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Thursday, January 01, 2015

A Look Ahead: January 2015

Steve Cole writes:
  
The future, like the weather, cannot be planned or predicted; it can only be guessed at.
  
The plan for 2015 is the same as the plan for 2014: establish a list of projects and then do each project in order, no matter how long it takes. The lessons of 2014 will be applied at every level. We will better leverage outside designers, motivate or replace the disappointing vendors for prototypes and molds, and set out from the first keystroke to produce manuscripts that have 90% fewer errors before they go to proofreading.
  
As before, there is more than one list.
  
The Captain's Log List includes Captain's Log #50 as the next product for the company, with Captain's Log #51 next summer and Captain's Log #52 a year from now in the winter. Because #50 is a big number, we're planning to include special features in every department of the issue. We're going to deliberately set out to do the best issue we have ever done instead of just being amazed when that happens by itself.
  
The Communique List will again produce a dozen new ships and a dozen new scenarios for Federation Commander. The steady upload of new PDFs will continue.
  
The Starline List will include new 2500s as the market demonstrates its ability to support them. There will be new 2425s (ships that work for both scales) including the long-awaited gunboats, the augmented battle station, and the jumbo freighter. Any and all new 2400s will be done to the level of detail of the 2500s so they would technically be 2450s. These will include the heavy destroyers and a few carefully selected replacements (re-scaled 2500s) for the less detailed 2400s. (Gorns, we're looking at you!)
  
The Main List is described below in terms of the individual designers. We won't predict any release dates but we will give some "no sooner than" guesses.
  
Tony L. Thomas will supply the final tweaks to A Call to Arms: Star Fleet Book 1.2, supervise the creation of the corresponding ship roster cards by an outside graphics contractor, and create A Call to Arms: Star Fleet Book 2.1 (which will include the rest of the Orions and Tholians along with a new empire and some entirely new classes). Book 2.1 might be ready for summer.
  
Daniel Kast will complete work on both versions of Starmada: Rumors of War, which incorporates the ships from two Federation Commander series (War & Peace and Reinforcements Attack). This might be ready for late spring or summer.
  
Jean Sexton will convert our paperback book For the Glory of the Empire for sale on Kindle. (If it sells well, we will create new books such as Day of the Eagle, Day One, and For the Honor of the Federation.) Once the issues with Traveller are ironed out by Mongoose, she will manage the creation of those four books by Mike West. We hope to see something by summer, but much of that schedule is not in ADB's hands.
  
Steven P. Petrick will push forward on the Klingon Master Starship Book (released sometime in the summer, perhaps) and will concurrently begin work on SFB Module X2 which will take many months to complete (and might not see print this year). Steve also does much of the work on Captain's Log and will have his share of the material for each issue done before it is needed.
  
Stephen V. Cole will focus on what used to be called the Main List, including what's left from the 2014 plan. He will have some layout work on A Call to Arms: Star Fleet Book 1.2, Deluxe but that won't amount to more than a few days before the print version appears (perhaps in February). He will have to do his part of Captain's Log #50 before he can turn to his true love: Federation & Empire. We need to print a set of fourdouble-sided countersheets, which will include Minor Empires, the revised Fighter Operations, the reprinted bases sheet (to get the boxed game back into stores), and a revised sheet for Advanced Operations. (The revised book for Advanced Operations will have to wait for 2016.) That should take him to the point it will be time to do Captain's Log #51. After that, the next thing on the list is the promised Federation Admiral Campaign Manual, which will consume most of the summer. He then has to get working on Federation Commander Fighters Attack, which is the bulk of the Borders of Madness project.
  
We have to print die-cut counters in runs of four sheets, and hope to do that run in the fall of 2015 or the spring of 2016. Two of those sheets will be SFB Module X2 and Federation Commander Fighters Attack; a third will be the reprint of Federation & Empire Planetary Operations. The fourth sheet might be the third installment of Star Fleet Marines, or something else entirely.
  
Given the recent malaise on Kickstarter it might not be a viable path for Tribbles vs. Klingons, so we are looking into other options. If any option works, the sky is the limit. If not, we may release a low-cost version of Tribbles vs. Klingons because anything that fun just deserves to get printed.