Federation Commander

An updated.

ACTA is taking forever and that is pushing FA back by the same amount. For the simplest game we ever did (other than one page things in CapLog) the ACTA game system takes the most fixing. Right now I'm still waiting for art to show up from Mongoose and some others. Once that happens (hopefully Monday) we'll spin up and upload the Deluxe PDF and then I'm done with ACTA for another year.

And then, even if that takes until Tuesday or Wednesday, I'll start on Caplog, which will take 3 weeks, and then need a week of post-publication work before FA starts. Figure four weeks from tomorrow.

This is not a major reschedule, not a dropping or delaying of the FedAdm product, just a couple of extra weeks. Given that we will sell ten copies of CL51 for every copy of FedAdm (or ACTA for that matter) I think you can understand that we need to do CL#51 just before FedAdm, just like it was scheduled six months ago.

ACTASF Deluxe Edition Book 1.2 Revision N got finished and uploaded, so I can start on CL51 tomorrow.

Shouldn't Federation Admiral get its own section of the board, like other standalone ADB products?

Burying the sole "blessed" conversation thread for it under Federation Commander | Campaigns seems to be confusing people. I know I didn't find it under a cursory search.

Quick update. Just finishing the second of three weeks of CapLog. We're going to lose a few days next week to the annual wildlife sanctuary trip, but we should finish CL51 by two weeks from today, and maybe spend another week rounding up stray dogs and cats before starting work on Fed Admiral. Guess right now that would be 23 May but likely several days earlier. I know it keeps slipping a little but it's still next in line and CL51 won't last forever.

As noted, CL51 took longer to finish than expected, and so did the FLAP list, and a small medical issue that messed me up for two weeks, but I finally got to start on Fed Admiral (again) this month. I've spent a lot of time going over work already done years ago getting to the point of understanding what it's all about.

I finished chapter 4 day before yesterday and did chapter 5 yesterday (but it needs major review by Petrick and Jean to comply with SFU history, the issue that has delayed this whole thing for five years). I'm working on chapter 6 now, and it's too soon to tell how it's going. Chapter 6 is 38 optional rules and rule #2 was a land mine as it doesn't work anything like SFU works and I'm basically going to have to toss the original text and write a whole new rule.

I should comment that while I have sent Jay about sixty pages of manuscript he has just started sending in his reports-answers-comments so that I can move the draft chapters forward. Basically, I need to get his comments on those pages, go finish them, then give them to Petrick, fix anything he finds, then give them to Jean, and then fix what she finds. This won't be finished tomorrow. Frankly, "early summer" is going to depend on a definition of the term. Summer begins 21 June and is 91 days long so "early" summer gets me to 21 July. Assuming that nothing interrupts me I have a remote chance of getting a PDF posted by then, a better chance of that happening in August or September.

A couple of elements still lack major work. I cannot predict when this will be finished.

I'm almost to the point of the annexes which were once thought to be "plug and play" and easy for me to lay out. As the project has developed, those will take some rather tedious revision. Jay did them in word-charts which will have to be converted to something else since the layout software cannot understand word-charts. Maybe excel, or maybe something else entirely. Even without changing every single combat value it could take a week or two to redo the charts in Excel or something else.

But this IS the current big project on my desk, which means this gets done before I do something else. Unless it takes past 1 Nov in which case I will have to do CL52 and then come back to this. But surely it won't take that long.

So far today I created the file for chapter 6, extracted the text out of the latest version of the original submission file, placed it into the file, reformatted the point size, and then had to manually reset the leading (line height) on all 38 titles of optional rules. I don't care how many times the frakking instructon books say "change the style sheet once and every instance of that style changes automatically" because it doens't work. Something in the original file overrides the style and I have to go manually un-override it every time.

If you need a cover for this, let me know!

Good progress today. I solved the problem with 6.2 by just changing the name from dash to sprint, but we still have design work to do. (I'm waiting for Petrick to have time to look at it.)

I got the reports back from Jean and Petrick on chapter 5 and did all of their fixes, adding art (ever empire gets the emblem, a people picture, and a ship picture). That is on the conference table for them to check before it goes to Jay.

I really need to take a deep breath and spent half of my time back on chapter 1 (then 2, then 3) finalizing them and giving them to Petrick and Jean to do. Knowing how things normally go, there will be some design work to do when I get those reports and I might as well not dump the whole book on them at once.

FRIDAY
Chapter 1, pages 1-8, has been corrected with all Jay reports and given to Jean/Petrick.

Chapter 2-3, pages 9-36, have been edited and laid out by SVC and Jay's reports have been processed.

Chapter 3, pages 37-43: have been edited and laid out by SVC. Jay report received but not processed.

Chapters 3-4, pages 43-62: Have been edited and laid out by SVC. No reports from Jay yet.

Chapter 5, pages 63-70: Edited and laid out by SVC. Reviewed first time by Jean/SPP; those fixes made. Further layout work done with art and graphics. Being reviewed now by Jean/SPP. Not seen by Jay.

Chapter 6, pages 71-76: Editing and layout work started but haven't fone far yet. Nobody but SVC has seen this chapter. This is a grab bag of optional rules and a lot of them need work, cross-references, changes to match SFU, expansion to the other three game systems, etc.

Chapter 7 and later, no work started yet.

Saturday 18 June: Completed editing and layout of Chapter 6 and sent it to Jay for missing parts to be found and inserted. Because I spent all morning at a family reunion, I don't have time today to do more Fed Admiral.

STATUS REPORT: SATURDAY 18 JUNE
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Chapter 1, pages 1-8, has been corrected with all Jay reports and given to Jean/Petrick. They have not come back.
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Chapter 2, pages 9-10: has been laid out and edited. Jay reports processed. Given to Jean/Petrick. Has not come back.
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Chapter 3, pages 11-36, have been edited and laid out by SVC and Jay's reports have been processed.
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Chapter 3, pages 37-43: have been edited and laid out by SVC. Jay report received but not processed.
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Chapters 3-4, pages 43-62: Have been edited and laid out by SVC. No reports from Jay yet.
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Chapter 5, pages 63-70: Edited and laid out by SVC. Reviewed first time by Jean/SPP; those fixes made. Further layout work done with art and graphics. Reviewed now by Jean/SPP, returned to SVC with 75 purple marks.
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Chapter 6, pages 71-78: Editing and layout work complete but there are more questions for Jay to answer. Sent to Jay 18 June.
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Chapter 7 and later, no work started yet.
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STATUS REPORT SUNDAY 19 JUNE
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I sent Jay questions about pages 11-20 and about Chapter 7 but cannot do any work on either without his reply.

On the BBS it was mentioned that there will be no follow up product for this. With that in mind, will the rulebook contains rules/guidelines for converting units to the system? That way if future ships are released, players can convert those new units into VBAM stats to be used in the quick battle system common?

Monday: I got Jay's reports on 11-20 and sent that to Jean. I got Jay's reports on Chapter 6 and set that aside for Jean to review later. I got his answer to a question about Chapter 7 clearing it for me to work on.

I don't think VBAM stats is going to be an issue. For one thing, we may very well end up converting them to match F&E stats which means you just use the continually updated F&E stat sheets free on the website.

If by some happenstance we end up not using F&E stats or FedAdm needs more stats than F&E/SFB has, then we'd just have a set of continually updated PDF annexes on the website. New units would get rolled into those annexes easily enough.

And personally I'm going to bet that you people are smart and can create the missing stats with 98% accuracy without any help given the massive database that you start with. After all, just how different would the D7# be compared to the D7?