You misspelled "Steven V. Cole'
Message:Zocchi made the minis and produced some licensed supplements, but he's about as much the designer of Star Fleet Battles as I am of Era Ten.
My SFB and Federation and Empire go into storage this week, along with the rest of my games. SFB remains the only game I've owned where I table-sawed off the spines so I could binder up the rules in order. Split between multiple binders.
To further pedant, in SFB Klingons and Feds use the same phasers. It's the disruptor which is the Klingon heavy weapon. Less damage per alpha strike, faster firing rate. Combine with superior Klingon turn modes and the classic D7 vs CC duel SHOULD end in Klingon victory if the player is patient. The Fed is almost always going to need to high energy turn to bring fully overloaded photons to bear and that 33.3% chance of breakdown makes that dicey. Literally.
Then again, the one time I entered a Task Force Games-run tourney as a Klingon, I was gutted in round 4 by a Fed. My fault. I'd miscalculated my energy allocation and my wild weasel wasn't valid. BUT my opponent and ref let me dump that power into shield reinforcement. Didn't stop me losing (I'd come in on a down #4 shield, fired at range 0 and turned - he HET'd and dumped an alpha strike right into my #4), but blocked enough damage to wildcard me into the semifinals (I'd HURT the Fed, and came close to a cripple, but had missed all his photons) where an Andromedan blew me into Sto'Vo'Kor.
Yours,
IronMike
27-Oct-2021