Full Thrust is a science fiction starship miniatures combat game. It is published by Ground Zero Games. It is reasonably well paced, and relatively well detailed, while maintaining a level of simple (but not simplistic) game mechanics.
Players first design their starships. There are fleet books available for those that don't wish to go through this step, though a lot of fun is found in creating your own ships. A point system helps balance out the ship designs against one another (though there are imbalances which will -- hopefully -- be ironed out in future versions or in house rules). A 1500 point fleet (large superdreadnoughts are in the 600 to 800 point range, while destroyers are in the 75 to 125 point range) usually takes less than two hours to play for experienced players.
Movement consists of "cinematic" and "vector" movement. The cinematic movement is easy to use and simple to understand. The vector rules are amongst the most streamlined vector systems I've seen for miniatures. In both cases players plot their ships' movements and then move them accordingly. After movement comes combat.
Players alternate firing weapons at each other's ships. Combat is resolved with 6-sided dice, but each weapon system is quite unique. Beams (representing laser beams, phasers, or what have you) roll lots of dice, but only 4s, 5s, and 6s do damage. Pulse torpedoes, though, roll one dice to hit and then a number of dice totaled up for damage. The result is a number of weapon systems with their own unique abilities and resolutions.
Damage is marked by crossing off a ship's hull boxes (a system that goes back to early naval combat games). The wrinkle with Full Thrust are the threshold checks. When an entire row of boxes is crossed off, each ship's system is checked to see if it is temporarily knocked out of action. This simple but elegant system results in ships losing weapon systems as the ship takes more and more damage.
Currently the Full Thrust rules are found in 4 books. The main Full Thrust rulebook is needed to play the game. This book is sometimes known as Full Thrust 2 (or simply FT2), as it represents the 2nd version of the game (the first version being rare). The first supplement to the game was More Thrust, which added new weapon systems and introduced the alien Kra'Vak and Sa'Vasku races. Fleet Book, Volume 1 (FB1) took the game in a new direction. Not just a list of starship designs, FB1 included new rules and new weapon systems. The vector movement rules debut in FB1, as do the new fire arcs, and salvo missiles. This is the direction Full Thrust will take with the third edition, due in a year or two. Fleet Book, Volume 2 continues this trend of adding new rules along with starship designs. While FB1 covered the major powers of the "official" universe (which some of us have called the Tuffleyverse after Jon Tuffley, the game's developer), FB2 covers the alien Kra'Vak, Sa'Vasku and (the new) Phalon alien races. Vector movement is clarified, and the expanded fighter types from More Thrust are included.
Full Thrust was always conceived as a generic game system. Being a generic game Full Thrust isn't married to one particular set of miniatures or one game background universe. You can create ships of your own design, or model ships from science fiction books and movies. I've personally seen (much of it on the World Wide Web) Full Thrust used to model Star Trek, Star Wars, Space: 1999, Battlestar Galactica, Space: Above and Beyond, and a host of anime backgrounds. One of the more successful implementations has been Babylon 5. Jon Tuffley was commissioned to write the starship miniatures rules for the Babylon 5 roleplaying game, which he derived from Full Thrust. These can be found in the roleplaying game's Earthforce Sourcebook by Chameleon Eclectic.
Due to this generic nature, there are a lot of miniatures available for the game. Star Trek miniatures are quite popular, as are Babylon 5 miniatures for the Babylon 5 Wars game, Games Workshop's Battlefleet Gothic miniatures, and a host of old, out of production miniatures. However, arguably the best miniatures in existence are the incredibly extensive lines available for the "official" Tuffleyverse.
This background universe includes a combined United States/Canada/UK coallition (New Anglian Confederation), an expanded Germany (New Swabian League), a militant France (Fed Stats Europa), and a new Russian/Chinese superpower (Eurasian Solar Union). There are also a number of smaller powers (representing Africa, South East Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, Japan, the Middle East, and a California-Texas union, among others) and the United Nations. All of these powers, and the aliens (the aforementioned Kra'vak, Sa'vasku, and Phalons) are fully covered. Each power has radically different looking ships, from carriers to superdreadnoughts down to frigates, corvettes, and scouts. If you use the designs in the fleet books, you'll also see that each power has its own design philosophy and plays differently from the others.
The universe is shared with two other games: Stargrunt II and Dirtside II. Stargrunt II is one of my favourite miniatures games, with combat taking place at a squad level, while Dirtside II is an excellent microarmour/1:285/epic scale ground combat game. Like Full Thrust, these games are generic but they also adhere to the game universe.
All this makes Full Thrust the one of the best spaceship miniatures combat game available.