SGJ Podcast #240 – The Much Maligned Capital Ship

Oh Yeah!

Welcome to this week’s show my friends! This week, Jim, Hunter, Spaz and I talk about capital ships. Those large ships that are inconsistently used in so many space games. We discuss games that do them well, games that do them poorly, why there aren’t more games that focus on them and much more. We realized as we talked that the RTS genre seems to be the most consistent in their great representation of cap ships, while space sims are all over the place. Interestingly enough, Star Trek covers both the best AND the worst the genre has to offer as well. It was a fun show, and we hope you all enjoy it.

Next week on the show, we’re gonna talk about what our dream space games would entail. If you’d like to share your dream game with us, drop it below, email us at hail@spacegamejunkie.com or hit us up on the forums.

Show Notes

Good Representations of Capital Ships:

  • Rules of Engagement
  • Klingon Academy
  • Independence War
  • Freespace 2
  • Sins of a Solar Empire
  • EVE Online
  • Nexus: The Jupiter Incident
  • Homeworld
  • Conquest Frontier Wars
  • Battlefleet: Gothic Armada
  • Starfleet Command
  • Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
  • Starpoint Gemini Warlords
  • Icarus: SCS
  • Sword of the Stars
  • Everspace
  • Rebel Galaxy

Poor Representations of Capital Ships:

  • Starfleet Academy
  • Wing Commander Series
  • X Series
  • X-Wing
  • Parkan II
  • Freelancer
  • Star Wars: Rebellion
  • Birth of the Federation
  • Starpoint Gemini
  • Star Crusader

Noble Attempts:

  • Lightspeed/Hyperspeed
  • Starshatter
  • Star Control
  • Battlecruiser 3000 AD series
  • Disney’s Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon
  • Bridge Commander
  • FTL
  • Empire at War
  • Angels Fall First
  • Artemis
  • Quintet
  • Pulsar: Lost Colony

Other Games Mentioned:

  • Halo
  • Star Citizen
  • Angels Fall First
  • Empyrion
  • Section 8
  • Star Trek Online
  • Space Rangers HD
  • Into the Stars
  • Objects in Space
Author: Brian Rubin

1 thought on “SGJ Podcast #240 – The Much Maligned Capital Ship

  1. Catching up on this one… The tactic for Starfleet Command about repeated small hits being better than one big hit is out of the Star Fleet Battles boardgame, where it’s called the “Mizia Concept”. In SFB, the damage allocation table rules say that some damage results (heavy weapons are the big one here) can only be made once per volley of incoming hits. So if you want to strip the enemy of heavy weapons you want a bunch of small volleys because the table ‘resets’ each time. From what I’ve read, SFC uses the same damage routines under the hood as SFB, though it’s not clear to me what it considers one volley.

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