Star Fleet Battles (SFB) is a tactical board wargame set in an offshoot of the Star Trek setting called the Star Fleet Universe. Originally created in 1979 by Stephen V. Cole, it has had four major editions. The current edition is published by Amarillo Design Bureau as Star Fleet Battles, Captain's Edition.
Star Fleet Battles is a ship-to-ship warfare simulation game, which uses cardboard counters to represent the ships, shuttles, seeking weapons, terrain, and information on a hexagonal map. It is a game system for two or more players (there are some solitaire scenarios). Typically, a player will have one ship in a game, though they can control an entire fleet, if they can keep track of the paperwork and options involved; multiple players can play as teams, with each team splitting up the work of running a squadron or fleet, or a 'free-for-all' fight can be run. Ships represented in the game are typically starships from such classic Star Trek powers as the Federation, Romulan Star Empire, Klingon Empire, or purely Star Fleet Universe creations such as the Hydran Kingdom or Interstellar Concordium.
The game system uses an impulse-based turn system, which is a departure from the traditional I-Go You-Go alternating system used by most wargames. A ship's speed determines how often and when it can move based on a 32 impulse movement chart. Generally, a unit only moves one hex at a time, making 32 the maximum 'speed' in the game. Similar systems are used in games such as Steve Jackson's Car Wars (which uses a 5 phase system) and is designed to more realistically simulate unit movement in an environment where the units can move a great distance in the time needed for non-movement functions (like weapons fire) to occur.
Overview
Star Fleet Battles was based on the Star Trek universe as of 1979 and includes elements of Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Animated Series. Federation elements were heavily based on concepts from The Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual. Unlike the mainstream Star Trek universe, Star Fleet Battles seems to consider some, but not all of The Animated Series, as being a canon material source, thus leading to the inclusion of aliens such as the Kzinti.
Since the first publication of the game, Star Fleet Battles and the Star Trek universe have diverged considerably as the authors of the game and those of the films and television series have basically ignored each other. The resulting divergent world of Star Fleet Battles is known as the "Star Fleet Universe".
There are several notable games set in this universe, including the video game series Starfleet Command (which combines parts of SFU with parts of canon Star Trek), the role-playing game setting Prime Directive, (currently available for the GURPS and d20 systems), the card game Star Fleet Battle Force, and the strategy game Federation and Empire, as well as the recently released Federation Commander.
The license Star Fleet Battles operates under does not allow for direct reference to the characters and detailed events of the Original Series. As such, official material does not include references to Kirk, Spock or use the USS Enterprise directly, though the latter is included in ship listings. This has not prevented oblique references, such as a comment about the first Gorn-Federation meeting as involving “two young captains who fired first, and faced embarrassing questions later.” Other references are monster scenarios loosely based on the planet killer from "The Doomsday Machine" and the space amoeba from "The Immunity Syndrome".
History
Pocket Edition Star Fleet Battles was originally published as a 'pocket-game' in a ziplock bag as "Task Force Game #4" by Task Force Games in 1979. Steve Cole later recalled: The design of Star Fleet Battles began during 1975... Jim Brown... and I were playing a lot of Jutland.... One afternoon I was studying the Jutland battle that was in progress on my floor (left from the previous evening) when the [Star Trek] re-run of the day came on. I began to consider the possibility of doing a space game on the Jutland system. JagdPanther was in operation at the time, and I had vague thoughts that I could somehow get a license for the game.
By the time Jim came by to collect me for dinner, I had a Federation CA and a Klingon D7 fighting it out. In the brief space of an hour long re-run, I had two SSD's, the proportional movement system, and the charts for phasers and disruptor bolts. All were to change drastically within a week and were to continue evolving for five years, but the start was made.
The company JagdPanther closed down before SFB was finished, but the game was not forgotten, and when Steve Cole and Allen Eldridge decided to start a new company (Task Force Games) Star Fleet Battles was one of several half-finished designs proposed to be published by them.
While the initial format was small, and the number of ships limited, the game was still not simple. This was dictated in part by a desire to do the "definitive Star Fleet game". This meant that it included as much detail as possible from all the source material available. In the mid-70s, this meant the original two series and a number of fan publications. Except for The Original Series itself, none of these materials are considered canon today, but at the time, they were all considered fairly authoritative, especially the Star Fleet Technical Manual by Franz Joseph, which had originally been blessed by Gene Roddenberry, and from whom Steve Cole got the license to do a Star Trek game.
Elements of these fan productions shaped many aspects of the game. The Technical Manual itself decided the main functions of the Federation Heavy Cruiser, and what other Federation ships looked like. A set of blueprints (probably those drawn by Michael McMaster in 1975) showed the Klingon D7 as having more phasers than the Heavy Cruiser, and disruptors mounted on the engines. The latter became a common feature of Klingon shipbuilding, and the former led to the idea of less powerful phasers for the Klingons. The same blueprints also stated that an older, slightly inferior version of the D7, the D6, was what was sold to the Romulans, and the D7/D6 dichotomy has been at the heart of the Klingon fleet in the game ever since. Two of the novels gave mention of a phaser being mounted on shuttlecraft. This was included, as much to give a reason to use shuttles as anything else. This proved to be the wedge that allowed the introduction of fighters to the game; a feature popular with many players, but also led many to believe that Star Fleet Battles was no longer Star Trek.
Designer's Edition Later in 1979, Star Fleet Battles was re-released in a boxed set known as the Designer's Edition. The original plan had been to produce "three interlocking games, all to be published in the 'pocket' format. When 'completed' this trilogy would cover the entire system."
However, the real reason for this plan was that it had been impossible to acquire boxes at an affordable price. When a source of boxes was found, it was decided to do a revised, expanded version instead. The box contained about twice as many ships and scenarios as the original Pocket Edition, and was expanded upon itself by three expansions in the same zip-lock format as the original (named Star Fleet Battles Expansion #1, Expansion #2, and Expansion #3), all of which were reviewed in issues of The Space Gamer.
These expansions rapidly added many new ships and concepts to the system which are parts of it to this day: The Hydrans, Andromedans and Lyrans were introduced as new empires that fielded novel technologies peculiar to themselves. All the races were issued a full complement of ship classes, particularly dreadnoughts, fleet tugs and scouts, which in the Designer Edition only the Federation and Klingons deployed. Notably, only the Klingon Empire built the superheavy 'Battleship' B10 class (in the Captain's Edition Module R5 the other races were presented with conjectural i.e. non-historical battleship designs). Heavy cruisers, the starship class the game was based on, were supplemented by 'wartime construction cruisers' (simply called 'war cruisers'), relatively inexpensive substitutes built on light cruiser hulls yet packing the firepower of their larger stablemates. All fleets deployed 'Command Cruisers' which were heavy cruisers with additional weapons and power, and some races deployed 'Leader' versions of smaller classes, such as destroyers or frigates. Carrier starships with attack shuttles (usually called fighters) became common throughout the Alpha Quadrant; in the Designer Edition the Attack Shuttle Carrier was unique to the Kzinti Hegemony. In the final years of the General War so-called 'Pseudo-Fighters' (later renamed 'fast patrol' ships; but retaining the 'PF' designation) were expendable 'attrition units' (like attack shuttles/fighters but larger with their own ship system displays) that operated from tenders, bases, or planets and hunted in flotillas of six. 'X-ships' or 'up-rated cruisers' featured altogether new technologies (like fast-loading torpedoes, overloaded phasers, oversize warp engines and high-capacity battery reserve power) based on the new versions of the Enterprise and Klingon battlecruisers seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
All races built 'Battle Stations', which were upgrades to the Base Stations deployed on territorial borders that were presented in the Pocket Edition (for their Starbases, each race used a modified generic SSD in the Designer Edition). Each race also received auxiliary units that used generic SSDs, such as police ships, freighters, Q-ships, Fleet Repair Docks and minelayers, for which comprehensive mine warfare rules were introduced. Until that point, the only mines were the Romulan-unique “nuclear space mine” (NSM) and the smaller “transporter bomb” (T-bomb) used by all races.
Many things were re-written, and each expansion included new elements that impacted how previous rules interacted, demanding a great deal of errata and making the entire system something of a jumble. "It was clear that issuing yet another 'expansion kit' that devoted half of its space to correcting previous products was not the answer."(Z1.1) Notes on the Commander's Edition, Star Fleet Battles Basic Set, (ADB, 1999).
Commander's Edition
Commander's Edition was, effectively, a ground-up rewrite of the rules. The old rule-number system was discarded in favor of a completely new alpha-numeric system. The three Expansions were scrapped and re-packaged. However, other than the new (bigger) reorganized rulebook, the initial 1983 release of the boxed set was mostly unchanged from the Designer's Edition, including the box (later printings labeled it Star Fleet Battles: Volume I). The separate Star Fleet Battles Commander's Rulebook was also available for previous owners of Star Fleet Battles, with a Volume II following in 1984.
Most of the material (including the new empires) from the Expansions was reorganized and released as Volume II. The bulk of the fighter rules were in Supplement #1, X-ships (now redone not to be based on ST:TMP and divided into two "generations") were in Supplement #2, and PFs (now renamed as Fast Patrol ships) were in Supplement #3.
From there, Commander's Edition came out with new products for the next half-decade or so. Two Reinforcements packs allowed the purchase of extra counters. Volume III added the Interstellar Concordium and the Neo-Tholians, as well as new ships and new concepts (such as heavy fighters). Nexus magazine was launched as a house organ for Task Force Games, and featured a regular SFB section which presented new material like scenarios, rules errata, and input and feedback from players. Similar material was also published in ADB's in-house (but widely distributed) Starletter newsletter from 1982.