Starfire Design Forum

I wish I had the time to play or run a game. Maybe after a few of my kids go to college.

As someone who started a game with the GSF rules and switched to ULTRA when the errors of GSF were fixed by ULTRA, I recommend starting with ULTRA as Solar is still in Beta and making changes in the middle of a game wasn't fun at all. Continuing in GSF wasn't really an option as the tech progression...

I play mostly multiplayer games in limited universes (60 or less systems per player) Games I ran 2001-2005 First GSF campaign ended when J'Rill just got too big to deal with and players either banded together to fight it or die. Turn 72 2010 Alpha Omega game got to turn 10 or so and my computer was ...

One idea I had that might work is to double the maintenance of any war ship and base that doesn't have tech equal or above the empire's current EL. Probably even better if you double the maintenance for each level of SL below the current empire's EL. Forces players to either upgrade or mothball old ...

Why the fear of messing with EL? Cue manical laughter… You have no idea. EL balances so many things and is the core of the game. Every once in a while I go back to all the emails from when GSF was in development and look at what was trying to be balanced just to get a centering on what was being bu...

For solo games, how you adjust growth has little matter. In multiplayer games, when you lower growth you are increasing the value of conquering populations and increasing the value of friendly relationships with NPRs. In a slow growth game, the K rules should increase the cost of the bonuses to comm...

Theoretically each new colony location requires sufficient defenses to hold it. This is where most empire go cheap and wait until there is a threat because in the nature of Starfire, you can't defend against a closed WP into your systems before it is used. And it will generally be used to invade. De...

As a test once I took G as my starting SRW and I do not recommend it. The value of SRW is the multiplier they can provide in close range WP defense. Having G meant that it was very difficult to defend WPs close in which made it difficult to deny enemies entry into my systems. Since I was focused on ...

If you want to build your own scenario for WP defense I recommend the following. Decide on an amount to build an attacking fleet and decide on technology SLs. (e.g. 10,000 MCr.) Then start with three times the original amount (e.g. 30,000 MCr) and start an auction build for how much less you could b...

Starfire tends to focus on fleet design. One tricky problem is that you will never have enough ships to face the current threat (at least it will seem like it). So your fleets will rarely be at optimal power during a game. Your designs will change based on the threat you face. If you are facing a sw...