The Full Game of SFB
There are many facets to Star Fleet Battles -- by now it covers
over twenty five distinct races; engagements from fleet battles to
limited ground action between troops on planets; ships from
shuttlecraft to battleships; tactical intelligence; and more. There are over 1000 ship designs available.
Races and Ships
In practice, the dominant feature of Star Fleet Battles is the different ``races'', where ``race'' indicates a galactic nation with a distinct style of starship. There are seven races in the basic game: Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Kzinti, Gorn, Tholian, and Orion. There are many more races are introduced in the official C and F supplements, and yet more are available as unofficial new races from Companion Games.Each race has a unique style of starship, including different weapons and other systems and different tactics (both as individual ship tactics and fleet tactics).
There are over a thousand different ships in the game, representing different races, sizes, time periods, and functions. They range in size from dreadnaughts to cruisers to frigates to fighters. Specialized ships of various sizes act as carriers, escorts, scouts, survey ships, minesweepers, priority transports, troop ships, etc.
Tactics
It is the variety of tactics which gives SFB its depth of interest. Because of the directional shields and weapon firing arcs, maneuvering is vital. A skilled player may have all six of his shields shot up, while his opponents ship is cut to ribbons through one shield.As I mentioned, each race has its own distinctive tactics. In the example, we see how the Klingon ship was heavily hit by the Federation one. The Federation ship packs a heavier one-turn punch than the Klingon and can take damage a little better. However, the Klingon is more maneuverable and can fire its heavy weapons more often. Thus, the Klingon wants to start with a non-vital exchange of fire, so the next turn it can maneuver around to get in a better shot while the Federation ship is reloading.
In SFB, all of the 25 races are distinctive this way -- not only by having different weapons and technology, but also by having a distinctive style of ship design.
Scenarios
These ships can engage each other in a wide variety of scenarios. A scenarios could be a `classic' one-on-one starship duel or a fleet action -- but SFB also includes many interesting scenarios which cover rescue missions, collecting information, encounters with ``space monsters'', and more. Published scenarios generally feature unique situations, such as investigating a ``space monster'' which needs to have scientific information studied on it -- and based on the findings you may have to destroy it, or you may have to not anger it by shooting it.A straight-forward duel between two starships will take about an hour or two for experienced players. Squadron or fleet-level actions take considerably longer -- although this can be shortened if you have a lot of players to divy up the bookkeeping. For a battle with three-four ships to a side, I'd say it'd take about four to five hours.
The rules also provide some suggestions about campaign games. There is not yet a definitive set of rules for making your own campaigns, but there are several playtested campaign games -- which can be either a sequence of ``historical'' scenarios, or a more freeform format for fights.