FC: MAGELLANIC CLOUD
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Federation Commander: FC: MAGELLANIC CLOUD
The playtest pack for this will be uploaded shortly.
Thank you to SVC for setting up the thread.
The prospect of bringing the LMC to Federation Commander was on my mind almost as soon as I first got my copy of Star Fleet Battles Module C5. I actually started working at it long before the FC Omega project sprang up, but it's been kept off-boards (in contrast to how the Omega discussions more or less sprang up over on the FC forum).
The playtest file has a familiar setup to what you see in the Omega document. It should have the various combat, weapon, and system rules needed to get all five empires up and running, as well as a set of eight Ship Cards (each presented in full-colour and low toner formats) to help get these empires up and running on the tabletop. Fortunately, C5 comes with a range of refits and "war" classes for a number of LMC factions, which makes life easier in terms of presenting ships that should, if all goes well, stand up better against Alpha, M81, or Andro ships of the equivalent weight classes. (You can still test these ships against the currently-available Omega opposition, but those ships are at more of a "Middle Years" level, as that is how most of the Omega SSDs presently are for SFB.)
One thing worth noting is that there are no counters in this file. The Omega file had them since the relevant SFB counters are spread across several modules. For the LMC, everything is covered by the C5 countersheet, which can be ordered separately if you don't have a copy of C5 itself (or if you'd like to have extras).
Overall, I hope you like the look of the playtest material for the LMC, and that there may one day be a chance for the setting to reach formal publication if or when the time is ripe for it further down the line.
The first post-upload errata line item:
*The "power when undamaged" note on the Maghadim CL Ship Card is listed as 31+4. It should be 33+4 instead. (I must have missed a couple of boxes when doing the initial count.)
You do realize that since you cannot update the file further that reporting errata publicly just convinces people to not download it, right?
Last night, part of the Talkshoe discussion went into what new options might be worth pursuing for FC: gunboats, carriers, X-ships, and whatnot.
In each case, there may be a certain degree of overlap here, in terms of how any ground work done for Alpha Octant technologies may allow for equivalent technologies elsewhere to be featured in FC terms.
In the case of fighters, things would be fairly straightforward in the LMC. Only the Maghadim use proper fleet carriers, and their fighters are armed with mass drivers (so technically count as "direct-fire" units). The Eneen experiment with casual fighter deployment late in the timeline, but their plasma attack shuttles are quite low in number. None of the other known factions have any fighters of their own.
For PFs, only the Baduvai are shown to operate them at present. However, their boats are critically underpowered relative to their Alpha (or Omega) counterparts, since they lack warp booster packs (at least prior to Operation Unity; it's not stated if they are able to adopt WBP technology thereafter). Power issues aside, they'd have no problems adopting whatever PF rules were worked up in the Alpha Octant.
It's known that the Jindarian Caravans in the LMC go on to adopt X-tech post-Unity, but whether any of the surviving C5 powers follow suit remains a grey area of conjecture. Even if LMC X-ships do exist, it remains to be seen how differently their implementation would be relative to the known Alpha X-template.
So, if either of the first two options are made to happen next time around, they would each have a knock-on effect for the LMC. While the third option would at least allow certain Alpha Octant X-ships (not least the GSX Sakharov) to interact with the Magellanics as they try to rebuild, not least in hunting down any Andromedan holdouts still at large across the Lesser Magellanic Cloud.
In response to an errata note posted over in the FC forum, I should mention that the text duplication in the sixth and seventh paragraphs of (4MC3a) was in error; the duplicated text can be deleted or ignored. My apologies for not catching it myself earlier.
Based on the Gunboats Attack preview in Captain's Log #54, there don't appear to be any major impediments (rules-wise, at least) which would prevent the conversion of Baduvai Interceptors and PFs to Federation Commander, were the FC LMC poject to move forward at some later date.
Baduvai INTs would use the same Move Cost of 1/16 as seen on the sample Interceptors in Hailing Frequencies Extras, whereas the Outrider gunboat would use the Move Cost of 1/8 used for the sample Alpha Octant gunboats in CL54.
Indeed, as the Module C5 versions of these Baduvai units do not have warp booster packs in the first place, there would be no need to remove such items from their would-be FC counterparts.
There is a laser variant of the Baduvai PF, which is incorporated into the standard PF SSD over in SFB. I suppose it could be added as a note on a would-be Ship Card, though there'd be no major loss if it were to be skipped over.
Also, as the Baduvai struggled to form "full" PF flotillas by the time these attrition units entered service, there'd be no reason not to deploy "mixed" numbers of INTs and PFs as part of a Baduvai force in FC.
The Baduvai gunboats will work perfectly fine. They are simply gunboats with limitation (no variants; no boosters; capacitor banks). Since all of that gets abstracted out in FC, that makes it even easier. In fact, the only truly weird piece of technology they have, the capacitor bank, is tossed in FC, so they don't even require any special rules outside their weapons. And even then, it's really just the mass driver. The lasers are phasers with funky weapons charts.
If no one else is going to get different versions of their gunboats, I don't see why the Baduvai would. The laser version is their analog to a Galactic's phaser version. Since no one else is getting their phaser version, why should the Baduvai? It doesn't really make any sense to do that.
The Outrider, in FC, is just another gunboat with weird phasers, a special heavy weapon, and interceptor-like shields. Pretty painless, really.
Sticking with the "standard" Baduvai PF sounds fine.
Speaking of which, since Alpha Octant gunboats cannot reload their drone or plasma-D racks under (5W3a), Baduvai INTs and PFs should not be able to reload their mass driver racks either.
To double back to other empires' atrition units (such as they are):
In the case of the Maghadim, they could be given the "latest" version of their size-1 fighter (the Wasp), and perhaps one or two of their carrier types from Module C5.
For the Eneen, they could perhaps be allowed a dedicated Ship Card with a number of plasma attack shuttles on it, along with some sort of "casual" deployment rules akin to those being proposed for gunboats. It would be an unorthodox option, but one which reflects the approach taken over in SFB. Or they could simply ignore the PAS entirely for the purposes of the FC LMC project.
In either case, should LMC fighters retain their overdrive function from SFB, or should it be factored out here?
Unless I misread it in the SFB Module, I don't think the Baduvai PFs can reload their mass drivers in SFB. So, obviously, they wouldn't be able to in FC, either.
For the Magellanic attrition units, I figure they will all get done in one go whenever you decide to tackle the project. 
On the fighters, I have not read them in any kind of depth yet, so I can't speak to their deployment method. However, I expect that, if they are commonly used in a "casual" deployment, they would still do so in FC, similar to how the Hydrans work. Since there aren't any real special carrier rules anyway, I don't see why it would matter too much.
As for the overdrive function, if that is an analog to warp booster packs, then, yes, it would likely be discarded in FC. But I have to read them more to have a real opinion either way.
In SFB, overdrive is a "built-in" function on certain size-1 fighters, akin to some of the innate functions which Hiver "frigates" (fighters) have over in the Omega Octant. Or, perhaps, akin to the afterburner function which "volatile warp" Omega gunboats possess.
A Maghadim Wasp fighter running on overdrive gains an additional point of warp movement each impulse for a total of 8 impulses; an Eneen PAS only gains this over 4 consecutive impulses. There is a 32-imulse delay between overdrive activations. Fighters with the overdrive capability cannot equip warp booster packs or megapacks. There are a few other interactions of note; for example, a fighter running on overdrive is destroyed if hit by a heel nipper.
Were this system to be brought over to FC, it would perhaps add a point of movement per sub-pulse over the course of two consecutive Impulses for the Wasp, or only a single Impulse for the PAS. It would then have to wait another 8 Impulses before it could be used once again.
Since there are not enough LMC attrition units to fill out an ePack by themselves, I would suggest that, were there to be empire-specific ePacks at some point, they could be added to those. So, for example, a would-be Baduvai ePack could perhaps include the INT and PF. But, I defer to ADB's wisdom in terms of whether this would be the best way forward or not.
Going back-to-front in the above post, I would not worry about a future ePack for the Magallanics until their initial module is published. Until such a time, playtest packs will likely look like however you format them.
As for the overdrive, if it is simply an acceleration for one or two impulses, that can be useful, but is rather underwhelming. Even so, if the rules are as simple as that, I'd want to include it. It has little cost in terms of rules, and gives a useful effect that helps show these fighters are different. (The whole weird interaction thing can go, though.)