Subtopic	Posts		Updated
	Archive through November 08, 2005	25		05/09 05:40pm

That's a massive amount of flexibility compared to the current Energy Allocation system. With Energy Allocation, I am only afforded the amount of flexibility directly in proportion with the amount of Reserve Power I have in my batteries (which is usually a handful of points of power).

With Warp Reserve, I can only alter my speed by paying twice the cost and gaining only half the value. Good chance that that will be less than the 8 extra movement points.

I'm in no way saying the PAYG is bad. I'm just saying that it will be harder to second guess your opponent or catch him off-guard as he can change his power allocation on the fly (unless you can get him to burn it up). More like it is to Energy Allocation like Unplotted Movement is to Plotted Movement.

By Ken Humpherys (Pmthecat) on Tuesday, May 09, 2006 - 03:11 pm: Edit

NEW Topic (kind of) FC ESGs in SFB.
SVC has said that he'd like to import the FC ESG into SFB.
I like the Idea but can see some modifications that would need to be done.

Here are some questions that need answered:
When is it announced?
Is there a duration to the shield?
How would capacitors upgrade the ESG?
How would you handle r2 & r3?

I have some suggestions that could answer my own questions:

It is announced during 6D1 Fire Allocation step.
When announced you must announce 1 of 3 modes and how much power, Defensive, Offensive, and Long Range(see below).

Defensive mode creates a sphere just outside of the ship's shields. The sphere lasts 8 imp and protects vs drones, ESGs, Explosions, and Hellbores. Hellbores are auto-hit vs this shield.

Offensive creates an expanding sphere that works just like the FC offensive fire mode. If you already have a defensive shield deployed it causes that shield to expand and dissipate.

Long range creates a wave fired out one of the standard firing arcs (LF,RF,L,R,LR,RR) this will strike targets out to r3 but will only do 3 damage per point of power used. Cannot be used if defensive shield is deployed.

Before capacitors, ESGs could fire once per turn and used all power in the ESG. Capacitors allow multiple activations per turn (12 imp delay between activations) and allow the owner to chooses how much power to use in each activation.

By William Curtis Soder (Ghyuka) on Tuesday, May 09, 2006 - 04:29 pm: Edit

First off, I will go on record as not liking the concept of Federation Commander's creativity influencing printed rules in Star Fleet Battles.

SFB's ESG rules have been around for a long time and they effect a lot more factors in the game than they do in Federation Commander.

I know that a lot of wonky questions are asked all the time about ESG interactions. In most cases it's because of the interaction of more than one overly complitcated rule and not just because of the ESG rules. Give some time and I'm sure a bunch will crop up with this Fed Com system.

Each Lyrans ship's BPV will need to be reevaluated because of the benefits and more because of the drawbacks of the new ESG system compared to the SFB system.

Offensively, the current ESG system can tend to influence an enemy's movement over an entire turn. The Fed Com system seems pretty much useless to do much more than sweep a few nearby drones.

Oh, don't let me forget that I've just bought a Master Rulebook and am gonna be miffed that you completly change a section of the rules already and especially because of another game.

By Ken Rodeghero (Ken_Rodeghero) on Tuesday, May 09, 2006 - 05:38 pm: Edit

"Offensively, the current ESG system can tend to influence an enemy's movement over an entire turn. The Fed Com system seems pretty much useless to do much more than sweep a few nearby drones."

I don't have the final version of this rule (Booster #0) but I think the FC ESG is more useful than this for offensive operations based on the last version I read.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, May 09, 2006 - 05:40 pm: Edit

Hey, guys, I was kidding because I had just had to answer a complicated "which shield got hit by the ESG question" (a question that the FC rules could not allow to come up).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, May 09, 2006 - 05:47 pm: Edit

Here are some questions that got answered (assuming you really want to try a pulsable ESG, perhaps as an alternate or additional rule).
- - - - -
When is it announced?
SVC: see the FC rule. It's basically just a DF weapon. You'd just ignore the FC rule about the "impacted" drones as the thing could "fire" any of 32 impulses rather than any of eight.
- - - - -
Is there a duration to the shield?
SVC: No.
- - - - -
How would capacitors upgrade the ESG?
SVC: It would hold seven points, not 5.
- - - - -
How would you handle r2 & r3?
SVC: Either not, or allow the FC "expansion" to continue to those radii, or allow the FC expansion to start AT those radii.
- - - - -
KR: Indeed. While an "existing SFB type" ESG gives you a really good reason to go somewhere else, having a "pulsed FC ESG" means if you get in range he's going to smack you.
- - - - -

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, May 09, 2006 - 06:53 pm: Edit

With all the new rules and ships it might be time to look into two new tactics manuals, one for SFB and one for FC (with cool new cover art).

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, May 09, 2006 - 10:27 pm: Edit

Good idea, I think.

If sales of FC continue to be strong, perhaps some additional support/training materials (heaven only knows what form that would take)... but perhaps on similar vein to the cadets module that ADB published years ago for SFB's.

(not simplified FC rules...)perhaps a programed learning module for squadron or fleet battles once a couple more FC modules are released.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, May 10, 2006 - 12:11 am: Edit

Well, I do see that we need people to practic FC more and start turning in more Term Papers.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Wednesday, May 10, 2006 - 09:07 am: Edit

The FC ESG, defensive mode, is similar to the Vudar IPG, defensive mode. IF we wanted to pursue this Stellar Shadows idea, then I would recommend using the Vudar system as somewhat of a starting point.

By William J Gauthier (Emperorvortia) on Thursday, February 08, 2007 - 11:26 pm: Edit

Anyone tried using the FC Hit allocation table in SFB? I find the whole 1 point of damage at a time hit table from SFB to be one of the slowest and most annoying aspects of the game....

By Terry_OCarroll (Terryoc) on Friday, February 09, 2007 - 06:40 am: Edit

The FC hit table, as written, wouldn't work for SFB because it doesn't include sensor, scanner, or damcon tracks. In addition, weapons tend to get hit more often, and to blow up a ship you need to pretty much eliminate every box on the ship.

IIRC there was a system called "battlecards!" which let players resolve damage points pretty quickly, and statistically was similar to the SFB damage allocation table. It's now out of print, AFAIK.

By William J Gauthier (Emperorvortia) on Friday, February 09, 2007 - 09:00 am: Edit

Well, I'm tinkering with a system to use it. I've got a theory that if you take Sensor hits on Flag hits, Scanner hits on Emer Hits, and Damage Control hits on Probe hits, it's thoroughly usable. I plan to try it tonight, so we'll have to see if we feel like the results strip the weapons off too fast. In any case, wouldn't it be easier simply to design a similar chart for SFB?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, February 09, 2007 - 11:29 am: Edit

There is no way I'd want to change the SFB DAC. The entire game engine is built around it and the other core game cogs. I've never had any problem with the DAC is 25 years.


However, I'd suggest this for your idea above, William. Take those hits on those results but when you do hit them roll an extra die. If the result is Odd it hits the alternative system (Sen, Scan, etc). Even hits the system on the chart. If you are out of that system you move on down the chart (you still roll the die though). That is if you hit Flag and you roll even but are out of Flag you move on down the chart not convert it to Sensor (if you did that you would hit sensor too often).

By Ed Crutchfield (Librarian101) on Friday, February 09, 2007 - 02:19 pm: Edit

William if you are looking for an alternate system try this site. I have toyed with it several times and in the long run the results are very similar. It is faster.

http://www.darkshire.org/~jhkim/public_html/sfb/options/fastdamage.html

By William J Gauthier (Emperorvortia) on Friday, February 09, 2007 - 06:26 pm: Edit

Loren -

I'm sorry to have to disagree with you, but as a new player, the thought of having to individually roll each hit out of a Gorn plasma salvo sounds like an exercise in tedium. The very reason why they changed the DAC in FedCommander was because the one in SFB is so time consuming. Even using multiple sets of dice, rolling damage allocation is probably the most time consuming part of the game besides energy allocation (sometimes more time consuming). It slows down the fun factor, and while I don't want to see anything done which will unbalance the game, I am interested in any provision which might speed that step up.

By Troy J. Latta (Saaur) on Friday, February 09, 2007 - 06:56 pm: Edit

William:
Try playing a PPD-armed ISC ship with the DAC and then try it with the FC table. You'll quickly see why the ISC built their weapons the way they did in SFB history.

By Tony L Thomas (Scoutdad) on Friday, February 09, 2007 - 07:39 pm: Edit

William, actually its not that bad.

We have a dice box that will roll 30 pairs of dice at a time and most of us have the DAC memorized out to 7 or 8 places. We can allocate 30 points in less than 5 minutes. It takes us almost that long in FC because we haven't memorized that DAC, yet.

By William J Gauthier (Emperorvortia) on Friday, February 09, 2007 - 09:11 pm: Edit

Troy/Saaur -

Good point on the PPD. Built in Mizia.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, February 09, 2007 - 09:27 pm: Edit

William,
me and my friends get a kick out of that part of the game. Rolling well and hitting Torp and Bridge and phasers is fun. It can get a bit tedius with very large vollies but we play leaky shields and a lot of vollies are just a few at a time. We role six to ten pairs at a time.


We make fun out of it. I mean, there are dice games where all you do is roll the bones. So we do things like call out "Die Commander!" when we hit a bridge or "Oh man!" when we lose our OL Torp.

By William J Gauthier (Emperorvortia) on Saturday, February 10, 2007 - 04:21 pm: Edit

Ran the FedCommander DAC in SFB last night. The results seemed pretty good, maybe resulting in slightly more weapons being destroyed than normally would be on a single salvo, but honestly a good Mizia Effect would have probably produced the same results. It did have the desired effect of speeding up the damage allocation step which kept the game rolling at quite a clip. I'll keep playing with it and see if there are any tweaks I can suggest.

By VincentFerrara (Vmferrara) on Monday, February 19, 2007 - 12:32 am: Edit

I've found a method that works pretty well for scoring damage using the standard SFB damage allocation system. Get 20 dice in 10 different colors (2 red, 2 blue, 2 green, etc.). This allows you to roll ten internals at a time, making it much easier to keep track of how many you've done. There is nothing more annoying than doing 73 internals on a DN, and then counting up the damaged boxes and discovering you've actually scored 78, and having to try to remember what the last five were. And what if the DN had previously taken a couple of volleys, and no one remembers how many points of damage they were?

By William J Gauthier (Emperorvortia) on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 - 07:47 pm: Edit

Ran a Gorn vs. Romulan game last Saturday using the FedCommander DAC. Once again, the game went smooth as silk. Until I see a problem arise, this will be the "house rule" Standard for the foreseeable future. *wink*

The One thing I'm thinking about is creating a different secondary chart for PPDs and other attacks which rely on Mizia effect to be effective. Anyone with any ideas feel free to chime in.

By Troy J. Latta (Saaur) on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 - 10:17 pm: Edit

The rule I suggested before Booster 0 came out was that the PPD is forced to use directed targeting on weapons, but may do so at any range, even if overloaded.

By William J Gauthier (Emperorvortia) on Saturday, October 27, 2007 - 07:19 pm: Edit

Just an update. Not only have I continued to use the FedCommander DAC without issue as I described above, but I've converted another veteran player in my area to it as well. I'd seriously urge people to take a look into it, it really speeds up damage allocation.