Here’s an amazing list of hundreds of spaceship games. Compiled by Tom Granvold, it includes board, miniatures, dice, card and role playing games. If you like such things, check out it out.
starships
Task Force Zeta Starship Rules
Task Force Zeta is a set of free wargames rules for starship combat.
Pundits will tell you that representing space combat in 3 dimensions is a wasted exercise in mathematics, and that two ships fighting can be equally well represented on a 2-dimensional plane. What happens when you have three ships? ten? Did their captains all just conveniently forget about attacking/defending from the z axis?
Task Force Zeta allows you to fight battles against opponents in a representation of real (3-D) space using vector movement – without doing complex math every time you move or fire. Fourteen different ship classes are provided, along with fighters and bases, as well as basic rules for ship construction – design your own factions or convert ships from your favorite movies/TV shows!
Imperial Ambitions Board Game
Imperial Ambitions is a free print-and-play board game of spaceship combat with both a strategic and tactical element. The author writes:
The game is played in two parts, on two different maps. The Strategic Game is played only on the strategic map, and the Tactical Game, where battles are fought, is played only on the tactical battle maps. In the Strategic Game, units move from one star system to another, and construction, repairs and various economic functions are conducted. At the end of the Strategic Sequence of Play, any hexes containing opposing units on the strategic map may trigger a battle (at the discretion of either one of the players with forces in the same hex), at which point each battle is resolved on a tactical map using the Tactical Game
Fires of Space Rules
Fires of Space is a space combat game with a WWII naval flavor. From the author’s introduction:
Here is my take on battles between big ships in space. This rules set has a deliberately 20th century naval warfare flavor, but with adaptations for space and far future technology. Included are the rules, tables, designer’s notes, a series of ships from various space navies, scenarios, a probability table for 20 sided dice, counters, and a 50 by 50 hex map. With the map are marked map sections showing showing the map’s center hex and deployment areas for tactical scenarios. Ideally, the game is played with two 50 by 50 hex maps: one for operational movement and the other for tactical engagements. In a pinch, a single map can double as both the operational and tactical map. Finally, I include a copy of the Excel workbook that I used to create the ships in the game.