Federation Commander

domingojs23 · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2015 11:33 am Post subject: Designer Edition: SFB OSR !

Dear Friends,

As you may know, many Dungeons & Dragons and other fantasy RPG fans have undertaken an "Old School Revival" (OSR) ergo a return to playing with older editions of D&D rules. There are numerous reasons for this, among them nostalgia and dissatisfaction with current rules.

I loved and often played SFB during its Designer Edition days, and just could not quite get into the subsequent Commander and Captains' and Federation Commander rules. Its not only the complexity of the newer rules - even things like the font bugged me !!! I just really loved and prefer the style and look of the DE, warts and all !

Thus, I was elated to learn that the Designer's Edition is now available electronically - so I intend to buy it and start up again - in my own SFB OSR.

Anyone else feel similarly ?

CarlZog · Lieutenant JG Joined: 01 Jun 2012 Posts: 40

No, the breadth and depth of the Captain's edition is central to the appeal of the game for me. I love the long, rich history of ship development and functional diversity, with all the fiddly rules to match it.

But I never played any of the pre-Captain's editions, so I'm exempt from any nostalgic association with it. I do own a Designer's Edition rulebook, and I've read through it, but it's more a historical curiosity than anything I'd want to break out to play today.

It will be fun to see if it catches on again though, now that it's all becoming inexpensively available again.

ElizabethB · Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 12:52 pm Post subject:

I have a lot of nostalgia for the Designer's Edition - I started after Expansion #1 came out. I remember the old BPVs (most everything at two digits) and Kzinti and Hydrans being the big fighter races - although Klingons and Romulans received fighters in expansion #1. No fast patrol ships yet (and when we got them with expansion #2 they were called "pseudo fighters" - I think Lyran, Klingon, Hydran, and Kzinti were in the expansion; Orion, Tholian, Romulan, and Gorn were in a Nexus magazine before getting counters in expansion #3.

The original x-ships in ex#1 were interesting - I seem to recall the Klingon D7X having forward and aft photons? Originally, they were an alternate universe development in place of dreadnoughts and fighters.

Oh yeah, and the Federation flatbed carrier in expansion #2, which was kind of a revelation given carriers to date had not carried more than 12 fighters and we get this thing with two different kinds of fighters and in twice the number everyone else had. Of course, the Kzinti had the space control ship which we got before we got a Kzinti dreadnought.

Fun times, but I think I prefer the current state of the game. Commander's Edition was a big improvement over the Designer's edition, and Doomsday an improvement over that.

djdood · Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 8:03 pm Post subject:

I view Designer's Edition with the same nostalgia I do for Gamescience's Star Fleet Battle Manual and FASA's Starship Combat Simulator. They're neat historical footnotes, and the game(s) I love would not exist if they hadn't, but I don't really have any desire to play them again.
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ElizabethB · Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2015 4:42 am Post subject:

If I still had the Starship Combat Simulator, I'd probably still play it. Still, Federation Commander probably fills that niche more efficiently now (that is, less complicated and faster playing).

Magnum357 · Lieutenant Commander Joined: 09 Dec 2006 Posts: 223

I can agree with ElizabethB. Once I found Fed Commander, I just couldn't go back to the older versions for SFB. They are, however, a great read for educational purposes in my opinion.

Sneaky Scot · Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 8:54 pm Post subject:

Having sat with a marker pen and pages upon pages of errata, I don't miss the older editions of SFB. I don't really play SFB anymore as Fed Cdr works so much better and at least I can occasionally find people to play with, but I keep buying the stuff as it has become a hobby, and it usually isn't too much work to create a Fed Cdr version of anything I might want to run out.

Agree on older versions of D&D having more appeal than 3rd or 4th edition, so I keep my 2nd edition, but I am enjoying 5th edition. I just don't think it's the same for SFB.
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Nothing is quite as persuasive as a disruptor pistol on slow burn and a rotisserie......

mdauben · Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2015 2:07 pm Post subject:

If I was to go "old school" on Star Fleet Battles, it would be all the way back to the original "pocket game" edition. The whole game in a small ziploc bag about the dimentions of a FC ship card. That's the verison of the game that introduced me to the Starfleet Universe.

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Mike

"The best diplomat that I know is a fully-loaded phaser bank."