Dramatic SFB: Some reminders

[Matthew]

I just wanted to post some reminders for people, in case they forgot, 
didn't notice, or haven't heard.


A) Convoys:

The scenarios have no notes about the state of the refits of the 
freighters (as they are now; Free Traders). This means they do not have 
the Y175 refits that give them double reloads.

Also note that the list of weapons available to the FTs also exclude 
B-racks. This lack of "modern" equipment is not an oversight. It is a 
deliberate attempt to keep the freighters from contributing in a 
meaningful way and therefore unbalancing the battle (a whole bunch.)


B) Conversion Orders:

I've heard that some players consider the conversion orders as an easy 
way to get a rebate when scrapping a small hull. This is wrong.

The conversion orders are intended to convert a hull into a variant of 
the same hull (in the same way that you see in F&E.) See the F&E master 
Ship Information Table (MSIT) for your empire, to see what is legal. In 
a pinch, you can usually assume that ships listed together in your SFB 
Master Ship Chart are legal variants of eachother.


C) Attrition Units:

If you have a carrier (or PFT, or something like that) that doesn't have 
the most modern attrition units, you can spend Commander's Option Points 
to upgrade them, by spending the difference of combat BPV costs. This 
also applies to the faster drones, sabots, etc of those attrition units. 
This is done before setup, and you should tell your opponent that you 
upgraded the attrition units (because everyone knows the composition of 
the opponents force down to the attrition units but not anything 
smaller. This doesn't mean you have to tell them how many fighter pods 
or T-Bombs you purchased, though.)

You cannot purchase "Rare" attrition units this way unless that unit can 
normally carry them (as already stated in the "Attrition Unit" section 
of the rules.) This means you can't upgrade to Fed F-14s or Kzinti MRNs 
unless that ship carried them historically. It also means you have to 
respect the ratio of assault-to-superiority fighters that the carrier 
normally had. (so, a Romulan SPB can't trade in their Plas-D fighters to 
get a load of 16 Plas-F fighters. Same for Hydrans to get scads of 
Hellbore Stingers.)


I will be updating the campaign rules to cover those PFs that weren't 
general-use but had no dedicated carriers. This will cover primarily the 
Hydran Hellions and Howlers. The Romulan Centurians and Starhawks are 
already covered in ship-builds (the Centurians were phased out in favor 
of the Starhawks.) As are the Kzinti Needles versus the MRNs (the MRNs 
are in the ship builds as well and are treated the same as F-14s there.) 
This will not be restricting the use of "Phaser" PFs, "Drone" PFs, or 
other PF variants that generally were seen rarely because of their 
limited utility. The Hydran PFs thus restricted need to be artificially 
restricted because of their much greater utility over the standard 
Harriers. The rule of thumb is that if the PFs aren't noted as being 
restricted in the rules, then consider them use-at-will. Players are 
free to come to me if they feel a PF model should be restricted.


--Matt