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Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Progress & Obstacles

Steve Cole Reports: Some progress today. Art Trotman reminded me I had never written communique 20 which is due to release Friday, so I whipped it up and sent it to the staff. Reports tomorrow, final fixes, and post on time. It's a good issue, with a new ship (Klingon E5) and a scenario that can accommodate 3-13 players. We've been asked for more multi-player scenarios and this is a good one.

Steve Petrick was in the office at 6am this morning, bushy-tailed and ready to hit the backlog. He's been working like a man on fire all day. Bad news is that he checked the Seltorian CA mini needed for Squadron Box 13 and Border Box 5 and it's going back to the sculptor again. It may have been damaged in shipment; perhaps the glue was not hard set when it was packed. Another 10 days of delay. Sigh.

I got more reports on the Master Starship Book and processed them.

I still have about 70 "pending Emails" to answer, but I'm gaining about 5-10 per day.

Leanna and Petrick are installing the new phone system. The one we bought when we moved in here 8.5 years ago has become impossible to maintain. They don't make the phones any more, and they do burn out now and then. Matt's phone burned out a month ago and has never been replaced because the only replacement phones we can get are reconditioned (and don't work, the argument over refunds has been going on for months.) Anyway, the new system is slowly going into operation. Leanna's phone works, and so does Petrick's. They're trying to get my installed while I'm in the other office blogging. (Blogger changed their software a few months ago and it will no longer talk to my Mac, so to blog I have to either come use Matt's computer or Email him the blog. Matt goes home at 1:30 and I had him busy when he was here taking photos of miniatures and doing the August newsletter.

Leanna greenlighted two more FC products, and a new product idea. One is a scenario book that will probably come out this fall. Another is a "booster of battleship cards" which will be done when we need to reprint cards that we're out of. The computer thinks we have less than 100 of nine different cards, but a physical count in the warehouse says we have over 400 of each of them. The new product idea (the battle series) would have 15-16 cards, but only seven-eight ship types. It would have three each of four common ships and one each of three or four less common ships. It would not have map panels because we're running out of ideas of space things to put on maps and you guys are running out of tables to put them on.

Somebody asked when when we would do the fighters from SFB for FC, and I told them I didn't know. (There is a fear that hordes of drone-armed fighters would slow the game down like it did for SFB.) Consider that we do two or three major products a year, and we have Distant Kingdoms 1 and Distant Kingdoms 2, War & Peace, Orion Pirates, and at least three if not more "battle" packs, and we could in theory go for three more years without doing a fighter product. At least, I don't have to decided that today.