Federation Commander

It's time.

The preliminary stats for the ships (or at least, the candidate ships)for Book Two are complete and ready to review.

I'd like to begin review and play testing after the first of the year.

If you're interested in participating, email me at tony (dot) l (dot) thomas at comcast (dot) net

Hi Scoutdad,

Any update on the progress of ACTA Book 2?

Book 1.2 isn't still needs roughly a week of SVC time which does not mean a week. Playtesters have the first draft of the rules to digest and that is where we sit. As stuff moves off SVC plate ACTA will start picking up steam.

The final pages of the hobby section were sent to SVC on Friday.
The photos were supposed to have followed Saturday... but I was called in to work.

I'm resizing the images as I type this email and will sendt hem shortly.
After that, 1.2 Deluxe only needs formatting time, and should be done fairly quickly.

As for Book 2...
It's in progress.
More ships have been added, so a few more stat blocks are needed.
The rest of the Orions have been tested by several groups and the optional weapon rules seem to work well.
Some point values need to be tweaked, but that's a minor process.

Fusion Beams, Hellbore Cannons, and EXGs are not in this book, but we need to make the rules work now... so that still needs effort.

The web rules are easily the most complicated rules in all of ACTASF... but that was true in SFB and Fed Comm, also.
I tried to be succinct, but ended up becoming vague...
I'm redoing the rules a bit more clearly now.
They will be longer, but once they work the way they should -we can get the whole playtest community involved in helping me cut them down with out loses meaning or clarity.

Scouts are effectively done.

Battleships are effectively done.

I haven't started on the boarding parties and commando ships yet, but that should be a relatively straight forward port from ACTA.

After that... its just scenarios.
Sometimes, those are the hardest parts.
Unlike an SFB scenario where you have 'these ships' versus "these ships" - ACTASF uses points. So its becomes X points versus X points. And everybody wants the bestest ships available.
It's easy to say take X points from empire A and match them against Y points from empire B - but that scenario already exists.

If anyone has any good scenarios ready to use, feel free to send them to me.
Orion scenarios
Convoy scenarios
Tholian sceanrios
Or anything else that fits the contents of this book.

Completed scenarios are best, but if its just a kernal of an idea, I can possibly make it work.

Thanks Scoutdad. Looking forward to seeing the finished result.

Any update on book 2?

I had started on it when I got sick last summer. After two surgeries, flu, and a computer breakdown, I'll be back at it in a couple of weeks.

Hope you're on the mend now though Mr Cole!

On the mend yes, but with a ways to go. Fortunately, my work is 98% sitting down which I can do quite easily. Getting up and walking around I get very tired very quickly.

Anyway, the surgeon who did the two surgeries officially "released" me as fully cured. That doesn't mean back to walking the dog a mile a day which I was going before the earlier Nov 2015 surgery. Some days I actually have to rest halfway from my car to my desk.

The new computer is working, All of the old files were transferred successfully. The new computer has dual hard disks and "silversaver" to back up #A to #B every night at 1am. (Carbonite cannot understand Mac 9s.)

The theory is to take a week (which hasn't even started as I have been buried by Shapeways and took Valentine's day off with Leanna) to do the art for the Kzinti MSSB, then do CL53 which should take 3-4 weeks. Then do something else, probably ACTA-2.1 Tholians.

Will Book 2 still be out in Q1 of this year do you think? So by March/April?

Dorian I am not SVC but the short answer is probably, no. I will not be in stores by March 30.

No, I have to do CL53 first and that will take all of March. I'd figure May or June if nothing else goes wrong. It would have been out last summer except for that little medical problem I had, two surgeries, nearly dying of blood poisoning, and oh yeah having the flu, A and B.

What's the Status on Book 2? It's now June.

Medical issues have kept me from finishing CL53.

Steve,

I know I sent all of the files to you back in 2017, but some of the guys have found a few typos... and asked a few questions that resulted in a rewrite of some sections to add clarity.

When you are ready to start, please let me know and I'll send you updated versions of all chapters. That may save some edits.