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Post by Liam Thompson on Mar 25, 2009 15:13:45 GMT
This is a rough post to help me draft some fleet rules for my collection of Star Trek ships for use with Full Thrust. Any contributions would be greatly appreciated, particularly from Star Trek and/or Full Thrust fans. To begin with, here is a listing of all the Federation ships currently available for my use and my suggested designations for them. The Mass Range is the suggested Mass Range for the given designations from Fleet Book 1. I've linked to Memory Alpha (the Star Trek Wiki) for each of the ships involved so that people can check out information on the ships if they desire. These are ordered in the rough order of power (by the late 24th Century) that I reckon they lie in and I've given them appropriate naval designations accordingly. However, there's a couple that I'm not particularly sure about: - Shuttles; as far as I'm concerned, Shuttles probably ought to be considered Fighters rather than ships. However, doing this leaves me without Scouts. Technically, Oberths and Runabouts probably ought to be Scouts, but then that would leave me without Corvettes. Any suggestions?
- Defiant; there's a part of me that really wants to be true to canon with this, hence my designation being that of a Heavy Cruiser. However doing so kinda violates the whole size convention of Full Thrust regarding MASS compared to relative ship size. Any ideas?
Ship design philosophy is generally that ships should be able to take care of themselves and generally be jack-of-all-trades, more at the higher end of the range than the lower end. Strong Hulls and Shields (Screens) should be the norm for most ships, though none excepting the Defiant- and Galaxy-Refit classes will likely have any armour (though armour may be substituted for Screens at the lower levels). Only a single Oberth class, Defiant class, and Galaxy-Refit will be allowed Cloaking Devices (Cloaking Screens). Weapons will likely be able to fire in multiple fire arcs, and will be capable of rear-firing (using the aft-arc fire optional rule on page 4 of Fleet Book 1), however as few as possible will have all-round firing capabilities. Anyone have any thoughts before I start statting up ships individually?
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Post by Stephen Mawson on Mar 25, 2009 17:00:08 GMT
Regarding the Defiant, I've generally though of Mass as a measure of displacement rather than volume as such.
As most Federation ships are not warships as such, they've got a good percentage of their space dedicated to stuff that is not in the list of FT components, science labs, holodecks, etc. This means the Star Trek relative size of a ship isn't going to match up exactly with the FT Mass value it's combat effectiveness requires.
Personally I'd be inclined to ignore the discrepancies, it's not like your model sizes will match with the ones I'm using for my NAC fleet, or the Gothic stuff I use as unaligned mercs etc.
As far as the shuttles go I'd be inclined to leave them in the scoutship category.
The Federation had attack fighters, although in Star Trek terms they'd actually be more heavily armed than a Shuttle, and from memory of the DS9 episodes where you see them I think they might actually be bigger as well.
You could simply not use fighters as there is no such thing as a Carrier in Star Trek as even the smallest 1 man vessels are Warp Capable.
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darkangel1(Darrell)
Gates of Antares
Master of the Ravenwing
The Dark Angels the First Legion the true Angels of Death
Posts: 1,060
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Post by darkangel1(Darrell) on Mar 25, 2009 17:26:04 GMT
guys as a trekker i would love a go at this im already booking my place at starfleet acadamy make it so!
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Post by wstevens on Mar 25, 2009 18:21:25 GMT
Regarding the Defiant, I've generally though of Mass as a measure of displacement rather than volume as such.quote] Displacement? Of what exactly? I thought that space was a vacuum of nothingness hence no particles to displace. See me after class!
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Post by wstevens on Mar 25, 2009 18:32:52 GMT
Liam is this another league? When would you be doing this as there a number of leagues going on WOW, Flames of War, the Ancients in September, and other games such as the testing of doubles armies, the Kelmarsh tester games, the Gamesday tester which you are doing. I haven't mentioned the role players either who will be indispensable 50% of the time. I would understand if this was an in fill leading up to September and you had the numbers to make it viable, I'm just worried about the allocation of time towards it. Sounds great and as an old trekky myself I wouldn't mind a go but again - new rules blah blah... slow everyone down yadda yadda... will I be able to commit with so much going on?
Oh and how is the big fantasy league bash organisation getting on for the all dayer? Do we have numbers yet as it sort of dried up in the WFB forum?
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Post by carl on Mar 25, 2009 18:34:49 GMT
yes..... and no-one can hear you scream.
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Post by Liam Thompson on Mar 25, 2009 18:44:03 GMT
Nothing of the sort, Warren. I'm looking to develop stats and a fleet list, in a similar way to your Warhammer Greeks, so I can use my Star Trek Micro Machine models in games of Full Thrust. What I'm posting here is something of a blog regarding my progress on it.
There's no league or any other kind of structured game format involved, but I'd like it if Mike, myself, and any others who wanted to could play Full Thrust perhaps once a month or so.
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Post by carl on Mar 25, 2009 19:48:56 GMT
Liam; i might have a look at those rules you mentioned for download, cheers for the nod.
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Post by theluckyone on Mar 25, 2009 20:20:35 GMT
Liam, you could try Star Trek: Starship Tactical Combat Simulator www.boardgamegeek.com/images/thing/3040I think this looks similar to the game I played at college all those years ago!! its pretty cool each player takes command of a ship, with specifics on shield, weapons and engine management. Good effort. D
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Post by wstevens on Mar 25, 2009 21:02:20 GMT
Sounds good Liam would like to see more on your progress on this. I am very tempted to have a go - if I'm allowed?
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Post by Stephen Mawson on Mar 25, 2009 22:51:00 GMT
More Full Thrust can only be a good thing.
If you want to give the game a go Warren I have more than enough ships to put together multiple fleets.
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Post by Liam Thompson on Mar 25, 2009 23:23:29 GMT
Stephen: I recently re-read the ship design rules and found that I'd missed the part that states that passenger space, cargo holds and science labs actually take up MASS. With that in mind, I figure that I will indeed have to up the MASS values of almost all ships (Defiant class ships seem to be the one exception that I can recall), but those values given will likely be a good place to start from. Indeed, my model sizes are in no way to scale to each other, let alone other spaceship models. Regarding the Shuttlecraft, I'm not so sure I ought to use them as ships. They fit one of the criteria that Fighters do in that they are carried aboard the larger starships, and yet they are FTL capable. I had considered that all of the larger ship types (everything from a Miranda upwards) would have a single Hangar Bay and a single set of standard Fighters (representing that ship's Shuttlecraft). As for the Federation Attack Fighters, Memory Alpha's articles seem to indicate that the attack fighters used in the Trek Universe are larger than those implied by the Full Thrust rules (in fact, the Maquis Raider model I own would be a contemporary equivalent). They would be considered ships by the FT rules (especially seeing as they would have FTL drives). This implies to me that, should I want to stick strictly to canon, all ships Miranda and upwards would need to be Tenders to be able to carry attack fighters/shuttlecraft. The only type of non-FTL capable shuttles are Shuttlepods, such as the Type-15 Shuttlepod and the Type-19 Shuttlepod. I would say that using these non-FTL capable shuttlepods as fighters would be possible, but is not a standard Federation battle tactic, and therefore probably ought to be discounted in general. The Reman Scorpion-class Fighters (as seen in Star Trek: Nemesis) would, however, so any Reman ships would likely be able to have Fighters (though I own no Reman models so I doubt that'll ever come up). Hmm... You've given me some things to ponder, but I think I'll be looking at statting some ships out soon unless anyone brings anything else to my attention. Carl: Much as I'd like to take credit for it, it was Mike who supplied the link. For anyone interested in potentially playing Full Thrust, you can download the rules from Ground Zero Games' website here. You will need to download Full Thrust (the basic rules), More Thrust (expansion and errata) and Fleet Book One (rules updates and errata, as well as sample ships). Fleet Book Two only contains additional sample ships, for three alien races and is not essential. GZG do not require you to use their own background and models for their game (unlike some other companies), which is why I have the freedom to use my Star Trek models. Darren: Oddly enough, I do own a second-hand copy of that, along with the Federation and Klingon Recognition Manuals. Likewise, I own the rules from Star Fleet Battles (which were included on the disc for the PC game Starfleet Command (which was, essentially, a 3d real-time PC version of the SFC rules)). I've read through both, and whilst I appreciate that they're rather good, I've found them both to be rather detailed. That and they detail TOS era, whereas I prefer (and my model collections better matches) TNG/DS9/VOY era. If I found other players of either, I'd be more than happy to give them a go, but since I know I've got at least two other Full Thrust players at the club, I'm far more likely to get a game if I play that. Warren: Feel free to download the above rules and purchase some ships (or just borrow some from me if you fancy) and join in. The models are actually quite cheap compared to some other companies; their online store states that their most expensive ship seems to be around £9, and most of them are far cheaper than that.
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Post by theluckyone on Mar 26, 2009 19:44:06 GMT
Just Mussing Liam, keep up the good work
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Post by Liam Thompson on Mar 27, 2009 22:44:46 GMT
Okay, here's my first attempt; the Sovereign class Superdreadnought (e.g. U.S.S. Enterprise-E). I've done my best to stick to canon, so it has 9 forward facing Phaser arrays and 7 rear facing Phaser arrays (counting Beam Batteries, Needle Beams and PDS all as a type of Phaser array and the 360 degree weapons split 50/50 between front and back). It also has roughly the same amount of hit points as the sample SDN class ships in Fleet Book One. It also has Science Labs and Cargo Bays, though no passenger capacity as Memory Alpha describes the Sovereign to not have the same family carrying capacity that the Galaxy did. However, to incorporate all of this, it's come out at a 400 MASS ship, using a poor armour value to get the correct Hull points for its class. It's also far more expensive than any of the other SDNs in the book. Sovereign Class Superdreadnought TMF: 400 NPV: 1182 Hull: 80 Thrust: 4 FTL: yes Weapons: Beam Batteries: 4 (FP, F), 4 (FS, F), 3 (AP, A), 3 (AS, A), 2 (AP, A, AS), 1 (360) x 4 Salvo Missile Launchers: (FP, F, FS), (AP, A, AS), both linked to a single Salvo Missile Magazine of 8 Needle Beams: (FP), (F), (FS) Pulse Torpedo Launchers: (FP, F, FA), (AP, A, AS) PDS: 4 FCS: 3 Screens: Level 2 Science Labs: 30 Cargo Bays: 27 Phasers: Beam Batteries, Needle Beams, and PDS Photon Torpedoes: Pulse Torpedo Launchers Quantum Torpedoes: Salvo Missile Launchers So, what do people think? Have I kept too close to canon to make it a viable FT ship? P.s. Anyone else notice how this thread, and this thread alone, has adverts for Star Trek eBay items at the top of the page?
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Post by Liam Thompson on Mar 28, 2009 0:16:42 GMT
Got some more ships done, though at the other end of the spectrum; the Scout/Courier class ships. These ones I've taken a slightly less canon twist on, and given each of them distinct roles.
SD-103 Type Shuttlecraft Courier SMF: 8 NPV: 23 Hull (Average): 2 Thrust: 6 FTL: yes PDS: 1 Full Streamlining (Atmospheric capable) Passenger Space: 1
Class-F Shuttlecraft Courier SMF: 8 NPV: 25 Hull (Average): 2 Thrust: 6 FTL: yes Beam Batteries: 1 (360) FCS: 1 Passenger Space: 1
Vulcan Long-Range Shuttle Courier SMF: 10 NPV: 23 Hull (Poor): 2 Thrust: 4 FTL: yes PDS: 1 Passenger Space: 5
Type-6 Shuttlecraft Scout SMF: 10 NPV: 34 Hull (Poor): 2 Armour: 1 Thrust: 6 FTL: yes Beam Batteries: 1 (360) x 2 FCS: 1
Class-2 Shuttle Scout SMF: 10 NPV: 34 Hull (Poor): 2 Armour: 1 Thrust: 6 FTL: yes Beam Batteries: 1 (360) Submunitions Packs: 1 (F) FCS: 1EDIT: It's come to my attention that Fleet Book Two states that there is no need to have a Hull rating as a direct percentile of the MASS rating. In future, I'll bear that in mind (and may perhaps go back and amend the already done ships).
Also, can anyone tell me where the rules are that allow PDS to fire at ships? I've combed my books but I can't seem to find the rules for it. Never mind, I found it.
Also, thanks to a later post, these stats have been rendered obsolete. I'm leaving them here for posterity, unless someone complains.
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