Updated rule book

It’s only taken seven years but I’ve finally updated the PDF rule book with the new rules for countermeasures. You can download the new PDF from here or from the list of files on the right.

Rules update: countermeasures

Thanks to everybody who has downloaded the game. Even if you're not playing it, I'm happy that you've taken the time to check it out.

I don't have time to update the PDF rulebook right now, so I'm posting the new rules for countermeasures (page 7) here instead. The changes are as follows:

1. The number of times ships can launch countermeasures against guided weapons is now capped: littoral ships can launch countermeasures once; escorts twice; and battleships three times. Once a ship has reached its limit, any further hits by guided weapons cannot be stopped by countermeasures.

2. The number of dice rolled when countermeasures are launched is decreased by one every time. To summarise:

- for a littoral ship, roll 3D6 the first (and only) time.
- for an escort, roll 3D6 the first time and 2D6 the second time.
- for a battleship, roll 3D6 the first time, 2D6 the second time, and 1D6 the third time.

3. The aim of the changes is to reduce the power of the larger ships by allowing players to overwhelm them with a barrage of guided weapons. We find the game also plays slightly faster this way. Please let me know if you have any comments or questions.

Update

The rules and the quick reference sheet have been updated. After the humble Shogun Tora Kamikaze pointed out that heavily damaged ships are hard to finish off we made minor changes to the damage rules to make the process of attrition more logical. These changes also speed up the game – w000t!

Thanks too to Only Warlock of The Miniatures Page for pointing out that 30 and 60 are in fact two entirely different things...

The Final Front Ear

Captain Ferk III is now online. The links to the various PDF files you'll need are on the right of this page. If you're new to the game (which pretty much amounts to the whole world except for the mighty Ninjasaurus Rex and the humble Shogun Tora Kamikaze) then start with the low-res version of the rules to see if you like it before frittering away your bandwidth on downloading the other PDFs.

The game does not require any paper record-keeping because it makes extensive use of various markers. You may already have markers of your own you would prefer to use but I have provided PDFs of the ones I designed. Once printed, these markers will need cutting to size. They require some initial time and effort to make but they speed up gameplay greatly (and we like to think they look nice too). As a time saver and to make them more substantial, I printed them on self-adhesive photo paper and stuck them to thin card before trimming them. Even if you don't like Captain Ferk III, feel free to use these markers for your other games instead, but remember they are not in the public domain so do not distribute, modify or sell them.

Sol-ved!

The bad news is Teh Def Spud is not going to feature in the rulebook. The good news is that the spare page in the rulebook now features the sample scenario we have been using to test the game. One last check for silly typos and I'm uploading it...

Almost finished!

The template files are all online so only the rulebook is left to upload.

Today, I formatted the game as an A4, 12pp booklet and discovered it ran to 11 pages. I wasn't planning to add civilian ships and Teh Def Spud yet but I may have to now to fill the space. I knocked up a quick drawing of a nebula for the cover. Later I will add a battleship bearing down on an opponent, but this will have to do for now.