Hi All,
I am new to the list, and do not know how active I will be as I am quite busy, but right now I feel compelled to post a few thoughts.
What brings me here currently is that I have been learning the Python programming language. I have been picking various projects for practice and I remembered a project I began a long time ago--the 1980s--to write a ship-building program in BASIC. I only got partway done on that project before moving on to other things. So, decades later, I wrote it in Python, using the original Starfire-I rules, and added fleet construction on top of single ship creation. Some extra gray hairs later, the program works better than I had hoped, and I have had fun making ships with the final product being neatly organized and printed control sheets. I am aware that there are other such programs--my goal was not to make something new, but mainly to practice Python (learn something new) programming while working with topic that interested me.
As I poured over the old well-worn Starfire rulebook, my curiosity brought me to look into the game online to see what had happened over the many years that had passed. I had no idea that Task Force Games had folded--maybe I heard about it at the time, but that memory had faded. I looked into Starfire online a few years ago and knew there were websites, and so I pulled them up again and found this forum.
My older brother bought the game I have way back in 1980. This was when I first played Starfire. In the beginning I was not super interested in the game. My brother had to coax me and even after playing Scenario 1, I was still not convinced. It took a few more tries before I became hooked. We played all the scenarios, though I think we never did complete the final big battle but had fun during play nevertheless, and then with challenges of our own. Eventually we bought Starfire-II and discovered the devastating power of fighters. The beautiful simplicity of the ship construction and the streamlined combat rules made for lots of fun play.
What the old rulebook brings to mind is an era of board gaming that seems to have largely disappeared. Where I lived, I would find Starfire at a local bookstore among a whole host of unique and rather inexpensive games displayed on a magazine rack. I encountered many of the first versions (or near-first) of various games there, including Car Wars, Star Fleet Battles (I still have this one) and Attack of the Mutants. We also purchased other games whose titles I cannot remember, including a simulation of WW-II fleet battles, a martial arts game and a spaceship racing game. There seemed to be a huge amount of experimentation with game designs back then, with much variety. These games were all generally packaged in plastic zip-lock bags and you usually had to buy the dice separately--no problem as we had so many dice. I cannot recall what the games cost, but it certainly was not as much as I regularly spent at the video arcade next door. Currently, I have three copies of Starfire-II and two of I, plus a copy of III (Empires), nearly all kept from those early days. We bought multiple copies to get more maps and counters. Plus it was always handy to have multiple rulebooks while playing.
Today, when I enter a game store it seems like so many games (not all as there are exceptions) are now in much bigger packaging--boxes--and they routinely cost ~$40-60. There were boxed sets in 1980, I am thinking Avalon Hill as one example and certain role-playing games, but the variety of the more modest lower-cost games was huge. I doubt that when I was a child I would have bought three copies of the same game at today's prices, even allowing for the devaluation of currency over time. Something has been lost, probably largely due to marketing strategies.
The last time I played Starfire was in 2000 where I would occasionally bring it to a small games group where I tested out different ship designs and fleet configurations with one other player. Now that I have written the Python program, I hope to play again, probably with some family over the summer. Thus my program will be play tested as other people who are not as familiar with the rules create some ships. I intend to keep the game largely true to the first rulebook, as this is where it all began.
Thanks for reading this rather long post.
-best