Federation Commander

Oh, sorry if I wasn't clear enough. You are supposed to wait until Friday (so that I have a chance to pick my races and send them out in encrypted format to prove that I can't use the knowledge of your picks) and then email them to me. My email address (if it isn't in my profile) is hillpe at comcast dot net.

That way no one can see your picks, and intentionally under bid you. If you like why don't you update your bids to slighly different numbers and then email them to me on Saturday.

Sorry, I guess I did't read clearly enough. I'll send them to you.

One rules change that I am noodling is the strategic movement phase.

Right now the movement of ships is very much flash forward without any ability to react to enemy movement. I'm afraid that this will result in unrealistic stragaties. For example it would be nearly impossible to chase an enemy fleet or convoy because they have several hexes of movement, and the pursuer doesn't know where the enemy fleet will go, and so would have to guess. I can think of two alternative options to deal with this.

This first has the most overhead associated with it, but also the most gradularity of movement. Basically we would do the impulses of movement one at a time. This would cause the movement phase take somewhat longer, but would allow you to send reinforments to a major attack, and also allow you to run down slower moving fleets with faster components.

The other option would be to allow the players to designate enemy fleets that a ship wants to chase. Basically during your movement orders you would tell me that you want certain ships or fleet to move towards certain enemy fleets no matter where they move. You could also designate some "reactionary" movements. For example "If an enemy fleet within 2 hexes of planet A then start to move fleet B to support it". This has some nice features, but could allow fleets to move in ways that you didn't want. For example you gave the above order, the enemy could attack in more then one planet resulting in your forces being deployed in a way that you wouldn't want if you had more time to think about it. On the other hand, it also allows for feints and slight of hand, which is somewhat realistic (Operation Glimmer and Taxable acting as cover attacks for Operation Overlord on D-Day). You could also say things like "Run down enemy convoy A".

In the above two options, I would probably have a rule, "The number of impulses that have passed between contact of the fleets will of the number of turns that will pass in the subsequent battle before the reinforcements arrive". So if contact occures during impulse 3, and the reinforcements arrive at the hex on impulse 6, then 3 turns will go by in the battle before the reinforcements can be brought on the map.

The other option is to stay with what we have now. I would probably vote for option 2, but I wanted people's thoughts?

#2

I'm interested in joining in but I only have the Klingon Border rules.

I'd be interested in playing. If admiral slots are filled, I'll captain. Although I'm not the world's greatest FC player. FCOL username is bugshipcrazy.

So as of 7:49 PM (still four hours to join as an admiral!) we have the following players

Admirals:
Dread_Lord
pinecone
Andromedan
Sir_Krotar
Tugger
DoggieMon
terryoc

Captains:
The_Rock

It also looks as if we have eight viable races:
Fed
Klingon
Romulan
Hydran
Lyran
Selt
Thol
Gorn

So I have finished the next draft of the rules. I would like folks to proof read it, but here are the major changes:

* Dreadnaughts are speed 5 (they are quite fast in the SFB universe)
* Conditional movement (take a close look at this please)
* Removed the turn counter for convoys - convoys will also meet with the same reward
* Raids will always find their target (they are quite expensive as they are)
* Fast warships can operate at twice the logic distance
* Cripples will start a battle with 1/2 their boxes filled

I think that is the major stuff. Here is the location:
http://home.comcast.net/~hillpe/fc/FC_Campaign.pdf

I have my empire picks, but not everyone's email, so I've sent my picks to Kenneth whose email I do have. He can provide proof of my honesty after the empire picks are sent to me.

squadron scale, right?

Well, the rules say that it is up to the players of each battle, and there are some guidelines if they can't agree. Honestly in a campaign I greatly prefer squadron scale because ships don't blow up quite as easily, but it is up to the players.

Oh, and since my picks are in, feel free to send me your empire picks at your convience, but the deadline is Oct 14h. The sooner the better though. (note I must be crazy or at least losing track of time, I said I would give a week and a half so I pushed back the deadline)

Option #2 sounds good to me.

Also, I think we should use Squadron Scale.

What will the map look like for 8 players?

Maybe an octagon with one player in each corner?

How big is the map for battles?