Odd that. But creating new counters, don't see any problems. Try creating some new LRs, and see if they still have that problem. If not, I corrected it already, if so, we'll dig into it.

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Wednesday, January 24, 2024 - 10:42 pm: Edit

Huh. Strange. I tried that, created a new LR onto the map, clicked it, and no "Tholian" option. It's only the LR's transferred over from the old files that seem to be friendly to the Holdfast.

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Thursday, January 25, 2024 - 01:18 am: Edit

Most likely I fixed a prototype in 2.1. There should still be a Tholian option in the capture submenu (unless you turned it off in the new controls). Presumably, there was a problem with the command to put it into the submenu at some point.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Thursday, February 08, 2024 - 08:40 pm: Edit

James I like what you did with the HDWs in the game.

This got our group to thinking would it be possible to add a similar option to all base variant ship counters to be converted? Example: F5 > F5 Variant

This could make conversions easy peasy at a SB.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Thursday, February 08, 2024 - 08:43 pm: Edit

Does Vassal (maybe in other games) have the option to double click a [fleet] marker to open the [fleet] tray and see the contents? Or is the only way through the menu tabs at the top?

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Saturday, February 10, 2024 - 12:56 pm: Edit

No other Vassal module really makes use of fleet markers sub-maps like F&E does.

I have a thought on how I can make that work. It will never be on double click, but I'll have a consistent keyboard command that you can use. Currently, that's slated as the big 'to-do' feature for v2.2.

I've just about finished up a lot of work on Pursuit of Glory module v2. After that, I will be back at work on v2.1.1 of the F&E module. The to-do list there is the new repair yard fleets, PFD markers, and updating/adding scenarios. After that will be work on 2.1.2, which may turn into 2.2.

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Saturday, February 10, 2024 - 01:00 pm: Edit

Currently, no plans to add a general 'conversions' menu to everything. (For a few classes, that would be an insane number of entries.)

HDWs of course are supposed to be easy conversions done on a whim, and aren't really 'converted'. Which implies I should probably do it for the SP and SK. ;)

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Thursday, February 15, 2024 - 10:53 pm: Edit

Okay, take a look at the image linked below and provide feedback.

I've got the new small Fed fleet markers and the associated fleet boxes in my working version of the module, and I want to hammer things out before going further (especially since changing names dumps the contents of the box, so lets not do that after I get everything updated).

Logistics fleets will be their own submenu, currently located just before all the 'joint' fleets. Logistics Groups are for major repair centers, and will have the larger Home Fleet boxes. Mobile Fleet Repair is for FRD parks and the like, and will have normal boxes. The Feds also get regular fleet boxes to use with their LTF groups in AO.

So, how are the names, can better counter abbreviations be thought of, etc?

Image

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Thursday, February 15, 2024 - 11:28 pm: Edit

For the LTF I'd have the counter say LTF-1 and LTF-2. They look look to close like the Log Grp counter.

For the pull down can you do LTF-1 (Brother Love) and LTF-2 (Wrambling Wreck). Which are there names according to (526.2).

By Soeren Klein (Ogdrklein) on Friday, February 16, 2024 - 12:25 am: Edit

I second Ryans comment.
Otherwise I like your approach.

Further questions:
a) Would it be possible to add a "dead ship" area, possibly named "Combat Losses"? Such a fleet would be nice for keeping records of combat losses at the end of a turn. Something like the salvage or depot boxes, where ships are sent to by a mouse click.
b) Is it technically possible at all to create a special fleet where all ship counters sent to are exempted from the ship counts?
Joern and I tried at one time to collect ship losses in an extra fleet to compare them later at the and of the whole game. But those ships there are still counted together with the active ones for porpuses of the fleet/empire strengths and ship counts.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Soeren Klein

By Soeren Klein (Ogdrklein) on Friday, February 16, 2024 - 12:30 am: Edit

A suggestion for a new marker:

An Orion marker noting the position of destroyed enemy bases (BATS and SB).

Reasoning: According to the Orion rules from the Cloudburst scenario, the Orion gain some extra EP whenever an allied BATS (0.2EP) or SB (0.5EP) is destroyed and not replaced. Over a longer game it might become confusing keeping the number a location of destroyed bases in mind, so a marker would be helpful.

For the meantime we use a generic orion counter with custom text.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Soeren Klein

By Warren Mathews (Turtle) on Friday, February 16, 2024 - 07:39 am: Edit

I agree with Ryan in that the LTFs should be LTF 1 and LTF 2. I don't know that their SFB names will or even shortened versions of their names as proposed by Ryan will fit on the on the counters themselves.

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Friday, February 16, 2024 - 07:49 am: Edit

Looks nice. I agree with with Ryan that "LOG TF #" should be changed to "LTF #"

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Friday, February 16, 2024 - 02:05 pm: Edit

LTF markers re-done to 'LTF-1/2'. (These are the first fleet markers not to need at least two lines....)
Menu entries now give their (partial) nicknames.
Actual boxes are still just labeled 'LTF-1/2' (which will be the 'reporting' name in inventory).

By popular demand (which I understand), I'll look at a dead pile box, possibly as the headline feature for 2.3. Doing up a large box/map isn't too hard, but I'll want to come up with good 'send to' commands, and bake them into the prototypes.

The Orion destroyed bases is conceptually easy, but not that much different from just using the generic marker, like you already are. It's there so you can easily do things like that. Don't forget it has a 'clone' function that should give you a copy with all the text so you don't have to type it every time.

If you feel adventurous, edit the module, find the "Empire Ships" entry, and add this to "Show only pieces matching these properties": "&&CurrentMap!="Hive Fleet"" (just before the final brace). That should turn off reporting from the main Seltorian fleet, and you can try that as your dead pile location.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Friday, February 16, 2024 - 10:18 pm: Edit

James I sent you some feedback to the email addy you have in your profile...let me know if that works or there is a better one.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Friday, February 16, 2024 - 10:29 pm: Edit

Using the "Kill em all and let God sort them out" concept.

It would be fine if you made ONE big dead pile.
Maybe make a Black Fleet Chart in its own TAB that has a box for every known empire and then code the ships to go there on "Dead" which is dead no salvage (ships from the salvage pool can also be sent to Dead when players are done counting them up).

This way it doesn't matter what scenario is being played or if there is some altered alliances in play all of the ships would be there in one place in all their Black Fleet Glory.

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Friday, February 16, 2024 - 11:17 pm: Edit

That is pretty much what I have in mind for when I get around to implementing it. Or at least some variation on that theme.

The bit in my last post is just for people who want to play around with a non-reporting dead pile right now, since I won't be getting to it for a bit.

And yes, got the email, thank you.

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Thursday, March 21, 2024 - 08:23 pm: Edit

Hey James, I have some minor edits for you to consider. However, I'm not exactly sure of the background on these, so maybe it's correct as it and I'm just not up on the rules.

1) The Reserve boxes have a space for an extra ship (the "BG" space), but I thought that Battlegroups cannot be formed in a reserve fleet for movement purposes. Am I behind on rule changes, or should the BG space go?

2) The Lyran Democratic-Republic have two border BATS... except they're listed as BTS instead of BATS. Is there a difference, or just a missing letter typo?

3) And lastly, a request. When I open up a fleet box, say the Romulan's Imperial Banner Fleet, the box opens up saying the name of the file and then the name of the fleet. This works if it's "F&E.vsav Imperial Banner Fleet", but not so well if it's "Reptilicon Revenged Turn 2 Alliance Operational Move.vsav Imperial Banner Fleet", because all I'll have on all my fleet boxes is about half the name of the gamefile and the rest will be off the edge of the fleet box. I won't know which fleet box is which unless I stretch the box out to see the full name. Any way of just getting the fleet boxes to have the name of the fleet alone?

Thanks for all that you have done. The vassal gamebox is absolutely great!

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Thursday, March 21, 2024 - 09:24 pm: Edit

Regarding reserves and battlegroups; from 315.1 (AO)
"Battle groups could also be formed as part of a Reserve Fleet (507.0)."

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Friday, March 22, 2024 - 03:04 pm: Edit

Well, there it is in black and white, I never read that line of the rules. Thank you, Jason. I probably confused it with the note in admirals that the admiral does not increase the size of the reserve fleet, and assumed the same was true of battlegroups. Kinda strange they are different.

So anyway, scratch item 1 from my earlier post.

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Friday, March 22, 2024 - 07:14 pm: Edit

As for the 'BTS/BATS' same base, different game system - BTS is F&E orientated while BATS is SFB orientated ...

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Sunday, March 24, 2024 - 01:13 pm: Edit

#2 - F&E has used BATS from the beginning, but more recently SITs and such have moved to BTS. I've... partially moved over to BTS going forward, but I think I've been inconsistent there. And I haven't done anything about going back and changing older counters. So, we're going to have a lot of inconsistency for a while.

#3 - Sadly, that's not something I have any control over. Vassal changed its title text display a while ago, generally for the better. But the secondary window bit is highly annoying. Maybe I really should do background images for the fleet boxes....

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Monday, March 25, 2024 - 07:15 am: Edit

BTS is the proper F&E designation.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Tuesday, April 02, 2024 - 09:43 pm: Edit

James: Question about the reports.

In the next update: Would it be possible to alter the FLEETS report to be EMPIRE FLEETS instead?

What I envision would be to have headers pre-sorting each Empire first the fleets belong to (similar to the EMPIRE SHIPS report). This would make thinks MUCH easier to view in terms of fleets and counts.

Example:

Vudar: 28 (28 SE): 123-139 (0H0) [0H0] 6EW 2G
> Capital Fleet: 10 (10 SE): 49-58 (0H0) [0H0] 3EW 0G
+ Patrol Fleet: 16 (16 SE): 70-72 (0H0) [0H0] 1EW 0G
--- CL: 2 (2 SE): 12-12 (0H0) [0H0] 0EW 0G
--- DD: 4 (4 SE): 20-20 (0H0) [0H0] 0EW 0G
--- FFS: 1 (1 SE): 2-4 (0H0) [0H0] 1EW 0G
--- FF: 9 (9 SE): 36-36 (0H0) [0H0] 0EW 0G

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Wednesday, April 03, 2024 - 02:56 am: Edit

Hmm... that would be a decided improvement over the current mess. However, it's sorted by the map properties (name), and that generally won't include empire. I'll look into it, but I don't have any immediate idea on how to make it work.