Paul Brown, you now have two strikes against you. You are directly arguing that the OWNER of the company doesn't know the terms of his agreement with Paramount. You even argue that we don't have an agreement with Paramount and I assure you we do. That does NOTHING but show that you are completely ignorant and are calling the owner of the business a fool or a liar.

Next strike and you are out for a week. Lest you claim this is unfair, if you were at a person's home and started calling him a fool and a liar, you would expect to be dis-invited. This board is no different. You are playing in ADB's house. THe least you can do is be polite.

Jean
WebMom

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 02:28 pm: Edit

Paul: Take a proven game, break it, ask people to buy it and then say "I told you so" when no one does. That's called self-fulfilling prophecy.
SVC: If we had done that (we did not) you'd have a point.

Paul: Releasing a product without testing is releasing a product without testing. The fact you promise to update it or provide errata doesn't invalidate that.
SVC: Jay didn't test it either (at least not adequately), and this is the way we have done many projects with great success. People are willing to trust us to fix it after they report the problems.

Paul: Unless you got slapped on the wrist for translating your universe into too many different game systems, I find it hard to believe that Paramount cares about what game mechanics are used or how different ships, systems, etctera are represented at different times.
SVC: I don't care what you believe, it's true, and it's not game mechanics but background database, a point you continue to ignore as it invalidates your entire argument. You just called me a Liar, Paul, and I told you what would happen if you did that again.

Paul: Particularly as you license is through Franz Joseph not Paramount.
SVC: Are you THAT out of touch with reality? We've had a contract with Paramount for over 30 years. We started with Franz Joseph and leveraged that into Paramount. Everybody knows this.

Paul: Given the various game systems SFU has already been translated into, there would be no LEGAL reason for example to use the F&E ship stats, the only reason would be to "make the game more like F&E" (or more compatible).
SVC: Apples and oranges. Using F&E stats is just a matter of correction and convenience; we never said anything about it being legal. There is no real reason for a different set to be used at all. If a Fed CA is twice as powerful as a Klingon E4 then they can be 8 vs 4 or 88 vs 44 and it's all the same. Jay made them 7-6 and 2-4, which is non-proportionate (i.e., just plain wrong) and has to be fixed or it is inconsistent with the knowledgebase. If we have to reverse-engineer his system to come up with these values so we can check them, and we find many of them wrong, and if we use the reversed-engineeered data to calculate the ships he didn't do (many had not been published in FC yet) then it's just easier to use proven and long-established values. He also has separate anti-ship and anti-fighter values which seem to be just random numbers. If we dig into his system enough to say that there is some reason for doing this (don't know yet, that's chapter 8, I'm not there) then we have to (in-house) pull all of the SSDs and verify that the numbers are accurate. It's up to us to make sure they are.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 02:44 pm: Edit

Here are the baseline heavy cruiser values from Jay's chart. (Attack - Defense)

Gorn BC 6-8 (F&E 10)
Hydran RN 6-6 (F&E 6-8 + 4.5 fighters)
Klingon D7 8-4 (F&E 8)
Kzinti BC 10-6 (F&E 8)
Lyran CA 8-5 (F&E 8)
Rom Firehawk 9-6 (F&E 10)
Seltorian CA 9-6 (F&E 9-8)
Neo-Tholian CA 10-6 (F&E 9)
Fed CA 7-6 (F&E 8)
Wyn Fish CA 10-6 (not in F&E yet, but 9 on provisional chart)

Analysis is going to get very interesting. The combat system has a lot of special features but I cannot figure out how any of it makes those values proportionate.

Remember that that the point is not compatibility with F&E but compatability with the SFU. The same command ratings are in SFB and other games and F&E is just the easiest place for Paul to gain access to them.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 02:52 pm: Edit

That's a bizarre set of numbers. :-(

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 02:53 pm: Edit

Garth, I think that ACTASF points out that in the Star Fleet Universe there are limits to the number of flagships in a force (and this would limit the number of dreadnoughts one could take were one following those rules strictly. On p. 147:

BATTLE FORCE LIMITS
These rules reflect that the “leader” and “special” versions of any class are fairly rare and have a specific purpose. If you use more of them in your fleet, then some other fleet will be at a disadvantage because you stole all of their special ships.

No battle force can have more than:
Two flagships (any variant of battleship, dreadnought, heavy battlecruiser, heavy command cruiser, or command cruiser).

(More restrictions follow, but are not pertinent to the discussion.)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 03:03 pm: Edit

Just for fun I went and checked the comand ratings for the heavy cruisers above. These varied from 3 to 7 (in F&E they are all 8 except the Lyran is 9). That just makes no sense and is not compatible with the universe. Moreover, FedAdm uses that "command cost" system which Paul seems to admire, meaning that you do not command 3-7 other ships but ships which cost 3-7 points to command. A firehawk has Command rating 3 and command cost 3, meaning you can have two of them and no other ships. (In other SFU games you could have eight other ships; this is not compatible.)

Hm.....

Here is Jay's original chart. I warn you that it looks worse than what he did because file translation issues mess up charts. I'm sure it looked fine on his machine. The point is that this factor is a four, not that the four is up against the wall of the cell.

Chapter 8 text.pdf chapter_8_text.pdf (71 k)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 03:13 pm: Edit

Point of philosphy: I have learned over four decades of published game designs that you have to really think about adding another rule, and with doing things more complicated than you have to. I personally see the command cost system and the squadron/fleet system to be unnecessary complications, making it harder than just counting to ten or eight or whatever. With the SFU command system, you look up one ship and count to that number. With the VBAM system you have to look up every ship, form ships into squadrons using one meaning of command rating and then form squadrons into fleets using another definition of command rating. Setting aside that these produce very divergent results and cause some issues with licensing, one is just a lot more work (20 or 30 times as much work). Separate anti-ship and anti-fighter factors (setting aside if they are valid and how they were calculate) is just more work than the two being the same.

I can see the point of a lower attack value (than defense value) limited damage and making the ships/game last longer. F&E does the same thing by the equation that produces casualties averaging out at about 1/3. (A battle force of 100 points will scoure about 30% casualties on the enemy force.) But on those charts, some ships have MORE attack than defense while others on a seemingly random basis have less. If you wanted fewer casualties you just change one number in Jay's clever little combat system and an 8-8 produces the casualties of a 6-8 or an 8-6. When you have an X times Y times Z equation the only thing that matters is the final result. There are a lot of ways to get there.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 03:17 pm: Edit

There was no playtesting done by ADB (that post refers to what Jay said he was doing) and the proof in the pudding is that the playtest 7 years ago by Jay was totally ineffectual and did not detect let alone fix lots of major errors. I was right; what I said was accurate. Looking at Jay's list of playtesters, I don't know any of them and none of their names are on starlist.

Remember that 7 years ago was the dawn of the joint venture era. We didn't know what we didn't know about how hard these things are to do. We've learned a lot, mostly that it's no where near as easy as it was assumed to be. We also learned that we cannot just trust outside designers to color inside the lines. That's why we had to change the drone rules in Starmada. That's why the drone rules in ACTASF-1.1 were totally wrong. That's why ACTASF-1.1 made disruptors super at long range and photos crap at long range. That's why most of the art done for a joint venture project you have never seen ended up wasted because the artist did not follow the rules on what he could legally use.

When the massive original FA/VBAM document arrived, we put it in the file and started "processing" a few pages at a time from the start. (Processing = checking spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization; formatting; reviewing each rule for completeness; adding cross references or empty blanks for future additions of such cross references; flagging things that were needlessly different from SFU.) If that document arrived today, nobody would start "processing" until we sat down and READ the ENTIRE document. That would find the curious numbers on the charts, and result in us stopping the project until we found out what was going on. We live and we learn. We get better as we get older due to experience.

Now, I really do need to say something about Jay and his playtesting. Jay is a good game designer with much less experience than I have. Despite having ten times or more the experience, I often find out after publication that a playtested-to-death game module wasn't playtested enough. The thing is, ten close-group playtesters will find 80% of the stuff, but for the other 20% you need the 1000 in-the-wild real gamers. I playtested the hell out of Fed Commander and after publication we have done revisions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the rulebook. And it's a fairly small rulebook in fairly big type. If Jay's lack of experience led him to think that the playtesting he did was enough, you cannot doubt he held that believe honestly. It just wasn't enough. Four decades in this business shows that no company can find enough playtesters and no playtesters can find everything. That his playtesters found less than they should have is obvious, and no doubt because they were VBAM people who already knew all of the "didn't quite get written down" rules. I don't want anyone to think that Jay is just totally stupid or didn't do any testing at all, but no one should think that what was done was nearly enough. We did learn from this very project that we had to insist on future joint ventures including ADB-selected playtesters with SFU experience.

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 03:24 pm: Edit

Paul, just because the slots were filled does not mean there were any reports. The only playtesters that were listed in the book were VBAM people. We found out while playtesting ACTASF that you need people who know the Star Fleet Universe to know when things do not behave according to what is known about the universe. We learned a lot about blending game systems in the last few years -- enough to know what needs to be done and what we needed to check more closely than in the past.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 05:15 pm: Edit

Jean, I'm not sure why you address those comments to me. The example SVC used and I quoted was using the F&E rules, which as you know is far less restrictive. I did acknowledge the ACTA:SF rules, which obviously use more-or-less the same restrictions as SFB, albeit not word-for-word, but still close.

F&E does have a rule that isn't in ACTA:SF and I don't think appears in SFB saying that 3xFF+3xDD = 5 ships, not 6, for command purposes. I just don't see a reason other games can't use that rule, too. It's up to SVC to add it, or not, as he sees fit.


Garth L. Getgen

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 05:35 pm: Edit

Garth;

Battle Groups for SFB are rule (S8.28) BATTLE GROUPS. I don't know if they are in ACTA:SF.

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 06:04 pm: Edit

When you wrote "However, it wasn't listed in the ACTA:ST Fleet Doctrine rules" I thought you were suggesting the information wasn't in ACTASF. I didn't want anyone to think we didn't include that.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 07:19 pm: Edit

Jean, that line was specifically about the "six for the price of five" rule, not battle force flagships. Okay, we're cool.


Garth L. Getgen

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 07:38 pm: Edit

I'd be curious to see how this game engine might account for the Inter-Stellar Concordium's Echelon formation. Say, if it needs the kind of detailed rules published in ISC War for Federation and Empire.

In F&E, there are rules governing how many "core" (i.e. PPD-armed) ships or bases must be in an Echelon of a given size; while 6 Size Class 4 ISC ships count as four ships for command purposes in a "Gunline Group", so long as no more than three of those are destroyer-sized.

Although, the Echelon runs into certain problems when faced with Tholian web, the WYN radiation shell, or those pesky Andromedans - though only the first case is presently accounted for in F&E terms.

There are also rules in ISC War limiting the number of PPD-armed ships the ISC can build in any given turn, which may or may not be a factor here.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - 02:08 pm: Edit

Remember that you can handle combat by any of several methods:
SFB
FC
Starmada
ACTASF
F&E Sidcors
F&E ESSC
and FedAdm's own FASCARS system.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Thursday, June 30, 2016 - 12:22 am: Edit

Having read this whole thread from the beginning, Paul Brown, it's not clear to me what, exactly, your overall point is.
SVC is not perfect, but he's got more experience in game design in his pinky finger than everyone reading this combined. That should command some level of respect.
The SFU is one of the most internally consistent milieus in existence and whether it's by license constraint or by design, it doesn't matter. I know what it's like, firsthand, to submit something that doesn't fit. A lot of us do. Yeah, it stings a bit, but the answer is not railing against the creator, as many (myself included) have done, but rather step back and try again.

But all this trying to make him look foolish by trying to trip him up, isn't going to work, man. It's just going to make you the bad guy, and at the end of the day, ADB will still be making the products we love. If you have reasoned, rational arguments, I assure you, SVC is a reasonable, rational person so long as you aren't attempting to make him look stupid in the community.

Seriously, try a different approach.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, June 30, 2016 - 03:37 am: Edit

Tony Thomas is not on Jay's list of play testers.

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Thursday, June 30, 2016 - 04:59 am: Edit

Paul, you just don't get it. We are working on the product, not combing over the posts made in the last 10 years in order to bring up every last detail. (As Steve points out, Tony isn't on the printed list of playtesters, so either the book is wrong or it was felt by Jay that they didn't contribute enough to get mentioned.) Honestly, no one's memory is perfect. An imperfect memory does not mean that something that is clearly wrong in the book gets a pass.

It is obvious to anyone reading the manuscript (which I don't believe you have done) that there are mistakes in describing the Star Fleet Universe. These are on the level of ACTASF making all Gorn ships "lumbering." We learn from our mistakes -- something you don't, apparently, as you are still haranguing the designer, albeit a bit more politely.

So what is your goal? We cannot release a product that contradicts known data. We won't release a product that has obvious typos that we have found. Are you trying to get a product (which has the potential to be a great one) cancelled because you, in your infinite wisdom, don't like what you haven't even read? Are you trying to convince people to not buy the product? Are you trying to drive a wedge between Jay and Steve so they don't work together? (That, by the way, is doomed to failure, it that is indeed your goal.)

Perhaps it is to earn a week-long suspension? If so, congratulations! You have done so.

Paul Brown, you have earned strike three and that means you may not post here for a week. This suspension may be appealed to the Board of Directors. They may reduce the suspension, but they may also increase it -- two of the three have already asked me why not cut down on the negativity and loss of time answering you by just dropping a permanent banhammer.

You may want to know why we are suspending you. The answer is that you have been rude, you have denigrated the designer in public, you are poisoning the well for this product (don't think I haven't read the VBAM forum where you carry on this nonsense and no one there calls you on it), and frankly you are not contributing anything useful to the discussion.

If you post again on the BBS or FC Forum within the timeframe of the suspension, the suspension will be increased to a month. If one of our customers reports you badmouthing the product or company (including its officers) in public during that time, then the suspension increases to a month. Again and it will increase to a year, culminating in a lifetime ban. Those times are all in the board rules which you agreed to by signing up.

I don't like doing this. I have been more blunt than is my wont as I had to get up in the middle of the night to deal with you. I strongly suggest that you spend your time off deciding on your goal. If your goal is negative, then perhaps you ought to consider this advice: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.

Jean
WebMom

By Tony L. Thomas (Scoutdad) on Thursday, June 30, 2016 - 10:10 am: Edit

Tony was sent a very early... first draft of the rules.
We read (as a group..) read through the rules... liked what we saw... and attempted to set-up a campaign using said rules.
Then the ACTASF 1.0/1.2 melt-down occurred.

Battlegroup Murfreesboro respectfully requested that we be removed from the play test list. We felt that in order to concentrate on ACTASF 1.2, we could bot give Fed Ad the attention I needed.

So yes... we play tested it... if you call proof reading draft 1 (and finding a couple of typos) and discussing how to use the system to set up a campaign game for Federation Commander play testing.

I apologize if my early comments gave anyone the impression that we were working with a complete system. What we had looked to have potential (and I think it still does(, we were just unable to get into it as deeply as it deserved and required.

In fact... I just went back and looked at the draft of the rules I have and the file name is FederationAdmiral_EarlyRoughDraft.

If you read through it... some of it is still in outline form with no actual rules in place yet.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, June 30, 2016 - 11:55 am: Edit

I talked with Jay who says Paul has no relationship to his company other than buying a few of the books. Jay does not endorse his actions.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, June 30, 2016 - 06:21 pm: Edit

Long rambling marketing/design meeting today may produce another direction, or another solution to some of the issues.

VBAM operates on the idea that you don't have to write down every rule because the Campaign Manager makes up missing rules as he goes along and if two CMs make up totally different rules then the publisher couldn't care less. SFU operates on "here are complete rules and every game played anywhere by anyone will have the same rules." I'm a little resistant to the idea of telling customers "I know very well that the book doesn't answer that question. You're the CM, go make something up and quit asking me questions."

By David Jannke (Bigslowtarget) on Thursday, June 30, 2016 - 11:04 pm: Edit

As a long time customer I am happy to be able to express my thanks for your approach. I hate garbage rules.