This product reached the top of my work stack this month. I finished chapter 4 day before yesterday and did chapter 5 yesterday (but it needs major review by Petrick and Jean to comply with SFU history). I'm working on chapter 6 now, and it's too soon to tell how it's going.

I should comment that while I have sent Jay about sixty pages of manuscript he has just started sending in his reports-answers-comments so that I can move the draft chapters forward. A couple of elements still lack major work. I cannot predict when this will be finished.

I'm always to the point of the annexes which were once thought to be "plug and play" and eays for me to lay out. As the project has developed, those will take some rather tedious revision.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - 05:24 pm: Edit

So far today I created the file for chapter 6, extracted the text out of the latest version of the original submission file, placed it into the file, reformatted the point size, and then had to manually reset the leading (line height) on all 38 titles of optional rules. I don't care how many times the frakking instructon books say "change the style sheet once and every instance of that style changes automatically" because it doens't work. Something in the original file overrides the style and I have to go manually un-override it every time. For all the grousing that only took 10 minutes, but still, the aggravation, oh, the aggravation.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, June 16, 2016 - 07:50 pm: Edit

Good progress Thursday. I solved the problem with 6.2 by just changing the name from dash to sprint, but we still have design work to do. (I'm waiting for Petrick to have time to look at it.)

I got the reports back from Jean and Petrick on chapter 5 and did all of their fixes, adding art (every empire gets the emblem, a people picture, and a ship picture). That is on the conference table for them to check before it goes to Jay.

I really need to take a deep breath and spent half of my time back on chapter 1 (then 2, then 3) finalizing them and giving them to Petrick and Jean to do. Knowing how things normally go, there will be some design work to do when I get those reports and I might as well not dump the whole book on them at once.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, June 17, 2016 - 03:11 pm: Edit

FRIDAY
Chapter 1, pages 1-8, has been corrected with all Jay reports and given to Jean/Petrick.

Chapter 2-3, pages 9-36, have been edited and laid out by SVC and Jay's reports have been processed.

Chapter 3, pages 37-43: have been edited and laid out by SVC. Jay report received but not processed.

Chapters 3-4, pages 43-62: Have been edited and laid out by SVC. No reports from Jay yet.

Chapter 5, pages 63-70: Edited and laid out by SVC. Reviewed first time by Jean/SPP; those fixes made. Further layout work done with art and graphics. Being reviewed now by Jean/SPP. Not seen by Jay.

Chapter 6, pages 71-76: Editing and layout work started but haven't fone far yet. Nobody but SVC has seen this chapter.

Chapter 7 and later, no work started yet.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, June 18, 2016 - 05:04 pm: Edit

Saturday 18 June: Completed editing and layout of Chapter 6 and sent it to Jay for missing parts to be found and inserted. Because I spent all morning at a family reunion, I don't have time today to do more Fed Admiral.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, June 18, 2016 - 05:58 pm: Edit

STATUS REPORT: SATURDAY 18 JUNE
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Chapter 1, pages 1-8, has been corrected with all Jay reports and given to Jean/Petrick. They have not come back.
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Chapter 2, pages 9-10: has been laid out and edited. Jay reports processed. Given to Jean/Petrick. Has not come back.
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Chapter 3, pages 11-36, have been edited and laid out by SVC and Jay's reports have been processed.
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Chapter 3, pages 37-43: have been edited and laid out by SVC. Jay report received but not processed.
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Chapters 3-4, pages 43-62: Have been edited and laid out by SVC. No reports from Jay yet.
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Chapter 5, pages 63-70: Edited and laid out by SVC. Reviewed first time by Jean/SPP; those fixes made. Further layout work done with art and graphics. Reviewed now by Jean/SPP, returned to SVC with 75 purple marks.
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Chapter 6, pages 71-78: Editing and layout work complete but there are more questions for Jay to answer. Sent to Jay 18 June.
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Chapter 7 and later, no work started yet.
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By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, June 19, 2016 - 05:20 pm: Edit

STATUS REPORT SUNDAY 19 JUNE
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I sent Jay questions about pages 11-20 and about Chapter 7 but cannot do any work on either without his reply.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - 02:34 pm: Edit

Monday: I got Jay's reports on 11-20 and sent that to Jean. I got Jay's reports on Chapter 6 and set that aside for Jean to review later. I got his answer to a question about Chapter 7 clearing it for me to work on.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, June 22, 2016 - 11:01 am: Edit

Tuesday 21 June: I didn't get anything done on this due to other projects but Jean and Petrick read the first 10 pages and gave them to me with comments and Jean read the next ten and gave them to Petrick.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, June 24, 2016 - 02:49 pm: Edit

Wednesday 22 June: Reviewed the whole command cost system which doesn't seem to match with SFU, where all ships cost the same amount of commanding. It seems to me to be an unnecessary complication to have both command ratings and command costs. The system used in SFU and F&E gives all ships a command cost of "one ship" and gives all ships a command rating from zero to 10. There just seems to be no merit in doing twice as much work, but before I go edit the entire command cost system out of the product, does anyone have some reason (other than "VBAM does it that way.") why we need to keep this?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, June 24, 2016 - 02:50 pm: Edit

Thursday 23 June: I spent half of the day in the hospital having a kidney stone removed and the other have sitting calmly to manage the pain and the "every 30 minutes" trip to the bathroom. Not a good day for me to work on FedAdm.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, June 24, 2016 - 04:06 pm: Edit

There are other (much simpler) ways to handle that issue. SFB has a page of rules that say things like you can only have one dreadnought. (In F&E you can put ten dreadnoughts in one fleet if you like but all of the rest of your fleets will be 10% smaller and you'll lose the war.)

A standard fleet in SFB or F&E is a flagship with a command rating of 10 and the 10 ships it commands, plus the traditional free scout, so 12 ships. There are a few ways you can push this to 14 (a Marine general comes with a commando ships that doesn't count against the limit, you get a few command points every turn each of which adds one ship to one fleet, and a battle group of six small ships counts as five ships for command). Heavy cruisers have a command rating of 8, war cruisers 7, destroyers 6.

The problem is that command cost is not elegant; it's dirt in the gears. With the F&E system you just have to count to 10. with a command cost system you have to take the CC of each ship which you had to go look up on a chart. That's just a lot of looking stuff up, and it gets you into trouble.

At the empire level, the command thing sorts itself out as you cannot rob every fleet of its dreadnought to make the third fleet powerful. On the smaller level you probably won't have ten (certainly no more than 20) ships to cover the whole neutral zone and command isn't going to matter.

Besides, this is the Star Fleet Universe and all products using all game systems must reflect the common base of knowledge, which defines that all ships cost the same to command.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, June 24, 2016 - 05:06 pm: Edit

How is a page of rules "much simpler" than a single number?
ANSWER: It's not a single number, it's a single number you have to look up on a chart for each ofmany ships. Then you get involved in time-wasting considerations of whethr I'm better off to include these two CC5 units or three CC3 units.

How is a rule which artificially makes your fleets 10% smaller because you have a fleet of dreadnoughts just "counting to 10".
ANSWER: This question doesn't seem to make any sense. There is no rule to make your ship 10% smaller, this is the result of your decision on where to assign ships.

Elegance is about having a simple system accomplish multiple things.
ANSWER: Agree.

That's what the Command Cost does.
ANSWER: I do not agree.

You don't need an additional rule to create artificial limitations on how a fleet is constructed, you just need the simple interaction of two numbers.
ANSWER: Actually it is the multi-level interation of 12 numbers you had to go look up instead of just counting to ten.

And it's not clear to me why F&E keeps being brought into the discussion. F&E is a game that already exists.
ANSWER: Because FedAdm must use a common knowledgebase, and much of that is defined in F&E. There is no reason to invent a new rule when existing rules do a better job.

Something like A Call to Arms Star Fleet, Klingon Armada, Federation Commander are all alternative ways to experience SFB or the SFU.
ANSWER: And all use a common base of knowlege. They do not go running off in different directions.

In the same way, Federation Admiral being based on VBAM is a playtested alternative to the empire game, essentially an alternative to F&E. The more it becomes like F&E, the less it's an alternative.
ANSWER: Nobody said we were doing that. We're just making sure it gives the same result, and satisfy licensing requirements, which the original manuscript did not.

And also the more that previously playtested rules are removed or altered arbitrarily, the less balanced the game will become.
ANSWER: You don't know that this is true, and from what I can see, the playtesting could not have amounted to much. There were just so many things that were flat wrong, missing, made no sense, contradicted each other, and did not conform to the universe.

Ships in Klingon Armada don't behave in the same was as they do in SFB. If it's fine there, why is it not also fine for things in VBAM FedAdmiral behave differently than F&E?
ANSWER: Actually, they do, and in two cases where they do not, revised rules have alredy been issued.

I really don't understand why a product which was playtested
ANSWER: See above. I cannot frankly believe that there was much playtesting given the problems in the design.

and well-received
ANSWER: by a tiny group whose well-reception is based on a slavish following of VBAM when printing that would violate our license and besides that just not work.

is undergoing massive changes to the rules. Are these changes going to undergo a new round of playtesting?
ANSWER: See previous discussion of selling the PDF and updating it with player input before printing a hard copy.

Are we going to get a balanced product in the end?
ANSWER: Of course you are, better balanced than what was submitted.

In the end, Paul, nothing is going to make you happy but a slavish devotion to a system that doesn't comply with the license and thus cannot be published (not to mention the fact that is just didn't work). Why don't you just go do that for yourself and leave this alone? Really, I'm serious not sarcastic. No matter what I do, you will hate it, so get Jay to send you the original manuscript and go play that with your "well received" bunch of friends.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, June 24, 2016 - 05:44 pm: Edit

Paul, Why don't you just go do the system you want for your own table and leave me out of it? Seriously, nothing I can legally publish is going to make you happy, so I'm not going to try any more to explain it to someone who won't listen.

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Friday, June 24, 2016 - 05:54 pm: Edit

Paul, stand down. At this point you are doing nothing but arguing with SVC and very close to convincing him to cancel the product. Is that what you want? If it isn't then do us all a courtesy and assume that SVC understands both game design AND our license. You may know VBAM, but you know nothing of the LEGAL REQUIREMENTS of our license. We will not violate that and get shut down to make you happy.

Until you have something constructive to suggest that is within our license, perhaps you want to take a break from criticizing a product you haven't seen in its LEGAL form.

Jean
WebMom

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, June 24, 2016 - 06:09 pm: Edit

Anyone can go look at the posted pages of the product and see just what was changed and why.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Friday, June 24, 2016 - 06:36 pm: Edit

They exist and the short version is that the various games have to conform to the "Star Fleet Universe" if they deviate from the SFU Paramount gets all cranky.

Command limits in Starfleet Battles, F&E, A Call to Arms Starfleet, Star Fleet Armada, Federation Commander and Federation Admiral all have to work very similar to these rules already published- http://www.starfleetgames.com/ACTASFFleetDoctrineRules.shtml

http://www.starfleetgames.com/documents/S8_AM_upload.pdf

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Friday, June 24, 2016 - 06:59 pm: Edit

FC and ACTA don't have a command limits system at all, they simply ignore that.

(Actually they do have one as an optional rule....SVC)

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Friday, June 24, 2016 - 07:01 pm: Edit

The rules have to conform, the printed page has to conform. What someone does around their own table is entirely different. Think of the rules as a guideline for your own adventures.
Paramount can come to ADB and shut them down and say the rules aren't the same from your previous games you are trying to leave the SFU and we'll shut you down for it.
Paramount won't come to your house and shut down your game because you chose not to use the rules, write your own rules or use whatever you want.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, June 24, 2016 - 07:29 pm: Edit

We have been talking about the legal requirements for five years. I am baffled as to how anyone can claim to have heard it for the first time today. That is THE reason we have given since the outset. Consistently given that reason.

The SFU must be consistent. Anything not consistent must be changed. That is why ACTA was done over. That is why the shield and drone rules in Starmada changed. We can do a game without a particular rule but cannot print a rule that gives a different result. When the requirements are tighten on me I do what the license requires. We got away with some fast and loose inconsistencies before, but that all changed a few years back.