Federation Commander

I started playing SFB back in the early 80s and am just now getting the new edition. However, I noticed that lots of the SSD have wierds symbols like "=" or arrows or deltas inside the box. Also, the fighter layouts have lots of little boxes and triangles around them. I can't find a reference page that lists what all those symbols mean. Is there such a thing?

Yes, BUT, you'd have to ask Petrick (rules@StarFleetGames.com) where it is, and he never reads this forum (since this forum is primarily about FC). Note, Petrick may not answer right away as he's sick with some plague and may not be in his office today (or functional if he is).

= is a ready rack for drones.
black triangles on SSDs are launch tubes.
The triangles around fighters are drones. the white ones are type-VI dogfight drones, the white ones with a black stripe are type-I standard drones, and the black ones with a white stripe are something (I don't remember and I designed them!)

Little triangles and stuff inside tractor boxes are mech links of various types, to hold shuttles, heavy fighters, or gunboats (PFs, pseudofighters).

Petrick can PDF you a chart with all of this. Maybe he'll even have it uploaded in the reference file.

By the way, the website is huge, so do this. Go to the front of the website, www.StarFleetGame.com and look in the lower right for site map. Click that. Then click the blue bars in the right side for an alphabetical list of all of the amazing stuff in the website for download. Look for FIRST MISSIONS to see the new FC rules (free). Look under SFB downloads for lots of cool stuff.

There's a table of fighter SSD symbols in module R1, next to last page in the rulebook (47 iirc). Black triangle with white stripe is type-III.

Thanks for the responses. I managed to find some of the symbols in an old SSD book from some older version I had. I looked through the alphabetical listing of the web sight but didn't find a chart (I don't really know what its named). I don't have R1 (yet) but its on my list.

Guess I'll have to bug Petrick.

I know about the other forum but can't figure out where to put my questions. I guess its designed to keep out the undesirables.

I cannot figure out why you're having trouble on the other forum. Consider it has over 1000 members and over 100 posts per day, it's hardly designed to keep anybody -- desireable or not -- out. You click on Star Fleet Battles and read the list and the sixth one down is RULES QUESTIONS which would work just fine.

I can remember reading about the references for the symbols back in the Commander's edition, I think they were used to represent a class of fighter. Seeing how some classes were different than others, certain symbols represented comparable size fighters on comparable sized ships. I don't remember where the reference is either, I would suspect there there would be a reference somewhere in the "J" module unless it was edited out somewhere between the "Commander's Edition" and the "Doomsday edition". If it's not in "J" it's probably in a Captain's log or some errata somewhere. Like maybe a Klingon Zoran would be the equivalent to a Federation F-16 or something and both would have a symbol like that to represent itself on an SSD or something. Comparably sized ships would have comparably sized fighters. Something like that.

Thanks. There is a nice big new version of the symbol list in the new G3 annex book. So, I'm set.