Hi, Gang. I’m Steve Cole, designer and publisher of Federation Commander. I probably won’t be by here very often but I did want to say hello and tell you that anyone with a question can send it to
design@starfleetgames.com and I’ll get back to you. If you want to post my reply here, it’s ok but please let me know in your question that’s what the answer is for. (That way I can make sure to include contextual information.)
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This is, I think, my second "account" here since I couldn’t find the log-in for the first one and couldn’t get the password retrieval thing to work. But it IS me and I’ll post something on my own BBS to say "yes, the post on dynaverse WAS from me." This account has the email address
deals@starfleetgames.com but they're both me.
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The ISC will first appear in "booster zero" sometime in April which also has the Hydrans, Lyrans, Gorns, Romulans, and WYNs. We just printed those cards yesterday and I'm working on the rules sheet now.
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The game is selling very well. Since release on 11 Nov we averaged a wholesaler restock every day through the end of the year; we’ve never had a wholesaler restock anything after Thanksgiving before. Since that whirlwind we’ve made sure to get the wholesalers to stock it deeper so while they order less often they order bigger quantities and it’s more efficient and the same sales.
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Yeah, it’s kinda weird having only 16 ships (plus four more in boosters 1-2-3, six more in booster zero, 16 more in Klingon attack, four more in boosters 4-5-6, 16 more in Romulan Border, 16 more in Romulan Attack, and eight more in boosters 7-12. I think we may also have four more in another booster this fall (but that’s a special case I can’t talk about right now without causing a riot). So, sure, you’ll "only" have 86 ships (with Communique this may reach almost 100) the first year, which compared to thousands of ships in SFB is kinda "paltry" but most of the SFB ships are variants of base hulls using rules that FC just doesn’t need. And of course, if you play squadron scale you can just use SFB SSDs and the game plays a heck of a lot faster. For new players that means "45 minute duels" and for veteran SFB players it means "I can use twice as many ships in the same time".
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Borders of Madness will happen sometime, maybe late this year or early next year or the year after or when I retire or maybe next week. We want to be careful how to market this as we hardly want to tell the thousands of new FC players that they "aren’t real gamers if they don’t use the extra rules."
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Terrance L. Roff had some hilarious points in his post. I have enjoyed talking to retailers a lot since I became the publisher in 99. I might comment that royalties from SFC aren’t keeping us afloat since they went out of business without paying us most of what they owed us. As for a "bare bones operation" I am not sure what that means but it doesn’t look it to me. Our sales were up 25% in 2005 (a horrible year when the whole industry was DOWN by 25%), we hired two more people in 2005, we just bought a $24,000 steel deck to turn our one-story warehouse into two stories and add 500 square feet of office space, and we have bought $35,000 worth of printing and binding equipment in the last 18 months. (If anything is "keeping us in business" it is the ability to print what we sell and not stack unsold books in the warehouse.) Again, I don’t know what Terrance thinks a "bare bones operation is" but the only lack of an amenity I know of is that we had to put the sofa that I used for naps into storage to make space for new people and equipment. Once the contractor is finished converting the warehouse I will have my sofa (and naps) back again and life will be good again. I am not sure what he means by "should be selling for $50 but is selling for $30" when the price as you all know is $60. At that price, it outsells everything we have published in the seven years since we fired TFG (and in the five or six years prior to that time). One thing Terrance is right about is that you need to support your local stores or you won’t have them. The industry lost 1200 stores in the last 18 months, and while we all nod our heads and say "those were the fad stores that only sold the clicks and cards junk" the point is that we lost 1200 of the stores last year and this is not a good thing for you or us. That’s one reason why FC includes a major push for retailer support and even an organized play league that must be held in retail stores to get the cards and prizes and bonus ships and pins and junk that go along with it.
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Klingon Attack will be $30, and Romulan Attack will be $30. Romulan Border I'm not so sure. If we include more mounted map panels it will be $60 and will be the second and last stand-alone FC product. If we decide not to include map panels we'll drop the price appropriately.
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Yeah, color printing is incredibly expensive. What we pay for a print run of 16 color ship cards would print twice as many 80-page black and white SSD books. But in this modern era, color is expected and a commensurate price is not an obstacle. I have no doubt some people balked at the price but I also know that we sold something like four times as many copies of FC as we did of Module R10 and that FC sales are tracking 30% higher (even at double the price) as the Resurection Edition of SFB sold in 1999.
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Anyway, like I said, I don't get around the internet much so I probably won't get back here very often but you are welcome to ask me questions any time.
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One of the things about the new company is that I am pretty much chained to my desk. With a new marketing guy I don't have to do that and with a new warehouse guy I don't have to do THAT so there is nothing left for me to do but answer questions and design games. My schedule is scary. I have to create 32 new ship cards in the 28 days that started Monday and during the first half of that I also have to do four new countersheets (Rom Border, Klingon Attack, Romulan Attack, and the new SFB Basic Set counters) and during the second half I have to do the Klingon Border rulebook, the ISC Scenario for F&E, and about half of CL32. Plus settling my father's estate (finally!) and the next two surgeries to get rid of those pesky if almost irrelevant skin cancers. The hole where they dug out the first one only hurts when I laugh. See you later.
Topic: Federation Commander Thread (Read 7351 times)