I'd do a full setup, then do the basic setup from it by removing that which does not exist in a move file. You could then save the game as a scenario and release both.

By Alan De Salvio (Alandwork) on Monday, July 20, 2020 - 11:59 am: Edit

I am 95% sure I will do the Winds of Fire and then ISC scenarios. Yogi Berra said the last 5% took 100% of the effort, or something like that.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Monday, July 20, 2020 - 01:42 pm: Edit

The issue is, some counters are still to be added, and some deleted. IF you start on one with a copy of the game box and then get a new copy of the game box it can change what you thought you was done correctly into something that is incorrect. It has happened to me mid game.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Monday, July 20, 2020 - 08:51 pm: Edit

Yeah I have several things that I have been working on for the box.

Adding the final new ships is only part of it. Turtle and I have been going through the list and looking for glaring errors (there aren't many but we have caught a couple so far).

I also have been doing final checks on the trays using a serpentine style where I go top down through all parties on the first tray and bottom up on the next. Mostly these are not the ship trays but the support units being checked for uniformity (everyone has all their Monitors and pallets or Mobile Bases with fighter modules as an example) I have a few more to do.

Lastly and before you guys really start on the new scenarios I need to verify each of the Marker trays to make sure corrections that were made were made universally and that the minor empires that were added have representative markers.

I thought it would go much faster, but I have it surrounded and am closing in on it.

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Monday, July 20, 2020 - 09:05 pm: Edit

This package is going to last a long time. It is better to do it right the first time, and take the extra time to do it, than it is to have flaws that necessitate another update after games have started on the new box.

So, just "thanks" for doing all that hard work to Lar and Turtle!

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Monday, July 20, 2020 - 10:12 pm: Edit

Haha well at least until Civil Wars comes out.
(Or AO/CO/PO/StratO is rereleased with some new stuff)

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 01:53 am: Edit

Do you have the WYN ships in the game? If not it's probably the only new thing for Civil Wars.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 04:54 am: Edit

Yeah but I was thinking more along the lines of CLog 50 and similar Civil War alternate color scheme Ships/ Units/ Fleets/ Resv/ Markers.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 09:20 am: Edit

Cyberboard Players, when moving an FRD from the capital to an active front or repositioning one from one front to another do you put it in a fleet counter or just leave it on the map the entire time? FRDs are one of the things that, in theory, can be made into a marker only.

By making them markers only, it frees up an estimated 600 counters to be used for more ships.

By Richard Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 10:18 am: Edit

I don't put FRDs in a fleet box.

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 10:30 am: Edit

I use both markers and counters for FRDs. When I have a massive FRD park, then to save space in the hex in which the FRD park is located I'll often put the FRDs into the fleet tray that has the crippled ships - because usually there's a lot in that hex. However, otherwise, I just leave the FRDs as markers so I can keep an eye on them better.

That being said, I know about the counter limitation problem. Thus, I would fully support making FRDs "markers only" in order to free up 600 counters.

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 10:45 am: Edit

I don't know if any of these possibly counter-saving measures have been considered. Please keep in mind that these suggestions are ONLY from the general war perspective, and I know that there are other scenarios and EB where more counters are needed. So take this for what it's worth.

I apologize if some of these have already been considered and implemented or rejected. I have a mind like a steel sieve.

All Empires.
-An overabundance of personnel (ADM, MMG, COE, DIP).

-PDUs. These are not needed as counters *at all*. Instead, they can be relegated to being handled as markers.

-BAMs: Might make sense to have base augmentation modules markers and not counters.

OTHER SUGGESTIONS
-It might make sense to have a few "super groups" for the Klingons and Federation. E.g., two counters of 24x, two counters of 12x, four counters of 6x for the most common ships that get mass produced: F5, D5, FF, NCL. Believe it or not the 24x *are* useful. They free up *a lot* of clutter in very large fleets in mid-war, and thus may enable you to reduce the number of "singleton" counters of these ship classes if you need to shave a few more counters. They can also be used to represent large piles of dead ships in the dead pool.

-Please add a "notes" marker to the "Misc Chits" category. Pretty please? I hate having to go digging for that one in EB markers or elsewhere.

Looking forward to building your GW scenario setup for you...

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 10:51 am: Edit

Ted, There is a Notes marker in the Map Combat Marker group.

By Alan De Salvio (Alandwork) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 11:34 am: Edit

FRDs as markers is a good choice.

Marker Pros: They are important for both sides, so having them on the map makes them more visible as opposed to 'hidden' in a fleet tray. They have movement restrictions, so keeping them out of a fleet marker avoids accidental illegal movement. Markers allows a large (unlimited) number of various augmented versions to be built and easily handled.

Marker Cons: They have to be on the map, and a large FRD park, particularly with LTTs and tugs to move them, and perhaps SAFs and auxes, and a base, planet, PDUs, cripples, other fleet markers and RESERVE markers, makes for busy, crowded pile of markers.

But I think the pros outweigh the cons.

By Nick Blank (Nickgb) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 01:01 pm: Edit

And if you really wanted to remove them from the map to clean things up when you have a pile of FRDs/Crippled ships, you can put the cripples in a fleet tray, and attach a note to the fleet marker that says "5 FRDs present" or something. Change them back to markers and delete the note when you split them up again.

I like using markers for a bunch of these common 1 sided things.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 03:34 pm: Edit

@Ted:
Are you suggesting multiples of three because that is what you would pull (3) to make a BG?
I think for counts it would be easier to be 5's or 10's, no?

@Everyone:
I can see both sides to the FRD.

For PGB/PDU: I can also see carting a PDU or two via a Tug/Convoy inside a tray but I suppose those would just as well be on the map so everyone can see them (owner would not for get to move or protect it; opponents would see it as a target of opportunity). We have cut these down considerably already but I would evacuate these to Markers (before FRDs).

Many of the items mentioned (personnel) have been cut to rule limits (plus 1 for tracking in the Black fleet off to the side). EB expands some of these to match the limits of other empires.

Maybe I will talk to Losberg about reducing to common standards the larger levels (usually Kling or Fed and later ISC) to match the rest of the universe. In EB everyone starts at the same level and builds up so establishing a common number even if lower should be fine. (Example: Prime Teams standardized at 10 per empire in EB)

As for Civil Wars each scenario I have seen so far has a timeline limitation and some sort of reduced production/conversion limits due to the factions so the ship numbers added should be rather limited.

A while ago and it has continued this time we added missions or pod/module/pallet configurations...when this was done it expanded the ship counter counts quite a bit. Things like:

• Tugs/LTTs
• HDWs
• Bases (all)...although excepting MB/OPB these are now all virtually markers
• FRDs
• MON
• PDU (these have been cut to 10 or less...most are 6)
• ROMULANS...so many modular ships (oye!)
• Fed fighter alternates for many things
• All the Minor Empire stuff (LDR, Selt, Paravian, Carnivon, Vudar)
• A couple of volunteers will get a Fleet Counter and Tray (thank you)

• HWX
• A few more standard Romulans (and all the CL50 Faction Roms)
• There may be some other adds this week if I have room but its a surprise
• Heavy and Jumbo Aux - although the headache with these is that for their numbers and variations they really don't add much to the game and very few will likely be built. I have been considering suggestions from some of you on what is the best way to go and while I have constructed almost all of the counters the variation in factors I am still leaning toward only supplying a standard set in generic colors and the unique ships such as the Kzinti Drone version and Fed Alternate Fighter versions in true empire color schemes.
• We still have Andros for EB and those are stayin cuz its an awesome scenario.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 03:44 pm: Edit

I dislike adding double sided counters to the Marker trays if I can avoid it. Makes them clunky for the players to work with. So I try to keep these to a minimum for you.

By Richard Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 06:36 pm: Edit

Carnivon and Paravian empires exist for playtest if that matters for anything.

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 06:38 pm: Edit

Lar,

Yes, for counts having 5 or 10 would be better. I only went with divisors of "3" because it seemed traditional.

So, for FF, NCL, F5, D5 (and maybe Lyran FF) I would have some 25 (maybe 4 of them each) and 10 counters (maybe another 4-8 of them each). Well worth it for counting.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 09:08 pm: Edit

Rich yeah I meant to give them a play-test line item all their own. They are in there too and will have some maps to play with.

Ted copy, will see what we can do there with imaging and such.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - 06:42 am: Edit

I put FRDs into FRD parks all the time. Also, to move them to another chart, one has to use a fleet tray. The alternative for markers would be to delete the marker from one map and add a corresponding marker to another map, which seems both painful and error-prone.

In answer to an earlier note of mine, I saw you said you cut back on the Hydrans about 40%. I think their CA and CC can be cut back more than that. Can't imagine needing more than 40 RN or DG, for example, or more than 20 LM, LC, or LB.

All ships with 5 DefPot, but only 2 crippled DefPot, can be cut waaay back, maybe to 12 or so. No one builds the things because they are so horrible.

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - 10:39 am: Edit

Lar,

The imaging for 25 ships of the same type should be easy. I would just have 4 or 5 (or more, whatever is easy to fit onto the counter) profiles one behind the other offset, kind of like the image you see when you put a mirror both behind you and in front of you. The number "25*FF" or whatever appears at the top like any other multi-ship counter.

The full compot should be reflected on both sides just so that it's obvious that the counter really does reflect 25 of the type (so the D5 and NCLs would be 175/100). Obviously you're not putting 25 ships on the line, but it does help with clarity in terms of what the counter represents.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - 07:31 pm: Edit

You do know you can drop 25 (or whatever number) into a fleet tray and then drop that fleet trays counter into your main fleet. (Just to make it easier to count.)

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - 07:45 pm: Edit

Lar,

Yes, but that creates nested fleet counters that could make finding them a pain.

Besides, for the Klingons (I usually don't play Feds) I'm frequently running out of fleets anyway.

It's hardly necessary to have large multi-ship counters, but I for one would use them if there's counter space for 50 counters or so. If not, no biggie.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - 08:10 pm: Edit

You run out of Fleets? Does anyone else?
How many more fleets do you think you need?

Adding a few more is fairly easy
(mostly just copy, clear the name, type new name, save...create Tray with new Fleet Name, Add counter...done)
It only adds 1 counter to the box per each fleet.