I like the color tournament SSD idea. This would seem a reasonable first place to start to gauge the interest and not spend too much money on it. Plus tourney ships are good for some demos and free-for-alls so potential new players would get to see them.

Ken

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, November 08, 2006 - 12:48 pm: Edit

For those who don't know, 24# bond is the same thing as 60# offset. It's based on the weight of so many sheets of paper of a certain size of sheet. Those who are intrigued by this could consult

http://www.paper-paper.com/weight.html

which explains it all very nicely.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Wednesday, November 08, 2006 - 12:52 pm: Edit

What weight does ADB currently use?

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Wednesday, November 08, 2006 - 01:50 pm: Edit

Tournament is definately the place to start - for SFB it is going to have the highest exposure to the public (i.e., you won't see many Starbase assualts played at conventions or stores).

By Robert Hyrneson (Hyrneson) on Wednesday, November 08, 2006 - 02:40 pm: Edit

My only quibble with that is how many tournament players are there vs how many SFB players overall are there?
I was looking for something that would address *all* SFB players. It's difficult enough to get SFB players where I live and since I neither play or promote the tournament rules I wonder about the profitability of the project for the labor involved.
(I'm not bashing tourney players, but if I try to teach one set of rules and then have to tell them that the 'cool toys' only work for the people that play with a special set of rules, then I just added a level of complexity and that risks discouragement for new players.)

RH

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, November 08, 2006 - 02:59 pm: Edit

We normally use 24/60 for products we print.

Covers are 10 point cardstock which is 65/165 or three times as thick.

Ship cards are 14 point plus lamination.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, November 08, 2006 - 03:20 pm: Edit

I hear that a lot. Tourney players seriously doubt there are more than a dozen non-tourney players. Non-tourney players seriously doubt there are more than a hundred tourney players while believing there are thousands of non-tourney players.

By Terry_OCarroll (Terryoc) on Wednesday, November 08, 2006 - 06:14 pm: Edit

SFB SSDs don't need to be printed in colour, I think. I printed out the Battle Raider FC ship card from Communique on a laser printer, and even in black and white, it looked great. Just having the detailed ship outline underneath the boxes makes the SSDs look much prettier, IMO. My suggestion is that you just do two tourney SFB SSDs with the ship outline underneath, post them online and see what kind of reaction you get?

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Thursday, November 09, 2006 - 11:59 am: Edit

One thing I'd like to see would be a paradigm shift in the content of the SSD. I'd rather see the R-section text and the relevant Annex entries right on the SSD, replacing the massively redundant weapon-info boxes. The information on weapons ought to be relegated to a reference card. Right now, I need three different books to figure out what my ship can do; putting the R-section and Annex stuff on the SSD reduces that to one book.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, November 09, 2006 - 12:10 pm: Edit

That's a very different perspective than I have ever seen before. I am dubious that there would be much of a market for such things giving the massive installed SSD database. Even though we could print them on demand, somebody would still have to do the work.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Thursday, November 09, 2006 - 12:26 pm: Edit

Michael, would a two-sided solution work for you? Ship description and pertinent annex information on one side, SSD as it exists today on the other? The weapon tables are kinda handy.

If a two sided solution is impractical then I would rather just have a bit more information on the SSD, like the ship status information from G2 and any pertinent annex notes about special drone storage or other special abilities, I could get away with only referencing two books. To me this would be better than losing the weapon charts.

Whatever is done, there is a ground swell to reduce the number of books required to fully understand a ship or fleet.

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Thursday, November 09, 2006 - 01:10 pm: Edit

Yeah Tos, keep plugging away for more info on the SSDs, after the infamous Crawford Boxes were added.

Keep poking the Elephent, keep the Elephant.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Thursday, November 09, 2006 - 03:43 pm: Edit

I think that "colorized" SFB SSDs with silhouettes instead of outlines would be cool.

Just keep the "crosshairs" in the phaser boxes. I kinda miss those on the FC ship cards.

By Jonathan Amery (Senji) on Thursday, November 09, 2006 - 07:11 pm: Edit

I tend to agree with Michael rather -- when I'm feeling organised I scan in my SSDs, take out the weapons charts (which I have a handy reference sheet for with everything including those nice Klingon phaser arcs) and stick an EAF on the left hand side.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, November 10, 2006 - 11:38 am: Edit

Michael and Tos:

The most likely candidate for making the changes to the SSD would be SPP.

While I applaude the intent to keep SPP massively employed (think of it as a form of job security) you run the risk of antagonizing said SPP.

Are you certain that an antagonized Steve Paul Petrick is really a "Good Thing"tm?

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Friday, November 10, 2006 - 11:52 am: Edit

With me its more of a forgone conclusion. That said, if the decision is made to redo the existing SSDs so dramatically that SFBers will shell out the big bucks to buy them all again it will require a serious amount of time and effort. An effort too large for SPP while still doing all the new development we want him to be doing. If a revamp all the SSDs project were to be green lighted, and I'm not sure the cost-benefit is there without accomidating FC, I'd rather have SPP as overseer and Jolene as the developer.

That does bring up an interesting option. Could the SSDs be redone as layers so that layer one is SFB info, layer two is FC info and layer three is both (the ship outline and boxes)? The only way I can see making the republishing of SFB SSDs being worth the development expense if it becomes possible to easily kill two birds with one stone.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, November 10, 2006 - 03:58 pm: Edit

Rambling thoughts ...

Reviewing "The Crawford Incident" in the data files ...

Issuing Imperial Arrest Warrant ...

No, seriously ...

To do the SSDs in color means SVC doing them. I am the only one around who knows that software. I could train Jolene to use the software but the time it would take to write instructions for Jolene to make the changes would be two or three times what it would take me to do them and would double the checking time required. Remember that she doesn't know the ships or the games.

Doing them is easy, checking them is hard (and two-five times as much work).

Converting existing FC cards into a set of tournament cards isn't that hard. Less than an hour each. Plus checking, which is done over extended calendar periods with significant hours but not entire days.

The time it would take to train Petrick to run that software is hard to estimate, but he's as busy as I am.

While in theory the SSDs could be done as layers, I really don't like working in layers and it's just as easy to take an FC Ship Card (FCSC) and clone it and turn the clone into an SFB-SSD. The first one would be tough as I'd have to invent a ship data table and turn mode charts and so forth, but if I only had to do squadron scale (for the tournament ships) it would be maybe a day or two's work (plus checking).

Trust me, I would like nothing more than to sell 1,000 copies of every existing SSD (two thousand of them, plus PFs) for about 50 cents each (a dollar each if I have to do both scales). I don't think it would sell, but it might be worth doing the tournament ships and if those sell enough to make a profit we could do a selection of "most common" ships and if those sell we could do another selection until we lose money on a project.

Alternatively, we could print FCSC books of black and white fleet-scale ships not in FC (maybe not even with silhouettes as without color those just muddy the waters) for use in Borders of Madness. That would be relatively easy and once I got a few ships done I can clone the rest with ease.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, November 10, 2006 - 08:58 pm: Edit

You know, some one should write a little automated SSD checker list for you guys. It would basically run in it's own small window and would be a checkable SSD check list (each item on the list pops up, you check the SSD, you click the check box when that item is cleared). When the whole list is done you click clear to start in on a new SSD.

The cool thing about that would be that it would be one the screen independant of the program you view the SSD in, and it forces you to scan for every item and then you make the fixes as you find them. For some one able to program for MacOS9 it would be only a matter of knowing what the list should be.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 01:46 pm: Edit

Well, the computer isn't smart enough to tell if every phaser has a firing arc, and a paper list "check to see if every phaser has a firing arc" (which we have) isn't any less likely to miss one of the phasers than an on-screen list.

By Neale Davidson (Vance) on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 04:20 pm: Edit

Hmm... are you just talking about an in-house SSD design application? That could quite easily have a built-in check for all the pieces attached to it. The pain would really be entering in all the old SSDs and confirming them all.

By William Hughes (Patchfur) on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 08:45 pm: Edit

Has ADB/GOD considered putting a scenario in the booster packs? I really enjoyed the titles of the booster packs, "Klingon Harrasment Squadron" with a blurb of fiction on the back sounds much better than "Booster Pack #2." Or the one titled "Attack at ..."

However, it seems a shame that there isn't a scenario in the booster pack that uses the ships included. Fits along the theme of "Federation Commander is usable out of the box." A one page insert with a short scenario on it.

Anyways, how about a scenario in Captain's Log for each booster pack? Might be a neat cross-marketing thing, in that while there is no actual scenario in the booster pack, look at this neat magazine over here, and look - this scenario has the same name as the booster pack! Or perhaps the Communique.

This suggestion, upon a second read, contains its own resolution. Anyways, I think it would be a clever thing to have a one page scenario in the booster pack that is relevent to the ships in the pack. Reverse of the page could be marketing stuff.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 09:29 pm: Edit

Matching Communique Scenarios with Booster Packs seems a smart idea.

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 10:50 pm: Edit

SVC: I think that his idea was a list that the person doing the check would check-off as they went over the SSD. I'm not sure why this requires a computer application instead of a pencil and paper.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 11:18 pm: Edit

MP: Less waste, right there on the computer screen, no required but might be handy is all. Since you check them off and cannot go to the next item until you do it forces a certain methodical approach.

By Robert Hyrneson (Hyrneson) on Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 12:56 am: Edit

Steve (and I don't mean this as the sticking my fingers into another person's rhubarb as much as it sounds), have you considered that it may be time to upgrade the system?
One FLGS around here has an old program they paid a fair piece for that lets them do their comic orders. The problem is it's old (I mean VERY old) and only 1 person understands it, the manager. It takes about 8-10 a month over a couple days for him to do his comic order & no one else can do it, despite him having available staff.
I don't know your system well enough (beyond what you've explained online) and I don't think my helpful suggestion here even merits you taking time to explain it online, but since you have staff now and new equipment and on and on, perhaps asking Jolene if there is a better program & method that would be cost productive could be suggested.
I know that means that you and SPP and whoever may have to take one day and learn the new stuff, but if it, in the end, makes less work for you eventually, it may be worth it.
Like I said, that's an internal thing and your prerogatives and not my concern or anything that needs discussed here, I mention it as a consideration after reading some of your posts.

RH