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What is Borders of Madness?
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pinecone
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Joined: 03 May 2008
Posts: 1862
Location: Earth

PostPosted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 7:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd actually prefer to see BoM as a paperback or e23 product, because that allows for many more ships than the sixteen seen in the attack products. With an attack product, you'd get a carrier and a scout for each empire. With a book, you could get two of each, plus escorts, maulers, gunboats, ect.

Also, did Briefing #2 not sell well, or not sell well enough to justify the work put into it?
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storeylf
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Joined: 24 Jul 2008
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 7:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
The best games ARE based on precise military simulations.


The emphasis there should have been on based. You can base a game on actual military reality, or simulation. But that is a world away from actually going down to the minutest level as part of the game. Sure each level of abstraction loses some detail, but that doesn't mean a bad game, it often means a better game. Horses for courses obviously, some like the detail, some don't. But for FC you implicitly have a number of players who do not want that detail, counter pushing and book keeping, otherwise they would presumably be playing SFB. Clearly, though, even within FC there is a range of opinion over how much to lose/abstract and how much to keep.

What would fighter launched seekers do normally (using the FC playtest rules - range 8 launches etc)?

1) Hit barring counter measures.

What are the counter measures:

2) Shoot the seekers.
3) Shoot the controller (no controller for plasma).
4) Run away
5) Out manouver them ([edit] by which I meant accelerate directly past them).


What do the direct fire rules currently do (including various tweaks that have been mooted in the threads)

1) They hit barring counter measures
2) You can shoot them
3) You can shoot the controller
4) Run away.

Ok you can't outmanouver them, but you get 4 out of 5 aspects. The outmanouver aspect is the one that is arguably the least useful to worry about as that could be very situation dependent anyway and seldom applies to plasma. The other aspects do have some subtle differences as well, but they are covered to a reasonable degree. Direct fire drones are based on normal seekers, it is abstracting out the 'movement to impact' but retains most of the key points. That seems a good compromise for the reduction in counters etc. SFB players have lost a lot more via other things that weren't ported or in the way they were ported - spoofing seekers seems to be a far more militarily realistic concept, but we happily lost wild weasals.

That's not to say that I'd not like some extra improvements in fighter based drones, but my idea of improving and other peoples idea of improving may not be the same Smile

Whilst they are called direct fire drones they are not direct fire weapons, they do not fire in the direct fire step, they do not impact instantly, they can be stopped even after firing, all the normal anti-seeker systems still kick in during defensive fire. You are not left with one type of weapon, you still have direct fire and seekers, it is just that the seekers have been handled in a different way to before, but they are still very different to phasers and photons.

It also changes the way you look at drone armed fighters, before the drones were the thing you concerned about, especialy in SFB where the fighters probably launched from across the map. With direct fire seekers it is the fighters you worry about. In SFB your manouvering was based on a wave of drones coming at you, now it is based on a wave of fighters coming at you. There is more emphasis on stopping them launching, that is more in line with modern naval warfare - you want to stop enemy airpower getting in range, not dealing with mass missiles afterwards. If we are looking at military simulation that is the nearest parallel I can think of with carriers and fighters.

Quote:
As for an attack product, sure, it's a possiblity, BUT....


I woudn't really like an attack product. I was just pondering why you might not consider that instead of a booster when it seems more attack like in terms of what it needs to be complete. I'd personaly prefer to see a proper BoM box set with all the main BoM concepts included in order to help differentiate it as seperate to FC. I don't see that happening though, so attack + booster products would seem the next best fit.


Last edited by storeylf on Wed Aug 17, 2011 9:13 am; edited 3 times in total
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storeylf
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Joined: 24 Jul 2008
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 7:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

pinecone wrote:
I'd actually prefer to see BoM as a paperback or e23 product, because that allows for many more ships than the sixteen seen in the attack products. With an attack product, you'd get a carrier and a scout for each empire. With a book, you could get two of each, plus escorts, maulers, gunboats, ect.

Also, did Briefing #2 not sell well, or not sell well enough to justify the work put into it?


Whilst you wouldn't get 2 per empire in the attack products, there should be room for 2 by the time you add in 3 boosters.

Of course I'm a fan of actual proper laminated cards that nicely match my existing ones and require no print/laminating by me.

And of course the minis packaging so far seems based around the attack/booster cycle. Not that I'm into minis. But it might be a factor to bear in mind.
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mjwest
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Joined: 08 Oct 2006
Posts: 4069
Location: Dallas, Texas

PostPosted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 8:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Don't assume there will be a single Borders of Madness product. Assuming that potential major components of Borders of Madness are:
- Maulers
- Full Scouts
- Fighters, Carriers, and Escorts
- Gunboats and Tenders
Then, you get to throw in a few random things like Klingon penal ships and Tholian pinwheels and such.

In summary, it isn't going to fit into one product. Not if you want it to be truly usable. For example, you are going to want at least two sizes of scouts (DD/FF and CW). That gets even messier with the whole fighter set. I really think fighters will need to be stand alone*. Gunboats may need to be stand alone, too. Then the rest can be mixed up as needed.

So, I really think that if Borders of Madness is published, you will be seeing multiple products, not just one.

[*] And, considering how contentious the issue of fighters are, containing their rules and ship cards to their own product could be a very good thing.
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Capt Jack
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Joined: 12 Mar 2011
Posts: 102
Location: England U.K

PostPosted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 11:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Storeylf take it easy.

I have just launched a fleet of Orions to Destroy earth before BOM is ever produced! (I hope they will be handsomely renbursed Question )
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Savedfromwhat
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Joined: 23 Aug 2007
Posts: 657

PostPosted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 11:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Storeylf what do you mean outmaneuvering seldom applies to plasma? Can you please elaborate.
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storeylf
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Joined: 24 Jul 2008
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 7:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Savedfromwhat wrote:
Storeylf what do you mean outmaneuvering seldom applies to plasma? Can you please elaborate.


When I was saying 'outmanouvering' I was meaning that you can often skip past drones without turning away, you simply accelerate past them and being slower they cannot stop you getting past, which you can seldom do with plasma. Outmanouvering may have been a bad term, but I was differentiating between being forced to outrun seekers and being able to go straight past them.

When I said situation depending, I was meaning that the launch range (currently) for fighters is 8, so you are looking at dealing with seekers that have been launched at 8 or even less. That may well mean that you are not properly positioned/faced to be able to skip past them, or if you were not already speed 24, have the turn break in time to do speed 24.
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Targ
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Joined: 02 Nov 2006
Posts: 125
Location: York U.K.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 11:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

one for the mix, scatter packs please Very Happy
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Steve Cole
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Joined: 11 Oct 2006
Posts: 3828

PostPosted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 5:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't see Scatter-Packs getting into FC by way of BoM. I just don't see a need for them. You'd also have to add wild weasels and pseudoplasmas, and I really do not want to go there.
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