Federation Commander

hessen77 · Ensign Joined: 19 Jul 2019 Posts: 15

Posted this on Facebook but I was directed here.

I noticed the Middle Years version of the Galactic Survey Cruiser is missing Sensor Boxes. Is this deliberate so I have to get the one in Federation Pack 2?

Thanks.

mjwest · Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:55 am Post subject:

In FC, there are no scouts in the Middle Years. As such, the Middle Years GSC does not have special sensors.

The GSC in Federation ePack 2 is from the game's main General Ear era, and so has special sensors. (It should also get two extra drone racks over the Middle Years version.) The two ships are from different eras, so they naturally have differences like almost all other ships do between the two eras.
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hessen77 · Ensign Joined: 19 Jul 2019 Posts: 15

The Middle Year's Master Ship Chart for Federation Commander shows the Scout on there.

And the year of service of the scout begin in Y130 according SFB Master Annex File.

Could it be the sensors are missing because the Federation Commander rules for sensors were not written at time of release?

Steve Cole · Site Admin Joined: 11 Oct 2006 Posts: 3828

No, it is like he said, there are no sensors in FC during that period.
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hessen77 · Ensign Joined: 19 Jul 2019 Posts: 15

Thank you.

mjwest · Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2021 9:35 pm Post subject:

I do want to point out that there are special sensors during the Middle Years in SFB. That is definitely the case. (And there are even rare cases where special sensors exist even during the Early Years.) But Federation Commander isn't as granular as SFB and abstracts many things out to make a more even playing field and make things simpler. One of these is that there are no special sensors prior to the General War era ships, and they are not available to the Middle Years ships.
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hessen77 · Ensign Joined: 19 Jul 2019 Posts: 15

I understand Federation Commander was designed to streamline Star Fleet Battles and speed up the action. Special Sensors are part of Federation Commander. They were first put into the Communiques and they are in section 5S of the Reference Rulebook.

mjwest · Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:58 pm Post subject:

Yes, but ...

There were several things done to streamline the Middle Years in particular, beyond what was done for Federation Commander in general. Not including special sensors was just one of those things. Here are two other very large examples of such streamlining:
- The Romulans have warp.
- The Hydrans do not have hellbores.
- The Federation CA is the CAR.

On the first item, the Romulans do get warp at the very, very end of the Middle Years, but for the vast majority of it they are sublight only. But, sublight only for one of the big three empires would suck, so they got their warp ships in the FC Middle Years despite that being somewhat unrepresentative.

On the second item, we have the exact reverse situation. Hydrans do get their hellbores at the very end of the Middle Years, but they didn't get the weapon at all. This is because with all of the unequal shields on the Lyran and Klingon ships, hellbores would be very overpowering. So, no hellbores in the FC Middle Years.

Special sensors were not the only piece of streamlining done in the Middle Years, but it is one of them.
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Sgt_G · Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2021 9:53 pm Post subject: