Federation Commander

[Steve Cole]

Were they not in that captain's log?
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Nerroth]

I don't have access to either file right now, but I recall that some of the Early Years rules that weren't in Captain's Log #39 proper went into the CL39 Supplemental instead.
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FC Omega Discussion (v3)
FC LMC Discussion

[jeffery smith]

the laser rules are not in CL 39 or CL supplement 39
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fun fun fun in the sun sun sun

[mjwest]

[Steve Cole]

Mike, send me a divison chief memo on FC EY and let me know everything I need to round up or spin up to make it happen. Might as well do it right.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[mjwest]

[Kohanavich]

I would love to see early years for FC. Besides CL 39, are there any more ships published? Might have to just make out own SSD's and give it a try.

We have a game based on SFB/FC for the First Romulan War by the way. Pre plotted movement, nuc missiles with area effect etc.. been messing about with it for awhile....

[Nerroth]

There are a few more playtest Ship Cards in the CL39 Supplemental File.

There's also a provisional FC Early Years MSC over in the Commander's Circle, but it's missing a few Tholian hulls (namely, the NDD and NFF - each in their particle cannon configurations) which were available in this era.
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FC Omega Discussion (v3)
FC LMC Discussion

[Kohanavich]

Not sure how you would market it and there has been plenty of discussion on this thread. How about kickstsrter or patreon? How about pre-pay? After I receive the CL39 SSD's can probably make W and Y ships for FC no problem on my own. I would rather buy them from ADB.

[Steve Cole]

Marketability is indeed a key element of any product decision, but it's based on more than money.

Obviously, you have to convince me that there are enough people who will buy it, but that number is key on several levels.

First, you have to meet the minimum print run. If you want die cut counters, that means 1000. If you just want laminated cards, probably half of that. If you want PDFs, then the minium run is one.

But, second, you have to sell enough not just for the minimum print run but to be worth the payroll time to create the product. Obviously, I cannot do a month of work to create something that sells one copy, even if the minimum print run is one.

Then third, you have to look at what is best for the specific product line (FC in this case). Doing much work on Early Years delays the already announced next project (Fighters Attack). Can anyone tell me that Early Years will outsell Fighters Attack? I just don't think you can.

Then, fourth, look at the whole company. I have more projects in line than I can finish this year (F&E-FO15, F&E-ME, FedAdmiral, CL51, ACTASF-1.2-Deluxe, KMSSB, RMSSB). Also look at counters. The plan is to print a sheet of single-sided counters early next year that Covers SFB X2, the reprint of F&E-PO, FC-FA, and one sheet not yet decided.
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The Guy Who Designed Fed Commander

[Kohanavich]

You are right, the fighters will sell and you are running a business.

[Nerroth]

There had been talk earlier of assembling the playtest rules and Ship Cards from CL39 and CL39S into an FC playtest pack, akin to those currently available for Omega and the LMC.

Assuming that there would be any time to put these pieces together this side of 2016 (which there may well not be), could such a file be reasonably doable - and, if so, would its success (or otherwise) act as a better gauge of how well (or not) the FC player base might take to the Early Years as an alternate setting?
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FC Omega Discussion (v3)
FC LMC Discussion

[mjwest]

The Early Years playtest ePack kinda died on the vine when the primary instigator for it pretty much said he wouldn't buy PDF. I got the impression that soured Steve pretty hard on that effort.
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Federation Commander Answer Guy

[Paul B]

Yeah, guilty as charged.

To be honest personally I find the idea of an Early Years playtest pack a little facetious. The ships already exist and are being drawn from other sources, and I think it's a less of a case that the ships need to be tested than it is a test if anyone will actually buy it. So why not simply call it what it is? An Early Wars Booster Pack? And from what I can tell the test is not really are there enough FC players who will buy Early Wars, the question is are there enough FC players to buy much of anything?

Not counting the tactics manual FedCom hasn't seen a major release in 3 years (Reinforements Attack). With such a long gap between releases how many people are still playing? People generally want new content on a regular basis, and whether the lack of releases is due to lack of sales near the end or simply due to a lack of time because of an expanded number of product lines I suspect the result is much the same in that many players have moved on to other games.

ADB's focus meanwhile seems to be re-packaging and re-releasing content through digital stores, an endeavour which undoubtedly requires less work than the creation of new products and is hopefully bringing them in a good amount of revenue but is none the less of pretty much no interest to players like myself who want new content distributed in print form. It also does little to maintain or expand their presence in retail stores. There is also of course Captains Log but I'm doubtful of how many Fedcom players purchase a product which ultimately provides comparatively little FC-specific content as CL is spread across so many game lines.

Now it has been said the most of the ships that could be in Federation Commander are in Federation Commander, so maybe the game has pretty much run its course in terms of releases and it's wise to focus on doing the same with another game like ST:Starmada or ST:ACTA but as a FedCom player they don't hold much appeal for me.

I do hope that when Fighters Attack comes out that there is still a substantial number of players who will invest in it and hopefully those sales can spur the creation of additional print-products for the game but given the time between releases I am quite skeptical.

For me personally in the absence of FC print products and interest in the other game lines I'm most looking forward to the Master Starship Books of which I already own the first two.

[Nerroth]

Since the FC Omega and LMC playtest packs are each available on the ADB storefront as well as online, could an Early Years pack not be offered in the same manner?

(I should note that only the most recent edition of the Omega pack is available in print, since it is the only one to have been formatted to fit ADB's print on demand formatting layout. Fortunately, by the time the LMC pack was being assembled, I was able to make it "POD-compliant" out of the gate.)


As you say, not every FC player may want to pick up issues of Captain's Log just for the sub-set of FC data found in each volume - which is precisely the reason why I'd want to see a dedicated EY pack offered (alongside the Omega and LMC ones). A player can then decide if they want to get the EY pack on its own merits, and the sales (be they in print or electronic format) can then be more directly correlated to the amount of interest and/or support there is for that era of play in FC.

I suppose I was fortunate, in that the work which Rick Smith did in setting up the InDesign template for the first incarnation of the Omega playtest pack made it manageable for me to be able to modify the later revisions later on (and to re-purpose the template outright in order to do the LMC pack). But I was all too aware that the odds of either project even reaching the playtest stage would have been slim to negligible had Rick and I not been able to put in most of the work "off-site", so to speak.

(Further afield, I would like to have a shot at the Triangulum Galaxy one day. I even had a go at converting the rules needed to fly the Helgardian and Imperium ships. But given the kind of problems there are in SFB with the playtest rules for the Arachnid hellfire and hellblazer torpedoes, and that it would be preferable to offer all four of the current M33 playtest empires in a single pack, I'd be wary of giving M33 a proper go unless that setting gets formally published over in SFB.)


In any case, I'd argue that it's far too early to start signing FC's death warrant. There are still more options to bring over from SFB - be it gunboats, new ship classes (such as fast war cruisers or heavy war destroyers), the "lost empires" (such as those factions previewed for FC in CL48), first-generation X-ships (which I'd imagine being good for several FC products' worth of Ship Cards), second-generation X-ships (which could be put on the table once SFB Module X2 is done), or the Xorkaelian Tyranny (a new "big bad" we'll hopefully learn more of once SFB makes the jump to the X2 era) - even if one wishes to stay in or around the Alpha Octant.

And of course, even if they need to be approached in a more cost-effective manner, I would still like to see new frontiers such as Omega and the LMC enter formal publication. (I do still need people to playtest both packs, to see just how well - or not - they actually work...)

While it is unfortunate how long a gap there has been since the last go-around, I'd like to think there's still plenty of road left to run in the fullness of time.


And in all fairness, FC is by no means the only ADB game with a few gaps in its schedule. It took a very long time for F&E ISC War to be gotten around to publication when its time came along, and it's taken several years since then to get the next "new" F&E module, Minor Empires (LDR/Selt/Vudar), to the brink of publication. (Part of that is due to the time it takes for each fresh batch of double-sided counters to be ordered - which includes waiting for stocks of older countersheets to run out so that replacement runs can be done alongside "new" ones.)

Similarly, the only recent "full" SFB module (as in, one with a full-sized countersheet included) has been Module C6 - and X2 has been on the waiting list for a very long time itself. And while there are new potential options for the Prime Directive RPG (I'm particularly keen to see PD Tholians come to fruition), that product line has been caught up in the wake of Mongoose's supposed plans for renewing the core Mongoose Traveller game system.

While it would be nice if each game didn't have to wait so long for its turn in line, I wouldn't necessarily say that FC in particular been singled out for poor treatment. And of course, since some projects need more design time put in to get right (not least of which being X2), it's only reasonable to expect a more extended incubation period for those new projects which need more time and effort in order to get those particular concepts done right.
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FC Omega Discussion (v3)
FC LMC Discussion