There's a lot of projects being worked on between now and then that don't even appear in that list (F&E 2010 most notably) and I think it's fair to say from SVC's comments that even carrying out an inventory of the stationery cupboard is going to take priority over working on FA.
I don't think that is fair to say. It'll get done. It'll probably need a big chunk of Jean Sexton's (the ADB proofreader's) time, and that's in short supply since she's working on Prime Directive Federation atm. And the roleplaying market dwarfs (pardon the pun) the strategy gaming market. It's an important product. F&E 2010 has to get done, because there is ten grand's worth of counters in the warehouse that can't be sold until the new rulebook is ready to go. Federation Admiral can wait a bit longer but those other products can't.
I think that was my point. That list of things that have to get done before FA can even be looked at doesn't include the most important thing of all that out prioritises even those things.
A spring release would be brilliant but, I suspect, is wishful thinking.
That list of things that have to get done before FA can even be looked at doesn't include the most important thing of all that out prioritises even those things.
What is that most important thing of all which out prioritises even those things?
Well, I'm a regular reader of the ADB boards, and Prime Directive Federation is now very close to completion. Jean Sexton, the head of RPGs for ADB, Inc. went down and they spent nine solid days getting things done. With that pretty much out of the way, Steve Cole & staff are working on F&E 2010 right now (they had been prior to Christmas but it was suspended for Jean's visit). F&E 2010 is mostly about removing certain kludges that were necessary due to restricted countersheets, integrating some rules from later products that needed to be in the main rulebook, adding cross-references to relevant rules, correcting errors and fixing rules that were not clearly written or open to abuse (based on years of rules questions and new rulings since the last edition). Not major changes to the system, like VBAM 2.0 for example. A lot has been done already, and it seems to be moving pretty fast. Unlike small companies lke VBAM games and others, doing games is SVC's day job. It won't be interrupted by "real life" issues. On top of that, ADB has a solid core of dedicated volunteers. So I think you'll be surprised by how quickly F&E 2010 gets done.
After that, I don't know which product will get done next, but when work on Federation Admiral and FC: Support Ships goes into high gear, you'll be surprised by how quickly it happens IMO.
All in all, I think that we will see Federation Admiral when we've been promised it.
The last newsletter still didn't have a more precise date than Spring, 2010, and unless Jay is holding out on me, SVC has not communicated any new details lately on their schedule.
'Fear God and dread nought'
Coat of Arms motto of Baron Fisher, of Kilverstone
Shadow Warrior wrote:Prime Directive Feds next. Then an SFB product, Andromedan Threat File.
You heard it here first
Really? Unfortunately I haven't heard a word.
-Jay
It's only my speculation based on the fact they were also announced as spring releases and have stock numbers allocated (FA does not). Plus we unfortunately already know that SVC would rather work on almost anything else than FA.
Shadow Warrior wrote:
It's only my speculation based on the fact they were also announced as spring releases and have stock numbers allocated (FA does not). Plus we unfortunately already know that SVC would rather work on almost anything else than FA.
Right, there is that too. It is certainly looking like 2e will win the race to the finish, even though FA wrapped up development over a year ago.
It looks that way, which then begs the interesting question of whether or not to revise FA to bring it back into line with 2e? I know FA drove a lot of the thinking for 2e but there are bound to be some instances where the two are now out of step.
However, might that be an opportunity to revise the layout for FA at the same time to make it more palatable to SVC? The Klingon Armada product would undoubtedly be a useful template for an insight into ADB's collective mind as to what makes a 3rd party product nice to read (in my view, the bits added by ADB are the weak and jarring points in an otherwise cool product but, hey, they're the publishers and it's their call as to what's good or not).
We really did make FA to be a stand alone project, so we trimmed much of the VBAM stuff that just didn't add something to the setting. So 1/3 of the book is core rules, and the rest is all the extra stuff we thought would be fun for a Federation Admiral campaign, like Empire traits and missions. We could lose all of that but I feel having admirals with objectives does a lot for a campaign, and in the end, more meaningful Federation Commander battles.
2e will likely gets it own objective based system some day, but it is really tough to justify any additional work on FA for the foreseeable future. I did a Federation Admiral version of First Missions (which is like 20 pages IIRC), some new scenarios, and a number of other things to show that we stand by our work with FA.
Shadow Warrior wrote:It looks that way, which then begs the interesting question of whether or not to revise FA to bring it back into line with 2e? I know FA drove a lot of the thinking for 2e but there are bound to be some instances where the two are now out of step.
However, might that be an opportunity to revise the layout for FA at the same time to make it more palatable to SVC? The Klingon Armada product would undoubtedly be a useful template for an insight into ADB's collective mind as to what makes a 3rd party product nice to read (in my view, the bits added by ADB are the weak and jarring points in an otherwise cool product but, hey, they're the publishers and it's their call as to what's good or not).
