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Other comments left for this publisher: |
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Book is described as "complete" but has no construction rules which are a standard in Starmada and are referenced in various advertisements in the book itself. It's not like these rules need to be written, they exist in Nova Edition and are simply omited from this probably at behest of the IP holder. Why should a book based on a licensed IP offer the customer less value than the game it's derived from?
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Federation Ship Pack # 1 is a wonderful addition to the Federation Commander: Academy set available here on DTRPG. It provides 6 new ships to give some variety to Federation fleets. These new ships provide more flexibility for creating fleets or playing/homebrewing scenarios for Federation Commander. I strongly recommend this expansion.
I believe with this set and the Klingon Ship Card Pack # 2 you will have all of the Klingon and Federation ships found in Federation Commander: Klingon Border, a title that I hope ADB will provide in PDF format here one day.
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Klingon Ship Pack 2 is a wonderful addition to the Federation Commander: Academy set available here on DTRPG. It provides 6 new ships to give some variety to the Klingon Empire fleets. These new ships provide more flexibility for creating fleets or playing/homebrewing scenarios for Federation Commander. I strongly recommend this expansion.
I believe with this set and the Federation Ship Card Pack #1 you will have all of the Klingon and Federation ships found in Federation Commander: Klingon Border, a title that I hope ADB will provide in PDF format here one day.
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Federation Commander is a pretty stellar game (pun intended). It is a good intermediary between fast-paced and simplified modern tabletop spaceship combat games, such as X-Wing or Attack Wing, and the old-style spaceship combat games like Star Fleet Battles, Full Thrust, and other games that assume a degree in engineering.
For SFB fans, and people attempting to pursue SFB alike this game is either a good quick version, or a great starting point to the more complex game of Star Fleet Battles. If you are a Star Trek fan in general, looking for something a little bit more in-depth than attack wing, and in the (expanded) TOS universe, than this is the game for you, as well.
All in all, I find Federation Commander to be a great way to spend a couple hours with friends either on a tabletop or online (look up Federation Commander Online if you're interested in that. It's a fun game, with great scenarios and fun replayability.
I just wish ADB would put the rest of the modules, like Graduation and Romulan Space, up for purchase here as well; with the ship packs, though, you could probably do a pretty good job getting all of the content.
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Let me preface this by saying that I love this book as a product. It is very useful for someone who has purchased a great deal of FCom stuff and prefers to have all their rules in one, handy format. The organization is clear, the reference number system is great for cross referencing purposes and means that it is easy for ADB to update the book when necessary without rejiggering the table of contents (which they do regularly). It is one handy book. Unfotunately, What I purchased is not a book; it is a PDF and that is where two major problems raise their heads.
First and most important: there are no bookmarks. This makes it impossible to use the PDF as a quick reference document, especially with games as wonderfully simulationist and crunchy as those produced by ADB. If the material was referenced by page number, it would be slow but not unusable, but the reference number system that makes rules referenceing so useful in a dead tree product (which you can at least add physical tabs or bookmarks to) makes it very difficult to find things in the digital version (which is locked, so you can't even bookmark it yourself).
The major problem with this system is that there are no 'page number' references in the table of contents or index. If I want to find out about the effect of Seeking Weapon Impact, I'm directed to 4F4, but neither the TOC or the index indicate what page 4F4 is on. So I have to resort to skimming through the entire document, doing the equivelent of page flipping back and forth through a 112 page book, to find anything. And if I'm going to do that, I may as well buy the physical book, because that is just plain irritating in a digital format.
And there's the other rub: I paid $15 for the PDF. The book is $14.99. Even given the sales tax addition, selling a PDF for the MSRP of a print product defeats one of the main purposes people buy digital product (the other being quick reference). It is one of the reasons that I haven't purchased any other ADB digital products, despite the fact that I've wanted the Fedcom Tactics Manual since its release, my friends and I would like to get into Star Fleet Battles (we played our first Cadet Book game the other week) and we want to take a run at Federation and Empire (we have an old 1989 copy, but would like to get the digital rulebook for quick reference before diving headlong into a sea of chits and rules).
So, while I love the games and the books, I cannot give this product more than 2 stars. In the PDF market, the lack of a 'digital discount' is not a total deal killer, as some are willing to pay a premium for a really good product, but the lack of searchability in combination with that means that I cannot recommend this product in this format. You'd be better off just buying the print version (which I heartily recommend).
If the bookmark issue were corrected, I could easily revise the rating to 4 stars (unlock the book so I can add them myself and I can push it to 3 at least), but at this point I'm really discouraged from purchasing other digital products from ADB which, in combination with the lack of retail product in my area, really hampers me in selling my group on further expansion into what is really the best, most consistent setting for Star Trek gaming in the industry.
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The book is very thorough in it's explanation of the rules. There's a lot of attention paid to detail.
However, the rules themselves are not what I wanted from the Call to Arms series. This edition makes the rules a lot closer to Star Fleet Battles or Federation Commander in terms of complexity, detail, and resolution time. What I like about the Call to Arms series of games is that they are faster and can therefore support larger engagements. What I was hoping for was Amarillo Design Bureau to go into the rules set up initially by Mongoose and to tighten them up with balance tweaks, examples and rule clarifications.
The rules that I got I didn't recognize as being from the same system. If you are like me and wanted an airtight update to the Call to Arms ruleset for Star Trek that maintained the low complexity and rapid tempo of the previous games in the series, this book is not that. If you are looking for a detailed space ship wargame that can support larger fleets than Starfleet Battles or Battlefleet Gothic, then this should be a good set for you.
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This is a great addition to the Star Fleet Universe allowing quick play of battles involving multiple ships per side with enough chrome to keep the feel of Star Fleet Battles without the complexity of more detailed systems.
The deluxe version has more background detail, some painting hints for minitures and few other things over the basic version and worth the extra dollars. Layout is very nice with the only negative being a lack of a consolidated combat table to show dice rolls to hit, damage and explaination of the weapon details without flipping back and forth through the rules. No big detail as we made our own but new players could benefit by having everything at hand for the first few games.
Based on the publishers website this should be well supported with future supplements to add more races, ships and probably options/complexity. The system is clean and allows for a lot of house rule options to add more complexity if that is what you are looking for. System is geared towards minitures but can easily be converted to hex and cardboard.
If you want to play Federation and Empire and game out some of the battles in detail this might be the engine to make it happen.
Pros: Star Fleet, fun, not much book keeping, great feel for the genre. Easy to teach new players.
Cons: Very little, maybe add a consolidated combat chart.
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Nice upgrade over the original black and white version. Offers better organization of information by color coding which is helpful in teaching the game to new players.
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Looks okay from a rules standpoint but the design is horrible. Zero effort was put into it. Come on guys, whoever pulled this together must be blind. If I were Mongoose, I wouldn't want my name anywhere near this thing and would want my logo pulled.
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Background: 44 y.o. owner of SFB Basic Set, Advanced Missions, C1, C2, J-Fighters, M-Marines. Recently purchased Intro. To SFB (Excellent product).
Claim - "...designed to use with Star Fleet Battles"
Product - "(A1.10) All scenarios will be resolved using a statistical method of combat."
Product - "A single round of combat may actually represent several actual SFB scenarios with days between battles." (Yes, actually and actual in the same sentence.)
Response - Resolving fleet combat with a single die roll is not SFB.
Claim - "...use the map provided..."
Product - "(A5.10) The game map should be read as follows..." (The map on the back cover?)
Response - No map supplied; am I expected to buy F&E?
Claim - "Includes everything!", "...exactly what you want to know."
Product - "(C3.10) At the start of the game, all systems will have defensive forces listed on each empire’s status sheet."
Response - Where? Not in this product. F&E?
Product - "(Z1.10) The GM will provide you a base XXXXEP to spend."
Response - Not even a suggestion to help someone who purchased the product for advice.
Conclusion - This is not a complete product. This NOT SFB. The description should be changed to reflect this, so others don't spend money on a poorly written, poorly organised product. It may well make sense to people who already play it, but they wouldn't need to buy it. Disappointing.
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Bought this to complete my SFB Library as frugally as possible. My only complaint is that the full history background of the Empires is not included. It would nice if the SSD books for Omega Two thru Five were available through WargameVault as well.
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It does a good job of explaining what the game is and does. Very good job on that. Sadly the game is even more complex than Star Fleet Battles. And nearly all about economics. And is of such a scale that whole fleets could just zip by each other in the same hex and never interact since they are so far away.
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As an old star fleet battles player ,I got this to try out before I dove back into the full rules. Does a great job of breaking down and leaving bits of the rules out to get started in each little learning scenario. They did an awesome job with the scenarios.
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I downloaded this document for use to teach new SFB players. As a teaching tool/aide, it is bar none the best programmed method to teach a very difficult game to a bunch of new players. I would recommend this to every person that wants to learn how to play SFB, it will not let you down.
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I have a physical copy already and I thought it was worth it then, and it's still a good product. When I was in middle school, I read the three volumes of the commanders edition. Most people aren't into that many rules, but still like the genre and the turn based tactics. It's a good into and provides a modicum of depth.
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