F&E commander

[jpat]

Forgive my ignorance, but what is VBAM?

You weren't the only one who didn't know, so thanks for asking.

This all sounds quite cool, although I barely get time for Fleet Scale duels.

[Finarvyn]

Yeah, an official "General War" scenario with hundreds of ships would be a pain (and pretty much impossible to run), but a smaller and more generic campaign mught be fun!

I think what I would do is to xerox off a bunch of SSD forms, assign a ship name to each, and keep them all in a notebook. That way if a ship sustained damage I could keep the boxes crossed off in case they have another enounter before all of the damage is fixed.

Could be a lot of details to keep track of, but if I scale down the total forces for each faction I might be able to keep it under control.

At least, that's my thought at the moment.

[Nerroth]

Yay, someone else using the FRA flag!


Oh, Aurora, we love you...



Anyway, though I hope that the Invasion games can be done, I'm wary about (re-)posting the ideas I had before about this, since it caused more trouble than it was worth for all concerned.


(I have a troubling habit, in that the typical effect of my contributive efforts seem to be inversely proportional to the intent behind them.)



I suppose there will be time enough for that sort of thing, if/when the time comes for the floor to be opened for such suggestions.

Whether anyone would find interest in any of them is, of course, another matter.

[Charles Lewis]

Feel free to hop over to the VBAM Games forums and make all the suggestions you like.

[Nerroth]

It's not quite so easy...


Last time around, I posted a list of ideas that I wanted to put forth for the Invasion box sets, with the intent of sparking ideas in people's minds for what such a game might look like.


However, someone thought that I was talking about a game that was actually in production, or that was set to be released - and it caused headaches for ADB when they were trying to clear the matter up.


I didn't even realise what had happened until I was told about it later.


So when it comes to the whole Invasion thing, I want to wait until a time when, or if, ADB are looking for suggestions - and have a dedicated topic for just such ideas.

[Steve Cole]

I don't know that I will ever be looking for suggestions for Invasion. When I want to do it, I will do it without suggestions. I'm a game designer and don't need people to do it for me. Right now I'm thinking 2010.

[gar1138]

I look forward to the Invasion product with great anticipation!

Garrett

[Charles Lewis]

If you are familiar at all with the VBAM system, and have ideas you'd like to see implemented in the VBAM:FC product, our forums are the place for that, and what I was suggesting.

Any future ADB products are purely SVC's domain, and I certainly didn't mean to imply otherwise. We are extremely excited to have been given access to the SFU, but we'll stay in our corner.

[Nerroth]

At the moment, I'm not familiar with VBAM - is there an introductory pdf anywhere which details some of the basic concepts (a kind of VBAM equivalent of FC: First Missions) for newcomers to the system?


And just to clarify, is VBAM set at a level which would be consdiered a stepping stone between the starship-level actions of FC and SFB, and the empire-level actions of Fed and Empire?

[Charles Lewis]

Not per se...There are some campaign diaries on our yahoo group that would give you a feel for the system.

By default, VBAM is actually at a level higher than F&E - a player typically has total control over his race. However, VBAM features a modular rule set that is easily modified, and can adapt to much lower level games as desired. The majority of the scenarios being planned for the first VBAM:FC product are at a much lower level than F&E and would be the next step or two up from FC/SFB - the intent is to put the player into the shoes of a commodore or rear admiral in charge of a portion of the border up to maybe a fleet commander based at a Starbase further back.