With the list of unofficial rule threads starting to grow, I asked Mongoose and ADB for permission to add my own ideas to the mix; and with their approval, I'm setting up this, an unoffical rule discussion for a setting which I'm quite a fan of: the wild and warlike Omega Octant.

(The above pic is based on the cover art for Star Fleet Battles Module Omega 5; showing gunboat flotillas from two Omega empires, the Mæsron Alliance and Koligahr Solidarity, attempting to give an Andromedan Dominator a bad day at the office. Note that while the above units are all present and accounted for in SFB, the Koligahr have yet to be offered for playtest in Federation Commander, while no Omega gunboats have been ported over to FC at all; still, the pic above should at least offer a glimpse at what the Omega setting has to offer.)
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On the political map of the Milky Way (as seen in the SFU), the galaxy is divided into five main regions in which life as we know it can thrive; each divided from the other by great impassable Voids. (To get from one region to another, you have to either skim along the edge of the Storm Zone, do an "up-and-under" via the Galactic Energy Barrier, get transplanted from one place to another by some unexpected galactic phenomenon, or be the kind of exotic power that other species can only imagine... or dread.)
The Omega Octant is located across the far end of the Void located at the far end of the Inter-Stellar Concordium from the Federation. For most of SFU history, the two regions were isolated from one another; the first "true" contact (in that both sides would actually learn of the event) didn't take place until Y214, when the advanced technology survey cruiser USS Sakharov took a trip to Omega via the Lesser Magellanic Cloud.
What they found was a region of space that had seen great upheavals and changes, with ever-shifting borders and a vast array of strange-new worlds unlike anything found back home (or in the Cloud, for that matter). While the Mæsron Alliance*, a union of worlds founded by three mammalian species in Y19, rose to dominate Omega politics for several decades through the Pax Mæsra, the ambition of one of its founding species (the warlike Vulpa) eventually sparked a bitter Civil War, followed by a devastating Collapse.
Diving into the power vacuum, several rival Omega empires became superpowers in their own right, reducing the Alliance to its core holdings and setting the stage for several major wars to come. The Andromedans hit the Octant pretty hard, with their invasion set to succeed were it not for the success of Operation Unity; the surviving powers mustered enough forces to finish off the last Andromedan bastion in Omega through Operation Concerted Strike in Y204. The years following the invasion saw the slate wiped clean, with the Mæsrons entering a renaissance, their old rivals striving to secure their holdings, while newcomers emerging looking to shift the balance.
(You can get a look at Rick Smith's tune-up of the Omega faction logos at this link.)
In game terms, Omega (the brainchild of a certain Bruce Graw) has seen five published modules for Star Fleet Battles, as well as an Omega Master Rulebook consolidating the rule and background material from these five sources. In Federation Commander, there is the Omega Playtest Rulebook, as well as a handful of preview Ship Cards on the Omega Octant setting page linked to further up the page.
For the sake of disclosure, I am the author of the FC OPRB; though I have Rick Smith to thank for the outstanding graphical work that went into the file (and the playtest Omega Ship Cards). Of course, my role for Omega in FC has no direct relevance here; I have no claims to officialdom in how the settign may one day appear in ACtA:SF.
For that game's purposes, I have tried to follow FC's lead in terms of paring down the range of Omega empires on the SFB table (twenty-one and counting!) and arrange a portion of geographically-based rivalries to get things going. I started with the central power in the Omega setting (the aforementioned Mæsrons), the two superpowers to the "west" of the Alliance (the silicate Trobrin Empire and the salamander-like Probr Revolution), a set of Questing otter-like knights from a nearby extra-galactic cluster (the Iridani), and a small pocket of space that acts as a clearing-house of certain lost colonies from the Federation, Klingon Empire, and ISC (the Federal Republic of Aurora). This is similar to the original FC layout, where the "western front" of the Federation was shown along with the Klingons and Kzintis, before the "eastern front" with the Romulans and Gorns were added a bit later.
My hope was to use this template to try and frame a potential discussion here. The five empires I mention are among the more "normal" powers in Omega; with standard ship construction techniques, reasonably familiar weapons, yet enough new material added to the mix in order to make each act in their own way on the tabletop.
(Some of the more exotic powers in Omega really push the envelope; with an empire of robots flying super-intelligent computer ships, another species genetically adapting hollow space whales as living starships, yet another grafting biological "hull" segments onto the back plates of cloned Space Dragons, and a dark energy species from another dimension growing crystalline warships in their quest to drain our galaxy of all life! Yet, in order to get to those outliers, the base line would need to be set first.)
Of course, even if the Alpha Octant has enough time over the next few years to be properly fleshed out, there is no guarantee that any non-Alpha settings, such as Omega, would necessarily follow. Still, in the meantime, I was hoping that a thread like this one could help spark a little interest in that regard; and, perhaps, help show just how much one can do with the "indigenous" SFU that makes this setting so unique.
So, is there anyone else who would like to see what lies beyond the Void?
*The "ae" in both "Maesron" and "Maesra" is indeed supposed to be this grapheme.

(The above pic is based on the cover art for Star Fleet Battles Module Omega 5; showing gunboat flotillas from two Omega empires, the Mæsron Alliance and Koligahr Solidarity, attempting to give an Andromedan Dominator a bad day at the office. Note that while the above units are all present and accounted for in SFB, the Koligahr have yet to be offered for playtest in Federation Commander, while no Omega gunboats have been ported over to FC at all; still, the pic above should at least offer a glimpse at what the Omega setting has to offer.)
-----
On the political map of the Milky Way (as seen in the SFU), the galaxy is divided into five main regions in which life as we know it can thrive; each divided from the other by great impassable Voids. (To get from one region to another, you have to either skim along the edge of the Storm Zone, do an "up-and-under" via the Galactic Energy Barrier, get transplanted from one place to another by some unexpected galactic phenomenon, or be the kind of exotic power that other species can only imagine... or dread.)
The Omega Octant is located across the far end of the Void located at the far end of the Inter-Stellar Concordium from the Federation. For most of SFU history, the two regions were isolated from one another; the first "true" contact (in that both sides would actually learn of the event) didn't take place until Y214, when the advanced technology survey cruiser USS Sakharov took a trip to Omega via the Lesser Magellanic Cloud.
What they found was a region of space that had seen great upheavals and changes, with ever-shifting borders and a vast array of strange-new worlds unlike anything found back home (or in the Cloud, for that matter). While the Mæsron Alliance*, a union of worlds founded by three mammalian species in Y19, rose to dominate Omega politics for several decades through the Pax Mæsra, the ambition of one of its founding species (the warlike Vulpa) eventually sparked a bitter Civil War, followed by a devastating Collapse.
Diving into the power vacuum, several rival Omega empires became superpowers in their own right, reducing the Alliance to its core holdings and setting the stage for several major wars to come. The Andromedans hit the Octant pretty hard, with their invasion set to succeed were it not for the success of Operation Unity; the surviving powers mustered enough forces to finish off the last Andromedan bastion in Omega through Operation Concerted Strike in Y204. The years following the invasion saw the slate wiped clean, with the Mæsrons entering a renaissance, their old rivals striving to secure their holdings, while newcomers emerging looking to shift the balance.
(You can get a look at Rick Smith's tune-up of the Omega faction logos at this link.)
In game terms, Omega (the brainchild of a certain Bruce Graw) has seen five published modules for Star Fleet Battles, as well as an Omega Master Rulebook consolidating the rule and background material from these five sources. In Federation Commander, there is the Omega Playtest Rulebook, as well as a handful of preview Ship Cards on the Omega Octant setting page linked to further up the page.
For the sake of disclosure, I am the author of the FC OPRB; though I have Rick Smith to thank for the outstanding graphical work that went into the file (and the playtest Omega Ship Cards). Of course, my role for Omega in FC has no direct relevance here; I have no claims to officialdom in how the settign may one day appear in ACtA:SF.
For that game's purposes, I have tried to follow FC's lead in terms of paring down the range of Omega empires on the SFB table (twenty-one and counting!) and arrange a portion of geographically-based rivalries to get things going. I started with the central power in the Omega setting (the aforementioned Mæsrons), the two superpowers to the "west" of the Alliance (the silicate Trobrin Empire and the salamander-like Probr Revolution), a set of Questing otter-like knights from a nearby extra-galactic cluster (the Iridani), and a small pocket of space that acts as a clearing-house of certain lost colonies from the Federation, Klingon Empire, and ISC (the Federal Republic of Aurora). This is similar to the original FC layout, where the "western front" of the Federation was shown along with the Klingons and Kzintis, before the "eastern front" with the Romulans and Gorns were added a bit later.
My hope was to use this template to try and frame a potential discussion here. The five empires I mention are among the more "normal" powers in Omega; with standard ship construction techniques, reasonably familiar weapons, yet enough new material added to the mix in order to make each act in their own way on the tabletop.
(Some of the more exotic powers in Omega really push the envelope; with an empire of robots flying super-intelligent computer ships, another species genetically adapting hollow space whales as living starships, yet another grafting biological "hull" segments onto the back plates of cloned Space Dragons, and a dark energy species from another dimension growing crystalline warships in their quest to drain our galaxy of all life! Yet, in order to get to those outliers, the base line would need to be set first.)
Of course, even if the Alpha Octant has enough time over the next few years to be properly fleshed out, there is no guarantee that any non-Alpha settings, such as Omega, would necessarily follow. Still, in the meantime, I was hoping that a thread like this one could help spark a little interest in that regard; and, perhaps, help show just how much one can do with the "indigenous" SFU that makes this setting so unique.
So, is there anyone else who would like to see what lies beyond the Void?
*The "ae" in both "Maesron" and "Maesra" is indeed supposed to be this grapheme.