. Each undestroyed engine give 1 movement point, so this ship has a move of 4. The final number is based on hull size and is how many movement points must be expended between each turn.

It's a neat system.

Less good is movement which is pretty clunky. Player rolls for initiative. The side with initiative moves second and fires first. When it's your turn to move you have to expend 1 movement point for each of your ships. Then the other side does the same. And you alternate expending points for ships until all ships have expended all of their points. It's fiddly, but not unplayable. However since there's a minimum distance you have to move between turns, you have to remember how far each ship in play has moved when you want to turn. And you're allowed to carry over movement from the previous turn as well. This is really difficult to do with lots of ships in play. 

There is an optional rule for pre-plotted movement, and that really seems the only viable way to play, since you have a record of points expended from turn to turn.

Firing works OK. Players alternate firing ships until both run out. Any damage scored counts immediately, so you can take out weapons on an enemy before it can shoot back.

Anyway, I played that first scenario and the Khanate lost. Twice. It's really unbalanced. I can't see how the Terrans can't always win. They have a bigger ship that's as well armed as their opponent's and it's faster so it can close the range to bring its better weapons to bear.

Still, it got me back into the game.

I then tried the second scenario. In this the Terrans have beefed up some ships and returned to the system they had their first encounter. They have three ships, armed with a new weapons system, the Gun/Missile Launcher (you can choose whether to fire it as a Gun or Missile depending on the range).

The Khanate are waiting with a static armed base, three small ships and a light cruiser. 

This is a straight 'destroy the enemy' scenario, although you get VPs for damaging enemy ships. The Khanate outgun the Terrans, although not at long range. They got into close range and wiped the Terrans out.

Interestingly you get VPs for simply scoring damage, so a viable Terran strategy is to drop in via the Warp Point, fire off a load of missiles until you score some hits and then run away. You can outshoot the Khanate at long range, so should have more VPs, and can then end the scenario.

Anyway, I played a few games and it wasn't horrible, but somehow it didn't seem as good as I remember it. 

One other selling point it has is that it's possible to play a campaign in which you design and build your own ships. That would certainly be a way to play that offsets the imbalance of the scenarios provided. The ship-building system is really nice, although I haven't explored it a great deal.