Subtopic	Posts		Updated
	Archive through November 15, 2003	25		11/15 12:12pm
	Archive through November 21, 2003	25		11/21 08:21pm
	Archive through January 05, 2012	25		01/05 06:08pm

Shawn,

Notes from my brain on the TOC:

1. The original CDH never included scenario-oriented campaigns (mostly what you get in the U-section.

2. Most of the sections contain a list of options on how to deal with one of the aspects of the game. Most of these lists list one to five alternatives that are very varying in description. It would be helpful to have these options fleshed out more and to have them cross-referenced so that if you decide that you're going to use a Cartesian map, for example, how you should determine terrain if you do variable terrain or exploration in that scenario.

3. Races should be changed to "empires" throughout.

4. The initial section does a nice job of overviewing the different parts of a campaign ... and then the rest of the doc doesn't line up point for point to that so it's hard to correlate the initial discussion with the parts therefter. For example, "Territory Exploration/Conquest" is discussed again in "The Strategic Arena", "Scenarios" and several other sections.

5. One of the things that I always felt lacking from the CDH was any form of cohesive construction guidance. There's a lot of different suggestions and components in the document. What would be very helpful would be a checklist of:
MAP
Historic
Circular
Cartesian
3D Cartesian
Arcs
"Routes"
Some other kind of Map
Other: _____________

That way, as you were going through the book (probably in a group), you could make sensible decisions without having to mine the relevant decisions you have to make out of the body of text.

6. I never felt that the CDH really had good advise about setting up the overall turn order. There's a lot of fall out consequences to decisions like when you decide what you're going to build and when those builds arrive (if you're doing construction at all). It would be very helpful to guide people through those choices. pp74-75 go into it, but not in depth and not talking through the consequences of the different choices.

7. There's not really any listed alternatives to command limits as bounds on a campaign. Many of the campaigns I've seen have put BPV limits, ship count limits, or other bounds on the size of combats. Many of these limits are totally arbitrary, but they're often used.

8. It would be very useful to have a listing of all the optional rules and those rules that are typically caveated by campaigns so that as you're deciding on the rules of a campaign you don't end up starting the campaign and then having to make a decision on what's in or out or how you're going to play something. This is somewhat of a touchy area. Many campaigns limit or do away with EW, as an example. It's not cardinal SFB and should probably be recommended against, but it's how people actually play a lot of the time, so you're left with a great debate - do you represent in a campaign guide how you'd like people to play or how they actually do?

9. There's a lot of decisions that aren't taken into account here, like for example, how do you deal with captured ships. BOTA wasn't around back when this was created, so that will need to be updated to be included as an option.

10. The random events, spy mission and other lists should be expanded and probably should include reference choices when something should or should not be included based off of other choices you have made.

11. R12? published some construction docks, which are different from these. The Y1 modules include some construction dock info as well. It would be nice to collalesce all of the different dock options into one or more options.

12. An overall guidance through how to make a campaign would be useful.

13. As has been noted, the tech blocks need a lot of work based off of the “discovery” of the history technology that have been made since this was originally released.

By Mike Kenyon (Mikek) on Thursday, January 05, 2012 - 07:06 pm: Edit

Okay, that was a small novel. Short-version:

I always found that the CDH always had a lot of good ideas, but if I was writting a campaign, I'd have it out for inspiration and then I'd have to pretty much head-scratch through a bunch of ideas and then have to walk through the entire set of rules again to determine what I had to put caveats on for use in the campaign.

I would have loved something that actually worked me through the process with worksheets and gave me clear choices to make so that I could hammer it out.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Thursday, January 05, 2012 - 07:43 pm: Edit

MikeK; What does BOTA stand for? I do not recall that term.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, January 05, 2012 - 07:47 pm: Edit

Just guessing, but I assume he means "Brothers of the Anarchist" series of Captains Log articles that convert known Major and Minor race starships to service in other empires navies.

But I could be wrong.

By Mike Kenyon (Mikek) on Friday, January 06, 2012 - 11:46 am: Edit

Jeff, indeed you are correct.

One of the topics that isn't really covered in the existing rules (and really only applies to 4X style campaigns, rather than historic) is battles with local forces found during exploration. In those situations, and to a lesser extent in any campaign, ship acquisition results in either having to choose between keeping the ship as is (which real navies probably woundn't do for the operation and logistic nightmare of it, but which makes for some very interesting and fun tactical challenges) or homogenizing the captured hull onto your technology.

The BOTA rules are fairly comprehensive, but occasionally off-hand some things ("toss a couple of APR on") that would be difficult to deal with in a non-administered campaign. Some of the conversions actually end up with ships better than what the original race makes, at least for some specific purposes.

By Troy Latta (Saaur) on Friday, January 06, 2012 - 12:23 pm: Edit

I'll agree with that. Lyran sc3 hulls converted to Gorn service are just beautiful things to behold.
Unless they're shooting at you.

By Mike Kenyon (Mikek) on Friday, January 06, 2012 - 12:52 pm: Edit

Looking at the Hydran hull converted to Borak service (GUN), I'm not sure why they ever bothered converting the shipyard back to making their designs.

I'm personally a favor of keeping the foreign tech and having to deal wtih ships that don't really fit your tactical doctrine, but that's cause I also find that playing the same empire for years on end in a campaign can get a little routine unless you add some things to spice it up.

By George Duffy (Sentinal) on Friday, January 06, 2012 - 01:34 pm: Edit

Looking at the Hydran hull converted to Borak service (GUN), I'm not sure why they ever bothered converting the shipyard back to making their designs.

It was more a question of size than anything else. Hydran hulls are about 10% bigger when compared to most other empire cruisers. While Borak cruiser hulls are actually smaller when compared to same cruisers, hence the lower movement rate. The Hydran hulls in Borak service, were the equivalent of a battlecruisers. So building wise you can get two-three Borak hulls for every Hydran hull built

Then there is the fact that the engines on the GUN could not be upgraded. Though the structure allowed for two turrets to be built onto the ship, there was no way to add additional power systems to the framework afterwards to compensate. So the Hydran hulls would tend to be be slower than most other Borak cruisers in combat.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Friday, January 06, 2012 - 01:34 pm: Edit

Currently rereading CDH now. Building on Mikek's list post above. IF we decide to try a full rewrite, do we want to do it with an eye to the idiosyncrasies of SFB, FC, Starmada, and ACTA? Such a document may only be a half page each, but would it be something to think about? I know it mentions F&E as a possibility.

By Mike Kenyon (Mikek) on Friday, January 06, 2012 - 03:36 pm: Edit

George,

Totally agree, and I'm not saying it's a bad conversion by any means. All I'm saying is that one of the side-effects of using BOTA in a campaign is that some conversions are good deals and some are miserable. Typically, the good deals come as either preferable arcs, different hull sizes, or favorable conversions of heavy weapons over.

From memory, for example, ships tend to get worse being converted to Hydran technology and tend to get better when converted from Hydran technology. Typically, it's because they never get a comparable amount of fighters in the conversion to being Hydrans and nothing quite bristles with heavy weapons ports like a Hydran does (at least in Alpha).

As for including the different products - do you mean as combat resolution techniques? I'd have to say "yes", but I think you nailed the nail on the head. Each one has their own idiosyncrasies, and each opens up rules questions that would need answered - though none so much as SFB itself.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Friday, January 06, 2012 - 04:17 pm: Edit

Mikek, Yes as combat resolution, although econ my very from system to system. I would note that a number of things that are in SFB that are glossed over in some of the variants i.e. drone speeds, the various drone warhead etc. I am really only up to date on SFB, and have read pre-2010 F&E, I have the new F&E, but have not had time to puzzle it out, and glanced through FC and Starmada. I just ordered ACTA:SF this week.

By Mike Kenyon (Mikek) on Friday, January 06, 2012 - 04:47 pm: Edit

I've got all of them except Starmada. Certainly easier with the other options, rather than SFB.

One of the things that I've had running through my head is how reasonable it is to be able "pick on the fly", and I don't think it is. When it was SFB or F&E, you could reasonably use F&E and the scale difference was such that the "little things" just kind of panned out. With FC, I'm not sure that's the case. For example, if FC is an option, I'd always buy slow drones for my ships because when resolving in FC they suddenly get a lot faster.

You can caveat in lot of the differences, but what benefit do you give a ship that bought a drogue in FC? You might be able to compensate with Borders of Madness, but if you're going to put all the Borders of Madness rules in play, you might as well play SFB at some level.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Tuesday, January 17, 2012 - 11:36 pm: Edit

Something to note in this topic- The Technology Timeline in this book will obviously need updated and a more current Technology Timeline was printed in Module G3.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, January 29, 2018 - 03:30 pm: Edit

If there is a serious person interested in pursuing this project, do let me know. ADB suspects that the CDH needs an update but it's too far down our list of things that need done but which only the in-house staff can do.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - 02:54 pm: Edit

Two questions;

1) Is this limited to Alpha Quadrant? Perhaps with Omega and LMC being a later possibility if this does well.

2) For Alpha, a simple update with the new things added since this first came out, or a more thorough reworking to better integrate new tech, i.e. just sticking on new boxes, or relaying out design trees?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - 07:24 pm: Edit

Whatever the writer wants to do.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - 08:17 pm: Edit

Ooooo tempting, I must point out that I've never done something like this before. If you don't get someone who has experience, I would be interested in doing this.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - 10:24 pm: Edit

I have an interest in doing this. I remember submitting my old SFB campaign rules (did 34 player campaign) for the original many years ago.

By Steve Zamboni (Szamboni) on Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - 10:55 am: Edit

I can help with some sections.

I felt the migraine coming back when flipping through the tech charts, though, so that's probably not a section you want to leave me alone with while armed with a red pen.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - 11:13 am: Edit

The tech charts are what interests me.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - 07:34 pm: Edit

I think Ken Kazinski had some tech charts that where not in the book.

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Monday, February 12, 2018 - 07:52 pm: Edit

I can not find any uploads.

From the posts on Tuesday, November 18, 2003 - 07:00 pm, I can generate a graphviz (dot) file showing all the requirements. Not hard to do. Graphviz can also generate a jpg. I have an excel file with all the tech blocks and an assorted set of visio files.

I would be interested in working on this project also.

I would like to see rules on creating long range scanning so you could play a fog of war game and a set of rules for the Andromedan RTN system.