Early Years Federation Commander

rfeceo · Post by **rfeceo** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 4:22 am

In the event that ADB puts out Early Years ship cards, utilizing both warp-refitted and Early class ships, I would suggest developing a distinction between warp-refitted and early freighters.

The reason is that the UFS and UFL can maintain baseline speeds of 24/(24+8 w/battery) and 16(16+4 w/ battery) at Fleet Scale, respectively, since they have no other power demands.

What we're finding in our EY campaign is that warp-refitted raiders (usually WDDs and WCLs) have a very difficult time catching a fleeing freighter, and even when they can do so, it is all power to move until Impulse 1, drop base-line speed down to 16 or 8, fire all weapons, and hope for warp box hits. If there aren't any, it is possible that the warship will never catch up (ie, a Carnivon WDD vs. a UFS). Early ships ("Y-class") tend to have more power, and so this is not as much of a problem for them.

IIRC, in SFB freighters have limits to their acceleration, giving the warships a chance to close before the freighter has a full head of steam, That's not the case in FC. On the other hand, directed targeting fire does help, half the time.

A suggested solution is instead of a UFS and UFL, to have a WF-S and UF-S, for example. The difference would be that that the WF-S has a higher move cost than the UF-S.

Unless of course, fast freighters in the Early Years is the intent, in which case I happily retract the above.

Peter / RFECEO

Nerroth · Post by **Nerroth** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 8:10 pm

Perhaps the UFL and UFS might need to have their Baseline Speed capped to a maximum of 8; with only the faster Y-era transports (like the early Free Trader in Module Y3) able to set a baseline speed of 16.

Although, it seems that in most cases, the kind of "generic" transports offered in the Y-era for SFB may not have existed (or had equivalent counterparts) in the W-era; it may be that each species (or member planet, in the case of the early UFP and ISC) had their own specific freighters, that were only eclipsed once the Y-transports emerged to succeed them.

(In the case of the ISC, that would be part of the same process that drive the formation of the unified Navy and Police; the new set of generic bases and transports allowed the five planets to work with larger economies of scale than any one of them had been able to manage individually.)

So, the W-era hulls should have issues trying to catch the newer generation of civilian hulls; which would be part of the motivation behind making the shift to the Y-era units needed to enforce each empire's prerogative within its home space.

Post by **Steve Cole** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 3:30 pm

The problem with doing real cards is that while I have managed to get the minimum run down a lot (to 500) I'm not at all convinced we'd sell 500 sets of early years, and you'd be talking about a LOT of cards to make a workable set.

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 4:33 pm

Well, let's see.

If we only did Y-ships, that is, at a basic core, YDN, YCA, YCL, YDD, YFF. With the basic 10 empires (F,K,Z,C,L,H,T,R,G,P), that is 50 ships. Let's round to 60 to cover bases and some nice general ships. Assuming 16 ships in an Attack module, and three new ships per Booster (you will still need duplicates of the small ships), that gets a total of 25 for an Attack product. Let's assume we sneak in one extra booster to cover the bases and generics. That means two Attack products (plus an extra Booster) will barely cover the base level set of Y-ships.

And that is just Y-ships. That doesn't include any of the W-ships, and their infinite variety. It will take way more than two Attack+Booster sets to cover the W-ships. It also doesn't include the ISC (too isolated) and Orions (introduced too late).

And if it was absolutely necessary to do a full mix of Y-ships and W-ships, then, at best, you can fit most of two empires in a single Attack+Booster set. So, that would be five or six Attack+Booster sets at a minimum. To get the full Fed and ISC national fleets would be at least one more set.

So, yeah, I can see where it might not be possible to make real ship cards in a meaningful way for the Early Years.

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 4:46 pm

On the other hand, would it be possible to make some Briefing Early Years products?

Assuming 30 ship cards per Briefing, that would let two cover the Y-ships reasonably well, and the W-ships could probably be covered in three or so. Also, instead of dividing things by empire, you could do it by class. So, for example, the first Briefing could have YCA, YDD, YFF for all of the empires, and the second Briefing could have YDN, YCL, Base, Generics for all of the empires.

But then, even they might not sell enough to justify the effort for 60 ship cards. And that would still just be the Y-ships, which is probably not near enough for many people.

JimDauphinais · Post by **JimDauphinais** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 5:18 pm

Practically, a limited e23 approach might be the way to start.

Basically, the Y ships Mike mentioned, but just three e23 color ship packs initially (one each for Feds, Klingons and Romulans). Each e23 pack would also include the early years rule mods and any necessary weapon tables. If the e23 revenue was sufficient from the experiment to cover Steve's time (plus any other non-overhead costs to produce it), than the early years could be expanded further on e23. If the experiment was incredibly successful (unlikely), dry-eraser marker cards become a possiblity. I am not sure a Briefing like project for a lot of paper greyscale ship cards is really feasible based on the experience with Briefing #2, but then again maybe sales of Briefing #2 were more than sufficient to cover ADB's cost to produce it.

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 6:07 pm

Well, we did various YCAs a few Captain's Logs back. It shouldn't be that hard to assemble them into an ePack and see how they do. The basic rules were put into that Captain's Log, too, so it would just need to reproduce them in the ePack.

Honestly, I thought it had already been done, but apparently not.

jeffery smith · Post by **jeffery smith** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 6:11 pm

E23 is great but an E23 module still takes time to make and if it does not make it to the break even point then Svc has been a "river to his people" at an expense to his pocketbook.

Do not miss understand me here i have already stated elsewhere that i would purchase pretty much anything FC from Early years thru X tech to "Omega Commander" but i am but 1 customer and Svc can not do things just to make 1 customer happy or i suspect Leanna will banish him to the Sargasso sea sector in a big hurry.

maybe this might be worth a kickstarter but i do not know much about that process.

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 7:18 pm

jeffery smith wrote:E23 is great but an E23 module still takes time to make and if it does not make it to the break even point then Svc has been a "river to his people" at an expense to his pocketbook.

Well, on doing the YCAs, the ships and rules already done, so that shouldn't be a huge drain on Steve's time, if he chooses to do it. Doing more than that would indeed be more effort, which may not be worth it. But by collating the collection that already exists will help gauge the level of interest to see if it might be worth doing more.

storeylf · Post by **storeylf** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 7:33 pm

mjwest wrote: Well, on doing the YCAs, the ships and rules already done, so that shouldn't be a huge drain on Steve's time, if he chooses to do it. Doing more than that would indeed be more effort, which may not be worth it. But by collating the collection that already exists will help gauge the level of interest to see if it might be worth doing more.

It might also be misleading - if a lot of players already have the captains log then they may not be about to rush out and buy what they already have.

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 7:47 pm

storeylf wrote:
mjwest wrote: Well, on doing the YCAs, the ships and rules already done, so that shouldn't be a huge drain on Steve's time, if he chooses to do it. Doing more than that would indeed be more effort, which may not be worth it. But by collating the collection that already exists will help gauge the level of interest to see if it might be worth doing more.
It might also be misleading - if a lot of players already have the captains log then they may not be about to rush out and buy what they already have.

True. But it can still be a leading indicator. Plus, by doing it, assuming it sells at all, it could help justify a simple second offering. Say, include YFFs that match the empires given YCAs. This keeps the number down (just eight ship cards), gives a pair of ships per empire, and gives a decent view into the viability of more extensive offerings of Y-ships. At worst, for the investment of eight ships (about the same as a booster), ADB gets a good feel for what Early Years can do in Federation Commander. If the interest justifies it, do more. If it doesn't, stop. If it really justifies it, a Briefing could be done. (Hey, I can dream, right?)

But, leveraging the existing YCAs can still determine if doing some YFFs is worthwhile. If they are, the combination of the YCAs and YFFs can determine if doing anything more is worthwhile.

Nerroth · Post by **Nerroth** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 8:11 pm

Perhaps it might be an idea to group the various Y-era empires into the same kind of historically-minded match-ups that are already in place for Main Era Alpha (and which I have tried to keep in mind for Omega); rather than simply drawing up lists based on the YR-section listings.

For example, the Romulans, Gorns, and Paravians could be kept together as an "eastern" trio; since, for the most part, those three empires were mainly dealing with each other anyway. (The Orions could also go in there, to represent the "pirate kingdoms" being carved out of Romulan space in that era.)

While relationships were more mixed over in the western side of the Alpha Octant map, you could still break off some of the "distant kingdoms" (Hydran, Lyran, Carnivon, WYN) and keep the Klingons and Kzintis in with the Federation (and the odd Tholian command module conversion or two).

Indeed, the ISC could be done as a setting in its own right; with the unified Navy and Police ships offered alongside samples of the five pre-ISC warp-driven fleets (and/or any dedicated pre-Orion pirate ships, should any be published for SFB between now and then). Perhaps with some Space Boar stampedes to try and keep tabs on?

So, that would leave three sets of four factions (Fed-Klingon-Kzinti-Tholian; WYN-Lyran-Hydran-Carnivon; Gorn-Romulan-Orion-Paravian), plus some room for a self-contained ISC "setting" to be considered if there was any room for it later on.

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 9:23 pm

Gary,

First, I really just hope a viability check can be done.

As for dividing things up down the road, I suggested the divisions I did for a very specific reason. The Early Years is a niche aspect of a niche product. If you ever want to see Carnivon, Paravian, Hydran, or such ships, you had better be sure to include them with the Klingons and Federation. And, given that the Romulan ships are going to suck, they probably don't count for this. So, better to give cross-section across all empires, then trying to segregate empires. If you segregate empires, you won't get past whatever includes the Federation and Klingons. You might not ever even see the Romulans, Gorns, and Paravians. And the ISC would be a pipe dream.

And if we are going to try and do a cross-section, the first entry had better be decent. Thus my suggestion of YCA, YDD, YFF of all of the empires. It gives the best chance to sell well, makes sure the less popular empires are included (i.e. anything that isn't Federation and Klingon), and provides a decent selection of ships if the effort fails. This is not a random set of ship choices; this is a deliberate selection with immediate and long term goals in mind.

Is this the right approach? I don't know for sure. However, watching how the various Attack products evolve and the reason for the Reinforcements Attack approach, I think it is probably the best way to go.

But, again, this is all getting the cart before the horse. The first (and only immediate) thing to aim for is getting the nine YCA ships into an ePack and running it up the flag pole. If it works, give those YCAs each a stable-mate and run it up the flag pole. If all of that works out (which is far, far from a sure thing), then we can talk about how best to divide the various ships up.

jeffery smith · Post by **jeffery smith** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 11:51 pm

being one who has every issue of captains log except #45 and both briefings i can say i will purchase it if steve choose's to do this even if it was already in one of these issues. whether it is color shipcards or black & white makes no difference to me.

Post by **Steve Cole** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:43 pm

I don't know (and am not convinced) that enough copies would be sold to allow me to spend the time doing the cards, no matter if the cards are e23, briefing, or real cards.

Now, under the new system used in Reinforcements Attack, there could be 40 new ships in a product and three boosters.

I don't know that you can force 50-60 down to 40 but I am sure you cannot drive sales to the point of two full products/booster combos.