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Star Fleet Marines News
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Jean
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:33 pm    Post subject: Star Fleet Marines News Reply with quote

SVC wrote back in 2007: Preliminary memo. Concept document to follow.

This was previewed in P6. One "squad" per counter, 100m per hex, designed to work with SFB and FC on a direct basis. (Every BP you land on the planet in SFB becomes a counter in SFA.)

Very simple game mechanics. On your turn, pick a unit, have it fire. When it fires, it's turned upside down. Units upside down are, at the end of your turn, moved one hex and flipped over. Units that did not fire move their full movement.

To fire, pick target. Combat table lists unit types (infantry, civilian, marine, commando, heavy weapons) down one side, target types (Infantry in woods, infantry in open, infantry in city, armor) across top. Cross-index block lists various results on 2d6 (kill, stun, no effect).

There might be an advanced rules set, allowing such crazy things as heavy weapons troops dropping their weapons and turning into regular infantry.

Primary focus of the game is battalion sized attacks on colonies.

It is currently scheduled for an April release.
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Jean
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote



Star Fleet Marines: Assault Early Design Map Panel

SVC wrote: First, this is the "SVC version of the map" which is functional but old school. Of course, it's a lot newer school than the games I grew up with, but we sell games in the year we live in, not the year we grew up in.

For those who want to know:

Roads are in red.
The brown is hills and the dark brown is higher hills and the orange is "rough".

Forest in green. Grey is forest on a hill.

Blue is water. Light blue is swamp (which doesn't display right here, the version I did had a pattern effect). The two hexes in the upper left are town (not town on hill, just town). Actually, in this case, it's an ethanol fuel plant, but for game purposes, it's town.

The yellow bit is "corn" which slows down walking people but does not slow down heavier vehicles.
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Last edited by Jean on Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:50 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Jean
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote



Star Fleet Marines: Assault "Xanderized" Map Panel

SVC wrote: Ok, way back when, Xander asked "Can I do the map?" and I told him that AFTER the map had been designed (forest this many hexes from the town, so forth) I'd give him a chance to show his stuff. I did, he did, and here it is.

There are some issues I have with it, but these are correctable things. Xander's roads are too hard to see, the "forest" hexes are too close to the "forest on hill" hexes and need to be distinguished a little more, the high hexes may need to be a bit darker, and I'm a little worried that the "rough" terrain is too similar to the "hill" terrain, but everybody in the office this morning has very positive reactions to Xander's version of the map.

I should note that there are six panels (each 8.5x11) that make up the map, and that the graphics here are only one of the six panels. The map in the game is six times as big.
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Steve Cole
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 6:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Q: Could the last scenario cover a sample operation in which an opposing force would be trying to clean out a remnant robot garrison?
A: I guess it could, but that sounds pretty generic.
=====
Q: Which empires will have organization entries in the core book
A: most of the alphas.
=====
Q: Would an entry for the Holdfast Tholians cover M81 or Draco-Tholian deployments? Would Andromedan deployments be common across the various settings they are engaged in?
A: Tholians and andros always used their same respective organizations.
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Q: There's a very early Gorn vs. Romulan scenario in which the Gorn are attempting to prevent the Roms from getting warp tech. As a SFB scenario, it's a no-brainer - the Gorn can acheive success with very little to no chance of Rom success. You fly by, drop off troops before the Rom can even get a shot off, leave.
It would be an very different scenario if you had to actually land troops that had a chance of failure. That could be a fun one ...
A: That could be an idea, but given the situation, it may be more a scenario for prime directive.
======
Q: what eras are the rules included able to cover as they stand?
A: Pretty much anything.
======
Q: If I want to playtest, can I just talk Scott into playing against me, or do you need to approve it as well?
A: Assuming you mean Scott Moellmer, he can recruit anyone he likes.
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Q: especially the "advanced rules" mentioned that should give it a properly hefty rulebook
A: The advanced rules take two pages in a 16-page rulebook.
======
Q: Could a scenario involving simultaneous starship and ground combat use Star Fleet Assault to resolve the ground combat while using SFB for the space combat?
A: That is the point.
====
Q: Seems like the main thing that would need to be included is some provision for remote areas, which are common in SFB.
A: March your remote troops onto the map.
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Q: It seems like the types of units correspond mostly to those in Module M so compatibility should be possible.
A: That is the point.
====
Q: The sample PDF says "or when the invader brings [tanks] in a special starship able to land on planets," but D15.822 allows tanks to be landed by HTS/HAS (under module M rules, landing by shuttle is about the only thing tanks are good for).
A: Yeah, I forgot HTS could move tanks and Petrick added that later.
=======
Q: Oh, and do the rules in SFA cover, say, boarding attempts against asteroid outposts, or assaults on large space-based installations such as battle stations or starbases - or could that be up for consideration in future expansions?
A: This is outdoor infantry combat. Combat inside a building or base is something more suited to another game system, KRAG, that we haven
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Scharwenka
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 2:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Is there any clue to a price range we would be looking at for Star Fleet Marines?

Thanks!
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Jean
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 8:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Leanna hasn't set a price yet.
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Mike
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 1:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is probably a "way too obvious" recommendation, but I'll mention it anyway...just in case.

On the map panels, how about making the roads that enter/exit on the sides of the map do so horizontally in the exact middle of the hex so they will all fit together properly when the mapboards are put together? The road hexes at the top and bottom of the map panels do that already.
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Jean
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mike, SVC has already done that! Still a second pair of eyes verifying things need to be done (and it is) is far better than everyone thinking surely you see the train wreck (and it wasn't seen).
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Steve Cole
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 2:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The road hexes already line up. They don't need to be in the exact middle to line up. They're all in the same hex up/down.
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rexbinary
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PostPosted: Thu May 26, 2011 11:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Any Star Fleet Marines news? Very Happy
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Dal Downing
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PostPosted: Fri May 27, 2011 1:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nope.

As SVC posted else where a couple of problems came up during Playtesting and SFM:A had to go to the bottom of the pile because other products have to make thier various ship dates. A couple of those Projects were C3A Andor Threat Files (In Production), Captians Log #43 ( In process), F&E ISC War (Counters at Cutter and rulebook being assembled), FedCom Transport Attacks (Seems to be finished with making the Ship Cards.

SVC said he hopes to be able to get back to SFM:A before Orgins.
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Steve Cole
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PostPosted: Fri May 27, 2011 3:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not sure I said that, at least, not anytime recently. SFMA was rescheduled for August a while ago.

http://www.starfleetgames.com/prod_schedule.shtml

As noted, we found out that the combat table wasn't bloody enough. Two forces of ten units each would sit one hex apart firing away causing one casualty per turn and taking six or eight or ten turns to resolve the battle. That just got boring!!!

So we tried just adjusting every battle up one point on the die roll. (It's a 2d6 game, so a shift of one die roll can be a really big change in the number of casualties. Say a 2-3-4 causes a hit. That's six chances in 36. Going to 2-3-4-5 means 10 chances in 36, a very different thing.)

THAT caused one of the scenarios to break, meaning we had to change some start up positions and arrival times so that a critical mass of troops all got to the point of battle at the same time. (Say you have 20 units attacking 10, but they arrive five at a time. With a bloodier combat table, each group of 5 is going to get wiped out before the next group arrives on the next turn. The "tactical" solution is to just stay out of trouble until you get more troops, but that gets a little hard to do with an aggressive enemy like Petrick who says "Sure, in 3 turns, I'm going to lose, but in one turn, I outnumber him 10-5, so I'm going on the attack!"
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rexbinary
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PostPosted: Sat May 28, 2011 2:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank You very much for the update. I am really looking forward to this product.
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leathernsteel
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2011 2:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Star Fleet Marines looks amazing! This looks like a dream come true! Please let me know when we can buy this!
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Jean
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2011 2:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

We're looking at late summer, early fall. We certainly hope that it will be out before Christmas. Very Happy
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