Sometime in February. It goes pretty fast (a page a minute) when I get time to work on it. I actually skipped the gym today just to work on ACTASF2.2 but the time when to resolve some crisis about escorting the B10 in F&E and to design the F&E variant of DIPLOMACY.

oooooo shiny object, new Tholian ship cards for FC, must go work on those...

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 23, 2020 - 04:58 pm: Edit

I have been doing some special case fixes (in what seems to be a random order but really isn't) and trying to improve the art, but today I did start doing the "clean write through" and got to page 32 in less than an hour, including interruptions by Leanna, Petrick, Wolf, and Fitbit. Jean sent me some fixes to GURPS FEDS but warned me not to do them until ACTASF2.2 was done.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 23, 2020 - 05:17 pm: Edit

Did the scenario fixes which has me at page 52.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 23, 2020 - 05:43 pm: Edit

Did Feds, Klingons, Romulans, Kzintis. Now at page 92. Jean wants this done, but does she want it done bad enough for me to do it badly? I mean, she wants a comma in the Kzinti chapter changed to a semi-colon. Does it really matter?

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Thursday, January 23, 2020 - 05:45 pm: Edit

WHANG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 23, 2020 - 06:01 pm: Edit

Now at page 100 out of 180. I will not finish (page 180) today because I have to leave for a bariatric group meeting, but I will try to finish in time to upload by February 1st if not sooner.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 23, 2020 - 06:15 pm: Edit

I ended the day at 115. Without interruptions I can finish tomorrow, but that's unlikely. Even then, Jean has to check the changes and invent more ridiculously piddly changes and we have to do this all over three or four times until she decides she has tormented me enough and prints the version I did yesterday.

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Thursday, January 23, 2020 - 06:21 pm: Edit

(sigh)

No more whangs for you today, as you seem to like them too much.

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Thursday, January 23, 2020 - 09:50 pm: Edit

Sometimes, perfection is the enemy of good enough and is an ally of the bankers...

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Thursday, January 23, 2020 - 11:11 pm: Edit

I've always heard the phrase "Perfection is the enemy of good enough" attributed to (former) Soviet Admiral Gorshkov. Anyone know if it's true?

By John Williams (Johndw) on Friday, January 24, 2020 - 07:53 am: Edit

Can not say that I do, but I appreciate being informed on the progress on the update to the book. Can't wait to see how it looks and to give feedback.

You might already be doing this correction, but if you flip back and forth between book 1.2 and book 2, the way the ship stats are laid out is different. So making book 2 line up with book 1 in how the stats are shown would help keep a consistent feeling.

By Steve Stewart (Stevestewart) on Friday, January 24, 2020 - 08:34 am: Edit

@jga: Voltaire I believe, although used to the usual excellent effect by Winston Churchill

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 24, 2020 - 11:38 am: Edit

I just finished 126. Only 54 pages to go before I present the corrected copy to Jean. (What happens then is anyone's guess.)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 24, 2020 - 01:38 pm: Edit

I just finished 143. Only 37 pages to go in this round.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 24, 2020 - 02:52 pm: Edit

I just finished page 160.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 24, 2020 - 03:27 pm: Edit

I just finished 173.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 24, 2020 - 03:42 pm: Edit

Finished 180. I have to go meet my personal trainer at the gym but I will get the stacks of pages ready for Jean when I get back.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 24, 2020 - 07:22 pm: Edit

Jean has found a few things to fix, mostly replace photographs of minis with other art because the photos some people sent print too blurry to leave them there.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, January 25, 2020 - 12:26 am: Edit

John D W: I do not understand your comments as I did the ships in both books and literally cloned Book 2 from the pages of Book 1.2 so ... I do not understand what you are trying to say.

Worse, I am a couple of hours from finishing Book Two and need to move on to another project. The time for your comments was last October when there was time to change things. Now, there literally is zero time to make major changes.

The time to tell me to land on Venus not Mars was when I was still in Earth orbit, not after I burned all the fuel getting to Mars.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, January 25, 2020 - 02:26 pm: Edit

Okay, I think I figured out what John D W is saying.

Book 1 has this:
Turn: 3
Shields: 28
Damage: 36 / 12
Marines: 16
Craft: 2 shuttles
Traits: Labs 6, Probe 1, Tractor Beam 2, Transporter 5
Starline 2400: 0503
Starline 2500: 35007

Book 2 has this:
Turn: 3 Shields: 28
Damage: 36 / 12 Marines: 16
Craft: 2 shuttles Traits: Labs 6, Probe 1, Tractor Beam 2, Transporter 5
Starline 2400: 0503
Starline 2500: 35007
Shapeways: 3125 Scale Kzinti war destroyer (DW).

We did this to save space, which ultimately allowed us to add several more ships to Book Two which you would not have if we followed the Book One single-stack format. (Being a 9mm fan I prefer double stacks; Petrick uses 45acp and prefers single stacks.)

For Book Two we're going to have to leave it alone. Switching to single stacks literally means deleting entire ships that won't fit if each ship takes three extra lines. Changing some and not other would make the difference worse.

We will be updating Book One sometime this year. When we do we can easily shift Book One to the double-stack format.

(I could do that update now but that would mean telling the F&E guys they have to wait longer for their product and telling everyone they have to wait longer for CL54. The glory of having eight product lines is that we can serve more customers. The downside is everyone waits a little longer to get a second helping of his dinner.)

I do not for a moment dismiss the importance of this format different. If it saves you a second every time you look up something you can get back to killing your gaming buddy that much faster. Over time, those seconds really do add up.

Jean also told me that John may have bought Book Two last week and wasn't reading it in October to tell me what he saw at the time. There are no end of things in the world (and this game company) that went unnoticed for years before somebody said something. I need people to say something, even if you think I may not take it very well. I don't stay angry very long and I'll get over it, whatever it is you need to tell me. With PDFs and print on demand, there is always another update next year for everything. I do apologize if anyone thought "Well, if he's going to yell at that guy, I won't tell him anything since I don't want to get yelled at." I didn't think I was yelling (just encouraging faster reporttage) but if anyone did, I wasn't, and I'm sorry if you thought I did. Internet is like that.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, January 25, 2020 - 02:30 pm: Edit

I was taught and believe what we called "The Russian Army ProverbTM": Better is the enemy of good enough.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, January 25, 2020 - 02:42 pm: Edit

Status of ACTASF BOOK TWO otherwise known as ACTASF2 or even updating ACTASF2.1 to the ACTASF2.2 version.

I made all of the updates, added the extra articles, and added the missing art last year. Jean gave me the marked up copy sometime in early January. I got it fixed and given back to her (hundreds of fixes and changes and updates) a few days ago. She's going through now checking the changes, requesting more and better art, and finding a few things she hasn't found before. I suspect there will be about 50 fixes for me to make and I should start on them later today. I hope to have the next round of fixed pages on her desk Monday and have ACTASF2.2 ready for upload in about a week, but (a) until it is finished we can only guess when it will be finished and (b) ACTASF is not the only think I have to do. (Steve Petrick is working on SFB Module R4T and keeps asking me for input on this or that. I do have stuff to do for the 10 Feb Hailing Frequencies newsletter. I do go to the gym almost every day (a necessary cost if you want me to stay alive long enough to do everything you want). I am going to have to do something to get more map panels printed for FC and Jean wants me to spend a day updating GURPS FEDS.

By John Williams (Johndw) on Sunday, January 26, 2020 - 11:46 am: Edit

I did purchase the book back on September 13th, but I don't catch everything on my first read-through. Or second, or third, etc. Some times you have to have it for a little while for the little differences to simmer and be apparant, like how you saved three lines by crunching ship stats together. I wouldn't mind if book 1.2 was updated to match book 2, just became more apparent that the muscle pattern I had building up for taking notes on ships was being broken and needed re-formed if I switch between book 1 & 2.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, January 26, 2020 - 12:38 pm: Edit

John: email me your favorite empire and I will update it and send it to you.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, January 26, 2020 - 03:32 pm: Edit

I got the re-mark copy from Jean. It includes 15 actual typos (spelling, capitalization, punctuation), 20 shapeways search terms that need to be more precise, and 15 photos she wants replaced because the fan-produced photos won't print in focus. Should take a few hours. I may do some of it today, but more likely most of it tomorrow.