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Sure, I guess my take is always: if the rules are well written...a game doesn't need support.

 Mr Morden wrote:

Arcanis161 wrote:
Starfleet Battles has a shorter version/younger sibling in Federation Commander. Far simpler rules, though I will say the impulse system is a bit clunky. Even has two scales depending on whether you want a small number of ships or a larger number.

I absolutely love Babylon 5 Wars and it's inertial movement system. I also like how distinct faction plays. Whereas Starfleet Battles and by extension Federation Commander have each factions ships mirror each other, just with their faction's weapons and turn rates, almost every ship for every faction in B5 Wars is distinct. One faction's escort may be designed to hang close to intercept incoming fire, another's may focus down enemy fighters, and still another's may be a gunboat with capital ship grade weapons.

Not managed to pick up B5 Wars - usually miss it on ebay or its too expensive....... Given that ACTA:B5 too alot of stuff from B Wars the fleets do remain quite different.

I also recall having some great games of Battlefleet Gothic using B5 and Star Trek ships with ststas we made up, same with Full Thrust.

I was quite sad that Dropfleet did not work that well as was hoping for a new starship game.

So here you go-
Now you can pick up B5 wars for free including ship control sheets, full rules and all it's conversions into STAR WARS(great for use with armada and the old collectable game for minis) STAR TREK(using attack wing minis), BATTLSTAR GALACTICA (ironwind metals still sells some of the minis as does this dedicated company http://starfightershipyards.com/battlestar-galactica-miniatures/battlestar-galactica-cylon-miniatures/ ), WING COMMANDER, BFG, MACROSS/ROBOTECH(models are still available from japan), STARGATE and more

all here-
http://b5warsvault.wikidot.com/

Welcome to the fleet

Full thrust is a very nice system, but horrible for "fleet" combat. It's very early-90s, almost battle-techy in it's attention to detail and if you bring a battleship, four cruisers and say, 3-5 escorts, you will be at it for a long time. It works best as a skirmish game imo.

Dropfleet is a great core ruleset that sadly got saddled with the horrible "drop" part of the game- the ships are pretty much just window dressing to the land-objective tank and infantry chits that capture victory points and whose part of the rules is both confusingly complex and undercooked at the same time. IF you ignore that and just use the actual space combat part, it's quite fun though.

Firestorm Armada was by far the most "classic" of the easily available systems, but it's kinda super-dead right now. You could track down the books I suppose, and just use whatever models you want to play it.

 aphyon wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

Arcanis161 wrote:
Starfleet Battles has a shorter version/younger sibling in Federation Commander. Far simpler rules, though I will say the impulse system is a bit clunky. Even has two scales depending on whether you want a small number of ships or a larger number.

I absolutely love Babylon 5 Wars and it's inertial movement system. I also like how distinct faction plays. Whereas Starfleet Battles and by extension Federation Commander have each factions ships mirror each other, just with their faction's weapons and turn rates, almost every ship for every faction in B5 Wars is distinct. One faction's escort may be designed to hang close to intercept incoming fire, another's may focus down enemy fighters, and still another's may be a gunboat with capital ship grade weapons.

Not managed to pick up B5 Wars - usually miss it on ebay or its too expensive....... Given that ACTA:B5 too alot of stuff from B Wars the fleets do remain quite different.

I also recall having some great games of Battlefleet Gothic using B5 and Star Trek ships with ststas we made up, same with Full Thrust.

I was quite sad that Dropfleet did not work that well as was hoping for a new starship game.

So here you go-
Now you can pick up B5 wars for free including ship control sheets, full rules and all it's conversions into STAR WARS(great for use with armada and the old collectable game for minis) STAR TREK(using attack wing minis), BATTLSTAR GALACTICA (ironwind metals still sells some of the minis as does this dedicated company http://starfightershipyards.com/battlestar-galactica-miniatures/battlestar-galactica-cylon-miniatures/ ), WING COMMANDER, BFG, MACROSS/ROBOTECH(models are still available from japan), STARGATE and more

all here-
http://b5warsvault.wikidot.com/

Welcome to the fleet

Wow thats awesome - will read and digest and add to my lore library! Thanks so much

I feel a little silly because I totally forgot about this one.

brigade miniatures the awesome makers of 3/6/10/15mm terrain of all types also have their own in house space game-starmada X brigade

granted I know nothing about it but it looks to be a fleet scale space combat game given the number of ships in the fleet packs.

http://www.brigademodels.co.uk/Spaceships/index.html

here are the basic rules it looks to be exactly the simple system you are after. it looks very similar to "a call to arms"

http://www.mj12games.com/starmada/mjg0140demo.pdf

Cronch wrote:
Dropfleet is a great core ruleset that sadly got saddled with the horrible "drop" part of the game- the ships are pretty much just window dressing to the land-objective tank and infantry chits that capture victory points and whose part of the rules is both confusingly complex and undercooked at the same time. IF you ignore that and just use the actual space combat part, it's quite fun though.

Exactly. It was like they squished two different games into one, where what happened in one game had no bearing at all on what happens on the other game, except you win or lose the game by the "Drop" portion. So if you want to win, you would take as many troop carriers as possible. The space combat part was actually pretty cool, except it was a bit busted (cough cough Bombers and Corvettes cough).

 Tamwulf wrote:

Cronch wrote:
Dropfleet is a great core ruleset that sadly got saddled with the horrible "drop" part of the game- the ships are pretty much just window dressing to the land-objective tank and infantry chits that capture victory points and whose part of the rules is both confusingly complex and undercooked at the same time. IF you ignore that and just use the actual space combat part, it's quite fun though.

Exactly. It was like they squished two different games into one, where what happened in one game had no bearing at all on what happens on the other game, except you win or lose the game by the "Drop" portion. So if you want to win, you would take as many troop carriers as possible. The space combat part was actually pretty cool, except it was a bit busted (cough cough Bombers and Corvettes cough).

Oddly enough, when I brought up the idea of running the game in pure space, I got massive backlash against the idea from players. They felt they NEEDED to have those drop zones in order to make it a good game.

Firestorm avoided that need with their Planefall line of scenarios and ships allowing for ships with the "Planetfall" rule to contribute to victory without ever dropping anything. After all, it is better to kill transports before they get close to their targets, right? There were rules for drops, but they were less focused on supporting the drops like Dropfleet was.

Speaking of Firestorm, there was some statements made by a Warcradle rep on their forums that they would be looking at running beta rules in 2020 after they launched Dystopian Wars. Considering how slow things are going on that front, I'm wondering if they will have it out before Christmas.

 Tamwulf wrote:

Cronch wrote:
Dropfleet is a great core ruleset that sadly got saddled with the horrible "drop" part of the game- the ships are pretty much just window dressing to the land-objective tank and infantry chits that capture victory points and whose part of the rules is both confusingly complex and undercooked at the same time. IF you ignore that and just use the actual space combat part, it's quite fun though.

Exactly. It was like they squished two different games into one, where what happened in one game had no bearing at all on what happens on the other game, except you win or lose the game by the "Drop" portion. So if you want to win, you would take as many troop carriers as possible. The space combat part was actually pretty cool, except it was a bit busted (cough cough Bombers and Corvettes cough).

Pretty much agreed, it looked nice and I thought had some really good ideas.

The whole signature/target thing was interesting but yeah the actual drop part being all important and not well done as well.
Fighters not being able to guard your ships against enemy bombers also annoyed me.
Shaltari being incredabbly good at everything was also not great.
Having a mainly broadside based fleet in a game when you need to advance was also not great
We played it a few times but it took so long most were put off by that and some of the above rules.

 aphyon wrote:
I feel a little silly because I totally forgot about this one.

brigade miniatures the awesome makers of 3/6/10/15mm terrain of all types also have their own in house space game-starmada X brigade

granted I know nothing about it but it looks to be a fleet scale space combat game given the number of ships in the fleet packs.

http://www.brigademodels.co.uk/Spaceships/index.html

here are the basic rules it looks to be exactly the simple system you are after. it looks very similar to "a call to arms"

http://www.mj12games.com/starmada/mjg0140demo.pdf

I posted the Starmada rules up above. They are a decent set but it has been years since I've played them.

Re: Dropfleet:

-PHR are the only broadside based faction (although Resistance now has broadside weaponry). UCM are turret based, Scourge and Shaltari are turret based but tend to have limited side arcs. Not really sure why youre calling it a broadside game when 3 out of the 4 core factions are more effective shooting forwards than they are sideways.

As far as "take nothing but troop ships to win the game" - no. The rule of thumb is 1 troopship per 500-750 pts depending on faction, more than that and youre going to lose because you wont be able to actually fight your opponent, less than that and you will lose because you cant capture objectives.

The drop portion of the game is quick and straightforward and serves the purpose of capturing objectives. Complaining about it is like complaining about 40k because you win based on capturing objectives instead of destroying your opponents units.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Re: Dropfleet:

-PHR are the only broadside based faction (although Resistance now has broadside weaponry). UCM are turret based, Scourge and Shaltari are turret based but tend to have limited side arcs. Not really sure why youre calling it a broadside game when 3 out of the 4 core factions are more effective shooting forwards than they are sideways.

As far as "take nothing but troop ships to win the game" - no. The rule of thumb is 1 troopship per 500-750 pts depending on faction, more than that and youre going to lose because you wont be able to actually fight your opponent, less than that and you will lose because you cant capture objectives.

The drop portion of the game is quick and straightforward and serves the purpose of capturing objectives. Complaining about it is like complaining about 40k because you win based on capturing objectives instead of destroying your opponents units.

I said one fleet was broadside based which hugely penalised them.

No the drop portion was not quick, easy or straightfoward. its nothing like 40k objectives - there is a whole massively overly complicated subgame - for us at least it was anyway.

*What is a dead system? What does it need for you to be "living"?*

I feel, as long as you still get models to play something, and you can get somebody else interested in it... that is enough, isn't it? If all your questions about the rules can be answered of course....
Plus... the blessing of Space Fleet games is that it can be quite "generic" so it is not that important to get "exact" models.

*And what does a game need for you to be "balanced"? *

I take it with a bit of sceptism if someone writes a system is badly balanced.
If you just want something to play with your wife then I think you do not need a hardcode-tuned tournament system? I daresay that the mentioned systems will all be somewhat balanced (because they have or had companies behind them that have experience or just due to their sheer size)
Likewise, if you just play with friends in a club/FLGS and are not in a hard-core tournament scene, then think thoroughly how much "balance" you really require?


*That being said...*

I think the most important thing everybody needs to ask in this genre is: what is it you are really looking for?

Should it be fast and fun or crunchy?
You want cool lore? Coming out regularily?
Does that need to look good?
What dimension are you looking for? Is it ok if the system only handles 3-7 ships per side?
Does it need to be easily accessible for new players?
Do the rules need to be free? (you will anyway have trouble finding players to play with you might want to give this a thought too)
How "professional" does the company need to be?

following are my 2 cents about many of the mentioned systems and one (and a half) that has not yet been mentioned before.

*Stars & Lasers*

I start with one that has not yet been mentioned: Stars & Lasers.

I have not played it myself, but this game is "living". And "balanced" (according to the creator).
You can check it out here: https://www.wargamevault.com/product/210571/Stars--Lasers

I am curious if somebody takes the plunge what you think of it.

*Full Thrust*

Yes, it is an old system (1992) but still "living":
For ages now the creator supposedly works on the 3rd edition.... but who knows if it ever comes out. Until then the v2 is official and living and you can buy models from that "official" creator of GZG and others.
Maybe not the cheapest ones or the best looking ones for todays standards... but I think they still look cool and they are readily available.
Ruleswise it will probably stand-and-fall if you are ok to write down movement and if you are ok with only "a few" ships per side.
Is the game easily graspable? Well, the problem is that for v2 there are some different manuals out there (Full Thrust, More Thrust, ...), so it is clumsy to collect everything together and look it up.
BUUUT: there *is* at least one edition out there collecting most together that will cover nearly everything you want.
AND is at least one TRIMMED DOWN edition about the the rules too: Full Thrust Light!

If you want to have a GOOD "Get Started" set and info look here

http://shop.mechworld.de/
and here for general info
https://mechworld.de/

If you get the mechworld starter box (which has a decent price i think), then the rules are NOT too compicated, but I do not know how long that starter box/rules will stay fun. I again think it depends on what you look for and how cruncy it shall become...

Is it balanced? I think it depends.... you will find in the internet that the system can fall apart with the fighters/bombers.
But I guess it depends what you do, this is NOT a tournament game.
Great thing about Full Thrust: You can design/create your own space ships, but of course this can lead to min-maxing and would also not suit hardcore competitive players.

*Firestorm Armada*

When I read the v2 Rulebook of this, I thought: wow, this is Full Thrust but made slimmer so you can play it WITHOUT all the book-keeping!
"Full Thrust" that can be used with big fleets!
People still complain about complexity but I think its easier than Full Thrust! If it is still too much, you can switch.

Is it balanced?
The internet seems to complain about the balance (less than about the complexity) but Spartan DID create a 2nd edition rulebook, so you would ASSUME it is more balanced than v1 and one would assume they learned from their mistakes?
Plus, Spartan Games had many game systems so they should know something about balance. If you do not want to play tournaments, then I think this is fine.

One plus I think is: I can easily see spaceships with Firestorm stands being used for Full Thrust.

Is it "living"?
Well no, but Warcradle who hold the IP at least SAID they want to re-visit it in the future! So... who knows?! Anyway, the rules feel "complete" and so does the universe and the ship-selection!
And with 3d printing services... getting models will not be a problem. Heck, you can also use Full Thrust or Dropfleet Commander ships if you switch the stands.

Another plus: The rules are FREE
https://blog.warcradle.com/spartan-games-archive#firestorm-armada

Or you grab the books from ebay. I found the v2 rulebook I have is quite decent looking and enjoyable to read!

*Firestorm Taskforce*

Spartan Games released it just a bit before going bankrupt and they tried to react to people complaining the rules were too complicated/games took too long.
So you can take a look at those too, because Warcrade was so kind to also put THOSE online for free:

https://blog.warcradle.com/spartan-games-archive#firestorm-armada


*Dropfleet Commander*

Well, this game is "living"...
Kudos to ttcombat who continue the game after hawk closed down. They even have at least one guy from the original crew who continues to work on it.
It looks like they have a hard time, but they try to expand it. PLUS I think the price point is really ok!
They right now have problems providing all the models (the master molds got "lost" during the takeover), but they seem to be fixing it slowly. They write about it in their blog regularily, so things are DONE for the system.
They also put out rules updates (Battle for Earth) and as far as I remember they also officially just embraced some changes the community suggested.

Is it balanced?
I have no hardcore experience about DFC against Firestorm, but I would feel that DFC will be more balanced than Firestorm because it feels like it was more created with tournament players in mind.
The price point for the starter box is also a bargain... a bit cheaper than the Full Thrust starter box from mechworld.

The DFC "feel" is definetely different from the other ones because its all about landing your troops and not about taking out the enemy out there in the grand void of space!
I would daresay this has the easiest "movement system" in comparison to full thrust or firestorm but then again you will have to "deal" with the 3 height layers.

chaos0xomega wrote:


The drop portion of the game is quick and straightforward and serves the purpose of capturing objectives

and that's why one of the first faq/errata files had a WIP "competitive" set of objective rules that simplified it. It was and is a mess, and not helped by the fact that the game is decided by chits, while all the lovely ship models are at that point relegated to window dressing save a few with bombardment (another messy subsection of rules thanks to the underlying problem of "sectors" and "clusters" for what should be simple objective grab).

you would ASSUME it is more balanced than v1 and one would assume they learned from their mistakes

As long as you don't play Aquans or Directorate the game is mostly balanced. Those two had the most love shown and it shows.

For DFC, we just play “destroy all units” and ignore the drop stuff. If we get bored, we’ll look at space station drop stuff, since winning a space station lets you use their space guns on space ships.

As for PHR, they have the Bellerophon, which shoots forwards and bombers everything, and the Orpheus (? The heavy cruiser troop carrier that is considered cheese). You don’t need to use broadsides it’s you don’t want to.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Well, sort of. There's no movement as such when taken in relation to "Starship Combat" games. It's really just a retheme of all the other Command and color games. Every review pretty much sums it up as if you've played Battlelore, or Battlecry, or one of the other Ancient Battle games, it's pretty much that with some tweaks.

Starship combat games, as they are usually thought of, really need a sense of outmaneuvering other ships with movement and facing, taking fire arcs into account, etc. BUT, the ships from Red Alert look like they would be great for use in other games.

That kind of outmaneuvering and worrying about fire arcs, that’s skirmish level ship combat. When you are talking about moving fleets and squadrons of ships, tactical details are up to the lower level commanders.

Yes, it is the Commands and Colors system, which is fun to play!

The games being discussed here are about individual ships and their capabilities, from less detailed ACTA/Gothic type games to more involved SFB/B5Wars. I’ve been playing these since the early 90s. I adored SFB and was a playtester for B5 Wars. I played Gothic when it was first released and ACTA afterwards. I have been a fan of SW Armada since wave 2.

None if these are “fleet” combat, just skirmish games of differing detail/complexity.
Fleet combat is about moving squadrons of ships and how those units interact, it doesn’t care about individual ships except, perhaps, when they are flagships or super carriers.

See, I always considered Battlefleet Gothic to be a Fleet-Scale game, because our mid-level games were always on the scale of 1 or more Battleships/Grand Cruisers, 4-6 cruisers/battlecruisers (either as solos or squadrons) and 2-3 squadrons of Frigates (each with about 3 ships in a squadron). Add in the amount of torpedo and bomber/fighter squadrons covering the battlefield at any given turn, that's fleet-scale in my book. I know a bit about Firestorm Armada and less about Dropfleet, but those are about the same scale.

Star Wars Armada always ends up a bit smaller than that in my games (usually between 2-5 capitol ships and a smattering of squadrons). Sometimes I will equate it in size to the games above, if you are able to envision little ships like CR90 Corvettes, Neb-B's or Imperial Raiders being equivalent to Light Cruisers, and each squadron base as a single frigate from one of those games (though the squadrons can take more than one point of damage unlike those games' frigates), though you are still not seeing the torpedo flights and fighter squadrons-as token density.

Then below that are games like Full Thrust and X-Wing where you are going to (usually) see half a dozen models per player on the board, with even more detail and attention towards movement and damage on each ship (some games get as detailed as Battletech when it comes to filling out damage boxes).

 Charistoph wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:

Cronch wrote:
Dropfleet is a great core ruleset that sadly got saddled with the horrible "drop" part of the game- the ships are pretty much just window dressing to the land-objective tank and infantry chits that capture victory points and whose part of the rules is both confusingly complex and undercooked at the same time. IF you ignore that and just use the actual space combat part, it's quite fun though.

Exactly. It was like they squished two different games into one, where what happened in one game had no bearing at all on what happens on the other game, except you win or lose the game by the "Drop" portion. So if you want to win, you would take as many troop carriers as possible. The space combat part was actually pretty cool, except it was a bit busted (cough cough Bombers and Corvettes cough).

Oddly enough, when I brought up the idea of running the game in pure space, I got massive backlash against the idea from players. They felt they NEEDED to have those drop zones in order to make it a good game.

Firestorm avoided that need with their Planefall line of scenarios and ships allowing for ships with the "Planetfall" rule to contribute to victory without ever dropping anything. After all, it is better to kill transports before they get close to their targets, right? There were rules for drops, but they were less focused on supporting the drops like Dropfleet was.

Speaking of Firestorm, there was some statements made by a Warcradle rep on their forums that they would be looking at running beta rules in 2020 after they launched Dystopian Wars. Considering how slow things are going on that front, I'm wondering if they will have it out before Christmas.

Most of the people playing DFC at this point completely buy into how Dave wants the game to run. The Resistance fleet idea had a lot of pushback early on from the community as well, until TTCombat got on board and then, all of the sudden, look what we got. As soon as it was announced everybody shrugged and said "that's cool."

There's also the problem of multiple ships (any non-PHR troopship, all strike carriers, bombardment ships, most corvettes) as well as a good chunk of command cards becoming completely dead weight in such a scenario , thus forcing scenario specific lists. While it could be a scenario about getting those types of ships off the other side of the board, not being able to hide some of them in atmosphere could be ugly.

That being said they have also been looking at making the ship combat portion more important (ex: more battles with critical locations, and tournament VPs being modified by kill points), and I remember hearing rumblings of an addition of a deep space battle scenario in the works, but that was a while ago.

You can have the atmospheric layers without needing the ground combat element. It does eliminate a handful of ships from being useful as you said, but it makes the game flow much better imo.

Osprey will be coming out with a space battle game soon. Something called A Billion Suns or something like that.

Cronch wrote:
You can have the atmospheric layers without needing the ground combat element. It does eliminate a handful of ships from being useful as you said, but it makes the game flow much better imo.

This is what we do. We also "counts as" ships as other ships. There's no way I'm building a $15 model as an ugly troop carrier or spending that much just to try out a different weapon system. I won't even build my Shaltari with disintegrators (the F/S weapons) because they ugly af.

 Easy E wrote:
Osprey will be coming out with a space battle game soon. Something called A Billion Suns or something like that.

Very interesting - likely add it to the pile of games books

 AegisGrimm wrote:
See, I always considered Battlefleet Gothic to be a Fleet-Scale game, because our mid-level games were always on the scale of 1 or more Battleships/Grand Cruisers, 4-6 cruisers/battlecruisers (either as solos or squadrons) and 2-3 squadrons of Frigates (each with about 3 ships in a squadron). Add in the amount of torpedo and bomber/fighter squadrons covering the battlefield at any given turn, that's fleet-scale in my book.

Thats only a "fleet" in the modern sense, most people think of "fleet scale" (in the context of wargaming) more in the context of pre-World War 2, with 50-100 ships on either side minimum. In a general historic sense, if you're only fielding a single battleship, then it isn't really a fleet, more of a task force. I don't know what events gave rise to the perception (particularly within tabletop gaming) of the battleship as being a singular vessel within the fleet that acts as a command ship leading a force of cruisers which serve as the main battle line (or for that matter why Dreadnoughts are perceived as being battleships but even bigger), but it is inacurrate. In real life, a formation of battleships actually served as the core main battleline for a fleet scale engagement, with cruisers and other vessels serving as flankers/scouts/outriders on the periphery of the battle. A proper "fleet scale" game would generally have about as many battleships (if not more) on the table as it would cruisers.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
See, I always considered Battlefleet Gothic to be a Fleet-Scale game, because our mid-level games were always on the scale of 1 or more Battleships/Grand Cruisers, 4-6 cruisers/battlecruisers (either as solos or squadrons) and 2-3 squadrons of Frigates (each with about 3 ships in a squadron). Add in the amount of torpedo and bomber/fighter squadrons covering the battlefield at any given turn, that's fleet-scale in my book.

Thats only a "fleet" in the modern sense, most people think of "fleet scale" (in the context of wargaming) more in the context of pre-World War 2, with 50-100 ships on either side minimum. In a general historic sense, if you're only fielding a single battleship, then it isn't really a fleet, more of a task force. I don't know what events gave rise to the perception (particularly within tabletop gaming) of the battleship as being a singular vessel within the fleet that acts as a command ship leading a force of cruisers which serve as the main battle line (or for that matter why Dreadnoughts are perceived as being battleships but even bigger), but it is inacurrate. In real life, a formation of battleships actually served as the core main battleline for a fleet scale engagement, with cruisers and other vessels serving as flankers/scouts/outriders on the periphery of the battle. A proper "fleet scale" game would generally have about as many battleships (if not more) on the table as it would cruisers.

Fleet size and composition changes over the ages, ancient battles could be between very large numbers of ships but as they each get bigger, more powerful and more expensive so fleets shrink till we have the modern "fleets" being built around a single powerful capital warship - usually a carrier.

Difficult to say what a Fleet is in sci-fi terms - it depends on the race, period, tech level and narrative background. So Babylon 5 rarely has more than a dozen ships on screen but the excellent Dilgar war (fan) novel has fleets of hundreds of ships. Same with 40k - the scale of the ships and rules lends it to the fleet that is described above, as does ACTA; B5 and others. There are others for larger games I believe and a number of ship on ship actions.

It's called "fleet" i suspect because it's based around all three sizes of units, not because it's remotely like any sort of real world fleet. A WWI admiral would have a fit of giggles at a single bb and a handful of escorts being a fleet. Cruisers have no business being anywhere near battleships to begin with. A "fleet" sized game that can still use normal-sized models should probably have 3 battleships, one carrier or equivalent, maybe 3-4 cruisers and a bunch of destroyers for screening.

 Mr Morden wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
See, I always considered Battlefleet Gothic to be a Fleet-Scale game, because our mid-level games were always on the scale of 1 or more Battleships/Grand Cruisers, 4-6 cruisers/battlecruisers (either as solos or squadrons) and 2-3 squadrons of Frigates (each with about 3 ships in a squadron). Add in the amount of torpedo and bomber/fighter squadrons covering the battlefield at any given turn, that's fleet-scale in my book.

Thats only a "fleet" in the modern sense, most people think of "fleet scale" (in the context of wargaming) more in the context of pre-World War 2, with 50-100 ships on either side minimum. In a general historic sense, if you're only fielding a single battleship, then it isn't really a fleet, more of a task force. I don't know what events gave rise to the perception (particularly within tabletop gaming) of the battleship as being a singular vessel within the fleet that acts as a command ship leading a force of cruisers which serve as the main battle line (or for that matter why Dreadnoughts are perceived as being battleships but even bigger), but it is inacurrate. In real life, a formation of battleships actually served as the core main battleline for a fleet scale engagement, with cruisers and other vessels serving as flankers/scouts/outriders on the periphery of the battle. A proper "fleet scale" game would generally have about as many battleships (if not more) on the table as it would cruisers.

Fleet size and composition changes over the ages, ancient battles could be between very large numbers of ships but as they each get bigger, more powerful and more expensive so fleets shrink till we have the modern "fleets" being built around a single powerful capital warship - usually a carrier.

Difficult to say what a Fleet is in sci-fi terms - it depends on the race, period, tech level and narrative background. So Babylon 5 rarely has more than a dozen ships on screen but the excellent Dilgar war (fan) novel has fleets of hundreds of ships. Same with 40k - the scale of the ships and rules lends it to the fleet that is described above, as does ACTA; B5 and others. There are others for larger games I believe and a number of ship on ship actions.

Thats all fine and well, but that doesn't matter within the context of what is being discussed, a fleet scale game is a fleet scale game regardless of time period or genre. Star Wars Armada isn't suddenly a "fleet scale" game because the average "fleet" in Star Wars films is 3-5 ships or whatever (substitute a more appropriate analogy for your game/historical period/IP of choice). The term "fleet scale" as a descriptor for a type of game becomes entirely useless if it has a variable definition, the whole point of it is to provide a standard term agnostic of IP, time period, or setting, etc. that can be used to describe a ruleset which is intended to abstract an interaction or engagement between opponents of a certain size.

Generally speaking naval wargames are usually described as being "ship scale" (usually 1-3 ships per side), "squadron" or "task force" scale (usually from about 5 ships up to about 20-25 ships per side), or "fleet scale" (anything above that), you also rarely encounter the concept of "grand fleet" or "armada" scale which is meant to represent hundreds of ships per side, but such games are few and far between.

The problem with anything below 25 or so models being "only a squadron or task force" is that things are muddied up because almost any starship miniatures game that would fit that description usually is only that large because players are fielding several elements that are themselves called (by the rulebooks) squadrons or task forces, and nearly every player calls their collections "fleets".

Not only that but usually when sub-rulesets are created within many starship games like described above, they are usually defined by calling them something-something 'Task Force', or a similar derivative term. Like Firestorm Armada: Taskforce or the fan subset of Star Wars Armada where each player only fields 150-200pts being called "Taskforce format".

But at the same time, we (myself included) should probably stop moving this thread towards circular arguments of who is wrong about what term, when most of those are semantic arguments, and instead just have it be about what Starship games are out there and the particular mechanics each one displays versus the others.

Just wanted to chime in that BFG already had rules for rolling the ship, if not in the book then in an early supplement/article.

It did? I don't remember that. Was it in one of the mini-magazines? I have some of those, but not all.

I dont remember that either, and to my knowledge I had (keyword right there, no longer have them to check) all the rules available for the game.

I recently lost all my hobby related files, so I can't look for it either, but I clearly remember it existing somewhere. It was a special order that flipped port/starboard critical damage. Might have been somewhere really obscure, like Andy Chambers's personal website.