Federation Commander

A preview of the Federation CA ship data card can be seen over at the mj12games.com forum:

http://mj12games.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... =15#p17441

mj12games wrote:A preview of the Federation CA ship data card can be seen over at the mj12games.com forum:

http://mj12games.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... =15#p17441

Very nice Dan!

-Jay

I'm coming at this as an outsider, since I have no experience with Starmada (or other games in the recent milieu, like Full Thrust). My perspective is as an avid FedCom player (and long-time SFB/SFU fan), with some previous dabbling in StarTrek:TSS, BattleTech, OGRE/GEV, etc..

I'm kind of missing having a graphic of some kind on the ship card representing the ship.

Having a graphic (even if it was just a silhouette-icon, like on half-inch SFB counters) helps with "role play" and sense of connection to the ship as something more than a collection of numbers.

It would also help new people identify their ADB minis (since things like the Fed DW and Fed NCL, or a D-5 and D-7 look a lot alike, to the untrained eye).

There isn't a lot of "whitespace" on the card to add anything, but it's just my $.02 as a an interested neophyte.

djdood wrote:I'm kind of missing having a graphic of some kind on the ship card representing the ship.

Thanks for the feedback!

We might be able to fit a small icon on the card ... I'll talk to Steve.

Would a background watermark of the ship work? Just a grayscale silhouette?

Per a request on DISCUS, here's a link to the D7 ship card:

http://mj12games.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 450#p17450

I am familiar with Starmada, and I agree that the lack of a graphic is one of the few things that made it less exciting for me. In other regards though this looks like an interesting project as Starmada is even faster to resolve than Federation Commander (although I never used shield shards, so I don't know what complexity they add).

I know that there can be a 1:1 translation from a SSD to a infoblock format (although Starmada does go a small step step further than 1:1) but even with a 1:1 infoblock... it feels more sterile. I think a silhouette or icon would help considerably though. I know that when I'm going through SSDs I am visually identifying more ships than reading names.

There's also the marketing/demo-day/eye-catch factor. Nobody walking by is going to get drawn in by some tables and charts. Everyone in a game store can recognize the Enterprise or a Klingon.

djdood wrote:There's also the marketing/demo-day/eye-catch factor. Nobody walking by is going to get drawn in by some tables and charts

That's what the minis are for!

True.

But you also have to find someone who has minis... or else buy / paint your own!

Scoutdad wrote:But you also have to find someone who has minis... or else buy / paint your own!

There's a rumor that you have a few

The way I heard it is that it's better to use Scoutdad's minis than bring your own and risk them getting lost in his massive armada

Of course, you can always bring them and feel the insignifigance of your relatively feeble efforts to build a fleet