OBT Forum

Lets say, for arguments ake, BT has 10,000 fans.

If TPTB create a new version of BT that brings in 10,000 new fans and looses 1,000 hard core current fans, it's a net win, no matter what happens in my mind, as I really enjoy what the current Writers and Developers produce.

I saw that example over on the BT forums, and it's an interesting one. Edit: Your most recent post over in that 3250 thread does a great job of explaining more info on the breakdown of SFB and the various different games. Thanks for that. I'm not familiar with ADB and that pairing of games. How does the number of products (and type) per year compare to CGL? And company/staffing size compare? Are those game lines producing similar types of resource intensive sourcebooks, requiring the level of fact-checking and oversight? I'm sure that there are ways that a dual development scheme could work. I'm just not convinced that such a practice can work with the situation CGL currently finds itself in (specifically, the production backlog, extremely limited staff/freelancer support, resources already stretched between SR and BT, and the unit creation software issue).

I'm glad someone noticed it! (It is a little disheartening to write up so much and not get noticed, but the thread seemed to be going in a new direction. Perhaps I'd be as well to delete that post and re-enter it as its own thread? But anyway.)

At this point, there are three companies involved with the Star Fleet Universe, in one way or another. (In a game design terms, at least; minis are another matter.)

Amarillo Design Bureau look after Star Fleet Battles, Federation Commander, and a series of other "in-house" game systems (such as the strategic wargame Federation and Empire, and the recently-released Star Fleet Marines ground combat game engine). They have a print-on-demand system which allows them to print their own black-and-white rulebooks directly, but they have to order colour works (book covers, countersheets, hex maps, laminated Ship Cards for Federation Commander modules, etc) from an outside source. Also, the older Starline 2400 series of minis are ordered from a casting company. I want to say Reaper do it, but I'm not too sure off of the top of my head.

In terms of product printing, ADB tend to batch main line items based on the countersheets needed to support them. For example, the counters for the recently-published FC: Reinforcements Attack were done at the same time as the upcoming Star Fleet Marines: Last Stand, as well as (I think) those for the also-upcoming SFB Module C6. Also, there are a number of uploads to e23, as well as a new issue of the Captain's Log magazine every six months or thereabouts.

(I don't work for ADB, so I can't give a definite answer on that front; but there should be more accurate information over on their own site.)

Majestic 12 Games run Starmada (in is various incarnations), and signed an agreement with ADB a few years back which allows them to port the setting into their game engine/s. I don't know what kind of printing setup they themsevles have, but I know that ADB use their own POD system for the books from the Star Fleet adaptation.

Mongoose Publishing are over in the UK, and have been around for a while now in their own right. (They used to hold the Babylon 5 licence, and inherited some of the old minis from Babylon 5 Wars when establishing the B5 edition of the A Call to Arms game engine.) As part of the joint venture with ADB, Mongoose run A Call to Arms: Star Fleet (one of two games which currently use the same game engine; the other being an adaptation of Holistic Design's Noble Armada, which is set in the Fading Suns RPG universe being handled by FASA 2.0) and the Starline 2500 miniature line, and will be printing an edition of the Traveller engine for the Prime Directive RPG line. They printed a hardback rulebook for ACtA:SF, which is partially in colour; though ADB will be doing the printing for Traveller: Prime Directive.

(The main difference between Starline 2400 and Starline 2500 is that the former were hand-sculpted, while the latter are all done using 3D models. Well, the 2500s are also a slightly bigger size.)


By and large, MJ12 does much of the running for Star Fleet Starmada, while Mongoose handle the development of ACtA:SF; but at each stage of development, both companies have to defer to ADB's oversight in order to ensure the setting remains consistent. (The to-and-fro-ing is much more active in the latter case, since the joint venture with Mongoose is significantly more involved than the agreement with MJ12.)

So, unless I'm misreading things horribly, it sounds like there's a big emphasis on rulebooks and products dealing with expanding available units and tech (roughly analogous to a TRO/record sheet combo)? Do these company see many sourcebooks like Liberation of Terra or Field Manual: 3085? (It doesn't matter if they are historical, like LoT, or moving the plotline forward like FM: 3085.) That seems to be the one thing I've always found BT to stand out on (and likely also one of the bigger time/resource sinks). These books aren't rulebooks, they aren't simply codex splatbooks, but they're something more like a hybrid setting book, giving you the "rules" of the setting...a framework to game within that isn't simply tabletop game rules. But that also means a great deal of work for a single book that may or may not pay off. How does ADB (and the rest) handle those sort of books and with what frequency? Looking at CGL, those types of resource intensive books are the overwhelming majority of what they do. Additionally, I think you've made part of my point. There's three companies involved here to make this dual/triad development cycle work. CGL isn't equivalent to three companies, particularly when one of them is Mongoose.

I should point out that the deals with MJ12 and Mongoose are relatively recent, and pretty much all of the universe-building work is done by (or for) ADB themselves. (While Mongoose's Matthew Sprange wrote the core rulebook for A Call to Arms: Star Fleet, the Traveller adaptation for Prime Directive is being written on the ADB side of the aisle.) And even then, the majority of games set in the SFU are published in-house by ADB themselves.

Generally, the bulk of the game rules and ship stats are published in modules for SFB or FC or whatever, the handbook-style data on a given empire is covered by faction books for Prime Directive, while most in-universe fiction goes into issues of Captain's Log magazine. SFB has a major head-start on the other games in terms of numbers; it has the most rules, ships, and empires published. (In fact, for the most part, a ship has to be published in SFB before it can be properly converted into another game system. There have been exceptions here and there, however.)

One thing to bear in mind is that there is a much greater variety in tech types for SFU ships compared to, say, WarShips. Even in the Alpha Octant (the "home" region of the galaxy), there is a variety of weapon types and support systems used by the local empires; and further out into the setting, such as in the Omega Octant of the Milky Way, the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, the Triangulum Galaxy, or other such far-flung regions, there is even more variety to be found. So while there is a lot of new items to play with, they tend to be spaced out across the dozens of empires out there in the broader setting.

And all of that has to be accounted for, each time a new empire is converted from one game system to the next.

(Only in Captain's Log would you see ships for more than one game engine at once; the main modules tend to be much more streamlined.)

I think the idea is sound, absolutely. In fact, in a theoretical example, it is the path I'd have chosen back with the Total Warfare ruleset. Split into a Quick Strike and Classic development line. I just don't believe that CGL's situation allows for the implementation of that kind of idea. I could very well be wrong.

I would sooner like/hope that 3250 could herald a more in-between game engine, which didn't go quite as far as Quick Strike when abstracting things out. (If "classic" BT was compared to SFB and Quick Strike was akin to, say, Starmada Nova, this new game could perhaps be akin to FC.)

But then, what I might like and what CGL might want (or be able) to go with are very different things, I'm sure...

Statistics are funny.  You can look at some, and conclude X, but if you look at all of them, you can conclude Y, and if you look at them with bias, you can conclude whatever you want.

Here is google trends for battletech, robotech, and mechwarrior:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=battletech%2C%20robotech%2C%20mechwarrior&cmpt=q

All 3 have been declining at about the same rate over the last 10 years.  Mechwarrior online has created a spike for that search term, but it still went down the same decline.

EVERYTHING said on here that I've seen is just an assumption, no facts.  CGL doesn't release sales info, neither does ADB.  Also, I know google has trends, but what about Bing?  I couldn't find anything, but perhaps fans of these genre's have gone to a new search engine.  Course, again, these are just assumptions I have made from incomplete data.

If I wanted to show bias, and do some blame, I could say since I got banned from those forums in May I think, there haven't been very many interesting threads started, and most are just stupid threads created by irrational fanboys, and responded to by the same.  Look at the post count for users on the average threads.  So there is a reason for your dip.  Of course that isn't a reason, but if we are pulling ideas out of our butt is as good as any others.

My personal opinion of the reason for the decline is a combination of things, in order of precedence:
#1.  Computers.  Who wants to play a slow game you have to spend time to setup, money on miniatures, money on books, time reading books, and stinky players? 
#2.  Burnout.  Many folks don't stay interested in a hobby forever, and without things to keep them into it, eventually it falls behind more important tasks in their life.
#3.  Age.  Battletech reached a height of popularity like 15 years ago.  Now those folks are having kids and lives that suck up far more of their time, and there is just no time to "play" anymore.  I'm sure many users on this very forum would like to play, but just can't spare the time.
#4.  CGL dropped the ball with the new rulebooks by making the game more complicated, more convoluted, and errata that is 50+ pages long, PER BOOK.  Then, on top of that, they didn't even keep a standard going, an are already introducing all these new things so if you want a complete copy of the rules, you need like 20 books.

But again, those are all assumptions, not to be argued but to be read with a grain of salt, as you make your own assumptions of your own.

goofy hypotheisis, but google is facing it's first heavy competition as a search engine since it became dominant a decade or so ago.  I wonder what Bing and Yahoo trends are telling us.

And you blamed it on a fan product, which if anything would only increase interest, guess we like our goofiness

And you blamed it on a fan product, which if anything would only increase interest, guess we like our goofiness

Unless I'm missing it in this thread, Mr. Arbiter only mentioned that CGL did not care for the fan product, not that it had anything to do with the searches. It was a tangent unrelated to the topic.

I'd put some of the decline into BN's idea. How much? No clue. It certainly sounds reasonable enough. What makes me curious is how much of that decline can be attributed to lack of new player entry. It's not exactly uncommon knowledge among the gaming community that the amount of gamers who actually get involved in online communities is only a portion of the actual gamers for that specific game. It's generally presumed to be a rather small portion. An even smaller amount of those fans present in online communities are active, frequent participants. I'd idly speculate (since apparently we need to note that now) that BT searches would more likely be taken in by new fans. If that's the case, it certainly lends credence to the idea that this game isn't exactly pulling in the new blood.

Not to be too pedantic, but it might be worth noting the difference between "Starfleet" and "Star Fleet" when doing such searches. (So far as the various licences are concerned, the Paramount/CBS Franchise uses Starfleet, whereas the SFU uses Star Fleet; the latter in keeping with the term as written in Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual.)