Work in Progress

Going Paperless

We have now "gone paperless" for reasons described below.

By way of background, as we are getting increasingly decrepit, heaving boxes of rules around has become a nightmare, and is less than cost effective. As small operation we cannot afford the luxury of large print runs, and thus our overheads are fixed by the printing costs. We have always managed to keep the cost of production at a low level, though this has sometimes been at the cost of page count. One complaint we have had in the past is that we removed the "Quick Play" sheets from our rules. This was entirely down to page count. For similar reasons we have often been forced to compact the data to fit the page count, which then inevitably led to the need for a supplement to carry additional data.

Increased costs of postage and the restructure by Royal Mail of their pricing system have not helped, especially with large orders.

A few years ago we supported the Mongoose initiative with their Wargaming Online download system which made our products generally available round the world, rather than just in the UK. It also allowed customers to buy our products without having to deal with the very high international carriage charges. Wargaming Online was discontinued when Wargamevault was introduced by OneBookShelf, and our products transferred to the new download site. The use of the download system has in fact almost completely replaced our retail mail order sales as a source of income, even for UK based customers.

Most importantly, the existing editions of all our products will continue to be supported by us.

Sea

One piece of important news is that we are working on a second edition of Stations Manned and Ready. This will incorporate all the corrections from the previous three editions, and for the moment we must also say that the rules text will be amalgamated into one volume. We have reviewed a number of options about how the game flows, and how combat works, and intend that the basic combat system that you already know will stay as it is, with some additional features. Some combat modifiers will vanish, while some new factors will be included. We will give you more information about this as we fix the changes.

Stations Manned and Ready II release notes (June 2011)

Air

Air Combat Operations in the 20th Century, is reaching the end of its development work at long last. The system allows for large scale air actions, involving bomber attacks on targets, big dogfights, etc. The rules were initially developed with 1/600 scale in mind but for practical purposes they can equally be played using counters if you do not have the models available.

The aircraft data has been developed so that all the whole period is covered using one set of calculations. We looked at possible ways of preventing Camels from Fighting MIGs, but in the end decided that the pragmatic approach was better, and if you wish to die in droves (Camels not MIGs) you can.

Aircraft are handled in the game by using "stands", with a number of aircraft per stand. Larger stands will get more chance of getting to their target, but are less cost effective in terms of combat results. Formations are made up of multiple stands under a commander. Targets have a defensive value, a toughness and (in the modern era) a Tech Level.

There will be a simple differentiation of relative heights. Combat is only possible between aircraft at the same height. Certain attacks against ground targets must be carried out from specific heights.

Our planned release date got "interfered with" because of various external pressures. We are happy with the words and the test games we have played were excellent (though we got smashed up by our playtester). We are stuck with the question of data presentation, illustrations of play and diagrams (and I blame Alan because he wants photos :(    ).

SF

Some of you may recall many years ago two products which we published: Into the Laserzone, and Shooting Stars. We have decided to dust these off and publish an updated version of each. Our plan at present is that they will only be available as electronic downloads. More on these will follow as they develop. Sorry to say the dust cloud has re-settled in this heap :((.