Game: StarForce 'Alpha Centauri': Interstellar Conflict in the 25th Century

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

DarrellKH — 2008-02-06T17:38:55+00:00

Tall_Walt wrote:
MS Space? Another, too, perhaps, but I can't place it. IAC, even computer games get unmanageable in 3D, real or fictional universes--IMO, of course.

I bought SFAC because it looked interesting, and it does have some interesting ideas. However, computing sqrt((x2-x1)^2+(y2-y1)^2+(z2-z1)^2) for each move isn't my idea of fun, however correct it may be. With over 30,000 games in the BGG database, some don't make the play cut.

For the record, I can find no references on the internet for any computer game of interstellar exploration/colonization having a name resembling MS Space. There was, however, something of a toodle-around-the-local-stellar-neighborhood program from Microsoft called "MS Space".

As Ron pointed out, there was a table showing you the distances, and I do believe it was printed on the map, itself.

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

RaDiKal — 2008-01-18T18:22:34+00:00

Tall_Walt wrote:
computing sqrt((x2-x1)^2+(y2-y1)^2+(z2-z1)^2) for each move isn't my idea of fun, however correct it may be.

I don't recall having to do that - I recall a simplified mechanism to return a reasonable equivalent. Specifically, in 7.6 of the rules:

"Rather than burden Players with the task of figuring out
square root problems every time they shift their
StarForces, we've supplied a table that does it for
them. (See the True Distance Table)."

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

Tall_Walt — 2008-01-17T18:37:43+00:00

MS Space? Another, too, perhaps, but I can't place it. IAC, even computer games get unmanageable in 3D, real or fictional universes--IMO, of course.

I bought SFAC because it looked interesting, and it does have some interesting ideas. However, computing sqrt((x2-x1)^2+(y2-y1)^2+(z2-z1)^2) for each move isn't my idea of fun, however correct it may be. With over 30,000 games in the BGG database, some don't make the play cut.

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

Sphere — 2008-01-17T18:08:32+00:00

The one other game I remember as having a 3-D map of our neighborhood in space was Web & Starship.

I'm another fan of Stellar Conquest who finds the simultaneous movement and combat quite manageable.

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

DarrellKH — 2008-01-17T17:32:26+00:00

Tall_Walt wrote:
I actually have played computer games with 3D maps, at least one with the local stars. However, the play-overhead of 3D just isn't worth it to me. At this point, I've seen so many hard-to-use 3D systems, it would take a lot to get me to try one again. Simultaneous movement is similar: a cool idea that's more trouble than it's worth. Putting cool ideas in a game because they're cool is a good way to make a game unplayable, IMO.

I've played every, interstellar expansion computer game I can find over the last twenty years, and I sure would like to know which one you're talking about, because not a one of them I ever found had an accurate map of our neighborhood (correct names, yes, but not correct locations). There was one game of first picking which system you were going to, and then colonizing one planet in that system, but that was the extent of the game.

And as already pointed out, this is not a hard-to-use system. Maybe you should pull it out, and bother to learn it. It's bound to have advantages over knocking it without having played it. Why else have it in your inventory?

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

elbmc1969 — 2008-01-17T17:15:25+00:00

RaDiKal wrote:
And Outreach has a map that extends well beyond the known universe (with the milky way being a small part of the map if I recall correctly)

It only covers about a third of this galaxy.

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

RaDiKal — 2008-01-16T22:44:13+00:00

elbmc1969 wrote:

(Incidentally, StarForce has the most strategic strategic game ever--since the real strategic game is Outreach!)
And Outreach has a map that extends well beyond the known universe (with the milky way being a small part of the map if I recall correctly)

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

elbmc1969 — 2008-01-16T05:59:38+00:00

Well, StarForce is about the simplest 3D system that's possible. No need to track directions or anything. I suspect that problems with this system have more to do with how a person processes spatial information that anything about the game design.

Likewise, the number of units in StarForce is so small that, combined with the teleportation moves (no need to plot hex-by-hex), it hardly makes the game "unplayable." And, like sub-hunting games, it creates a central tension in StarForce's strategic game.

(Incidentally, StarForce has the most strategic strategic game ever--since the real strategic game is Outreach!)

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

Tall_Walt — 2008-01-16T01:18:06+00:00

DarrellKH wrote:
There is an additional benefit to playing this game - one that you will never gather from playing MOO2 or any, similar game.

SF is played on a 3D map of the actual, stellar neighborhood of Earth....
I actually have played computer games with 3D maps, at least one with the local stars. However, the play-overhead of 3D just isn't worth it to me. At this point, I've seen so many hard-to-use 3D systems, it would take a lot to get me to try one again. Simultaneous movement is similar: a cool idea that's more trouble than it's worth. Putting cool ideas in a game because they're cool is a good way to make a game unplayable, IMO.

All that said, I'd love to see a modern 4X board game. We've seen many good Civilization games recently (of which Civ4 was not one, unfortunately), and a 4X space game can simplify some things. Starfarers wasn't horrible: it just didn't have much replay value.

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

elbmc1969 — 2008-01-16T00:22:58+00:00

DarrellKH wrote:
SF is played on a 3D map of the actual, stellar neighborhood of Earth. When you play this game, you're learning what stars are nearby, and in what direction. (SPI's Universe had the same map, although the stellar spectral classification was color-coded on that map.)

The map has a few inaccuracies (astronomical data has improved over the decades and astronomers were surprisingly uninterested in actually mapping near-space until quite recently. As I recall, there was also something odd about the perspective.

A more up-to-date near star map appeared in the 2300AD role playing game and Winchell Chung has even more (and betterer) near star maps on his Atomic Rocket site. (You can buy posters through Cafepress.) Attack Vector: Tactical comes with a perspective map by Mr. Chung in its setting book.

DarrellKH wrote:
StarForce also used pre-plotting for simultaneous movement, which leaves the player in a scary place, at times - not knowing where the next blow is coming from...

I believe that this was a potential weakness in the tactical combat system. Because movement was by plotted, simultaneous teleportation, the tactical system was mostly a guessing game. (You not only had to plot movement, you had to plot the direction of your attacks. Attacks covered a large cone, so it wasn't like you needed to make pinpoint guesses about the location of the target.)

Still, it's a wildly different system. How many combat systems result in the defender being hurled out of the strategic hex?

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

selenite — 2008-01-15T23:38:15+00:00

DarrellKH wrote:
SF is played on a 3D map of the actual, stellar neighborhood of Earth.

Which has made it a very handy tool for SF RPGs and other games.

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

RaDiKal — 2008-01-15T22:53:06+00:00

This is a game with very very few moving parts. The only barrier to play are:
- unique 3-d environment which you need to 'grok'
- simultaneous movement requiring supplied movement pad and pencil
- perhaps too few moving pieces to draw you in unless you buy into the 3-d sci fi aspect

I've played it a number of times way back when but am not averse to getting it on the table again in '08

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

DarrellKH — 2008-01-15T21:01:21+00:00

There is an additional benefit to playing this game - one that you will never gather from playing MOO2 or any, similar game.

SF is played on a 3D map of the actual, stellar neighborhood of Earth. When you play this game, you're learning what stars are nearby, and in what direction. (SPI's Universe had the same map, although the stellar spectral classification was color-coded on that map.)

StarForce also used pre-plotting for simultaneous movement, which leaves the player in a scary place, at times - not knowing where the next blow is coming from...

Thread: Re: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

Tall_Walt — 2008-01-15T20:43:52+00:00

I have an unplayed copy, too. It looks like a great game concept, bogged down by the contemporary hyper-complexity trend. As long as MOO2 and my old computer keep going, I doubt I'll be tempted to punch and play this.

Thread: StarForce Alpha Centauri is still neat

wargamer55 — 2008-01-15T17:01:34+00:00

One game I've always liked and admired but never had much success in getting friends to play is Redmond Simonsen's 1974 game Starforce Alpha Centauri.
I'm not entirely sure why this is. It was one of SPI's best-selling games and even earned a little bit of popular culture fame when the rock band Human League took it's name from one of the factions in the game.
Perhaps it's because it's a very intellectual game, in both premise and execution. While Star Wars and Star Trek captured the public's imagination with their "Space Opera" approach, they rest on very shaky foundation in physics.
Simonsen, on the other hand, created an extremely clever and unique game that treated the question of interstellar war and travel in a way that treated Einstein with respect while still allowing for it to occur.
To do this he had to invent a lot of science, but this is defensible in a game set five centuries in the future. Clearly a wargame designer in 1474, had any existed, could never have imagined what the world of 1974 would look like. let alone what war would have been like. Indeed, no one in 1474 had any notion that the future could or would be different from the present in any notable way. The very notion of science fiction would even occur until the nineteenth century. Given the accelerating pace of scientific progress over the past couple hundred years it's even reasonable to think that the world of the 25th Century will be much more different from today than today is from the fifteenth century.
Dealing with faster-than-light travel is the first chore of a sci fi writer hoping to craft a story dealing with interstellar travel. Ignoring the problem is not an option. The general limits imposed by Einstein are widely known, at least among the audience that might be expected to read science fiction literature or go to the movies.
There have been a lot of approaches and this web site does a good job of running down the list: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3v.html
A section of the Web site deals with Starforce Alpha Centauri, which turns out out have one of the best-thought out and plausible solutions to the FTL problem. Simonsen's solution creates an internally self-consistent world where wars make political sense and at the same time imagines a really futuristic style of warfare that does not involve anachronistic space "fleets" with "star battleships" , spaceship analogs of aircraft carriers or other unlikely developments. One imagines that if Aristotle could have imagined space battles he would have had them occur between "star triremes" that would have rammed each other.
In Starforce interstellar travel is achieved by special design spaceships that can "shift" in an instant from one point in space to another through the physic efforts of psionic-capable women assisted by sentient machines called Gnostechs. There are many limits on the process in distance, time and location. The telekinetics must be familiar with the space they are shifting from and to. Shifting past certain distances involves risk that include ending up someplace other than where you were headed. Combat involves groups of teleships attempting to involuntarily shifting their opponents.
The science fiction back story also creates a political and economic rationale for the wars because the number of telekinetics turns out to be a function of population size. About 1 out of every 1 million women is a potential telekinetic, a figure that cannot be increased. Politicalpower flows from the number of people under control, creating the basis for conflict. Human nature takes care of the rest. Actually, not just human nature, as the game includes some non-human races as well. The nature of teleships, however, doesn't vary and all the spacefaring races end up with very similar designs.
The game explicitly states that the telekinetics never try to kill their opponents and so the wars are relatively bloodless, with fatalities mostly happening by accident.
It's a stunningly original story line.
Despite the fact the game seems to have fallen off the radar among gamers, I think it's still worthy of notice and hope I'll get to play it someday.

More game comment at: http://pawnderings.blogspot.com

Thread: Re: Also available in the StarForce Trilogy Monster Box

blackbones — 2007-06-01T09:45:04+00:00

Thank you for the insight!

Thread: Re: Also available in the StarForce Trilogy Monster Box

Sphere — 2007-06-01T01:04:37+00:00

blackbones wrote:
My copy says Designer's Edition and has the same picture that is shown above but it is not in color the box is all green???? Any idea's?

Designer's edition was SPI-speak indicating a mounted mapboard (they were normally paper). All the early printings of Starforce had the green background. Later reprints look like the other one; I don't know if they ever did a designer's edition in the other box.

Thread: Re: Also available in the StarForce Trilogy Monster Box

blackbones — 2007-05-31T22:04:11+00:00

My copy says Designer's Edition and has the same picture that is shown above but it is not in color the box is all green???? Any idea's?

Thread: Re: Also available in the StarForce Trilogy Monster Box

blackbones — 2007-05-31T22:03:38+00:00

My copy says Designer's Edition and has the same picture that is shown above but it is not in color the box is all green???? Any idea's?

Thread: Re: Also available in the StarForce Trilogy Monster Box

blackbones — 2007-05-31T22:03:36+00:00

My copy says Designer's Edition and has the same picture that is shown above but it is not in color the box is all green???? Any idea's?

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arnaudel — 2007-03-08T22:05:20+00:00

French/Dutch Version - Back

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arnaudel — 2007-03-08T22:04:28+00:00

French/Dutch Version - Front

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broken_halo20575 — 2006-07-22T19:36:44+00:00

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AK78 — 2004-10-20T13:43:30+00:00

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NigelFisher — 2004-08-19T18:44:46+00:00

Counter Scan

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RaDiKal — 2004-07-29T10:19:50+00:00

Combat Cast - from the manual

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RaDiKal — 2004-07-29T10:19:37+00:00

Original 1974 SPI map

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RaDiKal — 2004-07-29T10:19:35+00:00

SPI Hardbox back

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alcazar — 2003-12-10T13:15:27+00:00

Thread: Also available in the StarForce Trilogy Monster Box

Karlsen — 2003-11-17T11:02:19+00:00

My copy of StarForce came in the StarForce Trilogy "Three Science-Fiction Siulation Games".

StarForce http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=2524
Outreach http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=3663
StarSoldier http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=6215

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Jim_P — 2003-03-03T19:41:46+00:00