Star trek Era and A call to Arms

[Jean]

As others have pointed out, I am on ADB's staff. This is what I have been telling people who ask.

Here's the deal.

If you make up stuff for ACTA:SF that are non-movie/non-series ships, ADB has no problem with that. There's no intellectual property to be violated. You can post it anywhere you like.

You can make up variants of ships. Be aware that Munchkin ships usually get dissected as do ships with "tech slosh" (i.e., you think it would be really kewl to give a Romulan ship photon torpedoes). These can be posted anywhere you like, but it's polite to indicate that the information is courtesy of Mongoose/ADB, Inc.

You can post your own "house rules" ships. Be aware that people tend to dissect those as not necessarily learning to play the game in its complexity. If you double up on disruptors to make it "fair," then maybe there is something wrong with how you are playing them or the other ships?

You cannot stat up ships in movies/other series and post them on the official boards of Mongoose or ADB. What you do with them in your own playing group is your business. I cannot tell you it is legal to post them anywhere online, because it isn't. I can tell you that we have better things to do with our time than to hunt these down. However, be aware that once we are told about them, we must act.

You cannot stat up ships that appear in other SF series (using ACTA: SF) and post them on the official boards of Mongoose and ADB: no Tardis, no B5, no Space 1999, etc. We don't like other people stealing our intellectual property and it would be hypocritical to allow that to happen here.

I would suggest that statting up ships that exist in ADB's line AND posting them would be confusing to people. Those things have a way of going viral and then it is hard to pull them back in the fold. In addition, you get folks who say that they have them and YOUR copy has to be wrong, even if your copy is the official version. They do tend to hurt sales as many people do feel that if they have the complete collection of battle tugs free here and they are balanced, then why should they pay good money for the "official" version. It is part of human nature, I fear. However, I have no official word on this from SVC or Matthew, just "a sense" of how it is playing out.

I hate to say it, but yes, we do have to play within the rules above. That's how we stay legal. In the US, at the present time, "legal" and "right" are not necessarily the same when one is dealing with a company that considers paying a bevy of lawyers to be chump change. They could put us out of business in a heartbeat if we violated our contract. So we have to be like Caesar's wife and above reproach. That's how we've stayed in business this long.

So the upshot is that it is both strict and relaxed. No using other companies intellectual property, but feel free to let your imagination soar. In fact, that is how the latest SFB playtest module was created. A talented ship designer wanted to have a species whose ships could do very specific things. Now we are publishing Module E3: The Borak Space League.

Does this help clarify the situation?

 

[Nerroth]

I've said it here already, but there really needs to be a stickied FAQ thread about all of this. It's going to be asked over and over again; better to have the answered in one place at the top of the board than have it buried in old threads.

 

[Jean]

Nerroth, I don't mind answering people's questions.

Jean

 

[Nerroth]

Even so, having a one-stop shop with a set of the most commonly-asked questions about the setting might make things easier for newcomers to see what is, and isn't, a part of what they might be considering getting into.

 

[Ryueokami]

I'm with Nerroth with that the handling of housemade ships,... should be put into a sticky faq thread.


And tnx jean that cleared it up. It's stricter than I thought when I heard that AFB and mongoose must follow a strict licence, but by ways not as strict as it seemed when I read through the posts of this thread (thats why I have been a bit persistent to be able to understand the rules of conduct so to say a bit more).

 

[Da Boss]

As others have pointed out, I am on ADB's staff. This is what I have been telling people who ask. Here's the deal. If you make up stuff for ACTA:SF that are non-movie/non-series ships, ADB has no problem with that. There's no intellectual property to be violated. You can post it anywhere you like.

Right thats fine - although the post from Sgt_G - who may or may not have official capacity(?) seems to me (and I think others) to be saying thats not the case at all?

You can make up variants of ships. Be aware that Munchkin ships usually get dissected as do ships with "tech slosh" (i.e., you think it would be really kewl to give a Romulan ship photon torpedoes). These can be posted anywhere you like, but it's polite to indicate that the information is courtesy of Mongoose/ADB, Inc

You can post your own "house rules" ships. Be aware that people tend to dissect those as not necessarily learning to play the game in its complexity. If you double up on disruptors to make it "fair," then maybe there is something wrong with how you are playing them or the other ships?.?

Yeah thats all fine - again the implication was this was absolutely not the case? Balance is a tricky thing and companies don't always get it right either - as we all know. Sometimes ships just feel wrong to players and they want to explore options to make them right - forums are there for those discussions - adn to be fair this forum has normally been extremely civilised about it....

You cannot stat up ships in movies/other series and post them on the official boards of Mongoose or ADB. What you do with them in your own playing group is your business. I cannot tell you it is legal to post them anywhere online, because it isn't. I can tell you that we have better things to do with our time than to hunt these down. However, be aware that once we are told about them, we must act. .

You cannot stat up ships that appear in other SF series (using ACTA: SF)

I note the clarification in brackets....thank you

I would suggest that statting up ships that exist in ADB's line AND posting them would be confusing to people. Those things have a way of going viral and then it is hard to pull them back in the fold. In addition, you get folks who say that they have them and YOUR copy has to be wrong, even if your copy is the official version. They do tend to hurt sales as many people do feel that if they have the complete collection of battle tugs free here and they are balanced, then why should they pay good money for the "official" version. It is part of human nature, I fear. However, I have no official word on this from SVC or Matthew, just "a sense" of how it is playing out.

Sorry can't see this at all - something is either official or its not - I wouldn't have expected players to try and to use my free supplements and/or the ships within them at any kind of official event (Unless I was running it or even without an opponents permission. In addition supplements I have brought out require you to have the official rules.

Sales can be enhanced by good kitbashes as people to try to emulate the ships they have seen or as has been the case - improve on them. Often you need to spend more money on ships then just buying the basic ship as you need extras to convert. They may not fit the official universe view or "way things "should be done" but some can find them cooler.

 

[Apep]

OFCOL - This is getting out of hand (on this and other forums) – Jean has kindly explained the rules, they are the rules, we have to work within them. ADB/Mongoose is "the law"

What Jean has said is key – i.e. don’t rip off intellectual property. (i.e. no swapping the engine pods on a firefly class for warp nacelles or adding warp engines to the planet express ship (it’s already been done!!))

But may I suggest if you are 3d rendering, modding or scratch-building and do come up with a unique, individual, cool, license compliant design – send it to Mongoose /ADB for their view first before posting anywhere (it might even be good enough for them to use!!!)

The one thing I am not clear on is ship naming – as long as we don’t rip off intellectual property – are we free to name our ships any way we like?

 

[Jean]

Da Boss, Sgt_G is a valued customer and a friend, but he does not represent ADB, Inc. By the same token, I do not represent Mongoose in their thinking about ACTA: SF except as it interlocks with ADB's license. ADB has no problems in the areas as I outlined them.

Do remember that I don't know the gaming culture of this Forum as well as I know the ones for which I moderate. Our BBS tends to get a tad rough-and-tumble regarding tech sloshing and Munchkin ships. House ships tend to bring out the players who want to explain why your house rules are unbalanced. But regarding statting up other ships that exist in the SFU and NOT in ACTA: SF (yet), we've really seen some folks go ballistic in other games (not just ours). There are the issues of "you stole my work and didn't credit me," "you meanie, I did the perfect ship and you ignored me," and "I like the unofficial one because it is perfect" (which leads to fracturing the player base). That isn't to say you cannot do it from ADB's viewpoint: it just has caused difficulties in the past. I cannot speak for Matthew's desires on this.

Apep, what you name your ship is your own business. We cannot single out the "Big E" by terms of our license. If you had a shot of all the other similar ships, then that's fine. We did a story that mentioned her, because she was the flip side of that story and to omit her would have been obvious. Thus if you did a complete collection of that class, she'd be fine to have in a group shot. Do you catch my drift?

You can obviously write up what we call "your gaming experience." You cannot sneak in fanfic disguised as "your gaming experience" and we cannot include "certain characters" by name (or let our fans do it for us).

I can see why there isn't a sticky at this point -- if there is ever an ACTA: SF top level topic, then I would push for one. But imagine a person coming in for Noble Armada and how that might confuse him. I'll just continue to lurk and answer questions to the best of my ability.

 

[Sgt_G]

As Jean said, no I'm not an ADB official, but I have been conversing with Steve Cole (SVC) and Steve Petrick (SPP) since about 1990, so I know that these types of questions come up frequently and have seen SVC's responses many times over. He didn't just make the policy up on a whim; he sat down with lawyers and talked it thru first. He has to protect his business and his license, so yes the policy has to be that strict, officially. Unofficially, how hard does he have to enforce it? Depends on how far someone pushes it. As Jean mentioned, they have better things to do that hunt down a one-off homemade SSD for a "new" Klingon B12-SSCS posted on Facebook. On the other hand, if someone posts ACTA stats conversions for the entire Lyran fleet before ADB/Mongoose can officially publish the same, that person should expect the Wrath Of God type of legal action.

The other thing about posting homemade ships, which Jean touched on, is once you do that you risk making it so it can never be published in an ADB product. Example, I created an ISC super-battleship that I called the Galatic Peacekeeper Starship "The Hand Of Justice". It has the center section of a DN plus the center section and one wing of two CAs mounted together to make a five-barrel ISC ship. I even had someone kit-bash a mini for me. SVC loved it even tho it was way over the top, but Petrick pointed out that as I had posted it on-line, it may never see print. That's okay, because they did publish my four-barrelled ISC "Contingency Ships" in a Captain's Log.

 

[Jean]

It came to me that I should clarify a couple of points about the naming of ships.

You can name your ship anything you want as you okay in your playgroup. No matter what you name your ship, no person from ADB will beam in, snatch your mini off the table, rap your knuckles, tell you how naughty you were, and then beam back out. That just isn't going to happen.

If you name your ship something rude and/or tasteless and put it on the Forum, then depending on the location and circumstances, you could be asked to "do something." We've never had such a picture posted on the FC Forum, but were one posted that offended people, we'd reserve the right to request it be taken down as our Forum is family friendly.


Does that help on the naming issue?

 

[Jean]

I will point out that I have been talking directly to Steve Cole as of this evening regarding this issue. I can assure you that my interpretation of ADB's position is correct. I cannot answer if Matthew will be stricter about statting out ships than we are.

As for "wrath of God," what that usually means to a fan is that you get a nice note letting you know that you are in violation of our copyright and asking you to remove any violating materials. We know people don't understand the intricacies of copyright (and that's why we have a lawyer who can tell us what is legal). We also know our fans don't want us to get into trouble.

 

[Sgt_G]

Regarding fan-fic, I spoke at length with Petrick about this a few years back. Someone sent him a story that had the ship doing things not allowed in the SFB rulebook. He suggested changes, but as it was such a big plot device, the author would need to rewrite the entire story. The author said he was going to post it elsewhere on-line. Here in lies the rub. Let's say someone reads that story and then goes to a convention and tries the same tactic in a tournament. When the other play and/or judge tells him he can’t do that, he’ll argue that it should be allowed because it was allowed in a story "endorsed by ADB". Ergo, the best policy that ADB can go by is to disallow SFB fan-fic stories posted on-line. Again, does that mean they’ll spend hours and hours searching fan-fic sites? No, of course not. It's not worth their time. Just my point of view, but if I were to write a SFB story involving combat, I would probably put a disclaimer at the top saying that it may contain action not allowed by the rulebook. Sadly, I’m not very good as writing combat actions, so I don’t have to worry about that.

Regarding what Jean said about not including "certain characters" by name, that rule applies even if you don’t actually name them. I wrote a story that explains why we never see a certain Federation starship in the Great General War of ADB's Star Fleet Universe. Steve Cole absolutely loved it. He said it was "hands down the best Trek-based story I've ever read", but also went on to say "too bad my lawyers will never let me publish it." Oh well, such is life.

 

[Sgt_G]

As for "wrath of God," what that usually means to a fan is that you get a nice note letting you know that you are in violation of our copyright and asking you to remove any violating materials.

Jean, that's only because Steve let's you send those letters now.

For those of you that don't know them -- Jean is a sweatheart, both in person and on-line. In person, Steve is a great big Teddy Bear; but via written communications, not-so-much at times. It's not that he's trying to be mean, just he's so busy he types fast and hits the send-button without always thinking about how the other person will read into what he wrote.

 

[Jean]

Actually, we aren't allowed to do stand-alone fiction. That is why our stories ALWAYS have scenarios and our collection of stories has scenarios for each story. We can't do stand-alone art/posters without it being "advertising" for the games. We have a license for gaming, not producing competing products such as novels and calendars and such.

That is why you can write about your gaming experience, but not write what is clearly fan fiction.

And I don't write the legal emails.

Garth, thank you for the kind words. Sometimes I feel like the horrible purple meanie here because I'm so frequently saying, "Ummmmm....no." Really, we have a wealth of empires to explore, cool weapons to use, very realistic ships to fly (it helps to have a professional engineer and military person doing the design), and an abundance of fun to be had by all.

Could we turn this conversation back to a more positive note? Which of the traditional ST empires are you looking forward to flying the most?

 

[Totenkopf]

Klingons

quick question about the game for play testers; if Romulans have access to all the Klingon ships, get cloaking, and all the same stats/traits as the Klingons for those ships at the same point cost, why wouldn't Klingon players just play as Romulans? Besides a personal preference for one empire over another? Is there something Klingons get that offset this?

 

[scoutdad]

Weapons that fire every turn and a greater number of ships for the same points.

the Klingon disruptor, while not as hard hittign as the plasma torpedo can be fired every turn and can be overloaded for double damage at point blank range.
Romulan ships have a point value surcharge added for the cloaking device, makign them more expensive than teh corresponding Klingon version.

 

[Rick]

Am I right in thinking that the Klingon ships in Romulan service do not benefit from the increased forward shields rule that the Klingons have?

 

[katadder]

and cloaking is really only useful for the approach. once uncloaked cloaking whilst in enemy weapon range isnt the best idea, you cant shoot, they can and 50% of shots should get through

 

[Rambler]

Rick - No you are wrong, the Kestrala are still Agile and still have the Foreward Shield rule.

 

[scoutdad]

Am I right in thinking that the Klingon ships in Romulan service do not benefit from the increased forward shields rule that the Klingons have?

No. Romulan Ketrals still receive the benefit of the extra shielding. Taht feature was buit into those ships during design, it's not necessarily a Klingon trait.
Which is another issue in fleet actions. If you're entire Romulan force is Kestrals... no problem.
If however you have some Kestrals and some 'Hawks (both agile units)... don't forget that the 'Hawks do not benefit from double shields in the forward arc, cause trust me - your opponent won't forget.

Not that "I" would ever let something like that occur... :roll:

EDIT: Dal types faster than I do today.