Federation Commander

Cat Who Sleeps With Dogs wrote:Are there any ship cards for bases in the Middle Years available?

As noted in Briefing #2, the following bases are work as published: the Base Station from Tholian Attack, the Commercial Platform and DefSats from Orion Attack, the ground bases from Reinforcements Attack, and the Starbase from Battleships Attack.

In all cases, be sure to use period appropriate weaponry. This means slower drones, no carronade or snares, Pl-S are Pl-G, ESGs have no capacitors, and Hydrans use crappy Stingers.

Thanks! It would be great to see these General Units that work with the Middle Years made available in PDF format.

Check out the Master Ship Chart. Look up the ship or base you want and look for the "Comm Rev" and "Comm Large" columns. This will show in which Communique the ship card was reprinted. Granted, it may be in grayscale instead of color, but still, there you have it. The Base Station, freighters, and a few other civilian ships are available that way.

Thanks, that is great! I hadn't really paid attention to those columns and just looked at the E23 Pack column.

Still would be nice to see these in color.

More great battles with middle years. The weaker flank and rear shields make for some great maneuvering! The lack of rear firing weapons on the Fed CA make that ship less invincible.

I like the Middle Years a great deal. Power tends to be a bit scarce as compared to the GW era, and this can force some interesting tactical choices. Someone mentioned the weaker flank and rear shields, and yes, those are a factor as well. This era can make for a real test of skill.

Yes, I can agree with this as well. Middle years has the most "flavor" in duels and squadron pairs. Lack of power and less efficent firing arcs on classes of these ships means some ships will not be "uber" vessels that can do everthing.

For example, if you doing a Frigate duel, the Fed DD+ is all you got. Good ship for example, but has gaps against certain empires. The Klingon F5 is another example of this as well. Frigate battles make think to your self "wow, I wish I had a DWH right now".

MY is my preference as well. Closer to TOS than any other era.

hello
n light of the version 3 upload, I figured it would be as well to re-start the overall discussion thread for the broader Omega project in FC.

How much depth would you like for the current crop of factions? Which empires would you like to see added later on? And are there any other aspects of this region of the galaxy (such as fighters, gunboats, or X-ships) you'd look forward to seeing explored in further detai.

regards
jessica patel

wrote:MY is my preference as well. Closer to TOS than any other era.

Mike, do you know if anymore Middle Years products or ships are going to be made available? Maybe either in a communique or ship pack? I loved Briefing #2 and would love to see our options expanded. Like maybe an older version of the Lyran Wildcat or the Klingon LD5?
Please advise.

There really aren't any plans to do more Middle Years products in Federation Commander. At least that I am aware of.

When we did Briefing #2, we set the parameters for what we meant by "Middle Years" and ended up having to scrounge around a bit to fill out the 72 slots. The base definition of "Middle Years" is ships appearing from (using SFB dates) Y120 - Y159. There were four primary exceptions:
- The Romulan Kestrels and early Eagles were included because sublight ships would suck. Only the very, very early versions were done.
- The Hydran Dragoon and Knight should have made the cut, but were discarded because they would be unbalanced against their traditional foes.
- Any ships already published were not included, but were noted in the rules section.
- No local defense/national guard ships were included. They are kind of their own thing, with their own flavor. They didn't really fit with the overall effort, as they are nearly unique secondary ships. The Briefing was focused on the mainline starships of the era.

Given that there are very, very few ships (if any) that remain to be done.

Note that there were certain ships that kinda feel like Middle Years that were not included because they didn't fit with the dates:
- Early Lyran trimarans are made in the very late Y160s. They are GW era ships, not Middle Years ships.
- Hydran Horse and Trailer. They are really crappy war cruisers (which were fixed in the Mongol and Tartar designs), not traditional light cruisers.
- Klingon C9. It is a GW era design. The C6, a Middle Years design, was included.
- Kzinti DD. I had really planned on including this until I realized how late its introduction date was.

I hope that explains things better.

I suspect that they would be quite a long shot at best, yet I wouldn't mind seeing Middle Years Ship Cards for the Vudar, Paravians, Carnivons, and Inter-Stellar Concordium.

Indeed, the various "Paravian timelines" from Star Fleet Battles Module C6 open up more of an opportunity to make use of the Middle Years ISC fleet - not least the revised version of the "unrefitted" Star Cruiser from the 2016 edition of SFB Module C2 (which now has an "empty" slot where the PPD would later go on the "regular" CA, and where a third plasma torpedo would go on the CAT).

Plus, any of the "starter" ships done up for the Jindarians (as in, the ones with a year in service date prior to Y1 in SFB terms), be they asteroid or metal hulled, would be viable for Middle Years (and Early Years) play. And, perhaps, for use in Omega and the LMC also...

The Jindarians are a separate question that Steve has to decide whether to do or not. Pretty much any Jindarian ships done would apply to MY as well as the main game.

For the other four, sure, they have candidates for the MY. The Vudar were not originally included because they hadn't been published yet. That said, their actual MY fleets were very minimal. The ISC were also intentionally omitted because they face no one. Also, their ships are extremely powerful for the era, so there is a great chance for them to be unbalancing. The Paravians and Carnivons have only just been introduced in recent CLs, so it could take a while to get to those.

In summary, all four have legitimate candidates. I just don't know if any are ready to be published, or if there is enough to sustain a follow up product. Maybe some ePacks could be done, but that is a Steve question.

Not a question to even consider until we have done Fighters, Gunboats, and X-ships, at least. There are many open paths and we don't have to pick one today. We'll decide THEN if any of those paths are worth taking.