Federation Commander

Anyone have any good scenario suggestions for demo/cons?

Some more information might be helpful.

How many players do you want to include?

Will this be a learning situation for complete newbies?

Do you want to stick with familiar and easily recognizable empires?

Mike raises some good points, but there are other factors at work as well:
Time frame - do you have 2 hour blocks, 4 hour blocks, or longer?
How many blocks of time do you have? If you have severla consecutive blocks - then a mini campaign is a possibility. The first block plays the initial scenario, the second block plays secnario two, and so on.
The forces remaining from each block determine the available units in sucessive scenarios.

Or if you just want to have fun:
We've played Combat Rally at cons with great success.
We've played the Fed Comm Demo Derby also. This is a good, fun, blow-up lots of stuff scenario.
Or you could just do a variation on Giant in the Playground. You take a B-10 and let everyone else have frigates of their choice. When one dies, they get another. Then just see how long you can last.

Don't know how many will show. I have had a request to run another game outside of my scheduled time. For that I should have 4.

Block length, I have 4 hours, but being one of the volunteers and primary helpers, I have some flexibility there.

Some newbs, some experienced.

I would also say to keep the special rules to a minimum, if any. Since this will be a demo time, you probably don't want any extra rules. One thing that can turn off prospective players is if the guy running the demo doesn't know all the rules and has to refer to the rulebook. That slows things down and makes them think that they will have to learn hundreds of rules just to play the game at a decent level.

Something else that our group has done is to make up short summary lists of the common rules. This has served two purposes. First, it shows prospective players that just because the rulebook is long, the actual number of rules is not. Second, it has been a handy reference during games.

I've found the "Combat Rally" Scenario to be a great con game. Do your homework and have one of each type of ship (two of the Federation and Klingons) ready to go. A fleet scale game with heavy cruisers and 4 flag pick up points can be played in about 3 hours.

Also, use the miniatures if you can - it will have a really good draw.

jmt