Federation Admiral Public Update

[PaulB]

It is interesting to note that in one of the posts in this thread:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/federatio ... c&start=30

SVC does mention Federation Admiral as being on the to-do list. That being said, the list also includes SFB Module X2 which according to another thread has been on the to-do list for 23 years. Specifically he says:

"I have a list of things to do that will literally last until Christmas 2015 and doing anything major means not doing or delaying something already announced and scheduled. We have more than one product line, and by the time I spend some time on Captain's Log #50, four F&E products, Federation Admiral, Captain's Log #51, Fed Commander Fighters Attack, SFB Module X2, Captain's Log #52, and some other things I don't want to discuss yet, there isn't a lot of time. I can do anything; I cannot do everything."

I don't really know what is going on with Federation Commander in general to be honest. The last major product released seems to be Reinforcements Attacked that was apparently published in 2012. The only other thing of note is a couple of PDF-only playtest packs for Lesser Magellanic Cloud and Omega Sector. Other "new" products have been PDF re-releases or re-bundling of existing products.

Recently in the above thread I helped stir up interest for Early Wars ships, suggesting a cheaper alternative of a Booster pack rather than a full expansion which SVC believes would lose money. People seemed to get on-board with the idea but rather than planning an actual laminate card booster they are instead planning to release a PDF playtest pack of ships. As it turns out 9 out of 10 ships planned to be included have already been published in other products like Captains log and other sources. So I'm not sure how this constitutes a "playtest" pack.

At the same time in another post SVC recently mentioned that he'd been informed the Omega playtest pack had sold sufficient numbers to warrant them moving forward with an official product. This says to me that the PDF playtest pack for Early Years is not a playtest pack at all but instead a product to gauge market interest.

So . . . I think it's pretty clear that ADB is very reluctant to put out ANY new print products for Federation Commander and Federation Admiral of course falls under that umbrella. I believe both Reinforcements Attack and Briefing #2 both had very poor sales which probably curtailed a lot of development. Also I personally bought the former of those products but had problems with the laminate cards. He does seem to have a product called "Fighters Attack" on the way but I don't know much about the ETA.

ADB personally took over development of ACTA Star Fleet which in addition to their other game lines no doubt takes up a lot of development time. For the most part it seems like the focus of the company is translating existing core races and designs into other systems and selling them rather than the generation of new content or the translation of more obscure races into a system like Federation Commander.

Anyway I hope if nothing else Federation Admiral will get a PDF release at some point.

[mwaschak]

It is interesting to note that in one of the posts in this thread:

Very interesting, thank you Paul. I very rarely hear from ADB anymore to be perfectly honest. I had not considered there might be an issue with the FC product line, but it would explain their decision to 2012 to regear FA to work with more of their products. I have personally never tried ACTA, but it seems to have taken over quite a bit there in the last year or two. From what little I hear we mostly got bumped because ACTA needed rewrites and they had to maintain the CL schedule. FA had a few support products with it too that have been dropped from our discussions after 2010. IIRC, there were a number scenarios and additional logistic ships planned.

I thought the whole point with ACTA was that Mongoose would manage and run the whole thing?

Tyrel and I had more than a few conversations about this. It gave us a lot clearer vision on how to handle 3rd party integrations in the future. We also have at least one new nice crossover book in the works with a very cooperative game developer.

It certainly is an interesting perspective on the situation though. We are quickly approaching 10 years since I started working on FA if you can believe it.

-Jay

[PaulB]

Actually I did forget one product, the Federation Commander Tactics Manual. A 138 page book that they put out (primary author Patrick Doyle) at some point in 2014. Never saw it in my local gaming store, it only came to light for me back at christmas when I was at home playing with Stad and saw it both in his hands and on the shelf. Though since I've won about 90% of the games I played I don't really see a need to get a tactics manual.

As for ACTA, they did a press release of sorts on the FC forums here:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/federatio ... php?t=5227

"ADB will assume primary design responsibility for A Call to Arms Star Fleet including the revisions to Book One and the entirely new future Books Two and Three. (Tony L. Thomas will manage the designs as developer; Matthew Sprange remains the designer of record.) ADB plans to sell these as both PDFs and print-on-demand books . . . ADB is committed to maintaining the existing ACTASF game system and improving it. ADB will be the only source for the purchase of new ACTASF books and PDFs. Mongoose will retain ownership and control of non-SFU versions of ACTA."

From what I heard it was a quality issue or perhaps the weaponry were not accurate (I omitted a portion where they address the changing of certain systems. But yeah ADB took it over basically. So now they're doing SFB, Captains Log, F&E, FC, two miniature lines (2400 + 2500), developing a tribbles game for kickstarter. Fair to say they have a lot on their plate.

Has it been 10 years? Bit sad but not surprising. Actually makes me sad I've done no gaming products of my own but hopefully I can change that in the near future as been working on a tactical system of my own. Meanwhile you guys have been rocking it for a decade now! Bam.

[BroAdso]

I know this is never gonna happen, but was doodling to work on some photo editing and layout skills, so here's a bit of what could have been/will be...

[mwaschak]

That is pretty neat.

I am really sorry about FA. Unfortunately we have several good projects sitting in the bin over there.

The FA project was started about ten years ago too, so it is probably safe to call over.

-Jay

[Tyrel Lohr]

While FA isn't going to happen, I'd still like to see where you end up taking that particular Star Trek conversion, BroAdso!

[BroAdso]

Here's a presentation-worthy draft of both Federation and Romulan ships from the Romulan War era. Suggestions and thoughts either for the ships themselves or the graphics/presentation?

RomulanWarTrialShips.pdf

(584.49 KiB) Downloaded 393 times

Also, should I start a new thread for this since it isn't part of the real/official Starfleet Admiral?

[mwaschak]

Those are really nice!

[BroAdso]

As to my question - when I finish another draft of this stuff, Jay and Tyrel, would it be more appropriate to put in this thread or make a seperate thread for homebrew trek conversion?

[mwaschak]

I personally think it would be easier for players just looking for nice Trek material if it was another thread. We can link it from here, but then it won't be buried in years of FA limbo.

Thanks,
Jay

[Tyrel Lohr]

Good start to the conversion, I like where you're taking things!

I second the recommendation of creating a new thread and continuing to post these conversions up there.

[mwaschak]

Well, maybe?

http://www.starfleetgames.com/federatio ... &start=180

[gstano]

Well, that is interesting. I will look forward to see where that goes.

[PaulB]

Well work has officially commenced on the book, but you'd be hard-pressed to know it.

Information for the book on the FC Forum is buried within the Campaign forum on the fc boards. People who asked questions about the book on the general forum had their threads immediately locked.

http://www.starfleetgames.com/federatio ... php?t=5696

Fed Admiral didn't even have a discussion thread on the discus board until I asked for one. And despite the book now encompassing all games, it wasn't given it's own forum. Nor was it given a thread in the Upcoming products section of SFB. Nor even a thread within the Federation Commander board itself. Instead it was given a sub-thread within the FC Campaign Proposals thread of the FC board where basically no one will ever see it.

So good luck if you want to discuss or get hyped about it on their boards.

[mwaschak]

It is definitely a project that they have publicly maligned, which has been hard for us as we were very proud of the initial product we delivered to them in 2007.

So it is almost ten years later now and for the life of me I am surprised they even want to finish it. But they want to finish it "their way".

-Jay