I am not ready to discuss this yet (and won't be this year), so don't start discussing it somewhere else or I'll get upset and delete stray posts. I am going to compile a few notes, trying to get things straight in my own mind. Lord knows what Petrick thinks about all this since supposedly HE is in charge of SFB. If this whole topic disappears tomorrow, you may assume that I woke up and thought it was a bad idea (or maybe Petrick vetoed it).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 11:46 am: Edit

The general idea is not to completely change SFB, just fix some of the better known problems.

The idea is to release one book (might be 50-150 pages, no idea yet) which would replace the pages in MRB and other products with the new edition pages. I don't want to make people rebuy the entire game system.

To that end, no ships will change, and fairly few rules, but key rules problems will be addressed.

Once "the revolution book" is out, new editions of other books would be issued so that new customers didn't have to buy the revolution book.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 11:49 am: Edit

ENERGY ALLOCATION: One of the worst nightmares for SFB is that infernal tax form you have to fill out. Switching to the FC system is difficult due to the 32-impulse system in SFB. (There is no interest in removing that and going to eight impulses.) The simplest and most obvious system is to have SFB players pay for their "legal speed plot" and then streamline the speed change rules. Everything else then switches to the pay-as-you-go system used in FC.
This might also include using the FC shield reinforcement rule (limited to number of batteries), which would eliminate bricks. If, however, players wanted to keep bricks, we could agree to allow them to "allocate" those. Just personally, I want to eliminate bricks.
It might be worth considering to add a very simple "energy balance due to damage" rule that simply says "if total power on your ship at the start of any impulse is less than the cost of the movement plot you paid for at the start of the turn, you have to slow down (or stop)." Then again, this might result in a lot of ships getting blown up, not that we’re saying that’s a bad thing.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 11:51 am: Edit

MOVEMENT
FIX ONE: The simplest problem is "reverse movement" which is easily fixed by the "double cost" rule in FC. We might then simplify the braking and and "reversing direction" rules since double movement cost would be enough of a penalty.
FIX TWO: The other problem is "starcastle" which means sitting in one place, and making the enemy spend power coming at you. One possible solution is to make a ship (with working warp engines) do its TACs as the last movement step, instead of the first. (Ships without working warp engines would stay where they are.) This would allow an attacker to fly down a shield border and sideslip onto the weak shield. Another possible solution is to have a "reverse EW" penalty for a ship (with working warp engines) which sits still (or moves very slowly), giving the other ship a die roll bonus when shooting at it.
FIX THREE While on the subject of movement, we might consider a total overhaul of the speed change system, using something similar to the FC rules. If you aren’t scheduled to move, but want to move, then pay for a hex of movement, and move (perhaps up to some limit). If you are scheduled to move and don’t want to, FC allows you to pay a hex of movement and cancel that impulse’s movement. Whether SFB players would want to use this rule is anybody’s guess, but the designer is willing to let the players decide in some kind of on-line poll.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 11:52 am: Edit

COMBAT
FIX ONE: The DAC process in SFB is laborious and time-consuming. It was designed to be the way it is to "build drama" as you wonder if the enemy is going to get that last tractor beam or not. The obvious streamline here is to switch to the FC system where one die roll resolves ten points of damage. This might or might not include "directed targeting".
FIX TWO: The super-stack remains a constant gripe. The FC solution is to prohibit more than three units from firing out of a given hex through a given hex side. This should work well enough in SFB.
NO FIX NEEDED: Some have complained about "EW scalability" in that a smaller unit uses a higher percentage of its power for EW. This is an accurate reflection of how real platforms in the real world work. Bigger ships (and bigger aircraft) have more capacity to generate electricity, more ability to carry computers, and the ability to have more antennae spaced farther apart.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 11:53 am: Edit

WEAPONS
FIX ONE: The weapons rules are more or less workable as is, with the possible exception of the ESG rules. Those SFB players who have seen and used the FC "burst" rules for ESGs have spoken highly of them and have called for them to be brought into SFB.
FIX TWO: There is some thought to the idea of providing the Tholians and Hydrans with a unique-to-their-empire EW "drone" of some sort. The Hydran one is obvious (Stinger-W) but the Tholian one would be more complex (perhaps a web anchor chassis dragged around in the snare?).
FIX THREE: It might also be time to consider allowing drones and shuttles to be tractored for half as much power as ships.
NO FIX NEEDED: There are a lot of different kinds of drones in SFB and the theoretical new edition would not delete them, but might move some of them to a "think before using" category.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 11:54 am: Edit

SCENARIOS
FIX ONE: It might be worth looking at the idea (when we print the Master Scenario Book) of including "low-level" alternatives and ship selection alternatives for those who don’t want to use "every stinking rule" and those who do not own "every stinking R-module".
FIX TWO: We need to find a creative solution for the "fixed vs floating map" issue (particularly related to plasma ships).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 11:56 am: Edit

SHIPS AND SHUTTLES
FIX ONE: We might want to "fix" the rule that turned RC-fighters into nothing but glorified scatter packs.
FIX TWO: something needs to be done with megafighters to make them what they’re supposed to be (a rare and failed substitute for PFs) instead of the uber-units they have turned into (perhaps a higher cost).
FIX THREE: Lyrans might switch to using Klingon fighters with drone-sized single-shot direct-fire weapons canisters instead of drones.
NO FIX NEEDED: There are thousands of ships and fighters in SFB and a theoretical new edition would not think about removing or changing ANY of them, but we could provide "substitute" charts so that players would know "if you don’t have the product with the NCA, use the CB".
NO FIX NEEDED: It’s unlikely that we would reissue all of the SSDs (that would be a lot of work, and cost each player hundreds of dollars for something that is functionally identical but prettier). Even so, we might slowly replace the SSD books with the "Block 5" format. Doing them in color or as laminated cards is probably impossible, but we might do a laminated play aide card or two which would make it easier to use FC ship cards when playing SFB.

Remove D5 Aegis.

Delete Partial X ref it's.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 11:57 am: Edit

I don't plan to start this conversation for a week or two, but if anybody wants to Email me their favorite fix or a requested fix or not-fix, feel free to do so. Like I said, I'm still puzzling out my own thoughts on the matter, thinking out loud.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 08, 2009 - 05:00 pm: Edit

I have received a dozen or two Emails on this.

Some want all the changes ASAP.

Some want some of the changes, but not others.

Some want all of the changes published, but want them as optional rules. (At this point, if this project is published at all, it would be done that way, as a single volume of optional rules people might or might not use as they wish.)

Some of the Origins judges want some of the changes just to cut down on the arguing at Origins.

Some want none of the changes, either because they like SFB or fear "fracturing the player base".

Some say "do not turn SFB into FC" but that makes no sense. To do that, I would have to delete 90% of the SFB rulebook, and nobody said anything about deleting a single rule.

This "idea" began when a few people pointed out that various people had left due to various rules that made the game less fun, and suggested that changing those rules would bring players back (or help FC players move into SFB).

I am fully aware that ANYTHING we do (including doing nothing) will both gain and lose players. The question nobody can answer is will any given change or product gain more than it loses.

We continue to study the issues but even if everybody wanted all of this immediately, it would be impossible to work on it for two or three months due to other projects (including moving the company to a new building).