Really, Paul, have we not reached the point of agreement? I'll publish it my way and you won't buy it until a year later when we've done a few rounds of updates?

I know you don't want to wait, but you want a tested product, you have admitted that the original document which ADB has edited and expanded would never satisfy your demands for a tested product, and testing cannot happen over a 24 hour period just because you want it to. So go, wait a year, then buy it. (It won't take me a year to finish but the thought of you being gone for a whole year makes me feel happy.)That is the only way to get what you said you want.

Will the document I post at the end of the month be tested as much as you want? NO
If I just released the original unchanged document would you get a tested document? NO.
Is there any way to get a document tested like you want it tested without somebody testing it? NO.
Does that someone have to be you? NO.
Could you contribute anything worthwhile to the testing? NO.

All of that being the case, is there really any point in you posting another word about this project in any forum? I cannot really think of any benefit to you, other than making yourself feel good by throwing irrelevant bombs just for spite or childish fun. Or are you really just trying to sabotage the product? Or the company?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, July 07, 2016 - 10:39 pm: Edit

Paul, you are out of here. Permanently. Good riddance.

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Thursday, July 07, 2016 - 10:53 pm: Edit

Paul Brown, by order of the Board of Directors, you have earned a lifetime ban. This applies to the BBS and Forum.

Jean
WebMom

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - 07:17 pm: Edit

This is progress to date on the ship chart for Fed Admiral.

FedAdm Ship Chart 13J.pdf fedadm_ship_chart_13j.pdf (52 k)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, July 18, 2016 - 02:50 pm: Edit

More progress on the ship chart for Fed Admiral.

I have to go work on other things the rest of today and all of tomorrow.

FedAdm Ship Chart 18J.pdf fedadm_ship_chart_18j.pdf (58 k)

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Tuesday, July 19, 2016 - 03:19 am: Edit

FYI...

There is a provisional ISC light cruiser hulled blockade runner in F&E classified as a CLB listed as: 7-8F/3-4; CR=6; Cost: 8.

We didn't include it in ISC War because it was to be used as part of AndroWar per ADB's direction.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, July 19, 2016 - 11:39 am: Edit

Chuck, as I said, send reports email, don't post them here. I've also been meaning to ping you and your staff to fill in the "not in F&E" ships.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - 04:00 pm: Edit

Chart is finished, sort of....

FedAdm Ship Chart 20J.pdf fedadm_ship_chart_20j.pdf (65 k)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - 04:02 pm: Edit

Ah, yes, the Frax. My thought yesterday was to bounce them to an expansion since their F&E data doesn't exist and they aren't real.

After moving them to the bottom of the chart yesterday, I was surprised this morning by someone saying how excited he was to see the Frax included. Oh well, they weren't THAT hard to add (took an hour) and I guess we could include them or make them an expansion. After all, the FC cards exist.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, July 21, 2016 - 02:21 pm: Edit

Thanks for all the help. I am creating an FA staff (Jay or course, plus Gary Carney, Richard Eitzen, Dal Downing, Ken Kazinski) of people who I know can perform. I might add one or two more from outside the "Circle of Usual Suspects (TM)" if someone demonstrates an interest and ability.

I got the first batch of lab/shuttle data (Richard Eitzen) which filled in the Feds. He and other volunteers will doubtless fill in the rest over time. Due to the local convention this weekend I probably won't get any actual work done on this until Monday, but today I did process all report line items (which is how I picked the staff).

I actually do plan to have the newly created staff run some playtest drills, a few sample battles each with the FA/FASCARS system so we can dial in the anti-fighter thing with which no one has any experience.

I don't think I've got a prayer of getting this thing (tested or not) into the PDF stores by 1 August (my goal a while back). The chart and the local convention are just consuming too much time and there is too much more to do. That said, I want to get an upload during August and then let this thing "simmer" while I do another project and then CL52. If you want a "tested" product then come back next year. If you want to be part of the test, watch for the upload. Campaign ribbons for more of my loyal customers!

Somebody remind me to list Paul Brown for a campaign ribbon with a diamond, or maybe with a skull and crossbones. He had a lot of good points but just needed to approach things from "could we do this?" instead of "What are you lying bastards screwing up today?"

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Thursday, July 21, 2016 - 02:40 pm: Edit

Disappointed that Version 0 upload won't be coming as soon as I hoped, but when it does I'll get it and do my best to make useful comments.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, July 21, 2016 - 05:21 pm: Edit

Well, I hadn't counted on AmaCon taking up as much time as it has just getting ready for it (probably about two days). And the next three days being there. And the chart took a lot more work than expected.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, July 22, 2016 - 03:44 pm: Edit

A bit of an update

Fed Admiral Chart 22J.pdf fed_admiral_chart_22j.pdf (67 k)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, July 24, 2016 - 04:52 pm: Edit

The chart is "finished" except for what isn't finished. Some ships don't exist in F&E or I couldn't find them on the SIT. Staffers please round up the missing data and send it to me or post it.

Fed Admiral Chart 24J.pdf fed_admiral_chart_24j.pdf (69 k)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, July 24, 2016 - 04:53 pm: Edit

Special thanks to Richard Eitzen who rounded up the missing lab/shuttle data and sent it to me in (by accident or design) a format I could paste directly into the chart without having to tediously retype it.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, July 27, 2016 - 06:55 pm: Edit

There has been progress, even if I didn't report it.

Yesterday I emailed the FedAdm combat system to the playtesters so they could start working on it. The first reports indicate that it is very luck dependent, with die rolls producing from 10 to 60 damage points by/on a 100-point fleet. In contrast, the F&E combat system varies only from 20 to 35 damage points. This may indicate that we need to rework the system, or not. I just really hate games where a lucky die roll trumps strategy and tactics.

Today I made all of Jean and Petrick's fixes to Chapter one (which is six pages of basic definitions) and sent that to the playtesters.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 03, 2016 - 02:57 pm: Edit

Snippet from playtesting dialogue.

While the combat system, whatever we use, needs to be able to handle 11-vs-11, that isn't what happens often in Fed Admiral.

F&E sees 200+ ships fighting on a front line 12 hexes wide.

Fed Admiral sees 25 ships fighting in an area 30-40 hexes wide and 20-30 hexes deep. There is no real way to have the kind of frontline/intercept system F&E has. Fed Admiral (see the pages posted at the link below) is a system where every turn you are given some missions, some of which last one turn and others six or ten. Every turn, some of your ships finish missions, others start missions, some missions are blocked by the enemy, and other missions are abandoned. You rack up points for missions accomplished. If you have ships that aren't busy (or free up ships by finishing or abandoning missions) then you can use them to mess with enemy ships trying to complete missions.

The player player (think "area commodore") has ships all over the battle space doing no end of things, and you cannot win the game by stacking all 25 ships in one hex and running around crushing things. (For one thing, you'll never catch most of the enemy ships; they'll stay out of your reach.)

Think of it as one player occupying Canada and the other Mexico.

On turn #1, The Canadian player gets three missions: send a ship to do research in Ohio (moved a survey ship in that direction but he won't get there until turn #2), put down revolt in Utah (sent four ships, one of them a commando cruiser; they'll arrive on Turn #3), send ships to open trade with Alabama (sent a tug and a cruiser to arrive on Turn #4).

Then on his Turn #1, the Mexican player gets two missions: show some force in Nevada (dispatch five ships) and deliver a diplomat to Tennessee (sent a frigate). Notiding the Canadian survey ship en route to Ohio, sent a war cruiser there to see what he's doing. Noticing a stack of ships en route to Utah, sent a cruiser to find out what his mission is. Noticing a stack of ships moving south and worried that he might be trying to invade our colony in Arkansas, sent some ships in that general direction.

On Turn #2 the Canadian player gets two more missions (research in Oregon, sent a destroyer) and show force in Pennsylvania, sent a command cruiser and two other ships). Sent three ships to Tennessee to keep that diplomat out of there.

That's hwo the system works. It's brilliant and you need to go review those posted pages.

http://www.starfleetgames.com/documents/Fed_Admiral_4-56-59.pdf

By Patrick H. Dillman (Patrick) on Wednesday, August 03, 2016 - 04:25 pm: Edit

Really liking what I'm reading here. I know, not a real constructive input, put really looking forward to trying this once it's published.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Wednesday, August 03, 2016 - 05:14 pm: Edit

Is there a way to integrate this into F&E?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 03, 2016 - 07:06 pm: Edit

In effect it is F&E (with different size hexes) but more than that and focused on peacetime not wartime. You will be use F&E as a combat system to resolve battles.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, August 04, 2016 - 05:20 pm: Edit

I like what I am seeing here.

Just curious about the combat system requirement to handle 11 vs 11. F&E combat rules allow for a few selected cases where a fleet may have more than 11 ships. Scouts, drone bombardment ships, various battle group/carrier groups, certain flag officers can all add additional ships to a battle force.

Is Federation Admiral going to restrict ships to cruiser or smaller (say f&e command rating '8' of a heavy cruiser) or exclude certain f&e rules that allow ships to increase the command rating beyond 11?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, August 04, 2016 - 06:33 pm: Edit

Yes, no, maybe.

We're not sure.

Here's the thing. The original manuscript included a "fast" combat system named FASCRs. It was never playtested adequately, and when we ran some tests on it this week, it crashed and burned, and not simply because we replaced the universe-violating command-cost system. It just had some major problems. (For one thing, it was possible for one player to destroy 10% of the enemy fleet while losing 60% of his own, something unaffected by the command cost change. (This makes FASCRs extremely dependent on good luck. Your tactics and strategy won't decide the game; die rolls will.) For another, the higher of the two player die rolls controlled all of the damage, meaning if you scored 60% you killed the enemy DN but lost only a DW.) So that system is going to take some ... tweeks.

Now, that system was written by somebody not familiar with F&E, so it left out command points, admirals, free scouts, 6 for 5 battlegroups, and a lot of other factors that would allow you to push your fleet past 11. We're faced with a paradox in that if we add all of the F&E stuff left out and fix everything that violates F&E, we just turned FASCRs into F&E-300. Now, that may be a way to go in the end, but the point was to have something not F&E but with the same results.

We're still trying to figure out if FASCRs was intended to be simpler than F&E or more complex. For example, it handles fighters separately (F&E just lumps them into the total combat strength) so that would seem to indicate FASCRS should be more complex, meaning include everyting from F&E but also some other stuff. But the playtesting has shown that the FASCR fighter rules are broken (and not by anything ADB did; they never worked).

For that matter, was FA supposed to be simpler than F&E? Or more complex? It includes maintenance cost, which argues for more complex. (This is a rule that involves a lot of work that no player thinks is fun and diverts money you wanted to buy ships with to pay for fuel for ships you already have.)

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, August 04, 2016 - 09:57 pm: Edit

Wow.

You don't think small, do you!?!

Just re-invent the f&e combat "wheel" using a different system that just "happens" to give the same results?!? And, oh, by the way, the new "wheel" combat system has to reliably replicate the manner that damage is apportioned under the f&e combat system.

Just a suggestion, but I wonder if a bracket/density template might not be the way to go?

In other words, instead of a near Infinite combination of ship types used in a complex manual combat system, you substituted a matrix of COMPOT total factors, and or subtract a set factor to the combat results if there were different net differences between the sides?

For example, the matrix would include a range of COMPOT , one player index his on the top of the matrix, the other player along the left side of the matrix. The result found by indexing the two axis. Add a factor if one side had a net advantage in scouts. Another if one side had drone bombardment factors and the other did not. Still another of one side had more net command points than the other.

Sounds complex, but I suspect it would play fast.

Just a thought.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, August 04, 2016 - 10:08 pm: Edit

Jeff, you are seriously misquoting me.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, August 04, 2016 - 10:18 pm: Edit

Sorry, been a long day, and my pain medications are not doing their job.

I did not mean to offer insult.