For what it's worth, this is not the only game system to undergo such scrutiny;
Majestic 12's work on the
Starmada adaptation (which also uses
FC as its primary source of conversion) has also been subject to errata; though given the high profile of the joint venture, things have been far more vocal in that regard.
For those who aren't familiar with the setup, ADB and MJ12 made an agreement a couple of years ago, in which the latter would produce a SFU adaptation of their
Starmada game engine, while the former would print the books and distribute them. As with the first
ACtA:SF release, the books so far in this product line are keyed to
Federation Commander releases (and Squadron Boxes); the ships from the first two
FC modules (
Klingon Border and
Klingon Attack) are in
Klingon Armada, while they and the ships from
Romulan Armada (which itself is culled from
Romulan Border and
Romulan Attack for
FC) are combined in
A Call to Arms: Star Fleet.
Indeed, if you've noticed from the product entries for the various Starline 2500 Squadron Boxes, this built-in commonality is explicitly mentioned:
The Squadron Boxes are designed for use with any game set in the Star Fleet Universe, including A Call to Arms: Star Fleet, Star Fleet Battles, Federation Commander, and Starmada.
So
Starmada fans can go out and spend money on Mongoose's resin miniatures, even if they are not planning on using them for
ACtA:SF, just as
SFB and
FC players (who may also not plan on playing this new game) can. Starline 2500 can be in demand for four games' worth of miniature collectors all at the same time!
But to get back to the errata thing, let me give one recent example. Earlier in 2011, the
Distant Armada supplement was released, adding the Lyrans and Hydrans (and WYN and LDR) to that game engine. Unfortunately, four of the ships that were supposed to be listed in the book were accidentally left out of the published version; these four ships were subsequently made available for free download
here. However, the card for the
Lyran Cave Lion Battleship had a few too many phasers, and a few too few disruptors, compared to the
FC Ship Card used as its basis; so MJ12's Daniel Kast promptly adjusted the file, and now the one you see online has the correct weapons suite.
The case of the
Starmada adaptation is a useful one to consider. When it first got underway (and in so doing arguably pioneering the kind of conversion process which
A Call to Arms: Star Fleet represents) those of us who have been more familiar with ADB's in-house game systems could readily see that it would be its own thing; the very nature of the core
Starmada game engine (which is probably closer to
ACtA than to either
FC or
SFB) would make that inevitable. That said, it was still important to make sure that though there would be changes in how things would work, that the "soul" of the Star Fleet Universe setting would be carried over in those aspects where consistency with its sister game engines would be expected.
None of this is to say that the way in which
Starmada re-envisions the SFU has to work out the exact same way as
ACtA:SF does; far from it. Rather, both will of course do the things they are each best at, but should still show some of the core elements that each adaptation carries over from the shared source material.
And this issue of consistency is a key one; arguably a lot more than
ACtA players might be used to from either
B5 or
NA.
In the case of
B5, by the time Mongoose acquired that particular license,
Babylon 5 Wars had already run its course; while there were doubtless many
B5W veterans who came into
B5:ACtA hoping to see its legacy carried over in the new game, there wasn't the same impetus to try and remain faithful to the older (and more intricate) game system. Similarly, the original
Noble Armada from
Holistic Design is at something of a remove from
ACtA:NA; but other than the need to keep things straight with the original IP holder (who would presumably want to keep an eye to how Mongoose and RedBrick handle the tabletop and RPG aspects of their
Fading Suns universe respectively) there seems to be less of an onus to remain consistent with things from the older tabletop game.
Unlike either of those cases, however, ADB's own stable of in-house games are still very much a going concern; as is MJ12's efforts (which should see changes next year, with
an inbound revision of the Starmada ruleset). When the first wave of Starline 2500 designs were offered for scrutiny, it was very important to make sure the designs were consistent with the setting; or rather, that any innovations in design features didn't come at the expense of, say, blocking a certain ship's firing arcs, or pushing the item too close to the non-licensed Franchise material for comfort. There are four games' worth of would-be collectors waiting to buy these miniatures; they had to be viable for all of them.
(Arguably, I'd say the range of minis is all the better for the efforts which were put in during the development process; contributors like Will McCammon rightly deserve praise for the skill and effort they put into helping refine Robert and Sandrine's drafts into the finalised designs.)
Ultimately, I think it's going to be an ongoing learning curve on these boards, in terms of trying to work out a balance between those coming over from the ADB online community and their new colleagues here on the Mongoose forum. We may be used to different ways of doing things (or as SVC puts it, "different corporate cultures"), but we hopefully all want the same thing going forward; for the joint venture between ADB and Mongoose to be all it can be.
It seems like we are still working on that; but Rome wasn't built in a day.
