Jim and I had been tossing around ideas for the last week or two... we had been thinking in terms of starmada system inspiration for weapons and using elements of Aces at Dawn for maneuver...

Guess I don't see what the conflict there is, as far as maneuvering goes. I may not have been specific enough, the combat mechanic and the durability of the ships isn't what we were looking at.

Hmmmm... I can see adopting the mechanics for movement to apply for flights or squadrons without any great strain, and it would leave that phase pretty quick, so you could manage flights of fighters and concentrate on the fun shooting and exploding bits...

that is a good game, especially the inertia rules, but having large ships take up two hexes is a clunky mechanic, imo. btw, you can download the 2nd edition from Kannik's site, but they dropped the damage flowchart. 

for spacefighter games of that scale there's also Jamie Borg's freeware MechASsemble rules. technically it's a rpg supplement for designing vehicles, but it uses the same engine as Firefly Games' products, so it easily converts to tabletop play. the design rules are a bit more abstract (and versitile), but can easily model RL-type ships or similar and covers dogfighting well. just add the RL inertia rules and you're set.

Sorry to be doing a bit of thread necromancy here, but did anyone do anything on this? I would love a good generic space fighter game.

Out of intrest what would people want in a game, by which I mean how detailed would you want a fighter? Just basic stats (Speed, defense. attack?) or a bit more in depth (speed,manover, shields,Armour) then have indivual weapon stats?

Would an energy system be too complex? something along the lines of having the stats linked to ethier Engine, shields or weapons) weaken some to strenghten others (A big part of many space computer games which is where I am looking at the moment for ideas.)

Would bigger ships need to be in their at least to some degree, I would'nt mind it since some of the best moments in both starfighter games and movies come when the poor fighters get thrown against a cap ship and have to take it down (Lucifer anyone?)

Anyways thought I would try to get the ball rolling on this thread again =P