Well, with the consistent interest I've had getting back to Starfire, and investigating old-school Star Trek as well [Star Fleet Battle Manual 3 and Star Fleet Battles, both 1979-ish] I figure I have to prepare better miniature and hex map / mat situations. The first thing I worked out was the miniature situation.
I needed small, cheap, easy to paint ships that had obvious thrust exhaust and obvious weapons. I also wanted some likely shapes. After LOTS of looking around and plenty of thinking, I went with the fleet-scale Star Blazers miniatures from Musashi et al: http://www.starblazersonline.com/products.html
I got about 18 of the early Okita cruisers and "Wildstar" missile destroyers, and the early Yamato [couldn't resist!] to use in some "Sink the Bismark" type scenarios. To oppose them, I got a bunch of Gamilon small ships, DDs, CAs, and Deslock's Command Ship, plus some transports. I figures these will due very well for an escalating war of tech as seen with the Starfire Scenarios.
The caption says "free with your purchase of kids meal". I think. Or maybe it says "Alex Wildstar's Destroyer in which he gets killed and propels his younger sibling along plotline". Yes?
Gamilon type cruiser or destroyer. Style very consistent with what I ordered. Note large bow vents where the ship model serves as a flashlight and water pistol.
General type of fleet I ordered for Terra. Unfortunately, the big battleship isn't available.
Altho I may not necessarily dig the Khanate as Khats, I like the general idea of both the Warp Points and the advancing ship size and tech that playing Starfire RAW puts forward. I will probably tweak the background and blend it with the Star Blazers one, and come up with a "Starfire Meets Star Blazers" routine. With Starfire, my nostalgia and RAW mix permits me to experiment with my own background. With the Star Trek, I am pretty much dead set on the original TV series universe, as that's that I knew growing up.
Anyway, the problem miniatures lead me quickly into is stacking. At the moment, there's no stacking limit and no penalty for being stacked when fired upon, as Starfire posits a .5 Light Second hex, about 93,000 miles. How a missile goes twenty hexes in a ten second turn is best not thought about! Maybe the lasers go the speed of light, but the missiles??? Anyway... More importantly, in game terms, one often stacks up the counters of ships, and has little reason to divide up and spread out. So how can I "stack" miniatures on bases? The simple solution was a mat that had hexes or squares that were sizable enough to put the ship models beside one another.
This led to the second purchase, several Chessex mats. http://www.chessex.com/mats/Battlemats_&_Megamats.htm
I got a Megamat with 1.5" hexes on one side and 1.5" squares on the other. This will allow several ships to be "stacked in a hex" as long as the bases are about a 1/2 or 3/4". With the small size of the Star Blazer minis, this seems quite doable. I was also thinking of developing some simple "squadron" rules using Multiplex Tracking and Datalink which are obvious technologies in this modern era.
While I am enjoying using the old counters, and both the original blue and new space hex sheets, as I paint up the models I'll certainly want to play on a larger space with ships organized to an Admirals satisfaction. Clashes btw Earth Defense and Alien Intruders coming thru Warp Points heretofore unknown to Humanity seems very fruitful for creative endeavors.
I'll post again when the items arrive. The next post seems to demand Scenario 2!
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