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Wrong on both counts.

It's not a flick of a switch. I have to go manually recolor each box on an FC ship card. If I do the "flick a switch" thing the result is unreadable.

The art in the MSSBs is done native B&W and to convert them to color art would take from 1-20 minutes per ship, just depending, plus 2 minutes per ship to reinsert them (as they go through a few steps and filters once they exist). Count almost 200 images in the Fed or Klingon book and do the math.

Feds are mostly down in the two minutes (plus two) per ship range (just a few detail spot colors) which would take 800 minutes or 13 hours. Since the intensity of the work limits me to one hour per day, call it two or three weeks.

Klingons are more in the 20+2 minutes each as the graduated gray shading covers the entire hull and there are a lot more spot color items. So 22 x 200 = 4,400 minutes = 73 hours = 73 days. I might be able to cut that down to 30/40 hours/days if I can take one master colorized hull and overlay the greebles from each variant on it.

I think you might find my time better spent on X2 or CL53 or Fed Admiral or ACTA2 or something. Trick is that much work on graphics would eliminate entire products from the schedule. (Assuming I can get my health back to the point I can actually work 10 hours per day.)

Now, another option would be have Simone do it. She's a bright girl and I suspect she could learn Freehand in 20 minutes. But we pay her something around $10 per hour plus payroll burdens or about a thousand bucks to colorize the Klingon book. Going to be tough convincing Leanna that we'd make that back in sales, let alone a profit.

By Del Bristol (Delbristol) on Saturday, October 05, 2019 - 08:23 pm: Edit

Something I would pay for.

Clearly, in almost every way SFB tourney play is almost completely gone. The big tourneys like Origins and Gencon either don't have any tournament activity at all or it is very limited. Online, almost every tournament played for years took forever to complete if it ever did. Players got frustrated and quit the game completely. Finally now there is a tournament that is supported by the game creator management but it can not get 16 signups for the second event. It might, maybe. But how about the 3rd one? How likely are we to get 16 players then? I imagine there are only a couple dozen people signed up at all for SFB online now with some of them not interested in tourney play.

I know there are a couple of great FTF tourney's being played and congratulate them for their efforts and keeping the game going. The truth though is that those tourneys are only pulling in a couple dozen players across the country, and those groups are getting smaller too.

I would propose that T2000 get completely updated. Get new battle tactics from whomever we think can provide them. I find some of the tactics from 20 years ago actually aren't that great today. Maybe it's just me. I would also just bite the bullet and add several of the non-sanctioned ships. Add the G-rack to the Fed. Take a p-3 off the Shark. Why not at this point? I would not put the original Andro back in, no matter what. I would also create SSD's in the style of Federation Commander. Laminated with EA form on the back. In color. Really clean them up. Wrap that up with a map and chits. Maybe create special tourney miniature box sets. If those ideas aren't great, form a committee, solicit feedback from the die hard players and do SOMETHING to save tourney play and SFB online from going away completely.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, October 05, 2019 - 09:23 pm: Edit

I don't see any of that bringing in new tournament players. But then, I don't know what would.

By Russ Simkins (Madcowak) on Sunday, October 06, 2019 - 01:01 am: Edit

For tournament in particular, I would propose a video venue for condensed play-by-play of matches with highly acceptable animation (weapons fire, shields flaring/collapsing, destroyed drones exploding, etc). See how the best players win! Let us share in their glory! Intended to present the game in attractive light to new players and hopefully regain the attention of some old masters. Who wouldn't want to see that?

Using an array of software and custom coding to make generation of content reasonable (less time than it took to play the match).

This could be offered to Paul for his weekly show as a segment to supplement the transition from audio only to more video content.

A little warbird told me that's already far along in the works and already looks quite nice. If only that guy had more than 3 days off since May to finish coding and didn't have recent major family crisis' to contend with. Daughters comes first.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, October 06, 2019 - 07:05 am: Edit

If someone can do such things we can put them on our YouTube channel, but DB itself would have no way to create such things.

By Del Bristol (Delbristol) on Thursday, October 10, 2019 - 08:03 pm: Edit

Once upon a time, I asked SVC how many people had played SFB over the history of time. I am pretty sure the answer was around 500,000. I may be mistaken on the number now since it was quite a while ago but I remember being surprised that the number was so high. It seems to me that some of those folks who are no longer playing the game might want to come back to it as they get older and closer to retirement. 500,000 is a huge number of people. A small percentage of that adds up to hundreds if not thousands of people. It seems to me, to encourage that resurgence, updated tournament materials, really cleaned up and modernized would make sense. Tournament play is far simpler and less time consuming then full on SFB. Less intimidating to the returning player. And we have the online environment to play in. Maybe after they get restarted they may then get ready to buy the existing full on catalog and miniatures. If I were looking to return to SFB after a long hiatus I would be far more excited about it if the materials were not from the year 2000.

By Del Bristol (Delbristol) on Thursday, October 10, 2019 - 08:10 pm: Edit

Another tourney update idea- a rulebook with only the rules that apply to tournament play. No ECM, no race descriptions, no scenarios, no monsters, no asteroids, no special drones, nothing that isn't necessary to learn to play a tourney game from scratch for a new player.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Thursday, October 10, 2019 - 08:26 pm: Edit

http://www.starfleetgames.com/prod_update.shtml "5622 MODULE T TOURNAMENT BATTLES: The new edition in 2000 is a total overhaul of the earlier versions. It has a new cover with ADB logos and would be all but impossible to mistake the older versions for the 2000 version. Product was virtually done over in 2012."

If I recall correctly Module TR Tournament rules didn't sell very well. The vast majority of people buy and use the Master RuleBook, especially the electronic version as it is searchable.

https://www.starfleetstore.com/new-rule-modules-c-1_11/module-t-tournament-wars-2012-p-25.html?zenid=53a67439d4281fb6b6e1b4a58d545eba

https://www.starfleetstore.com/core-rules-c-1_2/sfb-master-rulebook-2012-edition-p-333.html?zenid=53a67439d4281fb6b6e1b4a58d545eba

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, October 11, 2019 - 01:14 am: Edit

I don't remember being asked how many had played the game (it could have happened, easily), but I do recall many times being asked about sales. Counting the pocket game, designer edition (core), volume I, and the various versions of basic set the total number of "core SFB games of all editions" has long ago passed 500,000 and probably peaked at 800,000. So total people who bought one or more versions of the game has to be 200,000 to 300,000 or more. The total number who have played including those who bought and played, bought but never played, and played but never bought ... could easily be 500,000.

It is an axiom of the gaming industry that these SFB ex players are a major potential pool of new or rather renewed players. Basic Set continues to sell several copies every week. I get at least three or four emails every month from ex-players returning to the games.

That said, tournament players were never more than a small portion of that, maybe 10,000 that played in one or more events, people who played in several tournaments... maybe only two or three thousand. Based on that, a tournament product might not be a particularly productive effort.

Given what modules T and TR were and did, I have no real idea how a new tournament product could do any better. I really have no confidence that legalizing some additional tournament ships would bring back players, none at all. I have very strong feelings that doing that would drive away many of the remaining players.

By Dennis Surdu (Aegis) on Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - 09:11 pm: Edit

Like so many other wargames, I always felt tourney play would attract more players if simple BPV was used to allow each player to pick force and enforce S section restrictions on force composition. Strictly speaking sides may not be as perfectly balanced but that is half the fun of competitive play, figuring out a devastating force mix. Current games like 40K use this tournament methodology as does Battletech, I beleive. Of course, some basic ground rules as to what Advanced and Optional rules would be allowed would have to be articulated but rest assured, many more folks would play in tournaments.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, October 17, 2019 - 07:05 am: Edit

We tried that. Such events take much longer to run. More ships means more things to do. The judge has to check the math for every player, meaning it takes a long time to get games started.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Thursday, October 17, 2019 - 02:07 pm: Edit

Force selection also quickly results in a continuing call for balance which leads to BPV adjustments, breaking out the nerf bat to hit the broken force compositions, the empire inequities when you throw non-historical empires into conflict (Klingon vs Gorn, Romulan vs Hydran, etc) and endless headaches for whoever is running the whole thing as players lobby for adjustments.

The tournament events also take MUCH longer. You can play a ship duel in a few hours if you are good. A squadron vs squadron battle can take 6 to 12 hours. A fleet on fleet with two players who maximized fighters and drones can be a weekend event. Do you switch to an open map or keep the tournament barrier. I am almost salivating at the idea of a fleet packed with Stingers playing in a tournament barrier but then I think I could end up playing with carbon copies of the guy I played with once that thought all SFB fleet battles should take place at about range 60 and be focused on phaser shooting and I remember how tedious that was.

This is just my anecdotal experience but in a lot of games where you pick force compositions it seems like everyone spends forever discussing force compositions and almost no time actually playing. In High School in the 90s I would go to the gaming store to play SFB on Saturday and people playing deck building games and battletech spent forever discussing their latest custom built mech or the new deck combo someone found and almost no one was actually playing. I can discuss that stuff a little but it gets dull after a while.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Saturday, July 06, 2024 - 10:43 am: Edit

I don't know how difficult or costly it would be, or how much interest there would be in the purchasers' minds, but I would be interested in being able to purchase digital copies of old rulebooks going all the way back to the beginning.

Sometimes it's good to be able to find an old rule that has been changed just to keep my sanity and for the nostalgic value.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, July 06, 2024 - 12:20 pm: Edit

John: I am not sure if those files are easily available. They probably exist but may be in software so old it won't run on newer machines. Maybe if Jean thinks this is a good market we might explore what can be done. I know the oldest books were done on typesetting before word processing existed and would have to be manually retyped.

By Douglas Saldana (Dsal) on Saturday, July 06, 2024 - 12:25 pm: Edit

I'm pretty sure most of the old rulebooks (pocket edition, designer's edition, commander's edition) are already on Wargame Vault.

By Eddie E Crutchfield (Librarian101) on Saturday, July 06, 2024 - 01:26 pm: Edit

At one time I had all of the rule books and addenda scanned in as PDF files, probably still have them on a drive somewhere, that was years ago when I used to run games at conventions. For SFB I would run 500 point +CO on a double sized closed map(set top to bottom, generally got in 3 games a day(did used time limits), sometimes terrain sometimes not. At one Gencon I think it was I had 18 players. At the time I had a program we could either run a game on or just use the damage section of it to do damage. At the end of the time period would base award points on damage done.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Saturday, July 06, 2024 - 05:39 pm: Edit

I assume that any old stuff would purely be scans, so original files are unneeded; just a print copy. While doing new stuff as scans is horrible, everyone expects the old stuff to just be scans of the print rulebooks. So, I don't think it hurts anything as long as the scans are fully legible.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Sunday, July 07, 2024 - 11:41 am: Edit

Steve, thanks. I'm only asking for something that may be profitable. Please don't waste time on nonsense if this turns out to be nonsense. I am enjoying the nostalgia of the Supplement #2 pdf, which gave me the idea.

Douglas, thanks, I'll look.

Mike, maybe that's the path of a granted request.

Thanks for the consideration,
John

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Sunday, July 07, 2024 - 11:44 am: Edit

>> any old stuff would purely be scans

One could OCR the text. It certainly wouldn't be 100% accurate, but it might provide a useful, mostly searchable PDF index.

--Mike

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Sunday, July 07, 2024 - 12:09 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

One could OCR the text.

---

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Sunday, July 07, 2024 - 12:48 pm: Edit

I would suspect voice typing would be available to do the manual labor....
Just have to go in afterwards and get the format corrected....
Probably not as time consuming as OCR, if anyone has the time / will do something like that...

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Sunday, July 07, 2024 - 02:28 pm: Edit

Very nearly all of them are, as Dsal said above, available in .pdf form on Wargames Vault, DriveThruRPG, and Warehouse 23. The exceptions are Commander's Edition SSD Books #1 through #9.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, July 07, 2024 - 10:57 pm: Edit

Then we're good!

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Sunday, July 07, 2024 - 11:42 pm: Edit

So I went over to DriveThruRPG and looked thru the PDFs. I did indeed find my old favorite, SFB Pocket Edition, as well as a bunch of other older products. I purchased and downloaded the Pocket Edition PDF, and it looks pretty good! The pages appear to have been scanned in as images. There is indeed an index of all the text, so the PDF IS searchable. If only we had this back in the day, it would have saved us a TON of time.

Flipping through the PE was just a nice walk down memory lane:

* The "Gorn" and "Romulan" plasma torpedoes
* The dashed outlines of ship sections on the SSDs
* The old style DAC
* The shuttlecraft counter silhouettes that look like they have eyes

I played this version of the game more than any other. It was rough going and confusing at times, but we just plowed ahead until someone exploded. Good times!

--Mike

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Tuesday, July 09, 2024 - 01:53 pm: Edit

Yes, we're good.