The battle group system does that already.

BTW, Starmada and ACTASF both have universe compliant command rules as an option. FC has the same one.

A cruiser with a CR 8 getting to command only two other CAs is not universe compliant. It can actually command nine other ships in SFU, and the command system we eventually use must also work that way and get that result. Which means that the CAs CR will have to be somewhere around 27 to 30+ to use a command cost system and that will blow up in you face when somebody stuffs 15 or 20 ships into that squadron.

Besides, the system that F&E uses is very close to the system used by every wet navy on Earths oceans.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, June 25, 2016 - 02:29 am: Edit

Paul,

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Quote:

SVC: (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.)

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Quote:

Paul: How is a rule which artificially makes your fleets 10% smaller because you have a fleet of dreadnoughts just "counting to 10".

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By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, June 25, 2016 - 01:24 pm: Edit

Depends on the scale you select how many ships there are. Nothing in the rules would keep you and an opponent from deciding to use a different number to your own comfort.

By Paul Brown (Akalabeth) on Saturday, June 25, 2016 - 03:46 pm: Edit

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, June 25, 2016 - 04:02 pm: Edit

There is no 10 dreadnought limit, Paul. That was just a number to illustrate a point. You could substitute 7 or 17 or 27 and the point would be the same. If you put all the DNs in one fleet, all you other fleets will have CR9 flagships instead of CR10 flagships and will on average be about 10% weaker than the enemy fleets they face.

As a practical matter, each empire only has one shipyard that builds dreadnoughts and only builds one a year. With some exceptions.

Sheesh, now you're just making up stuff to bitch about. ADB has ALWAYS done things on the basis of "If you want to do that you'll pay the price" rather than hardwired rules. You obviously don't realize that you're agreeing with me here. I'm sure you wouldn't have if you had only known, but no, you made up some "rule about 10 dreadnought limits" which has never existed and went on a tirade about it that step by step matches what we have done in F&E and other games.

By Howard Bampton (Bampton) on Saturday, June 25, 2016 - 04:04 pm: Edit

[Post crossed with SVC's, but data may still be of help?]

In F&E (avoiding some corner cases):
DN costs 16 to build, about 1.5x as powerful as a CA (12 combat factors)
BCH costs 10 to build, about 1.25x as powerful as a CA (10 combat factors)
CA counts 8 to build (8 combat factors)
CW costs 5 to build and is 7/8ths the power (7 combat factors)
DW costs 4 to build and has 3/4 the power (6 combat factors)
FF costs either 3 or 2.5 and is 5/8ths or 1/2 the power (5 or 4 combat factors.)

No maintenance fees in F&E. The smaller ships also get built much quicker (6 months vs. a year).

You can have all DNs from a fiscal perspective, but you'll have half as many ships as you would if you bought CAs and less combat power. At the other end, you could have 3x the ships and 1.5x the combat power of the CA fleet if you went all FFs. SFU command ratings encourage a mix.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, June 25, 2016 - 04:08 pm: Edit

Working on Chapter 7 which is the scenarios. I hate this chapter most of all, but not because of anything Jay did wrong. These scenarios have lots and lots of charts and no matter how you do the charts in whatever program, they import into the layout software as a mess. Anyway, I don't see any reason I won't finish this one today and then get to look at the Chapter 8 stuff which is all charts. Oh, the joy of charts.

That and just the way things were done requires me to do a lot of formatting work that should have been done right the first time. Sigh.

Any of you guys who hear your doctor say "Kidney stone" email me and I'll give you some icky stories about what to expect. Lots of pain that pain pills don't eliminate, and going to the bathroom every 30 minutes because they give you drugs to make that happen (so they can flush out the sand that my pet rock was turned into). I have had two surgeries on my pet rock so far and one more to go (next week) so if I'm short tempered just think what I would be like without hydrocodone.

By Paul Brown (Akalabeth) on Saturday, June 25, 2016 - 04:13 pm: Edit

SNARK DELETED
FINAL WARNING

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, June 25, 2016 - 04:15 pm: Edit

Paul: YOU are the one being hostile. You've been hostile every post you made. I've had more personal insults from you than everyone else who ever insulted me COMBINED. Knock it off or get the hell out of here.

And quit making up crap that never happened just so you can bitch about it.

Your next hateful post gets you a 7-day suspension. The next time you call me a liar you get banned for life.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Saturday, June 25, 2016 - 04:26 pm: Edit

Charts aside I appreciate the work that SVC is putting into this product and look forward to it's completion and release.

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Saturday, June 25, 2016 - 04:58 pm: Edit

Paul Brown,

You ignored my mandate. I strongly suggest you voluntarily take a leave of absence until Tuesday. The very next post you make that has the least amount of snark to it will be an automatic 7-day suspension. The next time is 30 days. The third time is for a year.

Be very careful what you next choose to post.

Jean
WebMom

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, June 25, 2016 - 05:18 pm: Edit

Saturday: I started on and finished Chapter 7 and sent the PDF to Jay to answer a couple of questions. The page layout software always chews up the charts and doing them over manually I might have made mistakes, but Jay can doubtless tell me. I got a good look at Chapter 8. I think the only way I'm going to do that and keep my sanity is to try to move the charts into excel which will import into the layout software. But that's for some day next week. I want to spend a few days working on Jean/Petrick fixes to the first 30 pages and getting the next 30 to them. Before you ask, Chapter 7 ended on page 87. Looks like chapter 8 will push us past 100 and then some. During earlier times we thought this book might be much bigger but that included two sections (one of them literally a novel) that Jay doesn't seem to think are now necessary.

By Paul Brown (Akalabeth) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 01:25 pm: Edit

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 01:37 pm: Edit

Paul: I take it this a board where disagreement is suppressed?
SVC: Wrong, we have a healthy and polite debate on every subject. Years of history and hundreds of topics prove this. When you got nasty and sarcastic, you got slapped down. You're doing it again, so STRIKE ONE.

Paul: And where a dissenting opinion is misrepresented by the staff as personal attacks or attacks against ADB products?
SVC; There was no misrepresentation. You made repeated personal attacks. DO NOT MAKE MORE OF THEM.

Paul: That would explain the lack of healthy discussion.
SVC: Or there is a lack of interest. Or your toxic posts are driving out people who just do not want to deal with your bile.

Paul: Fact of the matter is, is that you're proposing making huge changes to a game and then will ask people to buy the new iteration, completely UNPLAYTESTED.
SVC: The fact of the matter is that the original manuscript was unplaytested (or the playtesting was totally ineffective, as proven by the many mistakes, unanswered questions, and other problems). The plan as previously announced is to get this thing done, put it on the PDF download stores, and see what results. Maybe nobody buys it which proves what I thought at first, nobody wanted it. Maybe a few buy it, test it, and improve it, then a new copy is uploaded, and then maybe nobody buys it or lots of people buy it. We don't go by gut feelings, but by real data. As for "huge" changes, that is a matter of degree. Most of them are not changes at all, but fixes of mistakes and completions of missing material. What actual changes are made are required by the license (as we have said in public for five years, do not pretend you never heard that) and would have to be made or the project could never be printed. This is the Star Fleet Universe, and every product starts with a common knowledgebase. Jay was told to follow the universe and said he did, but he did not. That's what's taking time to fix, but we're closing in on the end of the process, and I think we're building something neither Jay or I ever expected would be as good as it is.

Paul: That's not the actions I would expect of a game company with 35-odd years of experience.
SVC: Nor is that what is happening. ADB has a track record back to 1979 to fix its mistakes and improve its product. We also know a lot more about design project management than you or Jay. No matter how much small-group testing is done, only when it reaches the public will we know what we missed. That's just the reality. Remember that I've published around 200 products and this is the way the system works.

Right now the project is on pause waiting for Jay to do something. Up to him how long that takes.

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 02:06 pm: Edit

Paul, you know, when all you do is spread negativity when you haven't seen the product, then it makes it harder and harder to interest people in it. If nothing else, I now have an uphill struggle to market it as you are doing an excellent job of poisoning the well both here and elsewhere that I have read.

I read the book. I asked questions because there were things that were not explained or were apparently contradictory. I found problems with background that directly contradicted known facts about the Star Fleet Universe (in fact, I rewrote one small section). These were issues that needed fixing. The problem with playtesting when you totally understand the rules in other versions is that you "know" what to do. New people don't. (This is a problem we have encountered in other games, so we try to watch for it.) Since we'd like to sell this to people other than VBAM players, clarity of rules matters.

I suggested the time out for you because I hoped you would calm down and think about what you are doing. Obviously you see nothing wrong about declaring the sky is falling when you don't have access to what is changing. Steve and I both have tried explaining to you that keeping the SFU consistent is necessary. You refuse to acknowledge that Steve has years of experience with game design. Exactly how much experience in designing successful games do you have?

You insist on making statements such as we are misrepresenting you and suppressing your opinion (basically calling us unfair and liars) and expect that to go unnoticed. You've gotten far more leniency in making your implications than anyone on this board since 2007 when I took over moderation.

You, sir, need to consider very carefully how you write. You need to consider the damage you are doing to the potential sales of what could be an excellent campaign engine.