I'm just curious how others have been creating their SSD's for an exhibition
game? I recently did a few using the bit mapped "ship bits" which can be found
on the web. These looked nice but the trouble was there were quite a number of
pages of just ship diagrams and an additional page for orders. This seemed to
cause much shuffling of paper which distracted from the game.
In my next game I'm more inclined to use the SSD and Order sheet from the back
of the FB1 book, and draw by hand the pertinent systems. I'm wondering if
anyone else has suggestions or experiences as to the best way to handle SSD's
(keeping them neatly confined to one page)?
---- Begin Original Message ----
From: Aron_Clark@digidesign.com
Sent: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 15:17:40 -0700
To: gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: [FT] SSD question
In my next game I'm more inclined to use the SSD and Order sheet from the back
of the FB1 book, and draw by hand the pertinent systems. I'm wondering if
anyone else has suggestions or experiences as to the best way to handle SSD's
(keeping them neatly confined to one page)?
---- End Original Message ----
What I do is print out the SSDs the size of trading cards and slip them into
plastic card protectors. I have enough cards for each model of the ship type
that way I can just deal out a fleet. I use wet erase pens to mark off damage
on the cards and just wipe it clean after each battle. Saves on paper and
makes everything easier.
For orders we have a print out of an Excel spreadsheet so there's more room
and more spaces for ships.
Jaime
Beer Mail, brought to you by your friends at beer.com.
> On Mon, 16 Oct 2000 Aron_Clark@digidesign.com wrote:
> I'm just curious how others have been creating their SSD's for an
I scanned all four FB1&2 SSD/order sheets (with Jon's permission) and
posted them to my website -
see <http://warbard.iwarp.com/ft.html> - I've also got PhalonBits
available there.
They're big jpgs, so you can use them, ShipBits, and your favourite graphics
program to do 'professional' looking SSD sheets.
Alternately, Jaime's trading-card sized SSDs work very well, if you
don't mind giving up having everything on one piece of paper.
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> I'm just curious how others have been creating their SSD's for an
> game? I recently did a few using the bit mapped "ship bits" which can
> on the web. These looked nice but the trouble was there were quite a
> of the FB1 book, and draw by hand the pertinent systems. I'm wondering
> anyone else has suggestions or experiences as to the best way to handle
> (keeping them neatly confined to one page)?
Here's what I do, assuming you are a Windoze user:
a) Use Windows Paintbrush to make a number of SSDs. This is done by: 1. Make a
new document 2. Copy and paste from Shipbits to make the SSD 3. (IMPORTANT!)
Cut the SSD 4. Paste the SSD *as a new document*. This means that instead of a
*huge*.BMP file containing exactly 1 SSD and a lot of whitespace, you get a
much smaller one with no whitespace.
b) You can then use these in a number of ways. I tend to use Graphics Workshop
(Shareware) from Alchemy Mindworks to do the file conversion from BMP to GIF,
then the GifBot(Freeware) from NetMechanic to reduce the file size.
Graphics Workshop at http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/alchemy.html
GifBot at
http://www.netmechanic.com/accelerate.htm
But for your purposes, I'd suggest: c) Paste as many copies of the SSDs as you
like in a new BMP.
You should be able to fit a 1500-2000 pt fleet on 1 side of an A4 (or
Legal or Quarto) sheet. Then paste this into a Word document. On the following
page,
insert a table for the orders - one column for each ship in the fleet. I
find that 12 turns (ie rows) is enough, usually, for a demo game.
Now print it on a double-sided printer for a single page, otherwise you
have
2 sheets per fleet - one for SSDs, one for orders.
I usually use Win 3.11 for this procedure, but it works on Win 98 as
> In my next game I'm more inclined to use the SSD and Order sheet from
I've done custom SSDs for the FB1 ships that include the actual
outline of the ship. I find that about 4-5 ships can be put on one
"landscape" style sheet with the orders stuff along the bottom edge.
This could easily be scaled up by scaling down the SSDs and adding space for
more ships in the orders blocks.
> >I'm just curious how others have been creating their SSD's for an
http://www.ftsc.atfreeweb.com/ has the Full Thrust Ship Creator.
Download it now. After you design your ship, it will present you with the
graphics of the various systems which you can then paste onto a SSD.
Automatically figures out hull boxes per row, DCP placement etc. A
_great_ convenience.
> At 2000-10-16 -0700 15:17, you wrote:
> I'm just curious how others have been creating their SSD's for an
I plan to use Visio to create SSDs. Visio resources by Alan Goodall are
available at http://www.ftsr.org/ft\display\visio.html
Then group them 4-6 to a page.
Number them to match the numbers on the minis. Print and cut into individual
SSDs. Provide the SSD with the mini. Provide each player a record sheet for
recording moves (handles multiple
ships).
I am also in the process of placing.gif and visio versions of
non-official
ships on the Registry.
---
> On Mon, 16 Oct 2000 15:17:40 -0700, Aron_Clark@digidesign.com wrote:
> In my next game I'm more inclined to use the SSD and Order sheet from
I use Visio, a charting program.
I created Visio stencils for FB1 and FB2. The FB2 stencil includes everything
for all the alien races, including the special stuff for Sa'vasku. I can fit
1500 point fleets on a standard 8 1/2" by 11" sheet (more on Euro A4
paper, or North American legal size).
I used it to create the sheets for GenCon and got a fair number of compliments
on them. You need Visio, though, which isn't an inexpensive program.
I use the FTSC too. The latest version has added a fleet creator that will
print thw whole fleets' SSDs and a movement orders page.
> Alan Brain wrote:
> Here's what I do, assuming you are a Windoze user:
I save them in Monochrome format instead - I don't use any other
colours on my SSDs anyway <g> It has a similar (or the same, not entirely
sure) effect.
> c) Paste as many copies of the SSDs as you like in a new BMP.
Include the table at the bottom of the page with the ships. You should
still be able to get some 6-8 ships per page, and reduces potential
confusion a bit further.
Regards,
> From: Allan Goodall <awg@sympatico.ca>
Out of curiosity... how difficult is it to make FT Visio stencils? I have seen
them on the web but haven't tried them out. Are they scalable? If so, sounds
like a great thing.
Pete
> I'm just curious how others have been creating their SSD's for an
Hmmm, why did you have multiple pages? How many ships per player? The
templates for a decent fleet of ships can easily be combined to a larger page,
and then there are order tables available you can paste on the bottom.
> In my next game I'm more inclined to use the SSD and Order sheet
I use Paint Shop Pro with a customized set of bits and have a few different
sizes of base sheets depending on the size and number of ships I want on the
sheet (fewer ships or smaller base images get the smaller base sheet so when
printed as fit to page, it fills it up).
Only huge ships should take up more than one page (my mass 1400 Super Star
Destroyer takes up 2) though I do use the separate orders sheet for Earthforce
Sourcebook B5 ships so the vector orders and the Heavy Beam charge can be
tracked more easily.
> At 2000-10-17 -0500 08:31, you wrote:
At GZGECC, and most games, I usually use 1-2 ships per page.
I don't always know how many players I will have or how each side will divide
the ships. This avoids the problem of having 2 players having to use the same
sheet.
---
In message <8825697A.007A781D.00@amm03.paloalto.avid.com>
> Aron_Clark@digidesign.com wrote:
> I'm just curious how others have been creating their SSD's for an
Well, for the Full Thrust game I ran at Battlemasters 2000 I cut and pasted
photocopies of the SSDs from FB1, plus a turn chart and the box describing
what the various systems did ont A4. I then borrowed a friend's laminator and
laminated them using 360 mil film (thickest we could find). I also laminated a
photocopy of the turn sequence sheet from FB2, which has proven very useful,
and some turning circles.
For Gen Con UK I printed out some sheet that Paul Radford sent me (Paul, did
you design the deathmatch sheets, or were they from Allan Goodall's website?).
These were prited on coulour paper and again laminated (but we'd run out of
360 mil).
For Battlemasters 2001 <plug> April 21-22nd at Loughborough universty
</plug> I plan to produce the sheets using Artworks (a vector art
package, the forefather of Corel Xara and Xara X) and again laminate. (I have
the basis of these already done). <preach>The advantage of vector art is that
they look god at any scale, and, in the case of simple line objects, like an
SSD, they consume less memory than a good
quality bitmap.</preach>
> I'm just curious how others have been creating their SSD's for an
I've never used them, other than when Brian and Corey Burger handed over a few
of them for our pickup game in Seattle. I just list out all the stuff that a
ship class has in a notebook and then, when I play, I just list out all of the
total damage capacities for the entire fleet on one page and, when it hits a
threshold, I go down the list from the class sheet and just jot down what's
missing. A simple mnemonic for crews is that a weak hull loses a crew for
every four damage points, an average for every six, a strong for every eight.
It requires a little bit of head math when thresholds and repairs come up, but
it reduces the paperwork a great deal to set things up.
> On Tue, 17 October 2000, "Peter C" wrote:
> Out of curiosity... how difficult is it to make FT Visio stencils? I
If so,
> sounds like a great thing.
Making a stencil is very easy. You open up a blank stencil, which looks like
an empty window. You draw a shape in the drawing window, and drag and drop it
int o the stencil. You can then name the shape and edit the icon for the
shape. Tha t's pretty much it.
The drawing window is fairly straightforward. You can do free hand and line
dra wings. Visio comes with basic shapes that you can use for the basis of
your own creations. It has some good intersection and union functions so that
you can c reate complex shapes out of basic shapes. I didn't have much
difficulty at all creating the FB1 and FB2 shapes, and I'm not much of an
artist. The shapes can be pretty sophisticated, too, with the built in support
for Visual Basic, but I havent' bothered with that much.
Yes, they are scalable. You can resize the object in proportion, or just
resize one dimension of it. You can group objects. For instance, I have shapes
for di fferent types of salvo missile launchers and different types of
magazines. You can drag a specific launcher onto the drawing, drag a specific
magazine, and th en group them into one object.
The trick is that you need Visio. If you do have Visio, using the stencils is
v ery easy. Creating your own objects for a stencil isn't very hard at all.
> I'm just curious how others have been creating their SSD's for an
Go to http://www.exodusproject.com/
> Absender: agoodall@canada.com
If you do have Visio, using the stencils is very easy. Creating your > own
objects for a stencil isn't very hard at all.
> Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
It should be possible to produce good SSDs/Symbols with just about any
graphics/presentation/drawing program on the market today, following
the procedures described by Alan.
I made my 'trading card' colour SSDs with MS Powerpoint. See them at
> From: KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de
Hey Karl,
I checked out your color SSD's and I must say they look great! Nice job!
Pete
> From: Brian Bell [mailto:bkb@beol.net]
> I plan to use Visio to create SSDs. Visio resources by Alan
I also use Visio to create my SSDs. Using Mr.Goodall's stencils, it's mere
child's play to quickly make great looking SSDs.
> Then group them 4-6 to a page.
I actually print them out on 3x5 cards. One side is the SSD, the other side is
for writing orders. This allows each person to have a stack of cards for his
fleet, and it's easier to write on them without using the table or clipboards.
> Number them to match the numbers on the minis.
Each SSD card has a place for recording the mini's ID number. I have a set of
small washers painted solid colors, each with a unique alphanumeric ID on
them. These are slipped over the mounting stand, then the ship is placed on
the stand. This allows one to easily see which side a mini is on (by the color
of the washer) as well as it's ID number.
-- vargr1 UPP-8D9B85 --
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