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I recently got back into Full Thrust. For those not familiar this is a pretty slick space combat game by Jon Tuffley of Ground Zero Games. The second edition won Best SF Wargame Rules from SFSFW for four consecutive years and then it won three more times after the release of the fleet books.

It strikes a good balance between realism and playability. The default movement system ("cinematic") definitely isn't realistic but inertia is a consideration in a way that some other systems neglect and the game has a solid hard Sci-Fi feel. There is also an optional alternative movement system ("vector") which is more realistic but also more fiddly. The system is miniature agnostic but Ground Zero Games still produce, and are still updating and expanding, the official miniature range.

The rules are free and available here: https://shop.groundzerogames.co.uk/rules.html

However, I recommend just downloading the fleet books for the standard ship designs and grabbing Full Thrust Remixed here: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~laranzu/fullthrust/rules/ This version takes the core rules and edits in the More Thrust expansion as well as the substantial core rules changes from Fleet Book 1. With this version you no longer have to keep tabs on which parts have been replaced or updated by subsequent books.

Here's a pic with a mini on a 25mm base next to one of the largest ships (a NAC Fleet Carrier) to provide some scale for folks not familiar with the minis. The ship's base is 40mm across the flats.




There are going to be a bunch of fleets, modelled markers, basing tutorials and more to come.




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We'll kick things off with a New Anglian Confederation fleet. NAC is a constitutional monarchy formed of Britain, Canada and the colony formerly known as the United States of America (which has been placed under the authority of a military governor).



Obligatory drive glow shot:




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Some DIY asteroids




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Missile salvo markers



These are made from Pavla 1/72 HVAR rockets.

Radar contact markers ("blips")

looks pretty interesting, I'll keep an eye on this.

Some installations (on temporary bases for painting).



These are built from the Dropfleet Commander modular space station kit.

I really like GZG in general and all the ships Jon has churned out over the years. Your ships look really nice, please do share more of them!

And yep, I have a few space stations from Dropfleet on the pile too - I really like that elongated doughnut effort you've thought up in particular.

I like using the Fullt Thrust Continuum ruleset myself - I think it has a bunch of fan suggested stuff plus the goodness from the other books but then again I could be wrong.


Keep up the great work

Yes, that's exactly what Continuum is, Remixed plus a load of fan material, and it's become rather bloated (triple the page count) with edge cases and things that didn't really need to be differentiated between. I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone to start there. It's a great resource if you're looking for ideas for adapting FT for a diffent setting though.

Very nice looking ships. Agree that FT is a fantastic ruleset (though I prefer ACTA).
Look forward to seeing more!

Looking good, Scott.

Looking for a better solution to managing SSDs I created a set of templates for producing SSDs sized for standard card sleeves. (I have also put together SSDs for all the ships in both fleet books) This is a great way to browse your available ships to select a fleet and you can write on them with overhead projector pen.

Why OHP pen specifically? Unlike dry erase pens, OHP pens quickly dry at which point you can't smudge it or transfer ink to your fingers but you can still erase it with the pad on the pen cap.



For those not familiar with FT, these datasheets contain all of the stats, weapons, etc. for a ship and are also used to track damage to the hull, armour, weapons, systems, crew and so forth.

3.5KG of additional ships.

Always good to measure shipping by tonnage displacement.

"Displacement" is wonderfully anachronistic in the context of spacecraft.


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NSL fleet is assembled onto temporary bases for painting.

Here are the templates for making your own playing card formatted SSDs and, with kind permission from Jon at GZG, all of the current official designs from FB1 & FB2 in that format.

https://mega.nz/folder/OrJzDY7D#DT3r26BUgymN2FmQKAZUyg

I used Inkscape (which is free) but you can use any vector graphics software.


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FSE fleet is assembled onto temporary bases.

Kra'Vak fleet

After everyone that's fed up with the French leaves, Europe finally achieves its dream of becoming a single nation in the form of the FSE.

Without the UK, the Germanic countries, the Scandinavian countries and even some of the ex-Soviet block countries (who decide that Russia and China are better allies than France) there isn't much left. France economically and culturally dominates the new Federal Stats Europa, effectively turning Spain, Portugal, Belgium, etc. into vassal states.

Such glorious fleet shots! How do you find the clean up and castings for GZG ships in general these days? I would like to get more but my hobby time can get quite limited these days so I tend to seek an easy life!

It is highly variable.

Two distinct issues. Some of the ships have the pour in positions that make for difficult clean up. The FSE ships, for example, have square engine nozzles that are very deep. Pouring into one of those makes for nasty cleanup.

The other, as always with metal minis, is that you can tell where a mould is new or not.

Overall they're not bad but there are a few that spoil it. The FSE were significantly worse for cleanup than the others.

On the other hand, all of the multi part ships fit together very nicely and they're designed with nice big contact areas so pinning is not mandatory.

Hi, those fleets looks awesome. I'm just starting with Full Thrust as well. I see you have custom bases, where can I get those? They look far better than the original ones.

Pics of my small fleet here

I have been meaning to write up a tutorial for the bases but here's a quick summary for anyone that's especially keen.

Short version - I made them from bits bought from ebay. You will need the following:

Supplies:
- Acrylic shapes, preferably with a hole in the middle. I used 40, 32 and 25mm hex. 4mm thick for ships, 3mm for other objects. They don't need to be these sizes and thicknesses, they are just sizes I found pleasing. 30mm for the escort ships might look better (I'm thinking about changing them for the destroyers and frigates)
- Black countersunk machine screws. I used M3x40. NOTE 40mm long M3 is usually only part threaded and we need fully threaded. Check with the supplier if the description doesn't specify, don't trust the pic!
- M3 black nylon washer
- M3 black nylon nut (two per base)

Tools:
- 3.5mm drillbit (for drilling the hole in the base if it isn't already at least that big)
- Countersink bit (for making the recess for the screw head)
- 2.5mm drillbit (for drilling the hole in the ship)
- some sort of small handy drill for the above
- M3x0.5 tap (for cutting the threads in the hole in the ship)
- some sort of tap wrench for the above
- Suitable driver for the screws you picked
- Suitable wrench for the nuts you picked

The hole in the base needs to be slightly oversize so that if you haven't drilled it perfectly square the screw can still pull itself perpendicular.

You drill the 3.5mm hole in the base (if it doesn't already have a hole at least that large) and then countersink. Put the screw through it, add a washer and then a nut. Leave the plastic on the base (top and bottom) to protect it from spilt superglue later.

Drill the 2.5mm hole in the ship. Tap the hole.

Thread a nut onto the end of the screw. Put a drop of superglue onto the screw and then screw it into the ship. "loosen" the nut at the top so that it pushes up against the ship. Once the glue is all dried then you can peel the film off the base.

For smaller ships just glue the nut onto the screw right at the end and then glue the ship onto the nut.

Kra'vak fleet. They're basically predator.



Phalon, Sa'vasku and ESU fleet coming. And lots of fighters.

These ships look awesome again mate, always liked the story behind this race. love the paint scheme.

This is what I'm doing for fighter bases. You need to track the number of fighters surviving in the group and the group's remaining endurance so I've used the Litko flight stand dice holders.

(Human) merchant shipping

Storage is a challenge for FT ships, especially with bases attached (and you always end up glueing them on sooner or later).

This is what I ended up going for and it has worked out quite nicely.
M3H, M5H, V1H which fits into a KR multicase.
This holds my standard fleet nicely which is a mega fleet plus two carriers and fighters.

ESU and SVS fleets assembled

 Ragsta wrote:
Such glorious fleet shots! How do you find the clean up and castings for GZG ships in general these days? I would like to get more but my hobby time can get quite limited these days so I tend to seek an easy life!

I've now assembled all 7 of the major fleets (the 4 big human fleets and the 3 alien fleets - phalon pic to come) so I can give you a more complete answer (I know you asked this question 3 years ago but it may also be helpful for other people)

The NAC, FSE, NSL, ESU and KV fleets have all been updated relatively recently. The castings are pretty clean with minimal flash and they all fit together well. The only troublesome clean up is unfortunate pour positions on a few models, especially some of the FSE. The NAC in particular go together beautifully.

The PH and SVS fleets are far older. I suspect that they didn't fit together as well as the new designs when they were new, with aging molds and masters there is much more fitment work and cleanup. Similarly with some of the merchant ships, some of which are extremely old.

Having this range of ships on hand plus my old fleet from the late 80s is pretty interesting and you can really see how Jon has improved over the years.

The fighters are also highly variable. The KV fighters are glorious (see pic above) - almost too good, they put the others to shame! NAC, ESU, NSL, SVS, PH fighters are okay, FSE fighters are poorly detailed blobs and badly need an update. The other issue with some of the fighters (FSE and PH but especially with SVS) is that the new fighter stands need the fighters to have a flat spot on the bottom to glue them on and the older designs don't have any allowance for this. The SVS fighters in particular have nothing even resembling a flat spot underneath and are especially tiny making that a rather frustrating experience. I strongly recommend a pair of tweezers that are sprung closed (rather than the usual sprung open variety) and the patience of a saint. Fortunately Jon gives you lot of spares of these because they were stuck to clothes/chair/floor/etc afterwards.

A suitable glue is crucial for this and I'll go into a little detail because a lot of newer hobbyists are used to plastic glues. A good, thick cyanoacrylate (super glue) is essential for this. Thinner glues are stronger but thicker glues are more impact resistant and give you more working time. They are also better gap fillers. Be aware - the shelf life for CA glues is not long and is shorter as they get thicker. A very thick CA glue can have a shelf life of as little as 2 months (ever have that experience with superglue where the parts just won't hold together? This is why). Get a fresh one (from a hobby store or hardware store where they sell lots - not from the grocery store or dollar store where they will often sit for many months), write the date on it and keep it in the refrigerator (in a tupperware container), this doubles it's life. Where the newer ships have large flat contact patches between parts you'll have no problem gluing them and minimal gap to fill means the glue will set quickly. Where you have a less good contact, hold them in place until the two pieces hold themselves together then put them down and leave them alone for a couple of hours so that the glue can set all the way through. I can't stress this enough - get your multipart ships laid out, do one glue join on each ship and then walk away. If you try to complete one ship at a time you'll be constantly breaking joints you just glued and it will be very frustrating.

Fleets look amazing. Beautiful sculpts and very clever work on the custom bases. Love how they look on that starfield battlemat.

Nice work finding safe transport for them too.

Thanks for sharing!

Mat comparison

The first mat is a new one from Deep Cut. The design is nice but it's printed on white cloth making the black kind of murky, not helped by the center of the design being pretty bright.



The second is a much older GeoHex mat. This is screen print and hand paint on black felt. The design is crude in comparison but I like the much blacker black.



Is anyone doing a modern mouse-mat type mat which is properly black?

Phalon fleet