Federation Commander

[Paul B]

Are these the stats?

http://starfleetgames.com/documents/F&EDocuments/MSIT-02_Feds-3=2015.pdf

Because they look pretty different.
Looks like no command cost. Just command ability.
Doesn't seem like there's a defensive value separate from Attack Value; just two combat factors, one undamaged, one damaged.
No apparent class-based maintenance cost.
Less special abilities (assuming that "Fast" grants an ability in F&E)
Use of decimal points. Something which isn't in VBAM and would arguably take up more time.

The lack of DV and AS (or AF) value in particular is pretty apparent, since that's where a lot of the nuance in the VBAM stats come into effect. If the stats are just a flat Combat Factor it doesn't really have the same depth.

[Dal Downing]

Paul the G3 Annex Book covers most of what your look for. I don't see an issue here let the man design first ok. 😉
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-Dal

"Which one of you is the Biggest, Baddest, Bootlicker of the bunch?"
"I am."
"ARCHERS!!! THAT ONE!!!!"

[Paul B]

I don't play Star Fleet Battles, so why would I want G3 Annex Book? Am I expected to buy a second book in order to properly use Federation Admiral?

Further from what I understand Federation Admiral is supposed to use the VBAM rules system, so it's a bit confusing as to why it will now be using F&E ship stats. Particularly when those stats from first glance lack the depth and accessibility of what is typical of VBAM.

[Paul B]

Another question, does Federation Admiral still have three scales of play?

Originally the book was going to have Grand, Regional and Local campaigns. Grand being in charge of a whole empire, Regional being a border and Local being a sector along that border. Local I believe was going to include a Victory Point system, allowing for competitive campaigns even during times of peace as factions vie for political interests while at the same time keeping an eye on escalating tensions. I've seen the system in some of VBAM's newer books but would be interested to see the same system in the context of SFU.

Not sure if the VP system was integrated into Regional and Grand Campaigns as well or if any additional rules differentiated Grand from Regional. I suspect that similar to VBAM, some ships may be less accessible as they would need to be requested. In VBAM some larger ships, ie BB or DNs aren't built locally but instead need to be brought in with special points. Though I don't know if this is the case in the original FA iteration of the rules.

[Steve Cole]

Tuesday 21 June: I didn't get anything done on this due to other projects but Jean and Petrick read the first 10 pages and gave them to me with comments and Jean read the next ten and gave them to Petrick.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Steve Cole]

I'll try to answer some of the questions, but a little less antagonism would smooth things along. I have done dozens of products in a 50 year career as a game designer and publisher and this project is the ONLY one where I have seen this kind of anger and disrespect.

I haven't gotten far enough to see what the stats will have to be, but you're missing the point entire, Paul. There are thousands of ships in SFU, and more added every month, and the original charts by Jay just covered a hundred or so that were in Fed Commander at the time. I presume you're going to want the other 1900? It's not going to work very well inventing a whole new set of attack and defense values for 1900 ships (and spend months verifying which of them are right and which aren't) when we can just copy the ones out of F&E which are already right. I mean, we all want this thing out this year right? If you want to invent a whole new attack defense value scale you can pretty much forget this year or next year.

In most cases the attack and defense values are the same. I think you can understand that if it says 6/3 you can just assume it says 6-6/3-3 and then ignore the 3-3 which FedAdm doesn't use. Note that about 10% of the sips do indeed have separate attack and defense values in F&E.

As for other stats one might need (command cost, maintenance), we'll see when we get there (I have to do chapter 7 first) but the point is that there is an easy way to create and update the chart that doesn't involve publishing Volume II. Which was the original question. I'm going to bet that you all are smart enough to figure out such things on your own while waiting for the next update assuming you have the key data which is already available free.

I don't think I ever said anything about G3 or buying that. Frankly, G3 wouldn't help much as it has no attack and defense values and is not continually updated on line. G3 isn't on line and probably won't ever be. It's nothing I ever said was part of this conversation so let's not waste time with sarcastic comments about the need for it.

Yes, there are still three scales. Not really sure about the whole empire thing but I guess it would work for that. But I know how much work it takes to run a whole empire in F&E which is much much simpler than VBAM or FedAdm. I cannot imagine anyone being a glutton for punishment to that level but then I did once play a WWII Russian Front game that had the German Army broken down to battalion level, and I loved it. Of course, I didn't have a girlfriend at the time.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Paul B]

The G3 Annex comment was in response to Dal Downing's comment, not something you had said. And yeah I'm just mainly curious how it differs from VBAM 1e (since it's supposed to be sorta 1.5e) and how if its changed, if at all, since the original information some seven years ago. If the game is going to be using F&E stats then obviously it's undergone some significant changes. My concern would be how those changes impact the gameplay. Typically in VBAM the Anti Ship Factor doesn't match the Defensive Value, it's less, which makes the battles longer and helps to mitigate bad luck by having more rounds of combat (or allowing the scenario to end before one side has been destroyed). Having only one value would I think turn most battles into more of a meat grinder.

And personally I don't really see the need for modelling any ship that I cannot then play in my game of choice, Federation Commander. If I'm playing a campaign there would be no point building a ship that I cannot field on the tabletop. Since most of the 2000 or so SFU ship aren't available for FedCom, Starmada or ACTA that sentiment would be true for most players. The only exception would be SFB players. But since you stated on the BBS that this is primarily a Federation Commander product, maybe the book would be best if it included the VBAM stats for ships relevant to FC/ACTA/KlingonArmada and had an optional rule allowing SFB players to use the F&E stats instead. Just a thought. More options to play are generally better I find.

Typically in VBAM I think for running a whole empire you'd just start with a single planet and expand outward from there. It's "ahistorical" but it allows for the 4X gameplay (eXplore, eXploit, eXpand, eXterminate) which is popular in games like Civilization, Master of Orion etcetera. It's quick playing at the start but can slow down with larger empires, like any game. Fortunately, the battle system is there to quick run scenarios when needed since I think longer campaigns usually die off when huge battles come up and then are not played out.

How are planets and colonies modeled in Federation Admiral? Is it still the same as VBAM where they have Capacity/Census/RAW/Morale and Productivity?

[Steve Cole]

Wednesday 22 June: Reviewed the whole command cost system which doesn't seem to match with SFU, where all ships cost the same amount of commanding. It seems to me to be an unnecessary complication to have both command ratings and command costs. The system used in SFU and F&E gives all ships a command cost of "one ship" and gives all ships a command rating from zero to 10. There just seems to be no merit in doing twice as much work, but before I go edit the entire command cost system out of the product, does anyone have some reason (other than "VBAM does it that way.") why we need to keep this?
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Steve Cole]

How are planets and colonies modeled in Federation Admiral? Is it still the same as VBAM where they have Capacity/Census/RAW/Morale and Productivity?

I don't know of any changes there.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Steve Cole]

"If the game is going to be using F&E stats then obviously it's undergone some significant changes."

If it does then yes it has. But we don't know that yet.

"Typically in VBAM I think for running a whole empire you'd just start with a single planet and expand outward from there. It's "ahistorical" but it allows for the 4X gameplay (eXplore, eXploit, eXpand, eXterminate) "

You can do that if you want. You can even do it with F&E which people are doing at Stratcon right now. Look up "early beginnings" and you'll see. Nothing I have changed eliminates this possible use of the system.

"And personally I don't really see the need for modelling any ship that I cannot then play in my game of choice, Federation Commander. If I'm playing a campaign there would be no point building a ship that I cannot field on the tabletop. Since most of the 2000 or so SFU ship aren't available for FedCom, Starmada or ACTA that sentiment would be true for most players. "

Actually, most players (and I know a lot more of them than you do) want to use FC but want all of the SFB ships in FC. We add new SFB ships to FC every month and the list of "wanted ships" gets longer not shorter.

And you don't have to model a ship not in FC if you don't want to, but you can easily enough. We actually have extensive instructions on the website for how to convert SFB ships into FC. We haven't done that yet for starmada or A Call to Arms but we probably will someday.

"Typically in VBAM the Anti Ship Factor doesn't match the Defensive Value, it's less, which makes the battles longer and helps to mitigate bad luck ..."

An interesting point, but F&E handles that by using a battle intensity system which accomplishes the same goal. Seriously, you're worrying too soon. I haven't even gotten to the annex section yet, so I don't know, but I'm not really sure which way we'll go yet. This game has gone on too long (not least because of the personal attacks I get making me less than interested in spending time on it) and I am having to go review past chapters, chapters done years ago, to make headway.

"since you stated on the BBS that this is primarily a Federation Commander product,"

I don't remember evryting I ever said, but I don't remember saying that. Quite the opposite. I suspect that this is more of your taking stuff deliberately out of context. What I have consistently said is tht Jay wrote it for FC and I rewrote it to work with all four tactical games (greatly increasing sales potential). That doesn't change the FedAdm game systen; it just adds some pages of stuff (in scattered one-line snippets) that says hwo to reflect that level of damage or whatever in each game system.

Jay's original text said "To reflect this in FC mark out two cargo boxes." which I changed to "To reflect this in FC or SFB, mark out two cargo boxes. To reflect this in Starmada, do abcde fhghi lmnop qarst. To reflect this in ACTASF reduce the cargo rating by one."
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Jean]

Paul, at this point please confine your future comments to the BBS. That way SVC doesn't have to answer your points in both places.

Jean
WebMom
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[Steve Cole]

Friday: Spent the day on routine admin stuff (and moaning about the pain in my side where they killed my pet rock) and didn't really work on FedAdm other than watching the BBS discussions.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Steve Cole]

Saturday: I started on and finished Chapter 7 and sent the PDF to Jay to answer a couple of questions. The page layout software always chews up the charts and doing them over manually I might have made mistakes, but Jay can doubtless tell me. I got a good look at Chapter 8. I think the only way I'm going to do that and keep my sanity is to try to move the charts into excel which will import into the layout software. But that's for some day next week. I want to spend a few days working on Jean/Petrick fixes to the first 30 pages and getting the next 30 to them. Before you ask, Chapter 7 ended on page 87. Looks like chapter 8 will push us past 100 and then some. During earlier times we thought this book might be much bigger but that included two sections (one of them literally a novel) that Jay doesn't seem to think are now necessary.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Steve Cole]

Everything is done except:
1. The final edit and read-through.
2. Jean and Petrick reading the rest of it and my fixing their stuff.
3. Jay reading the rest of it and my fixing his stuff.
4. The chart listing 500 available ships.

About half of the chart is done. The current chart draft is posted on the other BBs here:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/12033/35565.html?1468867805#POST758966
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Scharwenka]

I like how this has the Frax....is it going to include other simulator and or Omega Sector Empires?
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