Virtual Deodorant

Active Ingredient · Post by **Active Ingredient** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 1:23 am

OK, this has been bugging me. How many people actually play â€“ or want to play - FCOL? (SFBOL doesnâ€™t count). I posted a message asking for help for a newbie. At last count, there were over 500 views. With only 4 posts in the thread, doing a little math tells me over 100 people read it! â€¦ but besides JPAT, nobody else responded. Nobody! Not a one! Zippo. Nada. What happened? Did I forget to put on my virtual deodorant?

But maybe itâ€™s not me. I have been on the client several times, yet have never seen another FC room open. Only SFB. So I ask again â€¦ is there anybody out there who plays FCOL?

Iâ€™m curious â€“ are a lot of people like me? You would like to play but have very limited free time on your hands? Perhaps there are a lot of you who have only 1 free hour a month to play FCOL. i.e. interested, but donâ€™t want to make any commitments that you canâ€™t keep.

Can we get a list going here so I (and everyone else) can see just how many people are interested in FCOL? -- and please -- donâ€™t feel like you must have tons of free time in order to â€œqualifyâ€?. â€œMy name is ****** and I have a demo account and I can only play one hour per monthâ€? is a perfectly accepted and encouraged response!

â€œFCOL looks really confusing, but if someone would show me how to use it, then I MIGHT be interestedâ€? is also a perfectly accepted and encouraged response!

OK, Iâ€™ll start.

_Active_Ingredient_ : I have a subscription. On a good week I can probably find one free night after the kids are in bed and get in about 2 hours. Every now and then I may try to get in a quick 20-30 minutes while my wife is washing up / making the kids lunches, etc.

OK. Iâ€™m slapping on the virtual â€œOld Spiceâ€? and gargling with some virtual â€œScopeâ€? for good measure. Letâ€™s see how many replies I get.

djdood · Post by **djdood** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 1:48 am

I read every thread on the board, but since I don't play online I had nothing to offer.

bobrunnicles · Post by **bobrunnicles** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 4:56 am

I'm working on it - I generally prefer to play ftf but since my primary opponent over the summer is moving back to college for the semester we're trying to get FC Online going (see the other thread for errors encountered so far). Otherwise I work 3pm to midnight during the week which means no free evenings as a rule, only free mornings......

Active Ingredient · Post by **Active Ingredient** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 10:00 pm

yeah, I prefer to play f2f also - but it's not always an option.

But if I ever get this working from home thing going, I'd be up for some lunchtime FCOL.

DrFaustus · Post by **DrFaustus** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 10:38 pm

I intend to get a sub when payday arives but I am in 'ole blightly so GMT timezone.

As for the lack of replies this is the 'net. The ratio of View to reply is always pretty huge.

bobrunnicles · Post by **bobrunnicles** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 10:50 pm

Active Ingredient wrote:yeah, I prefer to play f2f also - but it's not always an option.

But if I ever get this working from home thing going, I'd be up for some lunchtime FCOL.

Hey, it could happen

Kang · Post by **Kang** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 8:57 am

I'd like to play but it's very confusing when you download the client and run it and there's only four people on there, and they're on the SFB side of things, and the FC does not seem to have a demo version.

Perhaps it's just because I live in the UK and I looked first thing in the morning when you lot at the other side of the pond are still asleep....

I might try a $10 3-month sub to try playing against my son here in the UK. But we'll see....

Davec_24 · Post by **Davec_24** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 9:24 am

I couldn't find the FC demo version either. All the links to it got me the SFB one instead, and I couldn't actually figure out how it works.

Plus since I'm also in the UK, I'm unlikely to be online during US players' evening time since this is early hours of the morning for us.

Kang, we could try FCOL if you can find me the demo version to give it a shot with (student loan = no subscription unless I know it'll be worth it). It'd be nice to get in more FC, I've been a bit deprived of opponents over the summer, with my regular gaming group dispersed all over the country for summer break.

Kang · Post by **Kang** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 11:12 am

Davec_24 wrote:Kang, we could try FCOL if you can find me the demo version to give it a shot with (student loan = no subscription unless I know it'll be worth it). It'd be nice to get in more FC, I've been a bit deprived of opponents over the summer, with my regular gaming group dispersed all over the country for summer break.

Fishing successful. If we try it, I'll pay your 3-month trial subscription. You scrounging g1t

bobrunnicles · Post by **bobrunnicles** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 1:08 pm

You know the demo version is free, and lets you fight a Fleet Scale Fed CA against a Klingon D7, right? Might be the best way to at least check you can both connect etc. Did you download the example videos? They helped me a lot to get things going, even if I was just tooling around with it solo.

Davec_24 · Post by **Davec_24** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 1:50 pm

I don't know where to get the FCOL demo version from, or the example videos. If you go to the FCOL homepage (http://www.sfbonline.com/fc.jsp) there doesn't seem to be anything useful on there with regards to FCOL, just SFBOL. Maybe I'm just missing something majorly...

bobrunnicles · Post by **bobrunnicles** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 2:31 pm

I believe you have to download the SFB Online client, then once you do that there's an option to play FC with it. I know, it's about as clear as mud, but once you download the SFB client and fire it up, when you click 'start new game' Federation Commander is an option.

Certainly the documentation seems to suggest that FCOnline is a separate entity, but it's not. Try the above and you should be rolling in no time.

Edit - the videos appear under the 'Tutorials' page, again linked to from the standard SFBOnline front page:

Starting a Federation Commander Game
Moving Pieces in a Federation Commander Game
Firing/Launching and Damage Allocation in a Federation Commander Game

Kang · Post by **Kang** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 3:17 pm

Thanks for the advice. However I have tried running the client and it just looks like it has SFB in it. Do you mean that you actually have to start a new game somehow and then it gives you the choices?

But I will indeed look at the videos as soon as I get home.

Dave, apparently the client you download is the same thing as the SFBOL one and FCOL is part of it.

bobrunnicles · Post by **bobrunnicles** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 4:09 pm

Yes, if you kick off the client it will look like SFB online and you even have to enter/sign-in under 'SFB Online - Demo Mode' (or at least I do). Once it fires up, go to the top left under 'Game' and select new game. That should give you the option to play FC, as well as F&E, Star Fleet Warlord and four different varieties of SFB. Can't say I ever tried any of the others but the FC version appears to work fine. Select a room name for your game and off you go. Like I said, clear as mud, right?

Kang · Post by **Kang** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 6:50 pm

Right. Done it. Looks fine, thanks for your help.

I will watch the vids and then get cracking.

See you in space

Check your six first....