Federation Commander

[Kohanavich]

My group has played the heck out of this era! We love it because the ships have flaws and quirks ! It's challenging and fun. The refits of latter years kind of gentrified things. We have hosted tournaments with only these ships and introduced many new players and fans of TOS. Several of us have played SFB since it came out in the bag via TFG. We found FC a breath of fresh air and it suited our lifestyles better ( not as much time to play and not wanting the stress of SFB ) FC has very important differences from SFB and needs different tactics. It's a shame that newer players only want the latest and greatest ships. I would say to you all: PLAY THE MIDDLE YEARS! I think you will find it interesting and challenging .

[Nerroth]

It's good to see the Middle Years get more attention!

To go further back, have you had a look at any of the playtest Y-era ships from Captain's Log #39, to try and see how FC tackles the Early Years?

Also, while you may or may not be minded to look beyond the Alpha Octant, I might note that the current crop of playtest Omega Octant Ship Cards effectively represent "middle years" designs; while a series of more powerful ships are set to emerge later in the Omega timeline, most of those have yet to be published in SFB (let alone sampled in FC).

And while the playtest Ship Cards in the FC LMC project mainly focus on the "wartime" hulls fielded by the empires of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, even they have a quite distinct set of power-related challenges and limitations to consider. Plus, there is a range of "middle years" SSDs available in SFB Module C5, which could be potential candidates for conversion to FC... should there be enough interest to warrant it, at least.
_________________
FC Omega Discussion (v3)
FC LMC Discussion

[mdauben]

[Steve Cole]

I (too) grew up on WW2 armor, and there were probably more Tiger-II tanks in my playing group that in the German Army in March 45.
_________________
The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Mike]

Love the Middle Years! Don't really care for the GW era. Cannot stand post-war. I, too, like the differences in the ships of the MY. Every fleet having the same kinds of ships with basically the same strengths just isn't fun for me.
_________________
Mike

=====
Sandpaper gets the job done, but makes for a lot of friction.

[Paul B]

I like the middle years but I think the only ships I have is the special Federation Booster because I'm not really into the paper SSDs.

I play Flames of War as well but I've got much bigger "early and mid war" armies than late war with A9, A10, and Crusader Cruisers along with Valentines, Matildas, an MkIV Churchills. Though it's more of a preference for british armour as even late war I have Cromwells not Shermans.

But my impression from the stores is that Early War is a bit of a dead duck and Mid War as well as most everyone who plays there is into Late War now with Konigtigers, Ferdinands, Panthers and whatever else. Germans outsell all the other factions by a wide margin and my opponents I know tended to the best troops and tanks.

One wonders why they didn't release Early War first, if releasing it later hurt their sales but probably wanted to tap into the American market and there's also the risk that if you release stuff that is too crappy people just wont want to play it. In a similar war, a video game called World of Warships started with the Pacific theatre of WW2 with only American and Japanese ships and no brits/germans at all.

Federation Commander I think took a similar approach as Steve has mentioned something like the Early Years wars stuff is too old to be of interest to most people (not trying to misquote anyone) and I imagine that the X-ships might have the effect of making everything else obsolete and uninteresting. General War stuff might have "general appeal" so maybe that's the interest in leading with those ships first.

Also I imagine it would be hard to sell "upgraded ships" which had only one or two boxes difference. (And on-sheet upgrades can clutter things up)

That said, I think people will play what they play. I tend to prefer using squadrons of lighter ships like light cruisers, destroyers, etcetera. But my old opponent I know would prefer larger ships. Once we even did a battle where he stipulated that I MUST use a Dreadnought.

Once had a scenario designed by my opponent where I needed to assault some Tholians in an asteroid field, and his "force" was two Tholian Dreadnoughts (one Neo) and a "captured" Juggernaut. Hardly historical but people will play what they play. For the record my force of Kzinti CLs scragged the two DNs but lost most of their forward shields to asteroids impacts so didn't pursue the Juggernaut when it started running for distance Only time I conceded because I knew that my ships would be taking 20 points of damage from asteroids and there was no way to avoid it.

[Nerroth]

[Kohanavich]

I started looking at my Early year stuff from SFB after reading stuff in the forum. Are some of the ships available for FC in a single DL or product? I love the idea of dealing with the power limitations!

A great way to test a WWII armor game back in the day was to try out Russian front 1942 battles. If the system was just "hardware porn" the Germans wouldn't stand a chance! Whereas if the system had decent command control /experience rules it would work.

[mdauben]

[Paul B]

[mjwest]

The Original Series took place somewhere during the late Y150s. Exactly where is not a perfect match, but it is the late Y150s. The General War is after that.
_________________

Federation Commander Answer Guy

[Nerroth]

If going by the Alpha Octant timeline, the events of the on-screen "five-year mission" take place between Y154 and Y159 (or from 2554 to 2559 in FC terms). According to GURPS Federation, the prior incident at Talos IV (under a different crew and captain) occured in Y142 (2442).

It's worth noting that, from a Star Fleet Universe perspective, not all of the events "dramatized for tri-video" happened exactly as they were shown on-screen, or even happened at all. For example, the unfortunate First Contact between the Federation and Gorns had "two brash young captains shoot first and face embarrassing questions later"; yet there were no "Organian-like" super-beings involved in the SFU version of events. Similarly, while the SFU Organians did manage to broker an agreement between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, their mind powers were largely restricted to the area in and around their home world - and did not run the full length of the Fed-Klingon border. (I don't recall how large an area their mind powers could cover was off of the top of my head, but there is a "Myths of the Organians" article somewhere which addresses this topic.)

Some of this is due to the nature of ADB's licence with Paramount. As well as keeping any "post-1979" events off the table, the SFU cannot incorporate any "old" material from TOS and TAS which has not already been factored into this setting.


So far as first-generation X-ships go, Adam Turner has already done some fine work in envisioning how the Federation Vincennes-class CX and the Klingon DX look like - as shown on a number of ADB book covers, such as that for Star Fleet Battles Module X1R. (There's a really nice "Andromeda Attacks!" pic which Adam did up that I'm still hoping could be used on a future front or back cover someday...)

Hopefully the prospect of one day bringing X1-ships to FC might open the door for yet more hulls from the two SFB X-modules to be brought to life art-wise - and that we may see something truly new and distinct when the time comes for SFB itself to move further forward into the era of second-generation X-ships.
_________________
FC Omega Discussion (v3)
FC LMC Discussion

[Kohanavich]

Played the original x ships long ago in SFB and wasn't that impressed after a few plays went back to standard SFB. I know there have been changes but I'm skeptical how well x ships would work in FC. ADB has to make money though.

[Nerroth]

The X1-ship rules in SFB have been substantially errata-ed; overloadable phasers have been nixed, heavy weapons can no longer misfire, and several BPV listings from Module X1 have been adjusted.

As it happens, Module X1R comes with a number of ships which really come into their own during the course of the Andromedan War - not least the "X-raiders" (such as the Star Fleet GVX NCC-1783 USS Field Marshal Colin Powell, or the Romulan FireHawk-EX Admiral Centius), which played a key role in hunting down the Andro Rapid Transit Network from Y195 (2595) onwards.

Speaking of the Andros, I would hope that doing X1-ships in FC might provide a good opportunity to bring over the infamous Darwin scenario from X1. Even a squadron of X1-ships might dread the appearance of a Devastator Battleship on their doorstep...

And if that ship was not dangerous enough, Module C3A includes the Devourer: a "dark future" battleship variant which packed a quartet of dissection beams (a weapon capable of ripping off a heavy cruiser's warp nacelle in a single shot). Fortunately for the empires of the Alpha Octant, the Andros never introduced the dissection beam in the "main" SFU timeline, and hadn't been able to finish building their first Devastator by the time the Unity task forces made it to the LMC.


Oh, and when it comes to X2-ships, it might also be worth noting that their era is set to introduce a new "big bad": the Xorkaelian Tyranny, a superpower which holds the far side of the Milky Way under its thrall. Their invasion of the Alpha Octant is set to break out in Y210 (2610) - but it seems that the Xork fleet will have to wait until after Module X2 itself is published.

There is a discussion thread for X2 over on the BBS, if you wanted to pop over and see what may, or may not, be on the cards for this new era of Alpha Octant history.
_________________
FC Omega Discussion (v3)
FC LMC Discussion

[Cat Who Sleeps With Dogs]

Are there any ship cards for bases in the Middle Years available?