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Amarillo Design Bureau just announced today that they have signed a contract with Mongoose Publishing to release a new Star Trek game based on the ADB Starfleet Battles universe but using A Call to Arms combat rules.

THE BIGGEST NEWS
IN SFU HISTORY
Just hours before this issue went to press, we signed a new joint-venture deal with Mongoose, which is one of the largest companies in the Adventure Game industry. They’re famous for numerous product lines, including miniatures and roleplaying games. This deal includes three immediate elements, but the future is as open as space and as exciting as a supernova.
Something we have mentioned many times is that retailers only stock the top five or 10 companies (with the proverbial “one shelf” reserved for the other 40 hard-copy publishers, most of which are in less than 10% of stores). Mongoose is in 90% of the retail game stores in the US, Canada, the UK, and many other countries. This contract means that there will now be several first-class products in every retailer with logos on them for the Star Fleet Universe and for ADB, Inc. Each joint venture book will include advertising for all of our Star Fleet Universe products, giving us more exposure to the mass gaming market than we have had since 1982.
The first three projects each have their own topics. This one is for the overall effect on the company and other product lines.

*Edit* see below for link

As part of this ADB announced that Mongoose will resculpt the ENTIRE starline 2400 miniature line
*Edit* see below for link

I'm both incredibly excited and dreadful about this. Babylon 5 ACtA was my favorite space combat game of all time, and I absolutely LOVES me some Star Trek. SFB and Federation Commander are wonderfully fun games, but they're designed to be ship duels between a couple ships and are far too detailed to to actual fleet combat without taking an entire weekend. On the other hand, mongoose has continually messed up license after license and promised bigger games than they could ever deliver. BUT! This is a joint venture with a company thats been around longer than GW, and I DO love the ACtA system, so it'll be interesting to get some more details as the release gets closer.

*Edit*:
It appears the forums over there don't like you linking to em, they change URLs as people post. Go to

http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/board-topics.html

it's the 4th topic from the bottom called "The joint venture with Mongoose"

Man, this could be so cool. SFB and FC were way too slow. Also like the idea of re-sculpting the Starline series of minis.

I would be seriously tempted by a faster playing game. Id be all over it if they expanded the line and rules to include newer ships. Taking the line up to and including TNG ships would be great.

Oh look, another game for Mongoose to discontinue.

It's using the Starfleet battles universe, which is a completely seperate timeline/universe from normal Star Trek and only includes the original series and cartoon and then branches off into it's own thing. ADB got the license for Trek in the 70s when the franchise was completely dead, before the first movie even came out, and signed the rights for almost nothing. Thats why everything says Starfleet Universe and there's no Star Trek on any of the games, it's not actually the same thing. Kinda dissapointing to someone like me that grew up on TNG, but not much they can do about it.

I once asked Steve Cole about updating SFB/FC to TNG/DS9 and he said he'd love to but it'll never happen, the licensing fees are far too expensive and don't last long enough for a company as small as ADB to afford. Pretty sure thats why Mongoose went with ADB, the license for a Trek-but-not-Trek gets them a Star Trek space battle game they've wanted to do for a while but without the huge cost of the actual license.

Oh look, another game for Mongoose to discontinue.

That is EXACTLY why I'm only halfheartedly excited about this, Mongoose has continually come out with awesome games with great licenses and huge promises only to drop the game entirely time and time again. They make great games, they just don't make them for long.

Kalamadea wrote:It's using the Starfleet battles universe, which is a completely seperate timeline/universe from normal Star Trek and only includes the original series and cartoon and then branches off into it's own thing. ADB got the license for Trek in the 70s when the franchise was completely dead, before the first movie even came out, and signed the rights for almost nothing. Thats why everything says Starfleet Universe and there's no Star Trek on any of the games, it's not actually the same thing. Kinda dissapointing to someone like me that grew up on TNG, but not much they can do about it.

I once asked Steve Cole about updating SFB/FC to TNG/DS9 and he said he'd love to but it'll never happen, the licensing fees are far too expensive and don't last long enough for a company as small as ADB to afford. Pretty sure thats why Mongoose went with ADB, the license for a Trek-but-not-Trek gets them a Star Trek space battle game they've wanted to do for a while but without the huge cost of the actual license.

Soooo... no Excelsior class or other old school movie ships still?

I'd lov to have some cool Star Trek Minis floatin around the desk.

I love Star Fleet Battles and the Star Fleet Universe in general. If I had to pick one game, and only one game, to play for the rest of my life, it's SFB.

I'm really....conflicted about this news. On the one hand, good for anything that helps ADB grew and expand, and I've always admired their ability to thrive as a niche wargame company. But I have little love to spare for Mongoose, and hope this doesn't turn out to be a curse in disguise for ADB.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Platuan4th wrote:

Kalamadea wrote:It's using the Starfleet battles universe, which is a completely seperate timeline/universe from normal Star Trek and only includes the original series and cartoon and then branches off into it's own thing. ADB got the license for Trek in the 70s when the franchise was completely dead, before the first movie even came out, and signed the rights for almost nothing. Thats why everything says Starfleet Universe and there's no Star Trek on any of the games, it's not actually the same thing. Kinda dissapointing to someone like me that grew up on TNG, but not much they can do about it.

I once asked Steve Cole about updating SFB/FC to TNG/DS9 and he said he'd love to but it'll never happen, the licensing fees are far too expensive and don't last long enough for a company as small as ADB to afford. Pretty sure thats why Mongoose went with ADB, the license for a Trek-but-not-Trek gets them a Star Trek space battle game they've wanted to do for a while but without the huge cost of the actual license.

Soooo... no Excelsior class or other old school movie ships still?

That is correct.

Of course, in return, you get a Trek setting developed by the same people, who have a respect for it, over its entire life.

Might be interesting but most of the ship styles I don't really like.

Alendrel wrote:

That is correct.

Of course, in return, you get a Trek setting developed by the same people, who have a respect for it, over its entire life.

I do so love SFB, I was always just sad that they didn't have my favorite Federation class(Excelsior), but since it's around the same scale as the Micromachines Trek ships, I never really found anyone who had a problem with my proxying it in(generally as one of the faster ships). Was just hoping this news might mean a revamp with some of the "newer" classes replacing the Constitution class based variants.

That said, I love that the Kelvin in the newer Trek movie was actually based on one of the SFB designs.

Platuan4th wrote:

Kalamadea wrote:It's using the Starfleet battles universe, which is a completely seperate timeline/universe from normal Star Trek and only includes the original series and cartoon and then branches off into it's own thing. ADB got the license for Trek in the 70s when the franchise was completely dead, before the first movie even came out, and signed the rights for almost nothing. Thats why everything says Starfleet Universe and there's no Star Trek on any of the games, it's not actually the same thing. Kinda dissapointing to someone like me that grew up on TNG, but not much they can do about it.

I once asked Steve Cole about updating SFB/FC to TNG/DS9 and he said he'd love to but it'll never happen, the licensing fees are far too expensive and don't last long enough for a company as small as ADB to afford. Pretty sure thats why Mongoose went with ADB, the license for a Trek-but-not-Trek gets them a Star Trek space battle game they've wanted to do for a while but without the huge cost of the actual license.

Soooo... no Excelsior class or other old school movie ships still?

Nope, original TV era only apparently. it will be resculpts of the minis seen here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/miniatures.shtml

Ill go ahead and restate my interest as "meh". I could have used the ADB minis with Full Thrust rules long ago if I wanted old ships. Unless someone comes out with newer stuff Im really not too interested. Movie era and later for me please.

Mongoose starts again with releasing miniature games?
They use a setting popular in the 60s without current support?
They don't even use the original setting but a variant?

I have a bad feeling about this!

I have some excitement for this... which is tempered by reading that they are going to be redoing the ships in a larger scale... not the same as the one that plenty of people have already.

However, more exposure is good, and larger sized ships should not matter too much for ones I do not have...

lasgunpacker wrote:I have some excitement for this... which is tempered by reading that they are going to be redoing the ships in a larger scale... not the same as the one that plenty of people have already.

However, more exposure is good, and larger sized ships should not matter too much for ones I do not have...

I doubt that ship scale will really matter for game play unless they completely revamp the system to not be hex-based.

Platuan4th wrote:

lasgunpacker wrote:I have some excitement for this... which is tempered by reading that they are going to be redoing the ships in a larger scale... not the same as the one that plenty of people have already.

However, more exposure is good, and larger sized ships should not matter too much for ones I do not have...

I doubt that ship scale will really matter for game play unless they completely revamp the system to not be hex-based.

They have hexless miniature rules, and the scale of the ship doesn't matter. You place a shield/firing arc diagram around the base of the miniature, and everything is measured from the post.

Alendrel wrote:

Platuan4th wrote:

lasgunpacker wrote:I have some excitement for this... which is tempered by reading that they are going to be redoing the ships in a larger scale... not the same as the one that plenty of people have already.

However, more exposure is good, and larger sized ships should not matter too much for ones I do not have...

I doubt that ship scale will really matter for game play unless they completely revamp the system to not be hex-based.

They have hexless miniature rules, and the scale of the ship doesn't matter. You place a shield/firing arc diagram around the base of the miniature, and everything is measured from the post.

Cool, good to know. I've only played the hex version.

Mongoose did an amazing job on the B5 stuff so I imagine this to be awsome, but my concern is they run into the same problems they did with the B5, and run out of money due to lack of sales and just drop a really great game.

Empchild wrote:Mongoose did an amazing job on the B5 stuff so I imagine this to be awsome, but my concern is they run into the same problems they did with the B5, and run out of money due to lack of sales and just drop a really great game.

My understanding of the B5 issue wasn't so much that Mongoose ran out of money as that the people who own the B5 brand were asking an excessive amount for the license renewal and Mongoose didn't think the setting was still worth it.


I would love to be excited about this. I haven't played the ACtA rules, but I've heard good things about it. I'm not concerned about Mongoose's habit of supporting a game only for the short term... once you have a ruleset, it doesn't need to be continually supported to remain playable. My issue would be more with the fact that Mongoose have developed a rather, um... patchy track record with miniatures.

Let's just hope they manage to not turn this into yet another 'This will be the greatest thing in miniatures history - or, at least, it was supposed to be, and it's not our fault the end product is rubbish...and, er, hey, they're not that bad, so please buy them anyway... anyone...?' type debacle.

Can haz Kzinti and Gorn?

Interested, very interested.

@Insainiak: I spoke to one of the former owners of Mongoose a while back and he told me about why they dropped the B5. Lack of constant sales made it pointless for them to keep the lines going, but in their final month they did 150k in sales of it... Had people actually purchased like that all the time then the line would still be going.

Empchild wrote:@Insainiak: I spoke to one of the former owners of Mongoose a while back and he told me about why they dropped the B5. Lack of constant sales made it pointless for them to keep the lines going, but in their final month they did 150k in sales of it... Had people actually purchased like that all the time then the line would still be going.

A niche mini game based on a show that ended 10+ years ago AND has a license fee?

Yeah.

I mean I love me some B5 too but I never even considered picking up the game.

B5:ACtA the game was absolutely phenominal, and in my area at least it sold very well. The problem was with the B5 miniatures. Mongoose insisted on using the larger scale minis for a fleet based game. Their "starter fleets" were $100 and only had enough for a single side of a medium size game. EVERYONE I know that used the minis ordered the old Agents of Gaming fleetscale which were $10 for 2~4 ships vs $15 for a single ship and are even still available online (and also immensely more playable due to their smaller size). Coupled with a revamped edition every year for 3 years killed any chance they had of success.

I totally missed the scale differance in the original post. the new ones are going to be 1/3125 where the old starline 2400 ones are 1/3788. An increase of 20% isn't so bad, although I'd rather they went down in size than up. I think it's just too big for a fleet scale game.

They tried to follow the GW example of issuing a set of rules and making their money from the expensive official models.

lord_blackfang wrote:Oh look, another game for Mongoose to discontinue.

More like "another game for Mongoose to completely butcher and then discontinue even though they got handed what should have been a(nother) can't miss license."

Links are busted, show 404 error. More on topic, I'm looking forward to another space combat game, and an interesting license to boot. Hopefully it sticks.

Kilkrazy wrote:They tried to follow the GW example of issuing a set of rules and making their money from the expensive official models.

They were also ahead of GW by screwing all three miniature games due to poor management decisions

Empchild wrote:@Insainiak: I spoke to one of the former owners of Mongoose a while back and he told me about why they dropped the B5. Lack of constant sales made it pointless for them to keep the lines going, but in their final month they did 150k in sales of it... Had people actually purchased like that all the time then the line would still be going.

B5 ACtA had a range of minor and major issues. One big issue, for me, was that that the rules seemed to favor 'escorts' over 'capital' ships, which meant that the more effective ships in the game tended to be the minor ships either never seen or rarely seen on the show, and the iconic ships of the show (The Earthforce Omega Destroyer, the Minbari Sharlin, etc.) were not common or maybe 1 per game.

Another major issue was fighters, which swung from 'overpowered' to 'useless' a few times. It's an understandable issue, as fighters were very big on the show but you don't want them overpowering in game, but they were always hard to get just right as far as overall 'feel.'

The minis were 'problematic' as a lot needed to be resculpted.

Neat game, but with a bunch of annoyances.

My armada of D7's is very excited about this. Me? I'm cautiously optimistic.

Found SFB to be too clunky. Neat if I wanted to spend an hour flipping through charts for every possible variable. I played Star Trek Tactical Combat Simulator from FASA. They at least had the current, non 60s era ships that looked good. Those were the days!

The base ACTA rules, while not perfect, are pretty quick to play. Ships are a pretty simple array of stats and a list of weapons that can be boiled down to banks easily.

I kind of wonder if the 'big' Federation ships are going to feel unsatisfactory in the system because players used to the Trek canon expect more 'fiddling' akin to SFB's complex power allocation. The canon is based on characters like Engineers and such doing Cool Stuff to make the ship perform better. However, the system's special order rules can certainly be tweaked to accommodate this.

Might be neat to see various factions get different or enhanced special actions as a way to differentiate them. Romulans would get access to the Cloaking actions, of course, but the Federation might get some sort of special Engineering action that helps shields recover quicker or similar.

It seems like the older canon was also that the Enterprise-sized ship was massive and most enemies used lighter vessels... Is this true of the SFB version of the setting?