[cross post from Yahoo group]
Hey Group,

After almost a year and a half, my trek group got together and we had
a session! As it turned out, the place we had left of just happened
to be a starship combat, an opportune time to test out the starship
combat II system!

4 players ran the USS Essex, assisted by an npc D-7 (part of the
adventure), taking on 3 IKS D-7's.

Overall, it went really well. The Essex manhandled 2 of the D-7's
pretty readily, and pummeled the remaining D-7 into retreat without
taking any appreciable damage (having to do more with my bad rolling
rather than mechanics). The 2 battling D-7's were stalemated (as
expected). Total combat time was about an hour and a half, which
really had more to do with learning the game than playing it.

The great thing about real time play testing, you stumble across a
few bugs. The first is tactical advantage. As it read, the captain
who rolls highest goes first, but as it turned out, that became more
of a disadvantage, because when the Essex came into photon range, I
could easily back the D-7's out. We changed it during play that the
winning captain moves/fires last, to keep range advantage. That
accelerated the game tremendously, once the Essex could fire those
torpedoes at +2 each. Afterwards, it was recommended that the winning
captain should have the CHOICE of moving/firing first, depending on
the tactical situation (hats off to Christine ). I'm gonna sleep
on it another night and make a change with that. Control panels
explaining each players' role in the combat would've been handy, too.


Just wanted to pass that along, I was pretty pleased with the system and I hope you guys will be, too. For those who haven't downloaded it, it's available at the ufc465537 geocities site.

Thanks,
Joe