The Ashes of Empire: Das Science-Fiction Brettspiel

This is the Boardgame of a (once) popular German play-by-mail science fiction game. You expand from your home planet, build ships and troops, send fleets out into space, battle for control of star systems. Several resources need to be balanced: population, energy, raw material, technology.

The boardgame has some nice ideas. Once you've set your fleets in motion, they will remain on their course, no calling back. Distances between systems is given on a chart, so it will take your fleet between 1 and 3 rounds to reach its destination. No battle in outer space, only in a system. Combat is done by rolling dice (one per relevant unit) adding the points and dividing by 6. This is the damage done to the opponent, counted out in units.

As pbm / pbem this game may have its merits. To convert a computer managed game to a board game was a bold plan, but one destined to fail. There is to much fiddly detail. Every system has its own little board and there are 42 of them. Plus one central board, plus one per player, all loaded with markers: how many resources, population, fighters, troops, docks ....

It's a sensory overload. It may have succeeded on a smaller scale.