Science Fiction Strategic PBeM Campaign

Let me know if you have any specific questions

There are different movement types, although usually only one is selected for a given campaign. The standard rules use a "simplified B5-style" movement. Systems are near to othersin hyperspace, but no gates or warp points are needed and all ships are assumed to have Jump engines. There are quite a few variations, ranging from Starfire's Warp Points, to Jump gates, to free movement thru space via some other type of FTL drive. It mostly depends on the background of the campaign being played.

Typical movement is slow, usually 1 or 2 systems per turn.

War ships (and other objects, like stations or orbital platforms) have the following stats:

AS: Anti-Ship
AF: Anti-Fighter
DV: Defense Value
CV: Command value, essentially the ship's utility as a flagship
CC: Command Capacity, essentially the cost to put the ship under command

Some ships also have basing, which is used to house fighters. Fighters can in a variety of forms and are used in flights: each flight has stats for AS, AF, and DV.

There are also special ratings, like Scout, or Guardian, Supply, or Ballistic, which can affect different areas of the rules. These tend to be fairly rare and ships with them are often restricted.

Ships are organized into squadrons, each squadron having a flagship. Multiple squadrons can form a fleet.

Combat can take place under a variety of scenarios, ranging from deep space battle, interception, pursuit, or planetary assault.

Ships are produced at shipyards and typically take a certain amount of time to produce. Shipyards are rated for capacity, typically those at larger or more productive worlds can produce more.

VBAM does not have research for tech levels and individual technologies in its standard rules. Rather, ship classes become available based on their "In Service Date" (ISD). Player investment in tech allows the empire to maintain an up-to-date ISD.

There are variant rules for tech research and some conversions from tactical systems (particularly Starmada and Full Thrust). Most of these work OK, but can provide some odd results.

There have been a large number of fan conversions for different sci-fi backgrounds. The B5 ship lists for the empires listed above are based on the material published for B5 Wars and A Call to Arms.

Economics in VBAM are star system based: Each has a rating for Capacity (the amount of people it can hold), Census (population, essentially), RAW (a quantification of the resources available, typical range is 0-6), and Productivity (industry available).

Capacity ranges from 0 to 10, with 10 being homeworld size. Places with environmentally unfriendly planets would have a low capacity.

Census is population. You can have Census equal to or less than Capacity. Census can increase once per game year (typically 12 monthly turns).

RAW are exploitable resources. This is multiplied by productivity to get the amount of production available (credits, mega dollars, whatever you want to call them).

Productivity is your industrial base, the ability to turn resources into something more. You can only utilize productivity equal to or less than your census (i.e., you need a point of population to work each factory).

So, a star system's income is equal to RAW X Productivity. Typically the limiting factor is census--this can be increased through emigration from more populated worlds and natural growth. Vacant systems can be colonized with colony fleets, as well.

There are a variety of optional rules that allow players to use more detailed solar systems, down to ones similar to that used in Starfire. At those levels, planetary bodies can be colonized and each has its own statistics. This is more doable when the number of systems is fairly small and you don't mind tracking the extra detail.

Here are some websites.

The game itself: http://www.vbamgames.com/

A Site one of the authors uses for his upcoming Terran Imperium campaign:

http://www.commandcarrier.com/

I have gotten the most use out of the Yahoo Groups:
VBAM
VBAM_training

And and ongoing campaign set in the Full Thrust Universe:
VBAM_Tuffleyverse

I have heard of the rules but never seen them. I'd like to know a little more before committing.