Federation Commander

Hi everyone, Im quite new to discovering Federation Commander but I have a number of questions if you'd be so kind to answer. Im quite familiar with Starfleet Command for PC so many of my questions are related to similarities with that.

1. Are fighters present in FC? I assume the hydrans would at least have them, but do others?

2. are any vessels equipped with Anti-Drone defense weapons, or do phasers just do the job?

3. are there different kinds of shuttles such as scatterpack, wild weasel etc?

4. what kind of dice are used?

5. when I hear the term 'mounted' space maps, does that mean they are on hard cardboard like a monopoly game board for example?


thanks in advance!

1. Only the Hydrans

2. Yes

3. Only standard and suicide

4. Six sided

5. Not sure

vyrago wrote: Hi everyone, Im quite new to discovering Federation Commander but I have a number of questions if you'd be so kind to answer. Im quite familiar with Starfleet Command for PC so many of my questions are related to similarities with that.

First off, welcome aboard.
Secondly, we'll be glad to answer any questions you may have.

vyrago wrote:1. Are fighters present in FC? I assume the hydrans would at least have them, but do others?

The Hydrans have Stinger-IIs but they are the only empire to have fighters and they only have one version of them.

vyrago wrote:2. are any vessels equipped with Anti-Drone defense weapons, or do phasers just do the job?

Yes. Several vessels have a device known as an ADD (anti-drone drone), and the Lyrans have ESG fields, the Tholians have Web Snares, etc.

vyrago wrote:3. are there different kinds of shuttles such as scatterpack, wild weasel etc?

No. There are only Standard, Tpye-I drones available and all targets are known at the time of launching, so many of the anti-drone devices have been removed for simplicities sake. No Weasels, no Scatter Packs, no armed shuttles...
There are Suicide Shuttles (much more flexible than in SFB) and unarmed administrative shuttles only.

vyrago wrote:4. what kind of dice are used?

d6 only. Now, that being said... multiple d6s in various colors can speed play.
i.e., I'm firing 4 Photon Torpedoes, 5 Phaser-1s, and 2 Phaser-3's at you. The Blue dice are Photons, the Red Dice are Ph-1s, and the White dice are Ph-3s. Then you can roll all he weapons at one time... ove rthe course of a game, it does speed play.

vyrago wrote:5. when I hear the term 'mounted' space maps, does that mean they are on hard cardboard like a monopoly game board for example?

The map panels are 8 1/2 x 11 inches and are mounted on board, similar to Monopoly. Each panel has 1 1/4 inch hexes on side A and 5/8 inch hexes on side B. They fit together to make a large playing field and if the action runs off one edge, uyou can pick the un-used panels up from the far side and set them in front of the on-coming units. This prevents having to move all the units to keep them on the map.

vyrago wrote:thanks in advance!

Your welcome, and enjoy the game.

scoutdad covered any answer I would have given so I'll just say welcome to the board vyrago.

Welcome to Fed Commander!

1. Yes, but for Hydrans only and they only have a single type of fighter. It was decided that other races' fighters throwing drones out everywhere bogs down the game too much with all the map clutter.

2. The ships that had ADD's for drone defense still have them, but they can only intercept drones that have impacted that ship. Tractors can still be used to grab drones that get past ADDs and phasers.

3. Nope, just the basic shuttle and it doesn't even have a weapon (avoiding map clutter again). The only exception is that you can arm and launch them as suicide shuttles. Not having wild weasels is balanced by the fact that there aren't any enveloping or fake plasmas to worry about, no scatterpacks, and only a single basic type of drone.

4. Six siders only.

5. Yes, they are good sturdy maps. The best part about having separate boards making up the map is that you can take boards that no one is on and move them to "offmap" areas that ships are about to fly onto.

edit: Wow, triple ninja'd while posting.

Crimin wrote: edit: Wow, triple ninja'd while posting.

Type faster, Tim... type faster!

Almost no one can keep up with the blazing fingers of the Tennessee Terror.

You're just jealous that I have a job that let's me play on the Fed Com forum all day long...

Thanks for the quick responses guys!

I'm very keen on trying to introduce Fed Commander to my table gaming group so I appreciate having my nagging questions answered.

Unsolicited-suggestion: Pick up the consolidated Reference Rulebook (item# 4020), if you have the means. I've found it to be a huge benefit to have all the rules, fully-updated, and in one place. There's nothing wrong with the Version 4 books floating around out there, but I pulled mine (and all the "Attack" booklets) from my FedCom binder as soon as my Reference Rulebook arrived.