Star Empires is TSR Hobbies' long-awaited sequel to Star Probe. Arriving a year after the announced publication date, Star Empires entered my home at the same time as the soundtrack of Star Wars. This may account for my emotions about the game. It's wonderful, and yet flawed. The 72-page rulebook is densely packed with information. There is very little redundancy, and no wasted space. A few pages duplicate those in Star Probe, but the earlier rulebook is not needed to play Star Empires. Late in the Optimal Rules section, it is suggested that a Referee be present. Having studied the game, I have concluded that a referee is the only hope for completing a campaign of Star Empires.

The reason is simple: there are as many options in Star Empires as exist in Dungeons and Dragons. Before the game begins, players are asked to perform 5 years (60 turns) of interstellar exploration. With luck, this means a single player could explore up to 225 star systems. The amount of work this entails would dishearten the most persistent gamer; if he must, in addition, coordinate his exploration with half a dozen other gamers , he will quickly become bored and quit. The only way to avoid this is for one person to roll all the stars in a region , if not the whole game map. This is not impossible, but unless the referee invents some clever method of fudging, his die-rolling arm will fall off. I rolled a 10 by 10 matrix of results for each star type, species, and TSL, corrected the matrices for imbalances, and then ran through them in different directions, assigning values to each star on the map. This also allowed me to assign controlled systems to all species on the map which had achieved TSL 7 or 8. If the Special Minerals option is to be used, these should be assigned before the game as well. In addition to the rulebook's suggestion, I assigned Special Minerals to each planet receiving a "Special Item-Minerals" result on the exploration table.

Once the state have been generated, players should be assigned systems and species types. Although 8 races are listed around the edge of the map, players needn't be restricted to these. In my campaign, each player starts out controlling a Minor Empire of 2-7 systems; my system list can accommodate up to 34 players. This method eliminates the need for players to have the augmented system types listed in the game rates.

Each budget period in Star Empires lasts 3 years, and is played in 6 phases:

a. Intelligence and Research.
b. Income collection.
c. Support (or supply).
d. Expenditure of remaining income.
e. Placement of new units.
f. Movement (36 turns).

The Intelligence phase requires a referee, to arbitrate and conceal espionage attempts. The Research rules involve several problems. There are no difficulty factors listed for researching Hyperspace Generators. The costs and combat factors for improved weapon models am not clearly stated. In the case of most units, the increased values are merely multiples of the Mark I values, but this is not true of the spaceship armaments.

The final difficulty with Star Empires concerns the Optional Unit Design table, which enables players to construct spaceships and ground combat units differing from those listed in the rule manual. Ideally, such a table would also enable players to construct units identical with those listed; this game does not do that. All ships constructed according to the optional specifications have too great a structural value, and cost too much. There is no remedy for this problem: the table was constructed after all ships had been designed, and even a statistical analysis cannot find a reasonable correlation between the total ship capabilities and their costs. (I know. I tried it.)

There are other difficulties too minor to mention; they should be obvious as play progresses. Nevertheless, the advantages of the game outweigh its faults. The rules are an SF fan's dream: they have Blasters, Needlers, and Sturners; they have Planetbusters and Probability Bombs; they even have Terraforming.

Note: If the Alternate System Classification rules are used, all systems should be rolled for as if the Finding Race were a Mammalian species, and then converted to the correct class for the species involved. (i.e., for a Reptile, rolling a Class 2 system on the standard table means the poor Lizard has actually found a Class 3, from his viewpoint.)

Heh, Forgot that one. Anyway, if you liked Star Wars, and if you're slightly masochistic, get Star Empires.