It is UTM 1.1 sorry I should have been more specific but after 3 days walking around Berlin...and a few beers I was a bit out of it!

I'm still baffled how to interpret the -2 vrs fighters and -3 vrs starships thing...given other rules say they can only gain -2 from EM...

This is just a question for anyone to comment on.

Starslayer and I have just hit a battle between the Omega (Black Bugs) and the Alliance (Cannon Cartel and Undines).  Looking at the rules for gunboats a few oddities show up:

1.  It says "fighters/small craft/gunboats" can use a maximum of -2 EM from movement.  But the rules for gunboats say they can have a maximum of -3 versus starships.  So what the heck is this supposed to mean?  They can use 6 MP to generate -3 versus starships but that counts as only -2 versus fighters?   Or they can only use a maxium of 4 MPs to generate -2 versus either?

2.  It says under the rules for gunboats they can't use f?x.   It says under the f?x rules that "fighters/small craft/gunboats" gain bonus points from the use of the system.  Which is likely to be correct?

Also fighter weapons use halve the effect FRD...that makes EM of -1 not worth doing in small craft vrs small craft fights.  Joy.

As a quick follow up, I did purchase the STARFIRE Legacy Supplement CD as a download for about $36.

The many rule books, supplements and odd documents contained in the package are a really great bundle.

For anyone new to Aurora 4X, the STARFIRE products offer an interesting etymological and historical explanation for the rules and intent found in Aurora -- in the same way reading the original STARFIRE I rule book made the "grammar" of everything that came later much more digestible.

My only real complaint was not really grasping what products were included in the package before purchase.  If the packages' contents were clearly titled in their order page, I would have gladly paid some more for the ULTIMATE STARFIRE package. . .  which goes for about $56.

In any event, thanks for the reply Mr.  Walmsley and to Quill18 for introducing Aurora 4X to me (and by extension STARFIRE).  I'll continue watching the Aurora 4X C# development with interest.

Well the one time we did a double blind combat ...we had 2 maps one upstairs and one downstairs I can say that this made a huge difference at the system scale.  Basically time for information to get from one unit to the other became critical.  Also actual transit times become very important.  STMPs are all well and good for movement during peacetime when it doesn't really matter exactly when something arrives somewhere but when the war starts hours can make a huge difference.

You have to know when and where units are at the system scale.   Here SFA is useful but not to the degree it could have been had Steve finished his battle screen (which if memory serves he said ended up being the start of Aurora).

SFA is mainly useful for telling you "this fleet and that fleet are in the same system at that same time" after that well you have to look at where they are and see if they can even spot one another.  We have quite often had ships and fleets that pass in the night.   Starslayer and I have abstracted (as in not put out counters) several battles but generally only ones that are chases as these sorts of things are clear (only seperation matters) but even an attempt by the RM to survey and the Thing to block that survey needed some fairly careful use of system maps.  And the battles hinged on movement and timing...one scout ship was killed 12 hours before it would have met up with its datagroup partners.

At the moment we are hitting a tech level problem with battles as some NPRs are on the verge of cloaking tech.

For the most part I think system scale and interception scale are largely glossed over and this results in a lot of loss because it is that these scales that the fog of war really sets in.   I'm also fairly convinced there is a lot of interesting game play with fleet movement on the system map...they make up a large part of the starfire novels but one never sees much of this in games as most people just go "hi diddle diddle straight up the middle" to get to the tactical clash I guess (the ISWIV bug tactic due to their slow ships).

I'll have a look at my 4th edition rules again.  Basically it got reduced to random die rolling if memory serves.