Federation and Empire - Overview

Overview

The main focus of the game is the General War, an 18-year long conflict that involved all the major powers of the SFU's Alpha Octant. The scale is vast, with each hex on the map representing 500 parsecs, which as the rules point out, reduces the Milky Way Galaxy to a two dimensional object, as only the core would be thicker than a hex across, and it is not shown on the map. On the other hand, units are typically individual ships, each with its own combat rating. Each of the interstellar governments or "empires" can have dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ships, leading to a game that possibly tops the largest games for number of counters used, on a map that is only as large as a "small" strategy game. However, significantly larger maps are available for purchase directly from the company that greatly reduce this problem. Player aids also permit individual fleet counters to represent large fleets, the individual ships being kept off map.

In outline, Federation and Empire is fairly typical for a grand strategy game. Players take alternating turns, managing the resources of their side to build ships and defenses, and maneuver their ships (or fleets) to attack the enemy and then resolve the resulting combats; his opponent then does the same on his turn. In detail, it is a bit more sophisticated. During movement enemy ships can react a short distance onto moving ships. There are rules for the interaction of these forces, which may force some or all of the moving ships to stop, being pinned by the reacting enemy. After movement, the non-moving player can also move a few limited reserves of ships to battles so as to shore up the defense of critical points. After combat, the moving player retrogrades or moves ships that were in combat back to source of supply or repair, and finally moves a limited number of ships vast distances to prepare for the coming enemy turn.

While essentially a two player game, each empire's record-keeping is kept separate, meaning that is easy to run each side with teams — one person per empire. Technically, this could be up eight people (three for the Coalition, five for the Alliance), but it is not common to have a separate player for each of the smaller powers in play (and especially so for the Tholian Holdfast, which is included in this total, but is neutral for most of the game, and a very minor force when it is active), so that typical team play is probably four to five players.

The map also includes the provinces, starbases, battle stations and planets of other empires in the region, such as the neutral Lyran Democratic Republic and the WYN Cluster, as well as the Interstellar Concordium, which in the main rulebook are considered neutral powers, but the inclusion of these empires on the map allows for their use in game expansions, such as the ISC War expansion pack.

The main boxed set has a series of scenarios that can be played individually, but together outline the play of the entire General War. As well, it also allows for non-historical free campaigns to be played, with historical orders of battle for each of the stellar empires. The expansions typically have a number of scenarios, which may be a focused treatment of a particular part of the General War, or an alternate way the war could have begun. There are also a limited number of scenarios that show other conflicts in the region, such as the Four Powers War.