Federation Commander

[Steve Cole]

Having decided that I've been wrong to find excuses not to work on this project, I started serious work (again) yesterday.

The problems are multiple...

1. It's not a fun project for me. It's about like a trip to the dentist for a root canal. That's why I avoid it. Page layout is work, not fun. At least with an RPG it's fun to read. I cannot say reading campaign rules is fun. I can say it's not fun. If Jean was in Amarillo full time, she'd be doing this, not me. (Worst possible case scenario is the book doesn't get done before Jean reports for duty in July 2013, but then, she does it in a month.)

2. It's a LOT of pages with a lot of work per page. Just doing the page layout, with all of the usual file translation issues, formatting, charts, tables, illustrations, and so forth is bad enough, but the book is full of typos, bad grammar, bad punctuation, verb-subject disagreement, randomized capitalization, interchangeable terms for the same thing (race, empire, faction, power), and other issues. There were over 170 "things that had to be fixed" in the first six pages. Half of those were format things that were just the normal things that happen when people send in files that my computer hates. (My computer cannot use his style sheets, so the whole document has to be reduced to pure text and then the bold, large type, italics, and other stuff done manually. His computer and my computer do tabs differently, so every tab has to be done manually over.) Half of them were "English issues" and "Jean things." This makes the book tedious, a lot of hard work, and not just zero fun, but serious pain to do.

3. The "game design" is good, even brilliant. Nothing wrong with that. The worst design issue is that in a list of 100 defined terms, Jay forgot to define three terms. I've done worse.

The way we are proceeding is for me to take a few pages, do what needs done (with Jean's help), then send them to Jay. He then uses the "Lessons Learned" to do a few more pages that he sends to me. In theory, since every time I spot a problem he fixes that problem for the entire remainder of the document, we'll gain speed as we go along, but it's VERY early in the process and trying to do a mathematical prediction at this point is pretty useless. (Remember that in my 10+ hour day, I get at most 3-4 hours of "design time". It took all of three hours to do the first six pages. Assuming 240 pages, that means 39 more days, which will obviously exceed the "Cinderella point" where I have to "punt" Fed Admiral to "after Origins" and move on to work on other products. Hopefully, we'll get some acceleration, because at this point and given this math, the only way that FA will happen before Origins is for SFM:A to be delayed to after Origins. Let's see. My favorite project in five years versus the project I compared to a root canal. Let's hope it doesn't come to that decision.)

Oh, by the way, I thought I had spent two hours on chapter 1 way back when and then an hour fixing Jean's stuff. This topic says I spent six hours way back when, so 39 days is wrong, more like 69 days. Unless things speed up a LOT this won't happen before Origins. Jay thinks he can speed it up a lot. I am giving him a chance.)
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Steve Cole]

I did chapter 2 (one page) and the first page of chapter 3 yesterday. I had to stop and ask jay some questions about how he wanted to format titles. I don't want to have to go back and do them over.

Jay is discovering some format tricks that are saving me work. He finally figured out the tabs, which saved a ton of work. The one page of chapter 2 took over an hour (plus a second hour spent showing Jay how to do chapter 3) and had (let me go count) 41 corrections that Jean and I had to make.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Steve Cole]

I am determined to finish Fed Admiral, now if I can, this fall if I have to. (We're up to page 20 and I'm waiting on Jay to send the file for 3.5 and 3.6). There are a lot of Jean issues and English issues, but those are mostly a matter of fixing them on the run in the current file and telling Jay to be sure they're fixed in all future files. (In theory, he sends me 4 new pages per day, learning the lessons of previous days as to what needs to be fixed or reformatted). The capitalization issue is one of hammering it through, but is mostly a matter of deciding if this or that gets capped and running a search/replace. There are cases where two interchangeable terms are used when one should be standard (e.g. Maintenance Cost vs Maintenance Expense) but gosh, that never happens in SFB, now does it? There are some format things (we want a standard way of doing cross references, not multiple formats). Again, those are things we discover as we hit them and Jay fixes them in all future files. The tech block thing is all wrong (under it, if you have an FF and a DD, you have to research an FFS and DDS separately), but the fix replaces 3 or 4 paragraphs (the math-EP-d100 system is fine, but what you do and do not have to research is quirky). Biggest issue is semantic, making sure that both "rigid historical" and "make up whatever you want" scenarios are covered in each instance. I don't like the intel rule but the only thing that has to be added is a sentence at the first saying it's ok to just ignore it if you don't like it. (It's a cute mathematical thing but has nothing to do with how real world intel works, and I spent 17 years of my life doing real world intel, so it just irks me that it's so so so "wrong". As a gamer, I think it's just a lot of work for no real point, but if you want an intel system, this one will do.)
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Jean]

I just want to chime in and say that poor Jay is getting all the standardization we've created in three years all at once! It is hard on him, but he's truly learning quickly and I think this will be a great book and lots of fun.

SVC and I are also having to learn the game terminology as we go, so there is a learning curve there as well.

We all want it done right from the start, so we're being super careful. This is no reflection on Jay -- think of it as trying to blend Wii Tennis and Wii Bowling. Many of the things look similar and they sort of work the same, but there are differences that we have to accommodate on both ends and we don't know the differences until we find them!

As I explained to a gamer friend once, the problem in gaming comes about when the GM reads a rule one way and the player reads it a different way. The player plans actions based on his reading and the GM plans based on his reading. Only when things don't go as expected do the folks realize that there's an issue. Then they iron things out and life goes on.
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Business Manager/RPG Line Editor
Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc.

[Steve Cole]

I got onto page 27 yesterday (out of maybe 250). That's through rule 3.6, leaving some "work to be done" in earlier sections. Jay sent me 3.7 but I haven't had time to work on it yet today, but I do plan to. Jay is learning very rapidly how to fix things. Not perfect yet, but getting there, and there are still glitches where his rules don't match SFU (requiring a line or two or a paragraph or two of fixes). No idea of a publication date. This thing is much farther from publication than I thought it was, and I fear I'll run out of time. Already getting a LOT of pressure from the partners to set this aside or at least slow it down to 2-3 pages a day and move on to other projects. Given the math, doing this between now and Origins is going to cost us at least SFMA and very likely a second product from the published "Now thorugh origins" schedule.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Steve Cole]

Three more pages (through 29). These three covered the supply system. It's VERY complex compared to F&E, an extraordinary amount of fuss and bother for something that (to my mind) the staff weenies take care of without bothering us command-grade combat officers. I know enough not to outrun my supplies, so why should I have to do all of this work? The system is seriously different from F&E, which concerns me. It also concerns me that the system Jay is coming up with is going to generation zillions of "new planets" not on the F&E map, and I am not sure that I want them in the gazetteer. I certainly have no time to vette them. There is also the point that a "marked on the map planet" in F&E generates more money than six blank hexes, each with 50 colony planets, and yet Jay's system is drawing supply from those newly named and generated colony planets. This leads to a mountain of concern. His system won't work without an entire book of new maps with zillions of new colony worlds, and I'm simply NOT going to make those maps and colony worlds an official part of the SFU knowledgebase.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[JonPerry]

[Steve Cole]

I would guess that any campaign can generate planets, but Jay's earlier pages refer to included sample-suggested-scenario maps, which apparently include planets he generated. None of these planets are not going become official.

I really cannot grasp why a campaign, by definition, obviously needs lots more planets.

The F&E ecoomic system says that a "small" planet generates 2 EPs.

A proviince of six hexes and 300 "colonies" generates 2 EPs.

So a colony generates 0.0067 EPs.

I fail to see how this colony is supporting ships, or is even relevant to any rational supplygrid or ecoomic system.

Basically, Jay's system surrounds an arc welder with fireflies that you cannot even see in the glare of the arc welder. I am not grasping how the system could possibly function.

But whatever. I don't have to play this.

Waiting this morning for the next file from Jay, but the math on page progress isn't looking great. I strongly suspect that unless things really start to accelerate, we're looking at a 250-page project that's going to progress at about 6 pages a week through Origins and then get back to 25 pages per week. That won't be my decision, and She Who Makes That Decision doesn't read this BBS. Maybe if you emailed her of your enthusiam and support for this project, she'd taking a less dim view.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[JonPerry]

Not knowing what the $$/supply system in FA looks like, and not wishing to stick my nose into the business of She Who Is Referred To In Caps, I'll just comment on this -

[Steve Cole]

I got two pages (and change) done today, but ran into a roadblock, so two pages is all we get today.

Jay's next section is his command rating thing. He made up a whole new system which is radically different from the one used by SFB and F&E, and needs to do it over using the SFB-F&E system. (His system produces totally different fleets, and won't work. Licensing requires a degree of consistency between all of the games of the universe, and if he's going to have a command system, it has to produce the same results.)

Also, his scenario set up system needs to cover SFB, FC, and Starmada (not just FC) which simply means whenever he says "FC" he needs to replace that with "FC, SFB, or Starmada" but I will let him do that rather than taking a whole day to do it for him.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Steve Cole]

The problem I have with the "lots of planets to fight over" is that by universe data there are 50 such colony planets per F&E hex, very few of them any more valuable than any other. You're fighting over the "area" not any specific point. I guess maybe if you're doing a really bigger map scale then perhaps scattering a few planets around willy-nilly may give you some abstract notion of this "area value" thing, but it's just going to drive my professional military brain wonky. The reality is that on any plausible scale, there's a colony (or a dozen of them) in every hex, and having a campaign map that has a colony here, one two hexes that way, one three hexes another way, one four hexes beyond that is creating "battle relevant terrain" that doesn't really exist in the real (imaginary SFU) universe. I guess you have to have something to fight over, but I'm not making any sense of it. When the allies invaded Normandy and drove to the Rhine River, they were not trying to liberate cities that were of random value and scattered at random intervals; they were trying to liberate the whole country of France. These "random planets of random value at random intervals" give you something to fight over, but you're fighting a war that bears no relationship to any real war really fought in real space.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Savedfromwhat]

I think the vbam system just abstracts different things then you would mr cole. When I have used the vbam system before I always assumed that the planet. Or colony was just the physical representation of an area/sector/system. Yes it is not perfect, but it is great for creating compelling scenarios and battles, whih F and E a fantastic game in it's own right you end up creating the same battle with a couple of different ships on each side over and over again.

[JonPerry]

Re: the command system bit. I know SFB has command rating/fleet building rules - and I know that FC does not (that I've seen). Never played Starmada. If FA is to tie into all three of those systems, does this suggest that FC might someday get a set of command rules for fleet battles? Is there some associative property of command rules at work here?

[Dal Downing]

[Steve Cole]

Yeah, that's it, any published FC scenario uses SFB command limits. FC doesn't really need them (and SFB players ignore them at their peril as the game takes weeks to play with 20 ships per side).

Jay's system produced very large fleets, not just violating background but producing unworkable battles even FC cannot handle. (Starmada can.)
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander