Borders of Madness; a modest proposal. My objective here is to retain the interesting mechanics of FC while using as many of the concepts of SFB as can usefully be shoehorned into that structure. I intend to keep the 8-impulse turn, the baseline speeds, the Energy Allocation, the absence of secret data, and the me-too decisions (in particular, no-one has ever actually played SFB with umpteen secret and simultaneous decisions on each of 32 impulses). With me-too impulse activity the Sequence of Play can be shrunk to the minimum number of phases which preserves fundamental tactics (such as Alice wishing to tractor Bob before Bob can weasel). At the moment it's more of a series of thoughts than a definite proposal and I am very keen for other people's input. It's vaguely sorted into the SFB rules structure. A0.0 General. Ships are going to need SFBish Sensor, Scanner, Damcon tracks. For Fleet Scale, suggest omitting the 3rd, 5th... boxes on these tracks, preserving the characteristics of ships with multiple redundancy. Seeking weapon control should be halved at Fleet Scale - hell, it *should* be halved in FC, too. Tug and pod tracks will need thought. B0.0 Me-too procedure. In a tense game. players may wish to use a "First Player" token. This passes between sides each impulse. Whenever a me-too decision is to be made, the First Player takes that decision first. This is necessary because, if Alice announces "no fire", Bob fires, and Alice then returns fire, Bob may make deductions from the fact that Alice did not originally intend to fire. C0.0 Movement. Pick baseline speeds as in FC. I would suggest that the acceleration limit is represented by allowing the baseline speed to be at most one increment higher than in the previous eight impulses. "Stopped" is an increment below baseline speed zero; hence units that emergency decelerate cannot zoom off at effective speed 16 next turn. Exception; you can go from baseline zero forwards to baseline zero in reverse. Braking Energy? Downside; encourages constant exploitation of the "accelerate every impulse" tactic. Deceleration does not affect this; you're paying the energy. Nimble ships can go up two increments. Midturn speed changes; subject to acceleration limit, no more than one every 2 impulses (no restriction for nimble ships), speed plot public, can't midturn decelerate more than one increment. I really am unsure about the acceleration limits. I don't think we can use the SFB limits because of the difficulty of tracking speed with acceleration impulses coming at random times. Imagine if I did speed-10 all one turn. Under SFB rules my maximum speed is 20. Presumably if I do a constant baseline 16 I can accelerate 4 times - but if I do a 16/8 split at the half-turn mark, can I accelerate twice or four times in the first half of the turn? Conversely the proposed scheme is definitely different from the SFB scheme, but does keep the fundamental difficulty of accelerating after time at speed zero. Procedure for superspeed units eg Plasma Sabot. Keep the weak FC TAC ability, not that star castling will work well brickless. SFB HET ratings and bonuses. No tumbling. Turn mode AA. D0.0 Combat. Use the SFB DAC. No targetting rules. Electronic Warfare as per SFB, but bought me-too normally at the point of weapons impact or DF. A more radical proposal would be somewhat scaled ECM costs to keep FF relevant. CDR as in FC (but the potential for damage to the damage control rating will limit that eventually). EDR as SFB, except not preallocated. Any sort of ongoing campaign may want to track and pay for total expenditure of repair points. Generally a box destroyed and repaired by either means is a temporary repair with permanent repairs using the SFB between scenario procedures. Our list of repair costs might be more complex than the FC list, but still preserve the general ease of repairs. E0.0 I see no reason not to keep the phaser capacitor. Lose the energising rules; if we want an extra turn at WS-0, stipulate it in the rules for WS-0. Permit proxy photons (at point of firing), dial an overload, still no feedback damage or OL myopic zone for any DF weapon. No narrow salvos. Reintroduce the 8-SFB-impulse delay? 2 FC impulses preserves the fundamental decision, albeit movement before fire on impulse #1. F0.0 Big question over the general utility of drones and drone defence. Drone defence is generally weakened by the reduction in capability of the ADD; this cannot be restored because of the huge Stinger's Gap issues in FC. But could the ADD be used to defend allies at the point of impact? Chance best at range 2, worst at zero, discourages superstacking. Explain that can only be done at point of impact because the weapon slows for terminal maneuvers. Might let people actually empty ADD-12s; means that the enemy can't just hit you with one stack a turn and you might as well load and counterfire Type-VI. I would like to generally decrease the complexity of drones as has been done in FC; in particular armoured drones make a nightmare for phaser-based defences. Perhaps permit external armour, use internal armour only to make slug drones. Special types; keep ATG, lose the ECM drone and plasma, other types less fearsome when known - maybe no MW drone? Keep the Type-IV, but absent 6-space racks will be for special occasions only. No need to lab drones. How does drone availability work with infinite reloads? Perhaps choose loadout, reloads identical, cannot exceed availability percentages through reloading; crib sheet crossreferencing number of racks to number of Limited/Restricted drones permitted. Keep C-racks, lose B-racks. Weakening drones implies weakening drone defence. The ADD is already weakened. Strongly favour permitting T-Bombs and other area affects (except ESGs) to effect only size class 5 and above. That eliminates incentive to split up swarms; stipulate that drones fired from one unit at another unit on the same impulse *cannot* be split up, simplifying seeking weapon maneuvers. Drone speeds? Speed-8 are a bit of a joke outside the Early Years. It is simple to do half-baseline speeds (is that a word?) with units moving extra on even impulses. Possibilities; a) Strictly per SFB; drones move 8/12/20/32. b) No half speeds; drones move 8/16/24/32. c) Acknowledge that speed-8 is a joke: 12/16/24/32. I favour b) or c) even if housekeeping is not eliminated. G0.0 Don't track crew units save for monster or terrain effects. No BP casualties (commando ships?); no militia. Guards? Tractor movement as per FC. Explicitly prohibit multi-ship groups. Exception; unit with active positional stabilisers may tractor or be tractored by any number of ships (which stop). H0.0 Power. What about housekeeping? a) Eliminating it FC-style makes for faster ships; this would quite unequivocally demand the faster drone speeds. b) Full-scale SFB housekeeping is possible. But no low-power fire control, please? c) Intermediate approach; quote a total figure. If you can't pay this, you can do nothing except operate shields (even if less than the shield cost available - your chief engineer will shut down the turbolifts and all those machines that go beep) and repair power systems. I favour c). What about restrictions on energy origin? I certainly don't want the impulse/warp distinction, but perhaps it is worth distinguishing engine and non-engine power. On most ships the non-engine power will be swallowed by housekeeping immediately. J0.0 Shuttles. What's the arming procedure for SS, WW? If we implement the T-Bomb proposal we can operate fighter-shuttles in wings - see below. Should we have scatter packs? If so, only 6 spaces Type I and IV explosive, standard speed. No shatterpacks - drone defence too strong. Eliminate funky options; seeking or ballistic and range of release only (release with any damage). Fighters are going to be speeds 8, 12, or 16 (doubled with WBP); decelerate at will. What does base-16 fighters mean for death dragging? WW restrictions; stopped or baseline zero, accelerate only on even impulses. No HET under any circumstances. Nimble ships can EM (even if that would produce an SFB manuever rate >4, lucky them). TAC permitted. Admins go speed 8 but get their ph-3 back. Lucky them. M0.0 No hidden mine placement, even rolled out the bay. Roms keep their NSMs, but will have difficulty using them. Number of targets fine, but public. Fighter Wings Really I must look up the word for the groups of 3 fighters that 2-man wings obsoleted. Lacking area effects on SC 6-7 units, group fighters into wings of 3. (3 subdivides 12 and 6 fighter squadrons). A carrier launching fighters must launch a full wing if undamaged fully armed fighters are available of the same type as those being launched and must group identical uncrippled fighters launched on the same impulse into as few wings as possible (but could sort 4 fighters 2-2 or 3-1, assuming no further undamaged armed fighters available). Carriers can go into debt on shuttle bay operations for the purpose of filling out wings or landing wings (ie, a single bay - 2 shuttles per Impulse - can launch a wing on Immpulse #1, #2, pause on #3; a double bay can launch 2 wings on impulse #1, 1 wing on #2...) Wings maneuver as one unit. Crippled fighters break off from their wing and are under restrictions such that returning them to the carrier for repair is about the only useful thing you can do. Dogfighting rules, if present, resolve single wing versus single wing combat. Excess wings waiting to join a dogfight fill in spaces for destroyed/crippled fighters, possible some bonus for a waiting wing. DF weapons from fighters; the target can fire defensively at a wing, even cancelling declared offensive fire, at range 1 greater than the actual range; this fire NOT simultaneous with the wing's fire. Or the target can just fire offensively at the actual range. Eliminates the otherwise nightmarish Stinger's Gap. Escorts with Aegis may defend their carrier group in this fashion? Wings are not obliged to fire simultaneously or at the same target, and the individual fighters are targetted individually; they are separate units for all purposes except maneuver. No fighter experience. Absolutely wrong-headed to make two identical model fighters be different. I might even subsume the EWF capability into the squadron. Fighters probably also can't carry many if any funky drones.