Federation Commander

[Steve Cole]

Let me be clear about a few things...

1. Jay is a great game designer, and I've never said anything less about him. No one from ADB has ever said a critical word about the DESIGN of Fed Admiral

2. There are issues with formatting, punctuation, cap guides, style books, and so forth, but we are determined to work through these because FA will be a great product.

3. When someone says it's my fault FA is late, that is a mistaken assumption that needs to be corrected. It's not my fault. It's problems noted in #2 above. I'm not going to take the blame when it's not my fault.

Note to Paul B: You were NOT "conciliatory" and clearly had no intention of being so. Your posts amounted to "Don't punish me! By the way, I am now going to repeat what you said I'd be punished for saying." You have shown no respect. You have no place here or in polite society. Your next violation will be your last. Any game publisher EXCEPT us would have thrown you out for life two posts ago. We've given you a FINAL warning.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Davyj0427]

Any chance for a pre-order?

[Steve Cole]

We take pre-orders one week before release. There is no benefit (to you or to us) to order a March product in january,and it's an administrative nightmare. There are federal laws about keeping your money that long, plus the couple of times we did it we had people changing orders, adding to orders, dropping products from orders, changing their address. It's just a nightmare that we don't need.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[JonPerry]

Hands down this is single biggest item on my groups "to buy" list.

[Steve Cole]

While I remain mystified by the desire for a campaign book, I respect those who want it (which is why it's on the schedule). I'm sure it will work fine without FCB3 but I'm sure it will work better and better as more and more FC ships are released.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Wolverin61]

This is awesome news all right! Well, to me it is anyway.
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"His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."

[JonPerry]

[storeylf]

[terryoc]

Lee, the Victory By Any Means (VBAM) campaign system that FA is based on is highly modular and adaptable. You can either play it "straight out of the box" or customise it as much as you like. It's like a good RPG in that sense, especially when there is a moderator running things. I think that you will be favourably impressed with it.
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"Captain" Terry O'Carroll, fourteen papers published including six best of issue
"Man, Terry, you are like a loophole seeking missle!" - Mike West

[JonPerry]

[storeylf]

Sound likes we are probably at opposite ends of the spectrum to campaigns, like I said each player has his own idea of what a good campaign system is.

Some are happy with a series of linked missions. Some are happy with an all encompasing miltary/political/economic/exploration (4X) style campaign. And others fall in between.

Anything requiring a moderator is proabably out for us, there are only 3 of us regularly play and I expect we all want to play not moderate.

For me, it shouldn't need more than a few hours to come up with the basics of a decent campaign, of which a first playthrough will iron out most issues and let it evolve. But then I'm not after the politics and economics and strategic map and politics and research etc etc. First and foremost I want to play FC, at some point campaigns tend to become a game in their own right which you just happen to use FC (or whatever system) to play out some battles, at that point I lose interest.

I did a bit of digging on VBAM but not much. The best indicator I could find was :

[JonPerry]

When it comes out, I'm sure I won't be the only one posting details as to what we find inside, what it does and does not emphasize, the need for a GM, how much time to administer, etc.

[storeylf]

I hope you are not the only one 'reviewing' it - At the very least I enjoy reading players reviews.

[ericphillips]

From what i've seen of VBAMs systems they usually have a lot of options of how the campaign functions, called modules, which can scale it in both size and complexity. There are options for moderated and un-moderated games. I expect to see the same flexibility from Fed Admiral.

What is interesting is you can use the base VBAM Campaign System with FC or SFB now, but you need to work at it because you will have to adapt it to work.

Now, i am not a playtester, I have just been following the development on the VBAM forums.

From what I have seen of Fed Admiral is a couple of neat adjustments to make it more "star fleety." I know it it uses movement on a strategic hex map. VBAM uses a nodal connection system (kind of like warp jump points) to move, so the Fed Admiral is much more like F&E in that respect.

What does excite me is the flexible campaign levels. Conflicts can be "grand," which is a large war like the General War. "Regional" level gives a conflict in scope similar to a Klingon/Federation border war. The smallest is "local" and you command a small group of ships in a small area (like a sliver of the border, not the whole thing) while you have superiors that handle diplomacy and assign missions to you to execute with your fleet.

So, in essence, you have more than just fighitng, wiht mission to accomplish. Fun!

I wish I could see more. I wonder if the system will work with the F&E map?

[Targ]

Lee I’ll be buying it, partly for the collection and even if we never use it in its entirety there will hopefully good ideas etc. We can combine with the system we are using now.






Just checked this post once a gain too much Rom Ale