Well, I've been thinking that when the time comes to develop the new system, the focus should be on tying it into the view of the universe that we see in Fed Commander, when it comes to ship types and what have you.
Please note these are just my own thoughts on the matter, that's it!
First suggestion - keep the same ship types seen in FC (either those we know are or will make the leap, or whatever new ships cross over between noww and the time the new system arrives). Dreadnoughts, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, SBs, etc.
The new engine could be treated as a 'scenario generator' for FC - if the players wished it, they could fight a campaign with both strategic and tactical aspects (a la Medieval 2: Total War).
If fighters are kept out of FC for the foreseeable future, then they should be kept out of this too. If we have carrier groups in this game and not in FC, it'll either force the issue in FC where it might not be ideal, or throw off players who want to be able to use FC to tackle that starbase assault or fleet bust-up (Or pirate raid, for that matter).
Funnily enough, despite the working title I cooked up for the new game, the game could be made to cover the Middle Years wars quite easily - as for much of that period the Hydrans were alone in using warp-powered fighters, and there weren't a lot of historical variants anyway...
Second suggestion - factor in random monster encounters (or, if not including an Orion player, random commerce raids). Those Juggernaut and Space Dragon cards need not be left lying around, and there are a lot of Cartels out there loooking to get a five-finger discount on hard-earned empires' credits!
Third suggestion - use the same kind of double-sided map panels seen in FC to rep the Octant.
NOTE: To those who don't know, this is a map of the Alpha Octant from Fed and Empire -
The 'normal' size map would have enough panels to equate to each of the two Fed and Empire maps (with a little modificaiton to make the two theatres fit together smoothly - which the F&E maps do not do!) and would look pretty much like your average Fed and Empire map.
For the Klingon Invasion core box, the map panels would be laid out in portrait mode (P), like so:
P P P
P P P
Panel 1 would include the Lyrans, the WYN Cluster, and pieces of Klingon and Kzinti space, Panel 6 would include parts of Fed space, the Tholian Holdfast and the Orion Enclave, and so on.
Since there are more hexes on the panels than on the maps proper, that leaves space over for the kind of ancillary information we see on current F&E maps.
The 'megahex' map could be either a more abstracted map of the Octant... or perhaps a 'close-up' of the central fronts of each theatre.
Think of the map of the Klingon and Romulan borders in the FC rulebooks - they are rotated 90* from what we might be used to seeing in 'traditional' maps of the Octant.
The map panels would be laid out in landscape (L), to represent a closeup of the 'central front' - in this case, the Fed-Klingon border:
L L L
L L L
Note that this leaves each of the races in KB on the map in KI - the corresponding 1" map in RA would again match the races in RB.
Also note that the above image is a rough crop to give a general idea of what I mean - sorry if it's not as clear as it should be!
So, the large hex sides give you the 'Klingon Invasion' and 'Romulan Invasion' to match the core titles!
And here's a thought - additional map panels including ISC, Lyran and Hydran space in 1" scale could be included in packs which feature these races (I'm imagining a Lyran-Hydran and ISC-Andro pairing), and that the smaller hex facings of the panels would assemble to form a map of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, for Operation Unity, or for adding in the Baduvai et al!
I quite like that idea, actually...
(And of course, this would allow for Megahex counters on one side, and regular-sixed counters on the other.)
Fourth suggestion - Give each empire FC-style laminated cards for marking up fleet compositions, battle groups - and, most importantly, for tallying up (and spending) economic points!
Also, include an FC-style 'cheat sheet' with combat resolution tables and other such items.
Fifth suggestion - Treat late war ship types and races (X-ships, BBs, Seltorians, Neo-Tholians etc) and non-front line ships (National Guard, Police and more Orion ships) as material for expansions, as seen in FC.
For example, as TA will give us Neo-Tholians and Selts for FC, so a future expansion for GW could include the same ship types, along with specific 'cards' for the 312th and the Hive Ship rules (might need to port the Hive into FC, too...)
Or another expansion could plug the gaps left in peacetime (or make things more interesting in war) by extrapolating the need to keep the local Orion Cartels from running the show!
Sixth suggestion - encourage a healthy bout of diplomacy between the facitons involved, in war and peace.
Since it's quite likely players may want to play free campaigns with his system (I may be wrong with this, but gamers used to the likes of Total War might) it should be assumed that options exist for players to haggle and negotiate without simply declaring war.
Since turns would hopefully take less time in such a system, more time could be left to let players practice 'jaw-jaw', as well as 'war-war'!
I have to say, this kind of game is what I have been waiting to play for about as long as I've known about the SFU - I love games like the
Total War series,
Imperial Glory (a Napoleonic-era TW ripoff - the campaign system is great in it, plus it's available
on Mac OS X. If you have an Intel mac, you can still run the TW games if you use Boot Camp to install Windows on a disk partition, though.) and what have you - and the option to tie it into FC makes the idea even better.
I know it'll be a long time to wait to see the game, but all the same I look forward to it - the SFU game I really want to play!
Gary
) if it didn't "abstract" the game too much. Much of the interesting aspects of F&E to me is the strategic combat and the production work. If there was an easier way to do the later (w/o all the bookkeeping) I think it would go a long way towards the FedCom target. As for the former, the only thing I can think of is more monolithic fleets (no morphing carrier groups).