Federation Commander

Kang wrote:Why not use Skype, MSN or similar to communicate? Worldwide voice comms for free....

Take a look at the article I wrote for playing FC using Instant Messenger programs; you might get some ideas from that. It's in CL#40. Note that I don't mean for you to play it over the Internet like that, as opposed to using FC Online; just that you might be able to tweak your comms a little.

I like using voice chat too. My choice is XFire from http://www.xfire.com. It is free, we can put each other on a friends list for SFBOL to help set up games, it sounds great, and there is a Mac version as well, at http://ifire.games4mac.de/us/index.shtml

Unlike teamspeak and the like, you don't need to run a server.

Number of Turns: Eight turns is fine with me as well.

Dropping Out: I believe Swiss format can support dropouts. So, I believe there is no obligation to keep playing after the first round. However, the idea of using swiss format is to provide a reason to keep playing.


Ships Selections Part I: I am not sure why the Booster #92 drone and escort ships would be blocked from the tournament for any reason other than they are not yet in FC Online (which is obviously a valid reason). I believe they were allowed at the Origins Tournament. You were just prohibited from using the AEGIS rules for the escort ships.

Ships Selections Part II: Before players finalize their ship selections, I strongly recommend that they try out there ships selections in a dummy FC Online game to make sure they are the laminated version of the ship and that they have the features you are expecting. This is epsecially true with the Orions. Not everthing may have been implemented in FC Online.

FC Online Interface Caution: The client does not currently support pre-game arming of Hellbores (this has been reported to Paul). Also, we may need to get Paul to modify plasma feastures of FC Online so that Plasma can be pre-game armed such that you can perform the third turn of loading during the Energy Allocation phase of the first turn (in order to implement Terry's special rule for plasma).

I support this Thread.

Just finished playing a FCOL game (actually, a continuation of a saved game) and a thought occurred to me. It might be a good idea to cap the number of ships per player to two (rather than 3-4 from Origins), and lower the points used to select them from. I suggest this only because even with two ships per side, the games take quite awhile. The game I am in now has 3 per side (well, 2 and a freighter) and it seems to take over an hour per turn (or slightly more when things get down and dirty). Add in a ton of seeking weapons that 3-4 ships (6-8 ships total!) can produce, and you have a very cluttered and confusing map (and time consuming). Some of the games with 3-4 ships could realistically take several sessions to complete (given folks time and availability). I know I can usually only go for 3-ish hours max at a time.

I know it's an odd suggestion (and probably won't be very popular), but I think it would keep the time it take to actually get through all the games more bearable.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Garrett

JimDauphinais wrote: Ships Selections Part I: I am not sure why the Booster #92 drone and escort ships would be blocked from the tournament for any reason other than they are not yet in FC Online (which is obviously a valid reason).

The FED NCD is in there (with a stand in token). I say, if it is FCOL, it isn't broken, and it was playable at Origins, then it is fair game.

Eric & Jim, the drone ships from Briefing #1 were not allowed at origins (nor were the escort ships from the same product).

Our game was about 65 minutes per turn. There are bottlenecks that happen, usually involving tracking info or communications. I would rather play with 3 ships though.

Games with Kzinti will be real slow.

terryoc wrote:Eric & Jim, the drone ships from Briefing #1 were not allowed at origins (nor were the escort ships from the same product).

Really, because West ruled that ships in 92 were ok if no new rules were used (special sensors, aegis). This might have changed after that thread, just telling you what I last heard.

OK in that case I'll allow ships from B92 but no special rules (aegis, scout rules, etc.)

I agree with Gar. taking about an hour per turn, it could easily take three sessions to complete the game.

pinecone wrote:I agree with Gar. taking about an hour per turn, it could easily take three sessions to complete the game.

Thats about what it takes face to face as well for us. Isn't that the advantage of online play though, you can play as much as you can save and resume the next night.

I'd be interested in online play if the other guy was definately going to use voice comms. I found it too painful to have to concentrate so hard on the text comms rather than just ask/listen to what people are doing. I use teamspeak (and run a server if needed) for online gaming at the moment.

Any form of elimination seems a bit counter productive, surely to get people playing online you don't want to eliminate them.

Just finished playing a FCOL game (actually, a continuation of a saved game) and a thought occurred to me. It might be a good idea to cap the number of ships per player to two (rather than 3-4 from Origins), and lower the points used to select them from. I suggest this only because even with two ships per side, the games take quite awhile. The game I am in now has 3 per side (well, 2 and a freighter) and it seems to take over an hour per turn (or slightly more when things get down and dirty). Add in a ton of seeking weapons that 3-4 ships (6-8 ships total!) can produce, and you have a very cluttered and confusing map (and time consuming). Some of the games with 3-4 ships could realistically take several sessions to complete (given folks time and availability). I know I can usually only go for 3-ish hours max at a time.

I know it's an odd suggestion (and probably won't be very popular), but I think it would keep the time it take to actually get through all the games more bearable.

I would not be opposed to moving from 3-4 ships at 450 points to 2-3 ships at 300 points. However, I suspect it would implicitly ban Dreadnoughts.

I totally agree with storeylf on this one, voice chat is key. I personally like skype because it is so easy to set up, works like a phone, and doesn't require the use of a server (never liked using someone elses server without them). Ventrillo, teamspeak, xfire, skype are the basics. We should try to pick one format though and make it standard so we can build a tutorial for setup. Preferablly something that doesn't require a server but offers multiple person use. Another option is to get a vent or teamspeak server for sfb/fconline with about 32 slots (though I doubt we would need that many) we could make it the official channel.

Skype would be my vote, seems like it is widely used, and free for skype to skype calls.

Also, 2-3 ships (max BPV 300) sounds great. I know that probably won't gain much traction, but seems like a good idea, at least for the first tournament.

Garrett

Three things:

1) I think the tournament should stick with the current format of people playing in multiple rounds and then the top two players playing off to the declared the winner. Therefore a single lose will not knock you out.

2) When we have finalized the rules. I will be happy to send out a Emailing to let people know about the tournament.

3) I will be happy to use the SFB/Fed Com Online web site to maintain the tournament rounds and let people to register there wins and loses in an automated fashion.