Federation Commander

I am curious how others typically approach Federation Commander. Do you normally play scenarios (either published or make your own?)

Do you normally select a fleet of ships to a certain point level and fight it out?

Do you do everything in the context of a campaign?

In the two groups I've played with, it was almost exclusively point-value "pick up" games. Published scenarios were almost never used.

90% of our playing is play testing of "soon-to-be published" material...
Then 90% of the remainder is scenario...
Anything left over is set-point battles.

Our group much prefers to play a goal driven scenario as opposed to a fight to the death with no repercussions for losing your entire force.

90% of our gaming has been home brew campaigns, we don't like the fight to the death and no consequence mentality. The other times tend to be one off when we test something out (e.g test what this empire feels like before we start next campaign, or test out carrier rules).

We did try some of the scenarios once upon a time, but were quickly put off them due to lack of balance,

We often take 450 point squadrons on a closed map using the large hex boards laid out in a 4x5 arrangement. Other times we do single ship duels. These usually take place on an open board. We do some published scenarios, but not a lot.

I've been working up the outline of a campaign involving l commerce raiding, but real life has been a bit on the frantic side recently. At the moment, that project is trapped in interspace a la The Tholian Web. It occasionally manifests in a kind of transparent, spectral form.

We have enjoyed playing scenarios when we could find one that matched the number of people we had playing and the empires they were familiar with.

I personally get tremendous enjoyment out of creating and designing scenarios and then writing some backstory rationale for why the scenario happens.

We have also done a limited campaign where we had two teams of players. Each team had one supreme commander who allocated from a pool of ships for ships to move to various strategic areas to advance toward the capture of the enemy home base. Battles were fought when ship encounters occurred.

We have also done progressions of scenarios along a storyline. There weren't really planned, but they liked how the results of one scenario helped determine the next scenario. Not exactly a campaign, but fun.

Campaign.

Thus far it has been an early Years campaign. Campaign battles vary from duels (raider vs. patrol) over a convoy, up to monstrous battles.

We are currently in the middle of a Romulan invasion of the last Klingon Border outpost (Mutara), before the Romulans can strike at the Klingon Core Worlds. Romulans have 5x Vulture, 6x Kingbird, 6x Warbird, all of them "warp refitted" versions. Klingons had 1xYDK (with 3xD4, 2xF4 being repaired in the construction cradles), 1xYSAM, 3xD4C, 2xT4,1 1xD3G, 3xF4, 4xF3. After five turns of combat, the Klinks have lost the YDK (and all the ships inside), the YSAM, all their cruisers,adn their tugs. They have only the frigates left. Romulans have lost a Vulture and a Kingbird, the remaining Kingbirds are all crippled (or most of them), and all of the Romulan plasma has just been spent.

Both have become suicidal in this battle, this IS the bulk of the Klingon defense force, they must win to keep the Romulans from threatening Klingzhai. The Romulans can afford to lose their entire fleet, as it represents only about one-quarter of their force, and at any rate, cannot retreat unless the Klingons allow it (which they are refusing).

We usually just do (approximate) point based games, mostly due to the fact that me and my opponents are hoping to understand each Empire we currently possess, we do hope to move on to playing a campaign once we decide which factions we prefer.

I am okay with the occasional points vs points battle. But I prefer to liven things up with some battle objectives rather than just kill all the enemy ships. That kind of mentality tends to encourage unrealistic tactics, with no consequences for your actions after the battle.

I'm coming from an F&E background, where you often did not want to fight to the death because you need to preserve your force to defend against the enemy on his turn. So fights to the death were reserved for very important battles like starbase assaults, or capital assaults.

Sean Xor wrote:I am curious how others typically approach Federation Commander. Do you normally play scenarios (either published or make your own?)

Do you normally select a fleet of ships to a certain point level and fight it out?

Do you do everything in the context of a campaign?

While I don't hate points match games, they are far from my favorite way to play. I'm just a newbie to FC but I played SFB for years and years, and most all of that was either published "historical" scenarios, home made scenarios, or as part of an ongoing campaign.

Just personally, I play published historical scenarios. Go figure.

I'm a campaign guy, although I've been playing a lot of point-match games to teach others how to play and get used to the rules myself. It's easier to learn cloaking and plasma if you're not having to worry about any other objective other than sneaking up on an enemy and flinging fireballs at them.

Like Steve, I'm more interested in the historical game, and my campaign (http://www.starfleetgames.com/federatio ... php?t=5158) reflects that, Indeed, if this one works out, I'll probably do a whole series of similar ones to recreate the entire General War.

The SFU appeals to me because of its consistency, unlike canon Trek where the Klingon neutral zone is many weeks of travel away in one movie, but you can reach the Klingon home-world within a few hours, unopposed, in the next and an exploding moon can destroy the whole empire in yet another one...

Mostly we play basic point value fights on a location map, often tournament style. Scenarios rarely, due to lack of time for the big ones and we can't find any small ones we like. Sometimes we do weird things and will pick a class of ships that both sides have and then roll random races for each class. And we use squadron scale, tried fleet scale a couple times and didn't really like it. I would like to do some campaign games, but we don't play regularly enough for that.

Steve Cole wrote:Just personally, I play published historical scenarios. Go figure.

You actually get time to play?

I'll chime in on this one as well:

When introducing new players to FC, I generally go with a very simple duel of a ship size that corresponds to the amount of time available for the game.

For personal play, I love linked campaigns, like the various Captain's Games.

Any interesting scenario (not too big) is great for a one-off game with friends though.