I like the little angled view of the ship next to the Ship Data Table! Gives the imagination a clear picture in the middle of battle.

I'm really liking this new SSD format. It is too bad that producing SSD books in color would be so expensive.

Just my 2 cents

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 01:04 pm: Edit

Can FC players be trained that security and other unknown boxes are treated as hull for damage purposes eliminating the need for the For SFB box?

Could you explain the nomenclaure you used for crew?

The shuttle table isn't labeled as a shuttle table. Like the crew table you could split the last two boxes in half with an A (advanced) to the left of the split.

Alternating between white and beige might be attractive for drones. The color in the drone boxes should be light like you have it because people tend to write down the specifics of their drones in those boxes. Some might even find value in the drone boxes being slightly larger to accomidate longer notes for specialty drones.

I'd want something in the turn mode chart that allowed me to more easily track between turn mode and speed. My eyes struggle trying to line up the information.

Do the FC need the multi-line term Frame Damage or could that be shortened up to Frame?

If an ident and/or notes box could be placed near the shuttle craft SSD then we might be able to do away with the shuttle table all together. I'm uneasy having two places to record the same information as it could lead to confusion.

Nice prototype. This kind of thing will really spruce up Captain's Log.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 01:33 pm: Edit

Replies
==========
By Loren Knight
I only meant that by putting the MSC (for that one particular project) in Freehand
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SVC: Several hours work, for WHAT?
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By Loren Knight
I guess flipping between excel and Freehand isn't that hard
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SVC: Right.
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By Loren Knight
IF it ever is to happen that SFB's bulk of SSD's get a make-over simple vector quality greyscale will work for me. Grey lines in the charts, very light grey in the data boxes. That would be nice.
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SVC: I think we can work it out.
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By Loren Knight
SVC: Ahh, I see where you are going with this latest SSD and I have to say it's briiliant.
Interactive SSD.
It's what I've always wanted. Tell me though, what is the cost of the display paper?
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SVC: You are looking at the PDA Blackberry version.
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By A. David Merritt
The Ships Data Tables looks good, I like the middle indicator on the Crew Chart, i.e. the large B with dotted line.
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SVC: It’s a solid line, actually.
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By A. David Merritt
The large paragraph on the bottom was amusing, but you forget to include a breakdown of ships stores so we could determine how long they can stay on patrol.
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SVC: Ooops, I’ll add that next time.
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By Daniel E. Bivona
I like the little angled view of the ship next to the Ship Data Table! Gives the imagination a clear picture in the middle of battle.
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SVC: Yeah, I did that as a joke. I was going to do it on the FC cards but we couldn’t get all the art in time and many cards are very crowded.
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By Daniel E. Bivona
I'm really liking this new SSD format. It is too bad that producing SSD books in color would be so expensive.
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SVC: I like it too.
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By Tos Crawford
Can FC players be trained that security and other unknown boxes are treated as hull for damage purposes eliminating the need for the For SFB box?
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SVC: No, they cannot. The FC side MUST be exactly an FC ship card, NO MORE and NO LESS. Nothing can be removed. Nothing not needed for FC can be added.
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By Tos Crawford
Could you explain the nomenclaure you used for crew?
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SVC: Well, the star and shaded boxes are minimum crew. The last 3 boxes are 3 test versions of the BPs.
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By Tos Crawford
The shuttle table isn't labeled as a shuttle table. Like the crew table you could split the last two boxes in half with an A (advanced) to the left of the split.
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SVC: Yeah, right.
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By Tos Crawford
Alternating between white and beige might be attractive for drones. The color in the drone boxes should be light like you have it because people tend to write down the specifics of their drones in those boxes. Some might even find value in the drone boxes being slightly larger to accomidate longer notes for specialty drones.
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SVC: bigger boxes and more stuff on a less-crowded SSD. Yeah, right.
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By Tos Crawford
I'd want something in the turn mode chart that allowed me to more easily track between turn mode and speed. My eyes struggle trying to line up the information.
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SVC: Been that way since SFB first did block 4 SSDs.
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By Tos Crawford
Do the FC need the multi-line term Frame Damage or could that be shortened up to Frame?
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SVC: No, it can’t.
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By Tos Crawford
If an ident and/or notes box could be placed near the shuttle craft SSD then we might be able to do away with the shuttle table all together. I'm uneasy having two places to record the same information as it could lead to confusion.
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SVC: No, see above. We cannot add SFB stuff to the FC side of the card, so we cannot put anything that FC does not use there. We could in theory eliminate the damage boxes on the left side shuttles, and the ident column, put an ident box on the FC side (been needing to do that for a while), and then use the shuttle space to make a bigger notes box.
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By Tos Crawford
Nice prototype. This kind of thing will really spruce up Captain's Log.
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SVC: Well, people WILL be talking.
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By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 02:10 pm: Edit

SVC: That would be the one thing that would make me buy a Blackberry.

By Todd Warnken (Toddw) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 02:49 pm: Edit

Those are some powerful phaser-3's on that ship!

By Gary Bear (Gunner) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 03:12 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

By Loren Knight
SVC: Ahh, I see where you are going with this latest SSD and I have to say it's briiliant.
Interactive SSD.
It's what I've always wanted. Tell me though, what is the cost of the display paper?
- - - - -
SVC: You are looking at the PDA Blackberry version.

---

---

Quote:

By Daniel E. Bivona
I'm really liking this new SSD format. It is too bad that producing SSD books in color would be so expensive.

---

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 04:49 pm: Edit

I was thinking about the Crawford boxes and I was thinking why do you need them. The answer is so that when you look at the ship you are about to select you have the important MSC data. But what if we reverse it. Meaning adding a summarized list of weapons, energy and total boxes. Something like the one that was included in one of Star Fleet Times that summarized the Tournament ships. But add this to the MSC chart instead. I think that would be a better place for it and it would be easier to maintain.

Paul Franz

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 04:51 pm: Edit

So you mean we need to add a "Franz Column" to the MSC?

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 04:58 pm: Edit

SVC, if you didn't realize, Todd Warnken's comment was that the P-3 table is off, it looks to be a mishmash of P-1 and P-3 numbers.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 05:06 pm: Edit

No, I didn't figure that one out. I cloned it from the P1 table so that explains much.

FIXED.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 06:21 pm: Edit

Can the shuttle cripple threshold be shown by coloring "crippled" boxes differently than non-crippled?

Maybe a thick line separating the boxes?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 07:11 pm: Edit

I don't know how much we can "abuse" the FC players with useless info. Most cases I'm going to say a flat NO. That particular case for admin shuttles, I might find a clever way of doing something with the windshields.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 07:54 pm: Edit

I've been thinking about all this referencing of MSC data, Crawford boxes, etc, etc. It occured to me that the problem it all is trying to solve is all the cross referencing when assembeling an S8 force. This often takes a considerable amount of time and going back and forth is where mistakes happen. It is a reasonable problem that SFB players would like to solve.

Crawford boxes do help with this. However, to really solve the problem is to dream way out of the box.

Really what we need is a Master Ship Reference. This would be a book with one column for each ship, the R section data, a mini SSD, and the MSC data at the bottom in two lines.

The amount of work would be ungoddly but lets face it, that's the only way to have a complete solution.

So, cross referencing will always be a requirement of putting together S8 fleets and squadrons.

Short of the master reference above we do get the next best thing: The MRB, G2/3, and the MSB will at least be largely void of errata (eliminating double reference requirements) and puts it all in one place.

I can hardly wait for the MSB!

Then the Master Scenario Tomb would just be icing on the cake!

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 08:41 pm: Edit

Kewel design! A couple of comments though.

1. How about a diagonal, instead of vertical division for the boarding party crew boxes? It seems to me that this might stand out more clearly.

2. On the SFB side, you could get rid of the damage tracks from the shuttle information table as a way to save some space, while still retaining the notes boxes on the "hidden" side of the SSD.

3. On the SFB side, how about moving the move cost, HET cost and EM cost info into the same box with the turn mode and breakdown info to creat a single, unified, source for movement information.

4. This format could get rather confusing for ships that have different movement costs in SFB and FC (2/3 vs 3/4 for CW's, 1/3 vs 1/4 for FF's)

Still some majorly neat improvements of the standard SFB SSD there, even if it isn't feasible to publish them in color.

Cheers,
Jason

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 08:45 pm: Edit

Loren:

Why do you want to bury the scenarios? ;-) (ducks and runs)

Cheers,
Jason

By Dale McKee (Brigman) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 09:11 pm: Edit

As long as "not abusing the FC players" doesn't short-shaft the *SFB* players, I got no complaints. ;-)

But I did have an idea. I read a thread somewhere about a CL issue that would let you pick and choose what pages you wanted. I know it was a joke; but it did make me think; what if, for color SSDs, you could do an "order on demand" and only order certain ships, since you'll be paying a high premium for color?

If it's unworkable on the business end, never mind, but I thought I'd suggest it.

By Gary Bear (Gunner) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 09:13 pm: Edit

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Quote:

It occured to me that the problem it all is trying to solve is all the cross referencing when assembeling an S8 force. This often takes a considerable amount of time and going back and forth is where mistakes happen. It is a reasonable problem that SFB players would like to solve.

---

By Terry_OCarroll (Terryoc) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 09:55 pm: Edit

There is a database program called Army Builder, which is meant for games where you pick your own force (typically miniatures wargames). Third parties write datafiles for the system. It's pretty powerful. Writing SFB datafiles for AB would be a lot of work, but probably doable. The website is www.wolflair.com

The only issue is, I think there would be IP problems regarding the distribution of the datafiles for SFB, which will probably make this idea a dead duck.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 11:19 pm: Edit

Ooops...

I did mean Tome.

Durrr...

Dee tee dee.

By Michael Ma (Mma) on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - 01:04 pm: Edit

Didn't come up in a search so I have a suggestion. I find before I start every game I flip through the rulebooks re-reading the sections on various weapons energy costs and then jotting them down on my SSD or Energy Allocation form.

I thought, "gee sure would be nice if this information was on there already."

So my suggestion is a change either to the Master Weapons Chart or on each SSD weapon chart.

On the same line as the title for each weapon table, add "EC Arm: X Hold: Y" indicating the cost to normally activate the weapon and the cost to hold the weapon.

For example a disruptor would have "EC Arm: 2 (4) Hold: N/A." Indicating a one-turn arming time, an overload cost of 4, and the fact they cannot be held.

Multi-turn weapons would have the format: "EC Arm: A(E)-B(F)-C(G)" where A-B-C indicates the costs on turns 1, 2, and 3, and (E)-(F)-(G) indicates overload cost per turn respectively.
The cost for holding would be shown as "Hold: N/A" , "Hold X" or "Hold X (rolling turn Y)" indicating that it cannot be held, cost to hold, or cost to hold and that it is considered to be on turn Y of the arming cycle."

I realize that if you only play one ship very well you probably have these numbers memorized. Or if you play the game a lot you may know them all by heart.

I find for newer players or casual players, having the numbers there instead of spending additional set up time flipping through the rules saves a bit.

Of course you're going to be flipping anyway, even if you are a rules guru. But anything to do that saves on that time, I'm all for.

Just a suggestion.

Cheers.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - 01:41 pm: Edit

This is why I'd like a write in section in the R section ships description.

This is yet another way if could be used to customize it and save time.

By Ed Crutchfield (Librarian101) on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - 04:14 pm: Edit

Mike There was a listing on one of the rule book page dividers that contained that information, maybe one of the Steves have it and it could be posted in the playing aids section of the site.

By Gary Bear (Gunner) on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - 04:33 pm: Edit

I can easily add it to the updated Weapons Chart I've built and you can use it.

(Hoping it gets offically added in G3, though.)

By Gary Bear (Gunner) on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - 09:49 pm: Edit

SFB Master Weapons Chart with Arming data

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - 10:01 pm: Edit

Gary,
ya know, if that was on two pages (print back to back) it would be a lot easier to read.

Cool though.