Topic: SFB GOES SIMPLE!!!

[T-Rex_NT]

the main reason you rarely see anyone on there is because MOST people that use the site are mainly involved in campaign play and come on during preset times to play their battles.

If you read the forums at starfleetgames.com you can get involved in one of the campaigns.

I do agree that they should try to build a community like the one SFC had and go from there.

have fun out there,

sincerely,

T-Rex of NT

[Lepton]

FC Resources

http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/21/player_reference_card.pdf

http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/21/d-combat.pdf

Cost of game is to be 60 bucks.  I think I may have to pass.

Star Wars BattleFront 2 or a 60 dollar board game with no players and no online presence.

A 3-d live action game that costs millions to produce or a flat baord game that should cost almost nothing to make if they distributed it ELECTRONICALLY!!!!!

Is ADB nuts, or do they just know that they have their player base over a barrel?  This is how you attract new players??!!!  By charging as much as software??!!!

 

Easy decision to me.

[Lepton]

I also find it funny that they claim to have reduced the number of impulses to 8 but then established 4 sub-pulses in each impulse which is, well, 32.

[J. Carney]

Lepton,

Where did they say $60 at?

I thought that it was going to be in the $35 range?

[Lepton]

Go to:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/

Go to New Product Development/CURRENT SCHEDULE/Federation Commander/Archive through September 29.

You will find a number of posts by Steve Cole that says the price point they are looking at is $59.99  and generally people are not happy about it.  Frankly, I think the whole thing is fishy.  If you bop around in there you will find a release schedule of further expansions to just the basic set, then of course there is going to be all the racial specific expansion that are likely to cost as much as Klingon Border.  It's ridiculous.  Certainly no one who has bought any or all of the SFB is going to downgrade to FC for as much money as they spent to get current for SFB.  AND I doubt first time Starfleet Universe players or first time Trek board game players are going to shell out 60 bucks when they  can buy a video game for that amount.  I don't know what business model ADB is thinking of, but it isn't a current one.  They are acting as if it is the era of D&D expansions as opposed to online gaming.

They need the equivalent of the Pocket Game (read cheap game) that got the whole thing started as opposed to a competing product line with as high a price point as their current products.

[Lepton]

Or I copy it here:

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 05:38 pm: Edit

This is the huge press release I just sent to wholesalers.

Memo: 29 Sept 2005
From: Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc.
To: Wholesalers, retailers, and gamers
Re: Federation Commander launch date.

Drum roll, please!

We here at Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc., are incredibly excited to be able to tell you about our new space combat game system, which will ship on 7 Nov 2005. You’ve heard rumors and seen vague listings in our production schedule for months, and now it’s time for some hard facts.

Federation Commander is the new "fast play" starship combat game from Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc., the people who brought you the intense (and complex) game Star Fleet Battles, the best-selling starship combat game of all time. Federation Commander is designed for the new markets of the 21st Century, where players expect and demand high production values, rules they can learn in an hour, and games that can be played multiple times in a single evening.

Here is the hard data for your computer.
Federation Commander: Klingon Border
Boxed Game, SKU #4001, MSRP $59.95, Release 7 Nov 05

Allow me to take a moment and apologize that you didn’t have all of this information two months ago. You should have, and if we had been able to send it out, we would have. During the final phases of design we made a terrifying decision to produce Federation Commander to "Eurogame" standards instead of to "1980s wargame standards".

Now let’s talk about the game itself. The box has brilliant cover art by Mark Evans, the artist who did the dramatic cover for Klingons D20. The playing pieces are full color one-inch squares with full-color high-resolution computer images of the starships. The ship diagrams (listing what a ship has, and how much of it has been wrecked by enemy weapons) are in full color and laminated for hundreds of repeat uses. The full-color map board is laminated on both sides of 80-point board, with "open space" on one side and terrain (asteroids or planets) on the other. Players can fight their savage battles in deep space or near their home planets.

Federation Commander invites comparisons to Star Fleet Battles, even if these are not entirely fair. Federation Commander has been called "SFB Lite" and it fulfills the function of that title, but it is far more than a "stripped down’ version of the classic game. It is a new design, built from the ground up for fast play. We didn’t take SFB and made it simpler; we built a new game engine that IS faster to learn, master, and play. For those who want the hard numbers for comparison:
SFB Basic Set has 224 pages of rules (with over two thousand more pages in later products), 32 decision points per turn, two die rolls for every point of damage, takes four hours to fight a one-on-one duel, and uses a tax form to allocate the energy produced by your engines.
Federation Commander has 48 pages of rules (with only a few more pages in all future products), 8 decision points per turn, one die roll for ten points of damage, takes one hour or less to play a one-on-one duel, and handles energy with an on-the-fly system using tokens (or even a paperclip sliding on a numbered scale).
We are aware that Star Fleet Battles started in 1979 as a 48-page book that grew, over 25 years, to over 2,000 pages of rules and over 3,000 starships. We don’t need to reinvent Star Fleet Battles, and have designed Federation Commander to START and REMAIN a fast-paced game with all of the excitement and little of the engineering, accounting, and rules lawyering. Future elements will add scenarios and ships, not complicated new concepts and systems. Future elements will add new empires and a modest number of rules for the weapons of those new empires.

Federation Commander will sell to:
Everyone who ever played Star Fleet Battles and liked it.
Everyone who ever played Star Fleet Battles and thought it was too complicated.
Everyone who plays Full Thrust, Silent Death, Battle Fleet Gothic, A Call to Arms, and Babylon 5 Wars.
Everyone who is a fan of any Star Trek series.
Everyone who plays RPGs and wants a fast space combat system.

Major selling points of the system include:
Colorful Eurogame-quality components
Thousands of pre-sold Star Fleet Battles players.
Full miniatures support.
Hex-based and free-form movement systems.
Two game scales to keep the largest battles under four hours.

A major element of our marketing campaign (which has sent advertising to all of the major magazines and other venues) is our Federation Commander Rollout Weekend on 25-27 November. Hundreds of fanatically loyal Star Fleet Universe fans have committed to running demonstration events in their local stores all weekend. Wholesalers already have our full-color flyer to send to every game store.

Federation Commander is a complete game system, designed to maximize player value. By providing the elements that the players want in digestible bites, we will also maximize store profits. Here is what we have planned.
Federation Commander: Klingon Border is the first boxed set. It includes 16 full-color 5x8 inch starship displays and 40 full-color starship playing pieces.
Also available will be three $39.95 "squadron boxes" of Starline 2400 miniatures which exactly match the ships in Federation Commander: Klingon Border. This will be a major up-sell item for retailers ... and remember that those other space games are basically vehicles to sell miniatures.
The mounted double-sided space map will also be available early next year as a separate item, which Federation Commander players will want so they can host larger battles, and which will also sell to any other miniatures and space combat players.
This will be followed in February by three "booster packs" for $9.95. Each booster will provide additional copies of the full-color laminated starship cards from the game so that players who want to play larger battles can use multiple ships of the same class. Each booster will include a command cruiser not included in the original game.
This will be followed in April by Federation Border: Klingon Attack, an expansion with 16 additional ships (none of them in the original FC:KB game) and two additional map sections. Simultaneously, we will release three "boosters" with additional copies of the ships in the Federation Border: Klingon Attack (each booster including one new ship not in the expansion).
This will be followed in June by Federation Commander: Romulan Border and its three boosters and three squadron boxes, followed two months later by the Federation Border: Romulan Attack and its three boosters.
Obviously, we will add exciting new expansions (that do not clog up the game system) for years to come, and our multiple lines of RPGs are an exciting opportunity for cross-marketing.
Additional information about Federation Commander can be found at www.starfleetgames.com/fc if you want to check out some sample components, and please feel free to call Ken Burnside, our Marketing Director, at 806-351-1950 if you have any questions.



And with the audacity to add this:

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 05:39 pm: Edit

Retail price $59.95. Given the components, no other company would sell it for less than $99.95.

[GDA-S'Cipio]

This price is not out of line with other games of similar scope and similar production values taht this advertises having.

Of course, if you have no players in your area, don't buy it.  The trick is to talk to several friends and get a group interested in the game before you purchase it.

-S'Cipio

[Lepton]

No wild weasels, no electronic warfare, no scatterpacks, no capturing.

Scip,

They made the decision to go "high-production values/Euro-Game".  No one asked them to nor did they consult their player base on that decision and they seemed to have decided rather late in the development to do so.

You can buy Axis and Allies for around 40 bucks.  That's a decent price point for a strat board game, as far as I am concerned.  I swear ADB acts as if the whole online gaming world doesn't exist.

Hmm, World of Warcraft or SFB?  You tell me what is making more money.  Apples and oranges, sure.  How about all the RTS titles out there?  What market do they think they have?  None that I can think of.  If it isn't online and computerized, it might as well not exist.  There are more folks playing poker online for free than probably own one SFB product for which one has to pay an additional fee to use via SFBOnline.  What world are they living it?

This is very boutique gaming, if such an idea exists.

[GDA-S'Cipio]

Scip,

They made the decision to go "high-production values/Euro-Game".  No one asked them to nor did they consult their player base on that decision and they seemed to have decided rather late in the development to do so.

I think they are trying to break into a new player base rather than cater strictly to the SFB one, and I suspect that includes a stronger miniatures gaming presence.

You can buy Axis and Allies for around 40 bucks.  That's a decent price point for a strat board game, as far as I am concerned.  I swear ADB acts as if the whole online gaming world doesn't exist.

Hmm, World of Warcraft or SFB?  You tell me what is making more money.  Apples and oranges, sure.  How about all the RTS titles out there?  What market do they think they have?  None that I can think of.  If it isn't online and computerized, it might as well not exist.  There are more folks playing poker online for free than probably own one SFB product for which one has to pay an additional fee to use via SFBOnline.  What world are they living it?

This is very boutique gaming, if such an idea exists.

There are other gaming markets out there that have little to do with on-line gaming.  Try here:

http://us.games-workshop.com

Yes, they've put out a few computer games (and we have SFC)  But GW is almost exclusively a tabletop miniatures company.  Tabletop miniatures is big business!

You are right:  ADB is largely ignoring the computerized on-line world.  Partly that is because they have little choice vis-a-vis paramount (barring another Interplay) and partly that just isn't their world.

-S'Cipio

[Rat Boy]

I'm interested in seeing how this develops.  I can see this translating over to the PC in a SFC-like conversion very easily.

[Hexx]

I would assume their target audience is omething more along the lines of
the guys who play Warhammer/40K etc. Tabletop minaiture games that are
easy to play, without a huge timesink investment or needing hundreds of pages
of rules .
Games Workshop did a game called Battlefleet Gothic a few years back, sold decent numbers
(mostly in NA, did less well in Europe) from what I understand.
It was a tabletop space combat game, about 30 pages (if that) of real rules
Fun, quick and easy to learn.
Two of those don't belong to SFB

Personally I think it will all come down to the models- ADB's minatures are "old style" ships for SFB.
If they get new & better molds- and bring their models up to at least TMP Era, it will possibly do well.
If they leave tabletop mini's looking like 60' s starships I have my doubts.

And the price range was in the same area.
If they want a sucessful miniature tabletop sucess they really need three things
1) Decent background and history (there's is OK)
2) A tight ruleset- easy to learn, but tougher to master, with few loopholes or special exceptions
3) Decent Miniatures- the miniatures have to be something Kids- (not adults 40+) will look at and like.
    the older style CA's won't cut it. (and I'm not sure if they're allowed ti use anything more modern..)

[Mr_Tricorder]

Maybe they should make a basic set without miniatures for about $20-$30 and a deluxe set with miniatures and maybe a few other goodies for $60.  That way, the people who just want to be able to afford the game and don't really feel like they need the cool miniatures to play (like me) will buy it and the people who shell out $60 for the full set with miniatures won't feel quite so ripped off because they're getting the "deluxe" edition.

[Lepton]

But it's not a miniatures game and it doesn't come with any.  One could buy some or use existing ones, but it just comes with fancier, larger counters.  Whoopee!!

Here's my most cynical perspective.  It's a money grab.  If you look at what they are offering, it is merely simplified SFB with color.  There is no new content here.  Same races, same ships, hell same SSDs.  Same phaser chart.  Same dizzie chart.  Same energy system practically.  Same weapons costs.  Same movement costs.  Same number of impulses (8 impulses with 4 sub-pulses).   It's repackaged, simplified SFB.  That's it and they want to players to pay 60 bucks for pretty colors.

Here's what to always remember with advertising.  The thing they say it isn't is exactly what it is.  They go out of their way to say this is not SFB Lite, when clearly it is.  Dice, charts, DAC, SSDs, movement costs, yada, yada.  It's all the same, but less complex at nearly twice the cost of SFB Basic Set.

In the initial package, I think you get basically 16 ships which seems small to me considering that they have every SSD that they will use is ready to go as they are basically the same ones they use for SFB.  Races are I believe Fed, Klink, Kzin, and a couple of Thols.  They are holding off on Roms because they haven't figure out how to handle cloaking or plasma which to me smacks of pooring planning.

Be that as it may, I won't be buying this thing.  I hope other people will like it, but I think they will be getting the short end of the stick, as the product is highly derivative and over-priced.

[Mr_Tricorder]

If I can get it for $20, I'll buy it.
... $30, I'll probably buy it.
... $40, I might buy it.
... $50 or higher, I won't buy it.  It's just not worth the money.

[Rat Boy]

Pffft, minatures?  I'm busting out my Playmates and Art Asylum 1 footer toys just you can hear what it sounds like when I torpedo you sorry people to death!

[Lepton]

I guess really I am spoiled and cheap.  I've got SFB Lite right here that I payed for at least 4 times and that is alot damn simpler than rolling die and doing an energy allocation, but alot better looking.  Also I've got all the major races represented.  What I hate about SFB is that to get to the point I am used to playing at in SFC, I'd probably have to drop over a three hundred bucks.  Basic Set ($35)  Advanced Missions ($35).  C Modules 1, 2, 3 ($50).  Most of the R modules ($150 roughly).  J and K modules ($60).  Ouch.  Every time I even think of buying the Basic Set I get that hollow feeling that tells me to get current I will need to invest alot more for a game that has a very minor player base.  I just can't justify it.  I kick myself for even buying F&E.  That's 50 bucks I wish I could get back.  Another expansion-mad system.

And what really peeves me is that I owned this game back when I was a kid.  Got the Basic Set when I was like 14 or something like that, back when it was Task Force Games Box.  I never could find anyone to play it with, so I got rid of it somewhere along the line.  And I always wanted to play SFB, but after all these years it is seriously disappointing that the cost is so prohibitive and the player base is fragmented from what I can see.  I mean what has ADB done in twenty years to create a cohesive community and get a movement going.  Play-by-Mail, Play-by-Email that's all player produced.  SFBOnline, a pay service with a miniscule base.  My assumption is that they sit on their laurels as one of the only companies to have a Star Trek License.  Any other gaming company would have had to do alot more to maintain its player base.

[likkerpig]

Sounds like they are going the Games Workshop/Wizards of the Coast plan.
Used to play a lot of Warhammer 40k, D&D... to a lesser extent Battlefleet Gothic, Warhammer, etc...
But it got too much... D&D went to 3rd edition, then 3.5... meant all the books and such I had were useless, WH40k revised the rules and put out new minitures (which looked much better but cost more) and kept you hanging for the codex for the race you wanted to play... (heh, one good thing was the orks, when I brought out my new ork army, people stopped singing "bring in the clowns"... the old ones were horrible)...
I guess the thing is that in order to keep making money they have to keep changing things, even when they have a winning system they have to tinker with it until it is unrecognizable as the one you enjoyed.
Oh, go on any of the official GW forums and put the word "squats" in your post, see how quick you are banned... (Squats were the 40k equivilent of dwarves, had a small but rabid following... they got so annoying that the admins would pop a tumor at the mention of them).

[Rat Boy]

If the FC game engine and the mechanics of it ends up working well, maybe, just maybe, somebody can talk Paramount and ADB into licensing FC for an SFC revival or SFC-like game.  It'd be like WotC did in turning D&D 3rd Edition into the core rules for the Star Wars RPG series; doesn't have to have anything to do with SFB or the SFB races, it could be from any era of the canon serieses.

[Commander Maxillius]

Ao at $60, how does Lite compare with the full version?


Also, consider that they're not really trying to lure online/computer gamers away from their PCs/consoles.  These will sell to folks that are already into big intricate board games, perhaps looking to move up in complexity from A&A without needing to sink a year into reading an encyclopedia of rules to play a 6-month battle that would've taken 6 minutes in a computer or RL setting.

Granted, the battles will still be really f--king long for my taste, but they will only take 1 month as opposed to 6


What I'd like to see developed is a Star Trek game that utilizes the D20 offline RPG engine (ala D&D)



"DUDE! Natural 20 on my photon to-hit roll!  Rolling to confirm critical...  DUUUDE! Another 20!  Your ass is toast!!  Let's see, damage....  1d8 x3 for critical....  rolling....  6, 7, 5... 18 damage, hope your shields were up mwaaaahahahaha"

[Lepton]

My larger point on their offering is the substantiation for the high price tag is the production values, i.e. color stuff, or so they say. If they distribute it electronically, i.e. move into the twentieth century, it would cost them almost nothing to produce and distribute.  The high price tag is their own problem not mine, a problem with product value.  I don't value a board game with color pieces when I can buy a fully interactive computer game for the same price.  They need to update their business model in light of online play.

They are trying to ride this little board game wave and make some dough instead of offering a decent product.