I finally saw The Force Awakens this last weekend and really enjoyed it. Which got me to thinking...
Given how many games have used the Star Wars IP, I'm kinda surprised at how few in the last decade (or before) seem to have actually featured any Turn-Based play. I've enjoyed some of the RPG titles, and I've never been a fan of RTS gaming (all that frantic clicking with an imperfect understanding of what might result reminds me too much of my day job!).
But it puzzles me that there are so few games out there that would meet a definition of war game that deal with Star Wars IP or even those same themes. The closest I can come is an SPI book-case game from about 1980 called Freedon in the Galaxy. It didn't use the actual intellectual property of the Star Wars franchise, but was clearly a knock-off the in characters and the idea. It featured some interesting ideas for asymmetrical play that you didn't see in many games for another decade or two (e.g., the Empire can't move many units away from their home planets until their "readiness levels" have been adjusted by detecting Rebel characters on their home planet, rebellions in nearby systems, etc.).
Anybody else got a title or game to recommend or reminisce about? Anything in the works today that I'm missing out on?
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-xw5j1muW_HE%2FTfgFurpzCFI%2FAAAAAAAADRY%2FsrGanh32_F8%2Fs320%2Ffreedom.jpg&hash=66fe357a09d0cd125cc508f244ef876cf1590759)
I would have loved a Birth of the Federation type of game for Star Wars but there isn't.... :'(
This one? Rebellion in the States, Supremacy in Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Rebellion
Not turn-based, but this with z3r0x's FoC Addon mod and Republic At War mod will stay on my drive:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/32470/
Quote from: Ian C on January 06, 2016, 04:53:31 AM
Not turn-based, but this with z3r0x's FoC Addon mod and Republic At War mod will stay on my drive:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/32470/
What do those mods do?
Quote from: spelk on January 06, 2016, 03:52:54 AM
This one? Rebellion in the States, Supremacy in Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Rebellion
This. Still on my HD.
Star Wars Combine (www.swcombine.com) used to be a nifty strategy / mmo game. Don't know if its still active ?
Quote from: spelk on January 06, 2016, 03:52:54 AM
This one? Rebellion in the States, Supremacy in Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Rebellion
It's not turn-based, but the real-time pace is pretty slow on the lowest time setting. Plus, your fleets generally take awhile going through hyperspace so once you send them to a far flung system, you gotta wait & do other stuff in the meantime.
Nevertheless, it had some of the best grand strategy gameplay mechanics set during the original trilogy. Has a bit of a learning curve, though. For example, you can't just bombard an enemy planet from orbit if it has planetary shields. You pretty much gotta keep sending Heroes and/or SF Teams in to disable it or your fleet will be sitting in orbit duelling it out for a very long time with little resulting damage per attempt. Sending your heroes & characters on special missions is essential. There are a couple little bits of gameplay info in the game manual I had found very enlightening when I ran into problems getting things done (such as the planetary shield thing).
Plus the way the info & system windows, which need to pop-up & rotate around to pre-designated screen areas, takes a little getting used to. I think such UI oddities, and the learning curve, is what turned many of the casual strategy players & reviewers off back in the day.
Was so happy when GOG put
SW Rebellion up, despite having run it from my old CD-ROM in recent years. Have it installed, need to play again. O0
I suppose you could try
Star Wars Empire At War Gold and just use the turn-based galactic side while auto-resolving the rather generic RTS ground battles. I recall trying that in the past and the Auto-Resolve heavily favoring the AI though. Plus the turn-based side isn't terribly deep, especially compared to something like
Rebellion.
As for actual turn-based games, I think it's all tabletop stuff. Fantasy Flight has that licensing cornered pretty well. There's a tabletop
SW Rebellion coming soon.
Imperial Assault is on the individual character level, with some RPG-ish progression in between missions. Fighter and capital ship miniatures games, and the modern series of pen & paper RPGs too.
Imperial Assault is probably the most solo friendly due to a user-created solitaire variant available on Boardgamegeek. Since he also had experience creating & refining a solo variant for the game system's predecessor (Descent 2nd Ed), it looks to be pretty refined at automating the Imperial opponent's side.
Quote from: tgb on January 06, 2016, 05:33:38 AM
Quote from: Ian C on January 06, 2016, 04:53:31 AM
Not turn-based, but this with z3r0x's FoC Addon mod and Republic At War mod will stay on my drive:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/32470/
What do those mods do?
z3r0x's FoC Addon is a high quality very well designed mod that adds many improvements, units, ships, planets and characters to the game.
Playing the three-way strategic game (Rebels, Imperials, Zann Consortium) is one of the most challenging and enjoyable strategic games I've ever played.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/z3r0xs-foc-addon-v35
http://starwarsmodding.wikia.com/wiki/Z3r0x's_FoC_Addon
Republic At War mod allows you play through the era of the Clone Wars and is an excellent piece of work.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/republic-at-war
Star Wars: Rebellion looks exactly like what I was looking for. Interesting that they're coming out with a table-top version of that later. I've seen the space-battle miniature games, but what always intrigued me more was the strategic level. My sense is that even a good starship war game would have a hard time comparing to the battles from the movies.
And, when it comes to spaceships-shooting-at-each-other games, Star Fleet Battles will always be my favorite girl, even if I haven't played it in 25 years! ;D
Quote from: FarAway Sooner on January 06, 2016, 11:53:47 AM
Star Wars: Rebellion looks exactly like what I was looking for. Interesting that they're coming out with a table-top version of that later. I've seen the space-battle miniature games, but what always intrigued me more was the strategic level. My sense is that even a good starship war game would have a hard time comparing to the battles from the movies.
Informative LP series for
SW Rebellion, from an experienced player:
Link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVIuq8IC28k&list=PLNn7c31H7Njkhf5UyMVfQ4_42sUsUEkCo&index=1)
Quote
And, when it comes to spaceships-shooting-at-each-other games, Star Fleet Battles will always be my favorite girl, even if I haven't played it in 25 years! ;D
I picked up the newer, more streamlined version: Federation Commander (http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/fed_command.shtml) last year.
They made some great adjustments to cut down on the less important minutiae (goodbye useless EW warfare point bidding annoyances, for example), reduced the amount of phases per turn to speed it up, provided some better looking counters & map boards, etc. Yet it's still very SFB - just less headache. Was much needed!
I've also purchased a copy of
SFC2: Orion Pirates for a digital d/l version of the old SFB rules-based PC game that works on Win7+ . O0
Quote from: Nefaro on January 06, 2016, 12:34:08 PM
I've also purchased a copy of SFC2: Orion Pirates for a digital d/l version of the old SFB rules-based PC game that works on Win7+ . O0
Is somebody selling SFC2 Orion Pirates as a digital download ?
Quote from: Pete Dero on January 06, 2016, 01:24:00 PM
Quote from: Nefaro on January 06, 2016, 12:34:08 PM
I've also purchased a copy of SFC2: Orion Pirates for a digital d/l version of the old SFB rules-based PC game that works on Win7+ . O0
Is somebody selling SFC2 Orion Pirates as a digital download ?
I purchased the community version here http://www.dynaverse.net/market/5-star-trek-starfleet-command-orion-pirates.html
Quote from: WYBaugh on January 06, 2016, 09:14:31 PM
Quote from: Pete Dero on January 06, 2016, 01:24:00 PM
Quote from: Nefaro on January 06, 2016, 12:34:08 PM
I've also purchased a copy of SFC2: Orion Pirates for a digital d/l version of the old SFB rules-based PC game that works on Win7+ . O0
Is somebody selling SFC2 Orion Pirates as a digital download ?
I purchased the community version here http://www.dynaverse.net/market/5-star-trek-starfleet-command-orion-pirates.html
That's the one.
I highly recommend you get
SFC2: Orion Pirates. Not
SFC2: Empires At War Community Edition.
The latter is buggy and has crash issues which are yet to be worked out by the mod team who created that Community Edition. Last I checked, such fixes weren't getting done.
Orion Pirates, on the other hand, is the original & unmodified version of the last of the SFC2 series and runs stable on Win7 & Dx9. OP was the most advanced of the SFC2 series.
3MA tackle SW:Rebellion
https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/10629-episode-336-star-wars-rebellion/