Thank you for visiting. If you would like to join in the discussion, please click on the Edit Profile link at left, then click the Instant Registration button to begin the registration process.

Your initial password will be e-mailed to you within 24-48 hours.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 10:52 am: Edit

FAQ #1: CD rom rules, SSDs, etc.

We often get requests or suggestions that we do such products.

We started selling PDF SSD books in 2015.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 11:02 am: Edit

FAQ #2: Things about miniatures.

How do you decide what ships to do?
Sometimes because the ship is obviously needed, sometimes because a sculptor wanted to do it and the ship looked like it would sell, sometimes because it was fairly easy to do by making a new piece for an existing ship.

Why can't you do ships in bronze or copper which melts at the same point as pewter?
Because a casting house keeps a pot of molten metal (almost always pewter) simmering all the time in a furnace that costs $1500. To keep a pot of another metal simmering requires another furnace, and no casting house would sell enough copper or bronze parts to be worth the expense. It takes at least a week to change a given furnace to a different metal, including cooling down, sandblasting the pot, and melting new metal.

Why don't you do plastic miniatures?
Because the stainless steel molds are very expensive and we don't sell enough to make it a workable theory.

Why isn't the plastic Fed CA available?
It is in Fed Fleet Box #2. The problem is that the molds are combined and to get a cruiser, you also have to buy all the others. If you then sell the cruiser, you end up with lots of money tied up in destroyers and tugs you cannot sell.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 11:07 am: Edit

FAQ #3: questions about copyrights.

Things you cannot do:
Post copies of ADB products on web sites.
Email copies of ADB products to anyone.

Things you can do:
Scan SSDs and print copies for your own use.
Print copies of SSDs for use by your opponent.
Print copies of SSDs for use at conventions.
Print copies of SSDS for use in your FTF group.

Things to remember:
Everything on this web site is covered by a blanket copyright statement. So you cannot copy things and respost them elsewhere.

Why can't I copy the tournament SSDs to my web site?
Because they're copyrighted and we reserve the right not to allow that. Why should you do it anyway, since our web site is no harder for people to get to? Also, we do change them now and then and if they were on 50 web sites instead of just one, there would be obsolete copies all over the place that lazy webmasters never updated.

Can I scan SSDs onto a CD and give copies to my friends who own the same products?
No, but they can scan their own.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 11:26 am: Edit

FAQ #4: Product schedule, product selection, etc.

We post the current product schedule in that topic. Products you have seen mentioned which are not on the schedule remain on "the list of things we might do sometime". We cannot do everything at once.

We normally pick products about six months in advance. We have to announce them three months in advance to get the wholesalers to buy them. June 2019: wholesalers are no longer an issue.

Selection of products includes many factors, including what people want to buy, what products are needed to make the game system work better, what products are ready for press or might be, and the need for each product line to get a new product now and then. For example, we selected SSJ2 for the March-04 slot because we would otherwise go a whole year between significant SFB releases. Another consideration is that die cut counters must be printed in batches of several games, which is why the F&E stuff comes out in clumps (AO+CO, F&E-R + FO) and why we pick and annouced three SFB products with counters for this summer and fall. There is also the fact that we are required to pay a minimum GURPS royalty so we need to do GURPs products at some regular interval.

Various products mentioned, requested, asked for, announced but never released, etc.

Ship Construction Manual: Many players want this, but knowing it cannot be done without loopholes, many players would rather we didn't. Trying to close loopholes makes this a product that would be harder to do than anything else, but still of interest to only half of the players. We once announced that we were going to print this (ten years ago) but what was announced was the Bruce Graw Custom Design System. Once players found out that the scheduled product was the CDS and not SFB Rule S7, nobody wanted to buy it and it was cancelled.

Omega modules: Bruce Graw no longer does these, as he's been busy with his own company and lost all of his files were lost in a computer crash. Steve Petrick is currently working on new Omega Modules.

Magellanic Module: Ken Burnside did the prototype E1 module, then started changing his rules every hour on the hour as playtesters said they didn't work. After he solved the last round of problems, he sent us an incomplete and untested draft. We eventually received and published a draft he said was tested. Hours after Module C5 reached the players, the players said it didn't work and Ken began announcing wholesale rules changes every hour. ADB shut that down and tried to fix his rules.

Star Fleet Assault: the ground combat version of SFB. Eventually published as STAR FLEET MARINES.

Klingon Invasion, Romulan Invasion: These would be games like Axis & Allies, or something. Basically the Fed Commander version of F&E.

Federation Risk, one or perhaps several game concepts discussed by players, but never a project ADB considered.

Star Fleet Action: Title of a planned future simpler version of SFB designed to appeal to a broader audience. Someday, someday. Eventually published as FEDERATION COMMANDER.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 11:35 am: Edit

FAQ #5: submissions

We have a submissions policy which is in SFB-Advanced Missions among other places. Nothing here changes it, but we can provide some other info.....

1. You don't need permission to submit something. People submit it every day.

2. When you submit it, it becomes ours. We hear people say "But I don't want to lose control over my design" and we remind you that this is our game system and we (not a designer) control what goes into it. Would anybody here stay around a game system where anybody who designed a new race could give them a weapon more powerful than a photon that useless less energy and fires more often and is mounted on ships that are 33% cheaper in BPV? Of course not. We must make sure that whatever we publish (whether we did it or not) actually works and fits into the game system in a balanced way. If you don't want us to mess with it, don't submit it, but you cannot publish it yourself. You can put it on your web site (under our policy this counts as a submission to us, but we do not consider for publication anything not actually Emailed to us).

3. Putting your proposal on a web site has good and bad points about getting published. For one, IF (and it's a big IF) people who download it actually test it and send you the test reports, you might fix some key problems you didn't know existed. But then again, few people want to buy a product they already downloaded for free. A compromise solution is to upload part of your project but keep the rest "secret" and show it only to people who have actually sent playtest reports (as opposed to those who promise they will, of which 90% never do).

4. Formats. We can digest most formats, and if we can't, we will email you and tell you that we can't. Good advice is not to send us 37 ship graphic files of an untested format at the same time. Send one and ask us to check it so we can tell you if the rest can be sent in that format. Remember that we use MACs and the translation between them as lesser computers is not often painless.

5. Submissions are logged and given a file number. A reply email will tell you the file number. Keep it, as that way you can ask if we have processed it yet. It can take months for your submission to get to the top of the stack, but then again, we often hunt down the list for things that would fit into a product we are doing NOW.