Scale Poll and Discussion

MadSeason · Post by **MadSeason** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 5:32 pm

Well, if it is not possible to do The General War given that not all necessary ships are converted to FC yet (and this would be a license issue, correct?), I would say whatever you do -- DO NOT bill it as The General War. But, given there are a a lot of vessels available, you can certainly do a grand strategic game of FC ships.

This should be fun.

Back in the day I played the Gorn in a game of... ahem... Federation Space. Have I dated myself???

terryoc · Post by **terryoc** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 6:13 am

I never played Federation Space, though I've heard of it.

Not designed by Steve Cole and apparently not a very good design.

zyffyr · Post by **zyffyr** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 1:01 pm

Fed Space was truly horrible. One of the worst aspects was that it prohibited you from ever building more ships of a given class than you started the game with.

Had 8 cruisers at the start of turn 1? Well, you can't build more until you lose some of those. Forget the fact that you are in the middle of a war, your bureaucrats aren't willing to budge on the size of your navy.

There were many more problems, but that is the one that stands out 20 years after I last played it.

MadSeason · Post by **MadSeason** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 5:02 pm

Federation Space was bad enough that when Federation & Empire came out, I remember seeing it and thinking -- "Uggh! Someone is trying to republish that rubbish!" I had no idea it was a new design with a new designer.

But... given that I was 15, my group had fun playing Fed Space for a while.

jygro · Post by **jygro** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 5:22 am

zyffyr wrote:Had 8 cruisers at the start of turn 1? Well, you can't build more until you lose some of those. Forget the fact that you are in the middle of a war, your bureaucrats aren't willing to budge on the size of your navy.

At least your empire won't go into debt like some nations seem to do during wars...
-Bren

mwaschak · Post by **mwaschak** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 12:08 pm

jygro wrote: At least your empire won't go into debt like some nations seem to do during wars...
-Bren

It is a very cut and dry way of tracking the size of spending, but probably not accurate for the SFU, which saw fleet expenses balloon during the General War.

Deficit spending is a touchy issue in everything from politics to campaign systems.

-Jay

orcface999 · Post by **orcface999** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 2:01 am

Grand campaign is what I think I can get my group interested in. We always play the campaign game of whatever we play.

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 3:08 am

TTL we won't have to play the General War and will be able to do something totally different. Like maybe TOS.

mwaschak · Post by **mwaschak** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 1:50 pm

Mike wrote:TTL we won't have to play the General War and will be able to do something totally different. Like maybe TOS.

Fortunately at this point in the edit all three scales of the game are still included and with no plans to cut anything.

I have about 120 pages of SVC's edits to implement but am moving at a good pace.

-Jay

MarkG88 · Post by **MarkG88** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 8:00 pm

mwaschak wrote:
Mike wrote:TTL we won't have to play the General War and will be able to do something totally different. Like maybe TOS.
Fortunately at this point in the edit all three scales of the game are still included and with no plans to cut anything.

I have about 120 pages of SVC's edits to implement but am moving at a good pace.

-Jay

This sounds rather exciting, I look forward to the final product! I really enjoyed playtesting/trouble-shooting this project with you.

-Mark

mwaschak · Post by **mwaschak** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 8:10 pm

MarkG88 wrote:
This sounds rather exciting, I look forward to the final product! I really enjoyed playtesting/trouble-shooting this project with you.

-Mark

Thank you Mark. I hope to have an update for everyone soon.

-Jay

Wolverin61 · Post by **Wolverin61** » Fri Feb 27, 2009 2:27 am

The local campaign sounds great to me! One of my friends and I have been talking about doing a campaign for a long time, one that could be partially played by email in between our face-to-face games, and that would be an excellent way to do it I think. Of course, I haven't seen the rules or anything yet, but it sounds good so far!

mwaschak · Post by **mwaschak** » Fri Feb 27, 2009 12:52 pm

Wolverin61 wrote:The local campaign sounds great to me! One of my friends and I have been talking about doing a campaign for a long time, one that could be partially played by email in between our face-to-face games, and that would be an excellent way to do it I think. Of course, I haven't seen the rules or anything yet, but it sounds good so far!

Thank you, and welcome to the forum.

I passed the latest revision of the rules and various maps off to SVC last night so he could have it for the Austin trip. I will keep everyone posted!

Local campaigns are geared to include the objective system (if you so choose). But, just let me know if you would like more information or samples of play. We have an integrated example of a 12 turn Local campaign we intend as a free release PDF (much like First Missions) so players can see how it plays before they buy anything.

-Jay

Wolverin61 · Post by **Wolverin61** » Sat Feb 28, 2009 2:54 am

mwaschak wrote:Thank you, and welcome to the forum.

I passed the latest revision of the rules and various maps off to SVC last night so he could have it for the Austin trip. I will keep everyone posted!

Local campaigns are geared to include the objective system (if you so choose). But, just let me know if you would like more information or samples of play. We have an integrated example of a 12 turn Local campaign we intend as a free release PDF (much like First Missions) so players can see how it plays before they buy anything.

-Jay

I'm definitely eager to find out more. I must admit I'd never heard of VBAM before reading about Federation Admiral on the Federation Commander forum. I hope you'll announce when you post the example .pdf so I can study it (I say study because I'm still finding stuff in the FC rulebook I overlooked or didn't catch the first time through, mostly because I think about the rules in SFB instead).

MarkG88 · Post by **MarkG88** » Sat Feb 28, 2009 6:10 am

Wolverin61 wrote:
mwaschak wrote:Thank you, and welcome to the forum.

I passed the latest revision of the rules and various maps off to SVC last night so he could have it for the Austin trip. I will keep everyone posted!

Local campaigns are geared to include the objective system (if you so choose). But, just let me know if you would like more information or samples of play. We have an integrated example of a 12 turn Local campaign we intend as a free release PDF (much like First Missions) so players can see how it plays before they buy anything.

-Jay
I'm definitely eager to find out more. I must admit I'd never heard of VBAM before reading about Federation Admiral on the Federation Commander forum. I hope you'll announce when you post the example .pdf so I can study it (I say study because I'm still finding stuff in the FC rulebook I overlooked or didn't catch the first time through, mostly because I think about the rules in SFB instead).

Wolverine,

Welcome to the VBAM-verse! I grew up playing SFB and thanks to watching Jay play a buddy two games of FC in person last fall, I can say I'm impressed with the streamlined (i.e. fast and fun) play of that system. The Federation Admiral rules will allow you to play at an operational/strategic scale to the tactical scale of FC and it brings a great deal to the "game table" based on my exposure to it as play-tester/idea tosser. Once all the editing and so forth is done, the example of play Jay has will give you an excellent introduction to this system and aspects of the "generic" VBAM 2.0 stuff that is currently in the works (which excites me as much as the FA book that will be coming out).

-Mark

VBAM Games Forums

Scale Poll and Discussion

What scale of a campaign interests you for a Federation Commander Campaign in Federation Admiral?