wow , just got the Arthur book, its a good one like I would buy, so a great treat, I'm sort of getting into Star fleet battles, I have a few box sets and books, but digital versions are so tempting.
I switched over to their newer
Federation Commander version awhile back.
More streamlined. Cut out some of the extra guess-tactic rules that didn't add much for the crunch (oh god ECM/ECCM!), reduced the amount of phases, and many other usability/time improvements over SFC.
Don't get me wrong. I was enthralled with how much was modeled in SFC over the years, and had a good amount of the products. But damn was that an exceptionally long and overly bulky thing. I rank the advanced version, with extended empires, up there with other bloated time, rules, and money sinks. SFC was the ASL of sci-fi ship combat.
The new FC cuts down on all that bloat a fair bit, yet still keeps it crunchy enough to retain the flavor. The components are also a nice improvement. Marco did a YouTube review on it a year or two ago.