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Xorkaelians, Sigma Sector and the Sargasso Storm Sector

 
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David
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 2:18 pm    Post subject: Xorkaelians, Sigma Sector and the Sargasso Storm Sector Reply with quote

I've heard mention of the Xorks before in reference to X and X2 ships. Is that still in the plans? Curious about the two other sectors as well. Lots of open territory there.
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mjwest
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 4:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Those are all things for the future.

The Xorks would probably be done whenever X2 is done. And there is not even a hint of when that is possible.

The Sargasso is something else talked about, but nothing is planned, and there is probably still a lot that needs to be developed first, anyway.

Don't know about Sigma.
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Steve Cole
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 4:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This may help

http://starfleetgames.com/galaxy_map_Color.pdf

Xorkaelians: the big empire on the opposite side of the galaxy. Very unfriendly people. Big enemy for X2.

Sargasso: A sector wracked by storms. There are things like the wyn cluster all over it, each with an empire inside. You cannot go outside because of the storms. Every few years, the storms stop and you can go outside for a few years to gather resources (fight for resources) to last during the next storm cycle. The theory was always to take submissions and plant each one in a cluster and let them fight each other. But I have no idea if we'll ever get that far.

Sigma: Another omega, basically. The theory was to take submissions and create a galactic sector, but nobody really believes that will actually come to pass.
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Nerroth
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 4:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In Bruce Graw's Omega's Lost Futures article in Captain's Log #36, his intention for the Echarri Dynasty (a major, yet-to-be-published new empire that shows up in the Omega Octant during the Seventh Cycle) was for them to have arrived there from the Sigma Octant. The Echarri claim to have been fleeing an Andromedan assault on their home region, but there has been no confirmation of this just yet.

According to the August 2012 memo for potential new SFB products, the Echarri are included with the Scon (natives to subspace driven insane by "our" use of subspace communications) and Zosmans (the Omega answer to the Orion Pirates) in one of the three potential "new empire" modules for Omega. Should the Echarri get their turn at some point, perhaps their backstory might delve a little into Sigma... or perhaps it might not. Time will tell.
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David
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 5:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Okay, this answers a lot, thank you.

Reading through CL over the years, ADB had a plethora of new race submissions in the file. Is this still the case? Are new submissions being sought? I realize that the majority probably aren't workable or at the least need a lot of work to maintain game balance.

I like your thoughts on the Sargasso Sector. That creates a unique game dynamic and differs from border style wars. Seems that more empires would come into contact with each other while out looking for...or protecting resources. I can see this as a 'beat the clock' dynamic as well.
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Steve Cole
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 4:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

We have hundreds of new races/empires/species on file.

They don't sell as well as we'd like and while we will do some over time, we probably aren't going to be doing packs of 20 new empires.

The three "invade omega from sigma" races/empire Gary mention were all destroyed in Bruce's hard disk crash and no data whatsoever exists on them. We have no idea what Bruce and his buddies designed or intended, and no way to recover the data. it's just lost forever. There is plenty of omega stuff to print without sitting down to design those empires from blank paper (which would also require designing a lot of sigma stuff). the workload vs potential sales isn't something that puts this on the top five new modules list.
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mjwest
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 6:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Steve Cole wrote:
They don't sell as well as we'd like and while we will do some over time, we probably aren't going to be doing packs of 20 new empires.

So, it's that base situation where lots of people want to make a new empire, but no one is really interested in anyone else's new empires?
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Savedfromwhat
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 1:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Seems like that could be a product somehow...
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Nerroth
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 2:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

According to Bruce's article in CL36, the Echarri had had no work done on them prior to the crash. His stated intent was to pick one (or more) of the submissions on file which hadn't been given a home already, and turn them into a working empire. (A similar process had happened with the Branthodons. They had originally been submitted in 1986 as part of an "empire design contest", but had to wait for over a decade until the right venue for them could be worked out.)

There doesn't seem to have been a lot of work done on the other two factions they are currently being grouped with, either. Apparently, the Scon had no real work done on their ship or weapon designs, but there had been some ideas governing their operations which had been lost in the crash.

The Zosmans, on the other hand, have some sort of idea presented as to how their ships would operate, but Bruce wanted to do that empire last so that their systems would be handled in one go. The Zosmans were intended to use wholly modular ship designs. Each weapon type was to be given its own module, that would also be equipped with the additional systems needed for that particular weapon to function. (Since there is so much variety in the Omega Octant, it was assumed that simple option mounts wouldn't be enough to account for each empire's weapon type, so the Zosmans would need to go to the trouble of adopting a more modular system instead.) So, if the Zosmans were done before all of the empires they can steal technology from were ready, they'd need to have "new" modules added each time a compatible set of weapons was published.


Of the various "new empire" modules proposed in the August 2012 memo, it would seem that the Vulpa-Nucian-Paravian trio might be the best option; even taking the crash into account, there seems to be more to work with in terms of designing those three empires.

The Paravians are said to eventually adopt anti-proton technologies, which are already in print. Plus, depending on how much tech they might share with their Alpha counterparts, they might not need a lot of "new" tech in order to function.

The Vulpa are said to use similar ships to the Maesrons (who they used to be allied with). Indeed, we already have a Vulpa hull in SFB; the blockade runner, a heavily-modified version of the Maesron destroyer. Doing new hulls for them might not be as major a challenge as for some other, more "whole-cloth" empires.

The Nucians are ethnic Vulpa who fled Maesron space to become a clan-based society in a dense star cluster. There's not a lot of info about their technology, but doing them at the same time as the Paravians would be handy. (The Nucians develop a type of tactical mine, which the Paravians steal and re-design into a quantum wave mine. Both types of mines would need to be done from scratch, but it would probably be as well to do the rules for both at once.)


The upshot of doing those three first is that, if the time comes for the Zosmans to show up, any modules they'd need to handle tech stolen from those three empires could be drawn up right away. Thus, the Zosmans would have a better footing in terms of being set up to raid and pillage their way across the Omega Octant!


(With that said, it still might be easier to do one or more of the "more ships for pre-existing empires" modules first anyway; but the handy thing about any of those would be that they would each do much to provide more data to the setting as a whole for the new empires to eventually work with.)
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David
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 3:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

mjwest wrote:
Steve Cole wrote:
They don't sell as well as we'd like and while we will do some over time, we probably aren't going to be doing packs of 20 new empires.

So, it's that base situation where lots of people want to make a new empire, but no one is really interested in anyone else's new empires?


I have just the opposite view, it is interesting to see the effort someone has put into their offering. Brings different dynamics into the game.
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David
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 3:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nerroth wrote:
According to Bruce's article in CL36, the Echarri had had no work done on them prior to the crash. His stated intent was to pick one (or more) of the submissions on file which hadn't been given a home already, and turn them into a working empire. (A similar process had happened with the Branthodons. They had originally been submitted in 1986 as part of an "empire design contest", but had to wait for over a decade until the right venue for them could be worked out.)

There doesn't seem to have been a lot of work done on the other two factions they are currently being grouped with, either. Apparently, the Scon had no real work done on their ship or weapon designs, but there had been some ideas governing their operations which had been lost in the crash.

The Zosmans, on the other hand, have some sort of idea presented as to how their ships would operate, but Bruce wanted to do that empire last so that their systems would be handled in one go. The Zosmans were intended to use wholly modular ship designs. Each weapon type was to be given its own module, that would also be equipped with the additional systems needed for that particular weapon to function. (Since there is so much variety in the Omega Octant, it was assumed that simple option mounts wouldn't be enough to account for each empire's weapon type, so the Zosmans would need to go to the trouble of adopting a more modular system instead.) So, if the Zosmans were done before all of the empires they can steal technology from were ready, they'd need to have "new" modules added each time a compatible set of weapons was published.


Of the various "new empire" modules proposed in the August 2012 memo, it would seem that the Vulpa-Nucian-Paravian trio might be the best option; even taking the crash into account, there seems to be more to work with in terms of designing those three empires.

The Paravians are said to eventually adopt anti-proton technologies, which are already in print. Plus, depending on how much tech they might share with their Alpha counterparts, they might not need a lot of "new" tech in order to function.

The Vulpa are said to use similar ships to the Maesrons (who they used to be allied with). Indeed, we already have a Vulpa hull in SFB; the blockade runner, a heavily-modified version of the Maesron destroyer. Doing new hulls for them might not be as major a challenge as for some other, more "whole-cloth" empires.

The Nucians are ethnic Vulpa who fled Maesron space to become a clan-based society in a dense star cluster. There's not a lot of info about their technology, but doing them at the same time as the Paravians would be handy. (The Nucians develop a type of tactical mine, which the Paravians steal and re-design into a quantum wave mine. Both types of mines would need to be done from scratch, but it would probably be as well to do the rules for both at once.)


The upshot of doing those three first is that, if the time comes for the Zosmans to show up, any modules they'd need to handle tech stolen from those three empires could be drawn up right away. Thus, the Zosmans would have a better footing in terms of being set up to raid and pillage their way across the Omega Octant!


(With that said, it still might be easier to do one or more of the "more ships for pre-existing empires" modules first anyway; but the handy thing about any of those would be that they would each do much to provide more data to the setting as a whole for the new empires to eventually work with.)


Appreciate the post. Good information. And it is a real shame about this computer crash.
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Steve Cole
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 8:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

We have found, indeed, that the interest in new empires drops like a rock when it's not the new empire of the guy answering the survey.

If you ask "should we print new empires" you get about 80% saying yes but 75 of those 80 want THEIR new empire to be the first one done and really don't care if there is ever another one done.
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Dan Ibekwe
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 4:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Steve Cole wrote:
We have found, indeed, that the interest in new empires drops like a rock when it's not the new empire of the guy answering the survey.

If you ask "should we print new empires" you get about 80% saying yes but 75 of those 80 want THEIR new empire to be the first one done and really don't care if there is ever another one done.


Maybe there's a product in that? A template for would-be empire designers, with a smorgasbord of characteristics for ships, weapons, overpowered/underpowered hulls, above or less than the number of hull boxes et.c and trade-offs for all these against points values.

I admit I'm being influenced by Starmada's ship design rules, here, with a side portion of SFB's simulator Barbarians.

With the strict proviso that these are for friendly or club level games only, for use only with opponent's or organiser's prior sight and agreement.

There will obviously be munchkin attempts to build uber-invincible death fleets, but they should be kept in check by the points system and opponent refusal.
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