The scenario has a series of 'what if' questions that would be easier to play out if it was simper to reset the scenario. I am going to make a save file for my own use

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Wednesday, March 24, 2021 - 12:35 am: Edit

James any chance of adding a second battle board and some extra fleets for the Klingons?

Also if you are interested in a vassal game we have a group here in NorCal.

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Wednesday, March 24, 2021 - 10:24 pm: Edit

I had a second board in the original, and felt it wasn't really getting used so I dropped it. Are you finding it's worth having two different battles set up at the same time, and keeping what's happening on both straight?

And I'm always up for a few extra fleet markers where needed. I just need some ideas for fleet names.

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Tuesday, April 13, 2021 - 06:26 pm: Edit

Howdy everyone. I've been playing around with Vassal and finding it convenient for gameplay (no more tabletops covered in dust from a game set up years ago but never finished!)

I have a couple of glitches to note.

First up, the Romulans have the convoy and military convoy. The military convoy of course has fighters, while the regular convoy should not -- but it also has fighters on the counter. Otherwise correct stats.

The next one is possibly my error. I added two Extensions, both the Orion Pirates and the Orion Enclave, and they seem not to work well with each other, though so far the only issue is that in the list of nation fleets on the top of the board it has the Tholians listed, but in the second row, near the Pirate Holding box is another tab of "Tholian Fleets", but it's obviously the Orion Fleets instead. I'm not sure if I created that by double-loading too many Extensions at once, or if someone just wanted the Tholians to wax supreme across the galaxy.

Which brings up a question. When I open the gameboard it tells me that the two extensions conflict with each other. If I wanted to remove one, does that mess with all my save files or can it be done safely? (And how, exactly, do I do that?)

Also... can someone direct me to a good set of tutorials on how I can add new stuff to the gamebox? And does it require a major rebuild or can I add a few small items and just update the game? I really want to add my VLM Vulture-Mauler to the game, but I don't have the how-to for that.

Thanks for all your efforts! Great gamebox!

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Tuesday, April 13, 2021 - 08:50 pm: Edit

I don't know about the extensions. But adding a ship to the game is a pretty major undertaking.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Wednesday, April 14, 2021 - 11:26 am: Edit

For adding stuff to the game...reach out to James.
In the meantime you can put the stats for said ship into the Label and flag them so you know its not a normal ship.

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Friday, April 16, 2021 - 01:38 pm: Edit

For adding/removing extensions, do it through the module manager. I should have a full explanation in the user's guide PDF, which you can find in the same folder as the module itself. The two Orion ones are actually pretty similar, so turn one off and you shouldn't have any trouble. If you see 'image not found' errors when loading your save file, then you do need extension you turned off. Otherwise you're fine.

Hmm. Obviously, I forgot to fix a copy and paste on the Orion fleet listing. One more thing to update.

Adding a new counter to the game isn't too hard. You need the images for it, and then 'edit' the module to add it in... which is easy for me, as I know the prototypes. :D But basically, copy an existing similar ship listing, add in the new images, change the name, and maybe adjust other stats (though there's nothing special for maulers, so just copy another ship with the same ComPot, and it should be fine).

For the Romulan convoys... Huh. Yeah, I mis-did the image. I'll need to update that. I note the actual statistics reporting is correct, so I just forgot to turn off the fighters when I did the image.

By Ahmad Abdel-Hameed (Madarab) on Thursday, May 13, 2021 - 01:19 pm: Edit

I have searched until I am out of ideas of how to search further. Can someone detail how I can create a F&E game on VASSAL that only uses the base 2010 rules?

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Friday, May 21, 2021 - 04:17 pm: Edit

Start up the module, open the General War start, go through the fleets and delete every stack that is marked for one of the expansions. Then play, ignoring everything that isn't in the base rules.

By Ahmad Abdel-Hameed (Madarab) on Saturday, May 22, 2021 - 09:34 pm: Edit

That was just what I ended up doing. I was hoping some kind of saved file existed that had that already done for me.

By Matthew Atkins (Matt) on Saturday, August 14, 2021 - 05:18 pm: Edit

I am testing out F&E 2.0. When I use the COMPOT button, scouts and drone bombardment ships are not added into the computation, e.g. my free scout does not add EW points, and my drone frigate's bombardment value is not added into the COMPOT.

Do these computations need to be done manually/analog, or am I experiencing some sort of glitch?

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Friday, August 20, 2021 - 06:49 pm: Edit

It has to be done manually. It should be possible to get all that totalled correctly, but it'd have to be an on-board display instead of an inventory button (which is what that is), or else things like DB will never be right.

Something else to put in the User Guide.

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Sunday, August 22, 2021 - 05:51 pm: Edit

I ran into a "situation" today after having upgraded my computer last week.

The F&E module has now developed a horrendous lag on any actions on or involving the map. I can work normally with stuff in fleet boxes, in charts, and on the battle board, but if I try to do anything to counters on the main map (even something as small as selecting a counter) there is a 5-10 second delay between clicking the mouse and the action executing.

Went from an Intel-based Mac running system 10.15 to an M1-chipset Mac running Big Sur. The problem seems to be specific to the F&E module; other Vassal modules seem to work normally.

This may just be a matter of "the risks of changing technology" but I figured I would check to see if anyone else has had similar problems and found a solution.

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Sunday, August 22, 2021 - 05:59 pm: Edit

Disclaimer: I do not have any direct experience with the problem you are experiencing.

I wonder if the version of Java is different between your old machine and your new one?

--Mike

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Monday, August 23, 2021 - 12:50 pm: Edit

Possible (Java)... It's also possible that there is a general slowdown in Vassal. The F&E module has always been extra heavy because of the large number of counters it uses.

Hmm... There is a Big Sur thread on Vassalengine... oh! Right!

The M1 is having to emulate an x86 chip for Java, try the current beta version of Vassal 3.6 for ARM; you can see the download link here:
http://www.vassalengine.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13514

And please give them feedback in that thread.

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Monday, August 23, 2021 - 05:16 pm: Edit

That seems to have done the trick. Thanks!

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, October 24, 2021 - 09:37 am: Edit

James,

So I got a new machine, and am trying to download the F+E Module, and on the Vassal F+E Module Page, the dowload is listed as:

"Module File can be found here"

Where "here" is a link. But whenever I hit that link, nothing at all happens (like, the Chrome address will blink as if it is moving to a new page, but then nothing happens at all). I tried turning off popup blockers, and nada. Ideas?

(I'm using Chrome on Mac 11.6).

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Sunday, October 24, 2021 - 12:02 pm: Edit

From the web page:

https://vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Federation_&_Empire

The download link leads one to:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/documents/F&E-2.0.zip

Which works fine for me on Mac OS 10.14.6, either Safari or Chrome.

I'm wondering if your new computer is configured not to download ZIP files, or if there is a ZIP helper app defined that isn't working right?

In Chrome, you could try turning on "Ask where to save each file before downloading". It may give you a more descriptive error message?

--Mike

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, October 24, 2021 - 12:29 pm: Edit

Hmm. I just clicked on the link here, and it downloaded the zip file instantly. So probably not any of those things. Weird.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, October 24, 2021 - 12:38 pm: Edit

Ok, so I got the F+E module open, but now have the same problem as Jason Schaff had above; trying to move the map results in multi second lags.

I saw the comment about downloading 3.6 for ARM, did that, and my computer refuses to open it as it "Can't verify the developer".

Ideas?

Yaa. New computer. I hate everything :-/

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, October 24, 2021 - 12:44 pm: Edit

Ok, never mind. Figured that out (you can just force open these things). Why isn't Vassal registered with Apple as a verified developer?

Yaa. New computer. I hate everything :-/

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, October 24, 2021 - 12:51 pm: Edit

Successfully loaded 3.6 beta, got it running, loaded the most recent game file, everything seems to be working. Yaa!

:-/

Thanks!

By Charlie Hart (Thatguybil) on Sunday, November 28, 2021 - 10:20 pm: Edit

James. Thank you so much for your work on Vassal.

The Hydran battle pod (7-2 with 2 FF) does not add 2 fighter factors to compot even though if you check the properties it does have two fighter check boxes checked.

When the BP is placed on top of the TG counter the hover to discover shows a value of "(1 SE) 10-10 (0H1)"

Thanks in advance!

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Monday, November 29, 2021 - 11:14 pm: Edit

Good catch!

Okay, that has been added to the pile of things that will be fixed whenever I get v2.1 done. (I need to get TacOps, and a bunch of spare time....)

By Tim McGillivray (Mazian67) on Sunday, December 12, 2021 - 12:46 pm: Edit

James: Amazing work on F&E! Just started playing on it a couple of months ago and we LOVE it! A couple of quick thoughts. It looks like the sysem only counts ships on the colored portion of the fleet display, but you can stretch the display and have units on the white area. Could you enlarge the colored area? It would make it easier to keep organized. Also am wondering if there is a way to find all your admirals?