Federation and Empire
Federation and Empire (F&E) is a strategic-level board wargame set in the fictional Star Fleet Universe spinoff of Star Trek, currently published by Amarillo Design Bureau Inc. (ADB). It is a stand-alone product, but has sometimes been considered the official campaign generator for Star Fleet Battles.
In outline, Federation and Empire is fairly typical for a grand strategy game. Players take alternating turns, managing the resources of their side to build ships and defenses, and maneuver their ships (or fleets) to attack the enemy and then resolve the resulting combats; his opponent then does the same on his turn. In detail, it is a bit more sophisticated. During movement enemy ships can react a short distance onto moving ships. There are rules for the interaction of these forces, which may force some or all of the moving ships to stop, being pinned by the reacting enemy. After movement, the non-moving player can also move a few limited reserves of ships to battles so as to shore up the defense of critical points. After combat, the moving player retrogrades or moves ships that were in combat back to source of supply or repair, and finally moves a limited number of ships vast distances to prepare for the coming enemy turn.
Combat itself is resolved in a number of combat rounds after the two players each deploy their battleforces. A battleforce is the group of ships each player selects to participate in combat from the stack of starships (and other units like bases) in the battle hex. In F&E there are no stacking limits, but only the ships in each battleforce may participate directly in combat, and this number is limited by the command rating of the designated flagship of the battleforce. The ship classes with the greatest command ratings are the dreadnoughts and heavy battlecruisers, with ratings of ten. Command cruisers have ratings of nine, heavy cruisers eight, and so on with the smaller ship classes. So a battleforce headed by a dreadnought could bring up to ten other warships with it into the combat phase. Certain specialty ships may be added above this limit; for instance a fleet scout or a squadron of drone bombardment ships, etc.
To resolve a combat round, the offensive rating factors for each ship/unit are summed to produce the battleforce's compot, or combat potential. Each player also chooses a Battle Intensity Rating reflecting how aggressively the ship captains handle their ships. A die is thrown; when indexed with the BIR and adjusted for electronic warfare, a percentage is obtained. This multiplied by the compot produces the number of damage points scored on the enemy battleforce. The attacking player has the option of allocating some of this damage as directed damage on one (and only one) of his opponent's units. The unit chosen is crippled by turning its counter over to its crippled (reverse) side. The attacker may expend more of his damage score to finish off (destroy) the enemy unit. When using directed damage the attacker must expend two points of his damage score to produce each point of directed damage (one ship can be designated by its owner to be in a protected position in the battleforce and is attacked by directed damage at a three-to-one ratio. Usually this ship is the flagship or an especially valuable unit like a fleet tug. The fleet scout and any drone bombardment ships also enjoy this advantage). After directed damage is resolved, remaining damage points are absorbed by the defender as he chooses at a one-to-one ratio of damage inflicted to damage taken.
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