Federation Commander

Well yes. Frankly I have never liked multi-player combat games for this reason: it comes down to alliances and not in-game tactics and choices. One on one avoids this issue.

I'm a firm believer in this principle: if the enemy uses tactics you don't like/that annoy you/that keep beating you/all of the above, then you need to develop counter-tactics rather than complain or introduce rules to stop the other guy winning.

While this is good advice, there is a reason why ...

I think that the Romulans in free for all should be obligated to fight (similar to the tournament rules for avoiding combat perhaps). If the free for all is simply everyone hiding, it isn't going to be much fun. However, only the Romulans really have that option (hiding) on a small map, thus they do ...

Reading the rule on firing, I'm not seeing a clear interpretation one way or the other. Allowing the constant "oneupmanship" dialog does seem most to be in the spirit of "me too" firing, with the normal requirement that you can't "back out" of any commitment (i.e., once overloaded it must be fired ...

I am familiar with Starmada, and I agree that the lack of a graphic is one of the few things that made it less exciting for me. In other regards though this looks like an interesting project as Starmada is even faster to resolve than Federation Commander (although I never used shield shards, so I ...

I haven't noticed a problem with drones in fleet scenarios: the volume in the clouds the Kzinti can throw is sufficient to make the target take notice and they seem to win often enough around these parts.

Even in a dual they can be OK, although often there is simply a "trade" between drones where ...

In FC, a ship tractored by a friendly ship cannot fire or launch weapons, even in its own defense. The towing ship could release the tractor, allow the towed ship to fire, then attach another tractor in the Other Functions Phase, but this would really be an abuse of the rules and I'd look askance ...

Nerroth wrote:

The Vari always remind me of the spider level in the TRON game for some reason.

I can remember the light-cycles, the sailing lightship, and the flying tank-things - but spiders?

*memory draws a blank*

The arcade game does have a spiders hatching from eggs level.

While I completely agree that in a tournament situation that the participants should be fully up to date with the rules and know which version is in force, in a pick up game I would have to disagree that anyone should "suffer" if they are using the rules that came with the game and someone else ...

Yes, I chuckled a bit at the "6 hours = long time" comment, but really couldn't come up with the words to put F&E into perspective.

I've been a lurker here, but I can say something about Federation and Empire, Twilight Imperium 3 (and 2 and 1) as I own them and their respective expansion(s).

My first question would be which version of Twilight Imperium you are thinking about?

The currently available Twilight Imperium 3 is ...