While the rules are not quite finalized to be published yet, I will share the general shape of the game. These facts about the game likely will not change by the final release.
The overall turn structure of the game is similar to the X-Wing Miniatures game. Ships have a "leadership" value, which represents the skill and cohesion of the captain and crew. In the "Helm" phase, ships activate based on leadership value from lowest to highest (so the highest skilled ship moves last, with the most information). Ships move based on pre-written secret move orders. Different ships have their own speed and turn ratings. Then, the player selects one "order" for that ship. Orders include: Target Lock (re-rolls an attack roll), Full Thrusters (move extra this turn), Come About (turn extra this turn), Cloak, Attempt Repairs, and others. This is all very similar to the way X-Wing Miniatures works.
Once all ships have moved and received an order, the "Tactical" phase begins. Ships activate from highest leadership to lowest and shoot all of their weapons one at a time. Ships roll dice to see if they hit, and if they hit, weapons do fixed damage to the shields first, then to the hull. The shield system is my own devising and is unique, as far as I know. On Star Trek, you always see ships taking weapons fire, and the crew is shaken around and the consoles explode, and Worf says "shields at 50% captain!" It seems clear that shields merely mitigate damage, not block it completely (well, depending on what the plot requires). In this game, shields will block a percentage of the damage from reaching the hull, based on the current strength of the shields. So if your shields are at 75% strength, they'll block 75% of the damage from reaching the hull. It's simple and fairly accurate, and the damage numbers are designed to easily divide by 4 so there is easy mental math. Weapons can target subsystems, too, and random subsystems will be damaged as a ship's hull takes damage. If ships are destroyed, they can possibly become derelict wrecks floating across the tabletop, or they can explode from a warp core breach.
Finally, we have the "Ops" phase. In this phase, ships again activate one at a time, highest leadership to lowest, and have a chance to perform a single "Operation". These include things like transporting boarding parties, tractor beaming, self-destructing, or others. These require rolling leadership checks to succeed, and usually give other players a chance to counter them as well. Boarding parties in particular have a hefty rules section written about them - you can knock out specific systems or attempt to capture the bridge temporarily, and different races have different effectiveness in combat. The Borg will actually grow stronger the longer they occupy your ship, as they assimilate more crew members!
So far, the rules are fun and smooth to play, offering lots of tactical decisions. The game is designed for small numbers of ships - we haven't played with more than 6 in total, and the game board would get pretty cluttered with large fleets. That said, it may work with a lot of ships - pending further testing. We have plans to keep the game expandable with various crew, upgrade, and event cards you can draw or equip in various game modes. Imagine an event deck filled with interstellar phenomena, quantum fluctuations and random acts of 'Q'! The possibilities are fairly endless.
I'm excited to share the full rulebook with the internet after a little more playtesting. Shouldn't be long now.
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