You have the largest selection of ships.  You may select ONE of the following: D-5 (no variant), D6, D6-D, D6-E, D6-G, D6-J, D6-M, D6-S, D7, D7-C, or D7-A.

 

You may select any 4 of the following: ALL F-5 variants prior to Y168 (pretty much all of them), E3, E4, and the G2.

 

So, your legal choices of ships could be D6-D, F5, F5CVL, F5-M, and G2.   

Romulans get one size class 3 design and 3 size class 4 designs. They may NOT choose a design after year 170. You may have Gladiator-1 fighters (4 bpv each, 1 F-torp and NO phasers) but may developer other fighters in time. You may not have warp booster packs. No fast patrol ships. You MAY have "B" refits if you pay for them.

You may choose ONE of the following: SupH, FireH, SparrowHawk A, B, C @ 130 bpv, D, F, G @ 143 bpv, or H @ 124 bpv, KE, WE, FrtE, MA  NO Klingon ships.  No Killerhawks.  No Novahawks. You MAY choose Warbird, but you will never be allowed to take the ship out of it's current parsec for the entire game.

 

You may choose three of the following: Skyhawk A, B, D, F @ 110, G @107, H @ 93, BH, WH, Snipe A, B, or P.

  
Feds get one size class 3 design and 3 size class 4 designs. You may NOT choose a design after year 168. Speed 12 drones. You may have two fighter designs (both F-4 and F-8) but you may NOT have F-14s (yet.) Too powerful. You MAY have the "+" refit if you pay for it.  You may not have warp booster packs. No SWACs, don't even ask. Too powerful.

You may choose one of the following: CC, CA, CVS, GS @ 140, CL, ComC @ 100, MS, CLS, CLH @ 100 bpv.

 

You may choose 3 of the following: DD, SC, FF, DDL, DDG, FFG, FFE, FFR, FFL, FFD, FFT @ 68 bpv, FFP @ 75 bpv.

 
Gorns get one size class 3 design and 3 size class 4 designs. You have very few ship designs to choose from but you are the only one allowed to use Tugs. You get one fighter design, G-10. You may not have warp booster packs. No fast patrol ships.

You may choose one of the following: CC, CA, CL, HDD, HDV @ 110 bpv, COM @ 100, CDD, HMS @ 110, HSC @ 125, or a Tug @ 96 bpv.  You may take the following pods for your tugs, Cargo @15 bpv, monitor @ 45 bpv, Troop @ 60 bpv, Starliner @ 40 bpv, or R Pod.  You don't get the Monitor + pod.  Your FLSC unit consumption varies greatly depending on the number of pods you take.

 

You may choose three of the following: BDD, DD, FF, DDL, SC @ 80 bpv, MS @ 70 bpv.

Kzintis get one size class 3 design and 3 size class 4 designs. The year limitation is Y170. You get one fighter design (either or AAS or SS) and you may not get warp booster packs. You (and you alone) get speed 20 drones and you can have them on your fighters. No fast patrol ships.

You may choose one of the following: CV, CVL, CVE, CC, CS, CM, CL, BC, CVS, SR @ 120 bpv, MEC, or MDC.

 

You may choose three of the following: DD, FF, MS @ 70 bpv, Pol, or L-Q Ship.

Hydrans get one size class 3 design and 2 size class 4 designs. No ships prior to Y171 may be selected. You get two fighter designs (Stinger, St-2, St-H, St-F) to choose from, but no warp booster packs and no Fast Patrol Ships.

 

You may choose one of the following size 3 designs: CVA, CC (LB, LM, LC), CA (R, D, H, or T), or CV (U).

 

You may choose two of the following: DD (L or K), SR, MS @ 75 bpv, Hnt, or Gen.

 
Lyrans get one size class 3 design and 3 size class 4 designs (as they get NO fighters.) No ships built prior to Y170 may be chosen. Sorry, no fast patrol ships.

You may choose one of the following: BC, CC, CA, CW, CL, LTT, or CWL.

 

You may choose 3 of the following: DW, DD, FF, Pol, or L-Q Ship.

Tholians get just one class 3 design and one class 4 design. That is it. They don't have a year limitation but they do not get ANY Neo-Tholian designs. No fighters either. Home planet starts all engagements surrounded by at least one layer of anchored web, two layers of anchored web if the Tholian player chooses so.

 

On a turn?

At the beginning of every turn (which is simultaneous for all the races) you get all your turn's bpv. A "turn" is three weeks in REAL TIME. This will give you guys 3 weeks of game time to resolve any combat you may have with each other. Surely, that will be enough time. Schedule your encounters with each other (that I will announce in secracy to the people involved) at your leisure.

Feds, Romulans, Klingons, and Kzintis start with space covering 10 parsecs each. They each have 4 planets each in their own separate parsec, (one home planet and 3 additional planets.) All home planets start at a rate of 25 bpv of production per turn. All satelite planets produce 10 bpv per turn. Total current production of these races is at 55 bpv/turn. These races start with 700 bpv in total ships at the beginning of the game.

Gorns start with space covering 7 parsecs and 3 planets. Home planet produces at a rate of 25 bpv per turn. Two satelites produce at 10 bpv per turn for total production of 45 bpv.

Lyrans and Hydrans start out relatively weak. They each only have space covering 5 parsecs and just two worlds. The satelites produces at 10 each and the home planets at 25 bpv each. Total production per turn is 35 bpv.

Tholians hae one parsec and just one planet that produces 25 per turn. Don't lost your LAST planet or it is the end of your game!

 

What to buy, how to store it, and where to build it?

Remember, the planets make the bpv, not your empires. You guys are playing SFB, not Risk, where you can take your 5 army production from holding the North American continent and place them all collectively on Alaska. If your race name does not rhyme with the word "Bolian" then your turn's bpv appears all over the place. This causes tremendous logistical problems as you sometimes need to get the bpv (or what you have created by spending it) from one spot to another. Thank goodness all ships have cargo space.

Well, Feds, Kzintis, and Klingons needs drones. You can build them on ANY planet and they can be shuttled up from a planet to ANY ship and stored as cargo. A single cargo box on ANY SHIP can store (as cargo) 20 spaces for drones (10 type-IVs or 20 type Is, you do the math.) You can move these drones to your racks in space, but NOT in combat. This process takes HOURS, not seconds. To build a single, speed 12, type I drone costs .5 bpv. To build a single, speed 12, type IV drone, costs .67 bpv (or 3 for 2 bpv.) A single type I speed 20 drone costs .67 bpv. A single type IV speed 20 drone costs 1 bpv each. These are relatively cheap, as they can be made anywhere. If the cargo box holding these drones is "hit" in combat, there go all your drones (but these drones wont have their warheads active so there will be no further damage.)

Pseudo torps are even easier. They can be built on any planet for any fake warhead strength. You can store 10 pseudo torps in a single cargo box. Once again, thes can be moved to the torp launchers (only one per launcher) but NOT IN COMBAT as the process takes hours not seconds. They cost 3bpv each, regardless of strength. Lose the cargo box in combat, and you lose the bpv.

Fighters can also be built on any planet. Planets may have an INFINATE amount of fighters based at their surface for which to protect the planet. You are limited ONLY by your economies and your choices. Fighter may NEVER travel outside of the parsec they are in UNLESS they are being transported by another ship. If they are stored as CARGO in a bargo box, you may pack 3 fighters (plus their armement) in a single cargo box. You may move these fighters from cargo to ANY shuttle bay in any of your ships within your fleet (at that location) but NOT in combat. This process will take hours, not seconds. If you lose that cargo box in combat, you just lost up to three fighters. Ouch.

See why cargo boxes are valuable? Internals really hurt in this campaign as cargo hits come early and often. PROTECT YOUR CARGO! You might want to dedicate ships JUST for cargo for these purposes.

All planets may build base stations. Every home world starts with just one base station in orbit of your planet, 20,000 kilometers above the surface. You may dedicate bpv for building a base station but until ALL the bpv for construction is at the planet together, the station is considered under construction, non-operational, and utterly defenseless.

Only planets that have a working base station may build a size class 4 or size class 3 ship. So if you lose your base station, you may NOT build another ship until you first build a base station. Moreover, you may build only one size class 3 or two size class 4 ships at one time (per base station.) You may have up to 6 base stations per planet, but I doubt any of you will ever get to that point. Although a planet may not have a base station, it can contribute towards construction of a new ship. In order to so this, you must SHIP the bpv to the planet with the base station building the ship. BPV is then "dedicated" at the beginning of your turn and stored in cargo boxes, upt o 5 bpv per box. For example: Klingon player is building a nasty D5 war cruiser at his home planet. He needs 110 bpv (or so, I don't remember the cost) to complete construction. Home planet only builds 25 bpv per turn. But he wants built quicker than 5 turns (or 15 weeks.) He wants it now. Well two of his other planets that make 10 bpv each just happen to be 2 parsecs away from his home world. Moreover, they each have a small ship to deliver the goods to the home planet. Since they are two parsecs away, it will only take two turns to get the bpv there (more on that later.) So he dedicates ALL of the bpv at those two planets for D5 production, he packs the bpv into two cargo boxes (as you may store up to 5 bpv of cargo PER cargo box) and sets sail for the home planet. Two turns later (barring any nasty encounters) they arrive simultaneously to deliver the goods and that D-5 is 20 pbv closer to completion. Simple as that. You all know what happens when you lose those cargo boxes in combat.

Transporter bombs cost 4 bpv each. Yup, that is costly. You may store 10 T-bombs per cargo box. The warheads are NOT active so if your cargo box takes a hit, you lost the T-bombs but no further damage. Since the warheads are inactive while in cargo, you may not use these t-bombs in battle and can ONLY activate them if there is space available on your ships 12 T-bomb shuttle space.

All-purpose Shuttles can be stored in cargo boxes just like fighers, 3 per box. Getting them OUT of the cargo boxes is handled the same way as fighters. Shuttles cost 2 bpv each to build.

FLSC units are the MOST important item you can build in the game. Without these, you have no fleet and no game. These can be built anywhere (on any planet) and are shipped in cargo exactly the same way all the above items are. FLSC units are one bpv each. Just 3 FLSC units fill an entire cargo box. SO what IS an FLSC unit? FLSC unit stands for Fuel-Life-Support-Compensation unit. Basicaly, its the gasoline, the k-rations, and the payroll for the ship. We will go into great detail on movement and how it relates to FLSC units in the next post.

Repair units cost 1 bpv each and are stored up to 3 per cargo box. If your ship is crippled (more than half of your SSD boxes colored in), you will need them. This may seem highly unfair and totally unreasonable, but to keep things simple, just one Repair unit repairs one SSD box to 100% effectiveness (phaser 3 or R-torp.) It's all the same. This can NOT be done in combat the way Dam Con can, as it takes hours not seconds. You do not need to be at a base station to do the repairs.

Cargo boxes are not multi-purpose. You must store ONLY one type of item per box. If you have 6 different boxes, you can transport six different items, but only each of those items can be stored in each cargo box.

 

Movement:

Everyone knows how to move ships in combat. To keep things simple, you all move up to one full parsec per turn. So all your ships can travel one parsec every three weeks.

I hear some groans. That is not fair! Some ships travel much faster than others. Those ships could never keep up! Thank goodness the referee (that is me) came up with FLSC units. These impact the cost of travel and impact the cost of simply keeping a slower ship in existance.

How many FLSC units does it take to keep a ship in EXISTANCE? Simple math. Count all the Warp Power on a ship (damaged or undamaged), multiply by the movement cost, then divide by 10. That is how many FLSC units you need to have ON THAT SHIP every turn to keep it from mutinying and you lose it forever. (Then the referee gets it to play with it. Hee hee!) Example: a slow War Eagle consumes 2 FLSC units per turn. 1 (movement cost) times 20 (warp power) divided by 10. That equals 2 FLSC units per turn (or 2 bpv per turn just to keep your War Eagle.) A faster D-5 and a Sparrowhawk-A (which a War Eagle would never be able to keep up with in battle) cost 1.6 FLSC units per turn or .67 times 24 which equals 16 divided by 10. So the fast ships are cheaper to maintain and keep. A Fed CA would cost 3 FLSC units per turn (1 movement cost times 30 warp divided by 10.) Be aware of the FLSC units. You do not want to being a deep attack into enemy territory and not have enough FLSC units to feed, power, and pay your people. 

Crippled ships may NEVER leave the parsec they are in until they are repaired. You must spend repair points to fix them where they are, or, you must deliver repair points to them where they are stranded.

 

Victory Conditions:

As I said earlier, you must never lose your home planet. So if one of the heavies (Kzintis, Rommies, Feds, or Klingons) pops the little Tholians like a zit, the game is over. It doesn't matter what else is happening ANYWHERE. These campaigns must have an end point to make it worth playing. Okay so what if a home world is attacked and defeated by multiple people at the same time?

As they saying goes in Highlander, "There can be only one." Whoever is lucky enough to do the absolute last point of "Excess Damage" on the last existing defending ship, base, or shuttle/fighter, is the winner. It does not matter if the final battle has 20 attacking ships in space and the one who does the last bit of damage had only one ship there, if you were the one responsible of destroying the last ship (or base station, whatever is LAST) you win. Be aware of that people when you fight unified attacks. You can form alliances and so whatever you want (you are in charge), but in the end, only one person wins and everyone else loses as badly as the one who just lost their home planet.

There are many ways to win and end this campaign. MANY. Capturing home worlds are just one way. If at the begining of any turn (beginning means BEFORE you have spent any bpv), your empire has exactly DOUBLE (or MORE) the bpv productivity you had at the beginning of the game, you win. The game ends right there. It's over! So how can you increase bpv? There are two ways: you may capture planets. You capture them from other players. To capture a planet, you need only have a single war ship (shuttles do not count) in orbit of another player's planet and that player has NO defending ships or bases remaining. The planet instantly "Capitulates" since it does not wish to be relentlessly bombarded from space with drones, plasma, disruptors, or photons. The planet is then "yours." What is more, you get all the spoils. If there are any drones, bpv, FLSC units, repair Units, Pseudo torps, shuttle, or fighters (if the defening player is so moronic NOT to launch them into orbit for defense) they are yours. You get the planet and all the spoils. Well done. Capture a "home planet" and you win the game. If you are among many people capturing that planet, refer to the paragraph right above this one. The second way to double your bpv is through infrastructure. At the beginning of any turn, you may dedicate bpv growth. Okay, so what is bpv growth? Well, you trade 5 bpv that you get now for a 1 bpv increase next turn. So if your race name doesn't rhyme with "bolian" you have a satelite planet that makes 10 bpv. You decide one turn to not build ANYTHING with the 10 bpv it produces, (no drones, not FLSC units, no nothing) and you go total infrastructure. You trade all 10 bpv in for future growth. Then next turn (provided you still have the planet) that planet now builds 12 bpv. Simple math. Okay, so given this, you theoretically do not even have to fight ONE BATTLE to win this game if your opponents simply let you "grow." Consider the following example: Tholian player takes his intial 250 bpv and buys three 80 bpv size class 4 destroyers and 10 FLSC units. Turn 1, he takes all the 25 bpv he makes and buys 25 more FLSC units bringing him to 35 FLSC units total. The three destroyers each consume .8 FLSC units in orbit of the home planet, all the while, maintaining the web. He now has 32.6 FLSC units remaining. Turn 2 he dedicates all 25 bpv for infrastructure. Destroyers do not move but consume another 2.4 FLSC units leaving him with 30.2 FLSC units. Turn 3 all 30 bpv go to infrastructure. Tholians are not attacked and the destroyers gobble up another 2.4 FLSC units leaving 27.8 units. Turn 4, 35 of the 36 bpv go to infrastructure, 1 bpv goes to FLSC and the destroyers keep maintaining web. There are 26.4 FLSC units remaining. Turn 5, 40 of the 42 bpv goes for infrastructure, and you all continue to ignore the ever strengthening Tholian as he has more FLSC units than he will ever need to win. Turn 6, he takes the 50 bpv and flushes it down the toilet and waits. Guess what? He has begun the turn in ownership of his home planet and has doubled his economy. He wins the game. Wasn't that fun?

So, at the beginning of every turn, each of you will be notified about the economic productivity of each other. That part of the game is NOT secret. At the BEGINNING of the turn, you KNOW how much bpv your opponents are making on EACH of their planets (just not WHAT they are spending that bpv on or WHERE they eventually intend on spending it if they plan to move it.) Moreover, you do NOT need to have even one ship defending your planets. So long as no one attacks them (or the referee doesn't come by with an Orion Raider or an Andomedan Cobra) you have the planet and you continue growing wealthy from it.

Other conditions?

If the Tholian captures (not destroy, captures) 2 or more size class 3 ships, he wins. If the Hydran or the Lyran capture 3 or more size class three ships, they win. If the Gorn captures 4 or more size class 3 ships, then at the end of his turn, he wins. In these circumstances, you do NOT have to keep the ship safe and shound to get credit for the "capture." You may at the beginning of your next turn, convert it to YOUR technology and add it to YOUR fleet. (Nice.) The major races may not use these scenarios for victory conditions. If one of the four majors captures just one planet (and holds it) from each of the other 3 major empires, and keeps all three to the end of the turn, then he wins.

 

Siege!

You can lay "Siege" to another planet. Assume that your fleet has access to sufficent FLSC units to keep it in a parsec away from home for some amount of turns. Then, there is no reason why you can't both peacefully co-exist in the same parsec if your enemy chooses NOT to engage you. This brings about several situations: #1) You can park a fleet of any number of ships right near a planet and if it's defending ships choose not to engage you (and you choose NOT to engage the planet) then the planet is under Siege. The planet still belongs to your enemy since the enemy has ships defending itself and the planet has no reason to "Capitulate" to you yet (and the enemy contiunes to produce bpv), but you could (at anytime) try to conquer it. Or, your enemy could fly out from the planet to engage you. Or, you could both just sit there. Either way, you are there and so is he. This adds tremendous value in this campaign as it allows you to "park ships" in a parsec that you might believe will have an impact at determining the victory conditions of the game. Moreover, you can "intercept" and "engage" ships that are leaving the planet or going to the planet. You are there. You make a difference.

Ian Whitchurch (Ian) gets Klingons

Seth Iniquez (Sutehk) gets Federation

Francois Lemay (Princeton) gets the Kzinits

Lessss is now playing the Gorns

 

#1) move ships

#2) resolve combat after movement

(there could be 21 incidents of combat in one parsec in a single turn if someone is under siege)

#3) consume FLSC units

#4) allocate bpv and build resources for usage NEXT turn