I have a request pending for an account to post on the SDS forum. We will see what happens.
Crucis my interest in Starfire stated in the 90's. I picked up a copy of Crusade at my local gaming store and found it interesting, I really liked the background and wanted to learn more. I found the novels and then the game itself. Quickly I picked up ISF and SM2 at the same time; later I got all the other supplements. When SDS released Starfire 4th Ed I was one of those who strongly disliked the new system. So the group I am part of has kept playing starfire 3rd ed but our last game was about 2 or perhaps 3 years ago. I have copies of all my stuff but I am not sure who else has what. Also we never used SFA for our games where I was the space master we used excel to keep track of things. Most times we do games with about 20 or so systems per player and they last about 60 to 80 turns before they fall apart for one reason or another.
As you pointed out people in our group play for different reasons, some want to do empire building and combat doesn't matter all that much. Some combat is key and some its in between. Even for the empire builders economics and paper work is an issue and we have used a number of different things to reduce the paper work load from SM2 rules set. For example in the new game most likely we are going to have only T/ST worlds with colonies on them and for the universe to start fully explored. The concept I am toying with is for the players to be sector governors of a single empire that spins off into civil war.
I was personally a bit in between on the empire building player vs. tactical player scale, and played a number of solo campaigns that were strictly paper based, and never had much problem with the paperwork. Then again, I never used the SM#2 PU/PTU system of economics, so once any OP or Colony (even on Type O1/O2 moons) was established, it could pretty much just ignore it and rake in the incomes without worrying about the details until that empire's TL increased and the EVM values needed changing. It seems to me that having to worry about tracking colonial population growth yearly, or worse, monthly, would be a paperwork nightmare. This could be mitigated by ruling that only populations on T/ST planets grow naturally (which was the case in ISF), which would prevent any natural growth on Desolate or Extreme worlds and hence mitigate the need to worry about that little annoyance...
BTW, remember that one reason for allowing colonization of Desolate and Extreme worlds (paperwork annoyance aside) is that they offer one alternative for players who find themselves unable to expand. (I suppose that you could allow Desolate/Extreme colonization only for those empires that find themselves in this unfortunate situation...)
Anyways, something else you might want to consider in the search for paperwork reduction could be to not use NPR's. I know that this seems like a radical step. NPR's add a considerable amount of paperwork to the game for the SM, if there's no player handling the NPR's. Also, NPR's are the most serious random factor when it comes to exploration luck (referred to by some as "survey luck"). That is, NPR's are almost entirely random in nature, since so much about them is die roll based, starting with their very existence. The existence of an NPR on a T/ST, rather than the T/ST being empty, is the first random factor. Then there's the question of what sort of political relationship your own race will be able to form with the NPR. If you're lucky (there's that random factor again), the NPR will form some sort of alliance. But if you're unlucky, they'll be hostile. (And of course, if one is playing solo, then all races are sort of NPR's, so what the heck...)
At this point, I should say that one may want to consider the motivations of the players... Are they playing strictly to play against each other, to beat each other, or are they playing more for the fun of the game? (Not saying that either motivation is wrong...) If the players are more interested in beating each other, then NPR's can definitely be seen more as an annoying random factor that can "unfairly" help or hurt, whereas the playing for fun players might see hostile NPR's as an amusing challenge.
Note that this is very much of a personal taste thing... But it is worth considering that if one's group of players is more intent on playing against each other in a highly competitive manner, then NPR's may be an annoying distraction, and perhaps one can save time, paperwork, and some general annoyance, by simply not using NPR's in a highly competitive game.
I will be interested to see where you take 3rd Ed. ISF was interesting but the economics that could be generated were something else on fully built up systems.
Well, I'm not so sure that I'd blame colonization of the non-T/ST planets for the size of ISF economies... That should probably be more accurately blamed on the REI multiplier. I will agree that the tracking of all those non-T/ST populations could be a paperwork pain though... Also, it's worth noting that the general consensus was that non-T/ST colonization was for the most part an economically bad decision in pure ISF, since the economic returns were far lower than could be achieved from NPR alliances or conquests... which was a reason for some of the changes to colonization and NPR's starting with SM#2.
One of the issues that most annoyed me about the way things played out when Marvin and Steve had their bloodbath is the UTM was about done and now no one can buy it. "PLEASE NO ONE ELSE RESTART FIGHTS MANY YEARS DEAD." I had hoped that at least 3rdR and SM2 would be available for sale. Our group will figure something out if we can't buy stuff. If nothing else our groups customs rules I still have.
You may want to check out Ebay for a copy of 3rdR. I've seen hardcopy SF products on Ebay from time to time... In fact, that's where I bought my own copy of 3rdR a couple years back.
