Topic: If Trek Liscense is Split Up Again, What Happens to SFC Series? (Read 23842 times)

Reverend · « **Reply #180 on:** July 17, 2003, 01:31:08 am »

Ah, yes, I shall just give up my papacy and start worshipping SFB! Maybe, we can try to implement SFB into other games too, like pretend that the troops in Allied Assault are really ships, an give them six legs to work with; then we can make misniscule little rules to govern each and every leg; for instance, you have to roll d6 to determine whether that leg will move.. if that roll fails above 4, then the perfectly functioning leg doesn't work an its in the ruleset, don't you dare defy it! And DON'T get me started on the weapons.. that'll take exactly 4.6 hours to dictate.... making sure you are in the proper time zone (me +5 with weather d10 modifier roll). Ah- ha! Now that's control; domination, over everything! I can continue being a controi freak until my hardened you-know-what explodes! By the SFB Holy Dice, I just can't see how those short-sghted, evil, foolish, lying, brainless, no class-havin' Televison Show 'fans' make any sense to their own families! Their view is always SFB loose, unruled, unbiased, and just can't be controlled!! What wrong with SFB them? SFB will send them to Hell when they die, because after committing suicide over their meritriculously rulesetted life, they didn't roll for a modifier! Ah, heck, got them again! Lets just have a nice glass of SFB beer and laugh +6 over them! Well, nice SFB talking with you, but it is time for SFB bed! GoodSFBnight!

Lets all petition Taldren for a open-source patch for OP...a final request... that'll give the ''hardcore" SFB fans ( you know who Im talking about) the room they need to mod themselves silly, since any patch forthe ultimate SFB game won't be good enough for them anyhow. Let us petition them for such a patch- universe bigger, extra races, interactive planets (oh, wait, isn't that what I was asking for?}, and a couple of extras that will be mentioned again, then the rest of us that only tolerated this series this long was becuase it was the ONLY, yes only, 3-D Star Trek game that allowed self-direction and allowed you to drive and shoot all by your little lonesome self, can move on. Finally.

Cpt. Chaos · « **Reply #181 on:** July 17, 2003, 03:08:47 am »

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the kind of attitude you are displaying Capt Chaos is a lot of what is killing the community.

...pardon me while I wipe the blood from my hands... (don't you hate it when it gets in the keyboard?)

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If took your idea of SFB only and took it to it's logical conclusion

Yes, yes, please do! That's all we're asking.

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i would tell you to stick to your game board

But a computer game is better (less arguments, yes?)

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you have EAW

Well, actually I have OP...

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but you do not need to waste the resources of Taldren on another EAW or SFB only game. That would be a travisty of the worse possible kind.

"Wasting their resources"? "Travesty"? Sorry, that's just too much attitude for me...

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But I'm not that type of person. I still think that the right answer is some where between the SFC-3 (which did away with SFB altogeather) and SFB extreamism ... which as a genreal rule will strangle what life there is left in the community to death.

To tell the truth, my idea of SFB is somewhere around the Commander's Edition along with the carrier/fighter and race supliments, circa, maybe, 1984 or so.

Doomsday is an overgrown cancerous tumor, IMHO. And the necessity to continue publishing new rules is what lead to that condition... Doomsday was sold to us as IT. The END. The FINAL WORD. It wasn't of course, just a new, and fabulously more complex jumping-off point for even more expansion. At this point, you have to be very freaky indeed to have the whole thing any where close to memorized... And THAT is what killed that community, at least for me.

SFC is something of a relief in that sense... Learning the game engine is so much easier than memorizing and arguing over something like the Doomsday rules (instead, we come here and argue over the game engine...)

So let me qualify myself: I want the game engine closer to SFB in 1984.

So far we have only partially achieved that state, and so in that sense we still have plenty of room to grow. I just want the thing to grow towards SFB (1984), not away from it.

And as for Trek Fandom, I have vivid memories of first seeing the Enterprise floating in its wierdly-lit, matte-space, on a Sunday afternoon some time in the early 70's... The first book I bought with my own money, (in the 3rd grade, at the school book fair) was Stephen Whitefield's 'The Making of Star Trek'. After that, I gobbled the show up. I also remember the excitement among my friends (who at the time had been working out their own 'space combat' rules) when we first got ahold of Alien Space, and then those little plastic bags of SFB itself... Then the movie came out (just a rip off of 'NOMAD', damn, couldn't they come up with something more original? Like a real war with the Klingons or Romulans?) Somewhere around the middle of Next Gen, I sort of lost interest in the show. It was just getting to be too much of a PC soap opera.

So I would have to say at this point, that I am much more a fan of SFC than of the shows themselves. And truthfully, much more of a fan of SFC than of SFB (at least of Doomsday...) I don't consider myself a 'Trek Fan'. I consider myself an old SFB'er who now plays SFC.

Chaos

Cleaven · « **Reply #182 on:** July 17, 2003, 06:49:07 am »

There are clearly two opposing opinions. One is that SFC was an attempt to make a PC game version of a boardgame. This boardgame has had over 20 years of design and play balance built into it, with a number of expansions adding depth and breadth to the basic game. To make a PC rendition of this game straight up would be a big challenge, and some corners were cut with the rules and the components, as well as a change of game style (to realtime). With two subsequent versions, missing components were added to the system, bringing SFC closer to the original boardgame. And the closer SFC comes to the original, the more successful the exercise of making a PC version of the boardgame will be.

The other opinion seems to be that the boardgame is a flawed system that detracts from a potentially (but not actually) good PC game. Anybody who supports the implimentation of boardgame systems is therefore ruining whatever hope there is for a good game to be made out of a bad game. Efforts must be made to excise dice, hexes and turns (and the artifacts produced by them) from the game. Instead ideas from other games should be incorporated to improve SFC.

I don't see how to resolve these two opinions, because they lead in oppposite directions. One gets you a cross between Armada 3 and Bridge Commander 2 (ughh) and the other gets you SFB/F&E on the computer, with dice and hexmaps. Clearly I favour the latter, but more importantly people need to recognise that these two things cannot co-exist in the one game because they are clearly two separate games. It's hard enough to build and sell one good PC game, but to build two and put them in the same box? Surely this is madness in a commercial arena? So let the people in charge of TNG make their follow-on to all the other TNG games. And let the SFC series continue to add components and rules from the board game in an effort to come closer to the original concept.

Besides, I want my next game to be made by the people who made OP, not the people who made Armada and Bridge Commander (or the other BC <shudders>) .

Cleaven · « **Reply #184 on:** July 17, 2003, 07:26:13 am »

I don't think the difficulty is with combining two game concepts like turn based and continuous time. Strictly speaking SFC 1 and 2 already do this. What you can't combine is X-wing with Starcraft, to cite an extreme variance of game concepts, and still have a fighter sim (or RTS game, depending on your point of view).

Reverend · « **Reply #186 on:** July 17, 2003, 08:58:09 am »

That last post of mine was supposed to be funny- couldn't decide whether I should post it or not- the person reading it here while I wrote it got a big kick out of it..... if it ticked some of you off, I'm sorry... but I really do feel that way... If all we could get from liscensing is a ''GAW'', then I'll be happy to at least get something, I suppose. That's probrobly a big ''if'' too though....

TheSatyr · « **Reply #188 on:** July 17, 2003, 11:24:13 am »

One thing to keep in mind. Whoever the next publisher is that gets the Trek licenses may not have any interest in publishing SFC style games...and even if they do there is no guarantee that Taldren would be asked to develop it. SFC games are not the "Blockbuster" games publishers are looking for these days.

I consider GAW to be a horse on life support. It's not quite a dead horse...but it's pretty close to being dead. Too many things have to happen for a GAW to be made.

As for the idea of an Expansion or patch to bring in andros and tholians...not real likely to ever happen. Who's going to pay Taldren to make either one? A patch would require new models,new artwork,new graphics...and they do have to pay people to create them.

An Expansion can only be done if they have a publisher willing to pay them to make one. Interplay might have been willing to to it,but they lost the licenses. Activision apparently doesn't even want an expansion to SFC3,so there is no way they'd pay for an expansion to a game by another publisher.

(And you know things are getting slow around here when the old Star Trek vs SFB arguements start up again.).

David Ferrell · « **Reply #189 on:** July 17, 2003, 11:26:26 am »

Cpt. Chaos I suggest you use:

http://www.sfbonline.com/

or find someone to code what you want. A direct translation of SFB on
the computer with "no compromises" would be a horrendous failure,
considering the amount of money required to complete a modern
software project of this scope and the number of potential customers (IMO).

Thanks,

Dave

Listen... do you smell something?

Cpt. Chaos · « **Reply #190 on:** July 17, 2003, 01:19:37 pm »

Thanks, Dave.

You have access to more marketing data than I do, so I assume you've at least looked at the 'total conversion' idea, and rejected it due to lack of a potential market. You either trust that data or you don't. Do you know what the total estimated size of the SFB market is? Compared to, say total sales of EAW, are we talking a small fraction? Or a larger fraction? I'm curious what your numbers show...

If SFB online had a computer AI as an opponent, that would be great. That would be very close to the dream. I have no way to put a price tag on that sort of project, do you have a rough guess?

Chaos

Tulwar · « **Reply #191 on:** July 17, 2003, 04:50:23 pm »

I too have very little hope for SFC GAW. It will be a cold day in Hades before Activision supports such a thing. The suit against Viacom offers a faint glimmer of hope. SFC2 was better than I believed possible. Taldren made an excellent engine for it and polished until it gleamed!

Unfortunately, it was too successful, and someone had to stop or acquire it lest it be competion for their game system.

Maybe Activision has come to see that SFC only has a niche audience and finds the license to TOS to be nothing more than a liablity. I doubt that's the case. If Activision thinks that any enterprise would draw a single customer away from their products, they will do everything on earth to stop it.

Considdering the state of the license, I think Taldren should work on something Tadren can control the rights to. Taldren put an increadable amount of value into SFC. Whatever they work on, if left to their own devices, will definitely be worth having.

olbuzzard · « **Reply #193 on:** July 17, 2003, 06:27:03 pm »

To those of you who have differing opinions on what we are discussing ... please understand I am not trying to be hard nosed and angry... but we are trying to despirately get you to see another point of view. Sometimes in order to serve the best interst of the overall community we have to make changes that may (or may not ) particularly suit our taste. This is a game. It's final out come will affect very little in light of eternal matters. Therefore, making a few concessions that do genuinly benefit the game is not asking for too much. (BTW... for what ever it's worth ... in the course of hashing this out perhaps we can come to some sort of realistic options .... I would also hope you understand when this is over we are atleast on a speaking basis. Maybe not best buds... but we try to understand and help each other as best we can. No grudges. OK !

Here is an example of somthing that I personally like very well.. ( but know it had to change) X-Ships !! Anyone who has been around me for very long knows of my fondness of the X-Class ships. But... if it helps matters continue to mover forward.. then they must be redesigned .... toned down before reinstituting..(yeah I know.. most of you think they are a joke any ways) But, to a degree that is my point. Many of us have differing opinions on ships, races to be utilized, game formats, map sizes, GSA or Dynaversa formats and a host of other things. Trying to find a common groud for all of is not going to be easy. I never said it would. BUT I do believe that it is a MUST !! If you want to find fault or pass judgement on me for that.. then so be it. Guilty as charged.

Consider this ... of all the copies of SFC-1, 2, OP and 3 that have been sold ... of those how many still are on line... and of those how many still hold to such a narrow, SFB only philisophy. In reality the numbers continue to grow smaller and smaller. That is not the sort of thing developers who will be willing to invest aprx 1/2 million or more want to see.

I will always maintain that what we are attempting to do is the best for everyone in a collective sense of the word. There's got to be a way... Please excuse me if we have been a bit rough around the edges in our discussion (olbuzzards have a tendency to be that way some times.) I guess that is why the name stuck as it did !!

AS ironic as this may sound... please continue this thread. But please try to let a crack of light in.

Thanks

Cleaven · « **Reply #194 on:** July 17, 2003, 07:49:35 pm »

I'm not saying that a follow on game to TNG should not be made, but I am saying that it should not be made and stuck in the same box with the GAW style expansion, with a button at start-up so that you can play SFC rules or TNG rules, with different Dynaverses (one F&E styled and the other open-space) etc. Put them in two separate boxes and sell them both for the same price. Just don't make any rubbish that will join the majority of ST titles in the play-once-and-never-again catagory.

Alidar Jarok · « **Reply #195 on:** July 17, 2003, 08:55:06 pm »

Although I know the future isn't clear, most of us here hope for Galaxies at War. I got SFC2 because it was Star Trek, not because it was Starfleet Battles. I had never even heard of it. I thought the game was great. When I found out SFC3 was comming out, set in The Next Generation period, I was thrilled, as I had always liked TNG better.

Using google, it didn't take me long to find Taldren's forums (I actually found Starfleet Universe first, and followed links to sfc3.net and taldren.com). Unfortunately, a few days after I had found Taldren's forums (before I had registered, though) the forums were taken down due to somebody posting porn (I'm sure most of you remember it, so there is no need for me to get into it). Anyway, for a liittle while, they wouldn't allow new members (which included me). Finally, they quietly lifted the ban, and I was allowed to join. Here I learned about SFB, and was convinced to try the Hydrans, Lyrans, Mirak, etc (which I never played because they weren't really Star Trek).

When SFC3 came out, it was a lot of fun. However, the game wasn't as fun as SFC2 (nestalgia I guess).

OK, I kind of whent away from the point I was trying to make. I had more fun playing in the SFB universe, but SFC3 did have some improvements I liked. I've always believed that GaW should have features from both SFC2 and 3 (obviously aimed more towards 2, since that is the time period). By features from SFC3, I don't mean "lack of features" (T-Bombs, Drones, etc), but actual features (I know reverse, and maybe officers, not sure, are part of SFB, so that's not what I'm talking about, but some features that were brand new and worked well)

TheSatyr · « **Reply #196 on:** July 17, 2003, 09:27:57 pm »

I think the biggest problem with SFC3 was the lack of variety. With a few more races it might have been competitive with EAW and OP.

NannerSlug · « **Reply #197 on:** July 17, 2003, 09:37:18 pm »

*and* a *few* more ships. lol.. gotta have moocho more for me at least, anyhow.. i think it was more of a lack of ships/hulls than races..

i believe the core with that issue and a few others is detail, to put it simply. there are a few things i believe that could still be done in a patch for sfc3 that could add some detail and help out tremendously.. whether thats adding in a few more arcs or ships released by date (if they were to put in releasing ships by date then i would nearly have my dream trek game - cause you could do a tos-present mod)..

play wise, i think the weapons could be juiced a little more.. sure, heck, even add in a type of missile or so (might be interesting for tactical decisions - but note that none of the main races in star trek use missiles - i think the ferengi do - so i feel like they should be on the low end of the balance spectrum). i do miss t-bombs though.. i also think if the weapons were juiced just a bit more..

just a few thoughts.

olbuzzard · « **Reply #198 on:** July 17, 2003, 09:46:57 pm »

woooaahhhh STOP THE PRESS, HOLD THE PHONE CALLS, NOTIFY CENTRAL COMMAND, SOME BODY TAKE A PICTURE !!!! my son and I agree for the 5th time in a row this week.

Can someone please check and make sure there is not an intruder using Nanners login eheheheheh hahaha hohohoho !!!

this is definately a Kodak moment !!!

TheSatyr · « **Reply #199 on:** July 18, 2003, 02:31:46 am »

I would have liked to have seen playable Cardassians and Ferengi,but I have a feeling that Taldren had too tight a schedule with SFC3 to put in more than 4 races.

The whole "you have to get the game out for Nemesis" thing hurt alot.

SFC3 is a good game,but I think Taldren's hands "may" have been tied by what Activision (and Viacom) wanted.

(Just guesses on my part...but that's how it looks from where I'm sitting).

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Topic: If Trek Liscense is Split Up Again, What Happens to SFC Series? (Read 23842 times) var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

Reverend

Cpt. Chaos

Cleaven

Toasty0

Cleaven

Sethan

Reverend

Sethan

TheSatyr

David Ferrell

Cpt. Chaos

Tulwar

Scipio_66

olbuzzard

Cleaven

Alidar Jarok

TheSatyr

NannerSlug

olbuzzard

TheSatyr

Topic: If Trek Liscense is Split Up Again, What Happens to SFC Series? (Read 23842 times)