Federation Commander

Andromedan wrote:I talked to Tony Thomas last night about Federation Admiral and one of the questions that I had was about logistics.

According to Tony depending on the optional rules used an FA campaign can abstract out the logistics to a great degree or have the player have to worry about logistics.

My question is: does FA support have the level of detail where you are ships "EPs" from point A to point B? For example, a star system/planet produces 10 EPs and that needs to be shipped to the construction facility for the ships.

Hello,

I believe you mean in the sense that a system at some distant location wants to contribute to shipbuilding, so it would pack up EP and send it off to be processed at some distant shipyard, correct?

In FA this is abstracted for the most part. At the beginning of the turn EP is generated in to a pool from that Empire's System Hexes. All turn purchases are from this common point pool. If a system is cut off by a blockade, it's economy is also isolated.

There are some cases where EP can be moved, such as an EP transfer between players or some special mission generated in the Objective System, but as a rule that element of moving economic points between systems is abstracted.

-Jay

asguard101 wrote:
What about Orion Convoy raids?

We have plenty of those too . Raiding is done in a number of ways, as well as a few enhanced optional rules to raid for EP and supplies.

-Jay

I'm somewhat familiar with VBAM. I'm curious to know how the various encounter types in VBAM will be translated into FC scenarios. IIRC you can generate various encounter types, like approach battles, raids, etc. Can you give us any insights into how this will be handled?

BTW, I'm really looking forward to Federation Admiral. It's given me a few ideas for campaign scenarios already. One I'd like to try is based on the Seltorian-Tholian conflict in this galaxy. The Seltorian objective is to destroy the Tholian NBB Sword of the Holdfast to convince the Klingons to commit major resources to finishing off the Tholians. The Tholian objective would be to take out the Seltorian Hive Ship. Either of these major objectives achieved is an instant win. (If the Selts lose the Hive Ship, the Klingons decide that the Selts are no longer useful and declare a ceasefire with the Tholians.) Otherwise, the game would last a set number of turns and a winner declared on other objectives. That might be small enough for a Regional campaign.

Hello Terry,

Sure, I would be happy to give you an overview. Scenarios are essentially resolved the same at any level of campaign but are all based on a few decisions before the scenarios begin. Remember that an enounter can be several engagements over the entire campaign turn, so we try to emulate the intensity of those engagements based on detection and commitment to action.

Once units are in the same Map Hex (which I will be happy to summarize as well), an engagement may occur. Each side attempts detection against the other forces present in the encounter, where they may learn the owner, number, and type of force, depending on how successful and prepared they are. This is where cloaking and stealth forces tend to have an operational advantage.

Players have a chance to communicate at long range, which includes some short rules about how to handle this. But at this point they must decide their commitment to the encounter. Are they going to be cautious, or aggressive? Based on those decisions, a number of scenario intensity points are generated for the encounter. As the encounter is resolved, players spend these intensity points to decide scenarios.

Like regular VBAM, there are four scenario types: Interception, Deep Space, Defensive, and Pursuit. The players will accept or reject these scenarios, spend intensity points to create them, and thus the constraints of the scenarios are created. These constraints may be required civilian traffic, or a number of fixed positions the player is protecting. The more intensity is spent, the "bigger" the scenario can get. So you can have a few pocket battles leading to something grander, or just one quick deep space engagement where the picket ships fire on each other and withdraw, which may result if both players react cautiously when they started the encounter.

I would very interested in developing your ideain to a complete FA scenario.

-Jay

While we have some time I think we should talk about some possible scenarios you might want to see in Federation Admiral. The main book will have a variety of pre-built scenarios, plus the scenario generator. Since then I have finished The Expedition (Hydran vs Klingon in anticipation of Hydran Attack), and The Dissenter, which focuses on a group of Orions undermining the Klingon Invasion. I am still playtesting the latter and have a mountain of fiction to edit.

I am planning to run at least one Federation Admiral campaign here (Play-By-Forum/Play-By-Email) so it might be a good time to get some of the ground work done for that as well. I am curious how "big" do you interested players want these games to be. Do you want something grand and diplomatic, or something straight-forward and conflict driven? Do you want a quick game, or something bigger in scope? This will help me figure out how to design the PBEM scenarios (assuming we don't just use something from the book itself). We are also going to need captains and commodores to help fight out any engagements.

Here are the two games I am considering anyway.

1) First Campaigns - In the spirit of First Missions players will be able to learn about Federation Admiral before they take the plunge. It includes a basic Fed vs Klingon scenario and all the basic rules of the game. I am thinking about running an open game for new players who might want to give it a try. All information will be open so everyone can observe the game in progress.

2) Federation Admiral (scenario to be determined) - Built for 2 to 7 players I am thinking of a Local Scale campaign that takes full advantage of the objective rule system. Depending on how big players want this game to be, it could be a quick 3 month campaign or something grander.

All the best,
-Jay

Oh good to know. So sub question here, is briefing 3 going to be bundled with Federation Admiral or is it going to be a seperate product? If it is to early to tell just ugnore the question

They'll be sold as two separate books, but they have to be done together so that all of the ships FA needs are in B3.

The problem is the sheer massiveness of the project. it's BIG, and takes a long time to do. It will get worked on after CL42 and probably be released in the first half of next year.

We already have two campaign systems (F&E and CDH) and this will be the third, if not the fourth (since SFB is chock full of campaigns).

Considering that my housecat actually IS a leopard, I'll take it as a compliment.

Being one of the few who have read Fed Admiral, i can say that it's more suited to SFB than FC, and so says the other guy who has read it cold.

Savedfromwhat wrote:if FA is more appropriate for SFB then I understand the reason for the delay.
Nick

We have run this thing through the washer with many FC players. FA is a customized VBAM system (a hybrid of 1e and the upcoming 2e), which you can see on the market today. There aren't many secrets there about what the contents of FA could be.

While it would likely support KA out of the box, which VBAM does now with its constantly updated ship construction sheet and the original book. SFB is another animal entirely with maulers, cruise drones, and scouts so there are more things for us to take in to account there.

-Jay

Been a long time since I read the previous FA draft so the specifics are a little murkey, but I do recall reading (and mentioning in the forum at the time, and discussing with Jay) that FA was full of stuff that FC doesn't have, and that I was going to have to add dozens and dozens of SFB ships to FC to fully utlize FA.

Remember that ADB isn't designing FA, we're more or less just publishing what Jay wrote. The delay is simply that the book is GIGANTIC and that just pounding through the formatting without trying to add, delete, or edit a single word just took about 100 time as much work as it was supposed to take, which is why it didn't come out way back when. (At the time, we expected a "place and print" document like the Starmada books, which isn't what we got, as was discussed in painful detail at the time. Jay did a ton of additonal work on this thing to get it to a point I don't have to dedicate three years of my working life to just getting it into a page layout format.)

We certainly plan to print FA, probably in the first six months of next year. As for what it does and doens't work with, that's my interpretation of what I have read. I do think it works better with SFB than FC (until we finish Briefing #3, which it won't work without), but I'm sure it will work with whatever it works with.

The process is like this. I take a chapter, do my page layout thing, and send Jay a list of "things he needs to fix in future chapters" and ask him to send me ONE and only one more chapter. Jay then send me the rest of the book. So I extract one chapter, do that, and send Jay a further list of things he needs to fix in all of the subsequent chapters...

At some point, perhaps a month from now, perhaps six months from now, I'll have a really good grip on when we'll be able to finish it, and schedule a release date. [It's a "do the math" thing. If the book is 250 pages and it takes me a week to do chapter 1 which is ten pages, then it's going to take 24 more weeks to finish. If I do chapter 2 which is 20 pages in only 1.3 weeks, then you divide 220 by 1.3 and we'll be done in ... you get the point. It's far more complicated than that, since I have other projects to do. When we get "the visitation of the great dragon" (some project that consumes ALL available time and bumps ALL other projects and functions to future weeks) then those weeks don't count. (e.g., I have spent the last four weeks doing nothing but CL42 and Alien Armada and have at least one week to go, so nothing has happened on FA during that time.)

Hmmmn, well standard ADB format appears to just be paragraphs arranged in two columns per page, so I'm not sure why the formatting would be quite so time consuming. Also not sure why another 3rd party product would take precedence when this one's been delayed so long already (though CL delaying anything and everything I can understand). But I do know that some things which seem simple can actual be quite time consuming.

In any event. Just thought I'd throw out some comments to remind people that there is a demand. So hopefully we can all get our hands on it next year.

Thanks for your time.

There is a LOT more to it than putting it in two columns.

As for why AA gets priority over FA...

AA is closer to being finished. A lot closer. I doubt that I'll actually spend all of 3 days on AA. I spent three days on half a chapter of FA. Quality in, speedy out.

KA and RA have proven sales performance, FA sales are "anybody's guess".

Paul B,

Chill out.

It is not the case that "text is text". Formatting involves a lot of things, not just arranging text into columns. It involves figuring out how the information is organized. It involves editing the words to be as clear as possible. It involves readability. It involves making sure nothing is missing, and that extraneous information is removed. It is not a simple process and claiming that it is does not help one's credibility.

It also helps to fully read what has been written. That Jay completely rewrote the whole thing was a hindrance, not a help. Steve wanted it one chapter at a time. Following a demonstration of a lack of understanding of what has been written about the issues with throwing Steve's words back at him is not wise and is not helpful.

You have expressed your displeasure on the lack of progress on FA. That's fine and fair game. But escalating things from there is not productive and is completely unnecessary. You had said your piece. Adding more will not make things move any faster. Sorry, but that is just reality.

This is an official warning. Please don't do this again.