Starship book feedback

Well I just got my copy...

the whole book sucks.










...NOT! It is amazing!

First of all, I think it is a bloody shame that Don didn't get the proper credits for his work. How can Decipher make such a blatantly stupid mistake like that ?!?!

The book is very expensive; it cost me $56 Canadian bucks (with tax) BUT it is hardcover; high quality/all colour and even the starship drawings don't suck like in the SOM. But more importantly there are tons of useful info and each ship gets a very thorough treatment. The new material is extremely well organized and written, with plenty of examples to illustrate the new material. As someone else pointed out the new rules and systems add more detail and a bit more complexity to the basic rules but they are shoe-horned seamlessly. Contrary to the SOM where whoever did the ship stats was on hard drugs, the ship stats in Starships hold up very well (IMVHO). I did spot however a few minor points that could be contentionable, like the over-armed Ambassador and the under-armed Vor'Cha but otherwise nothing really major. And this time the actual text matches up the stats very tightly. The selection of ships (no surprise there as the contents where known prior publication) is excellent, being a good mix of most major ships we have seen on screen, different powers and different eras.

Lastly I couldn't help chuckling at the irony of having the ghost of the FASA STRPG creep up in Starships. IIRC Don was told to use by "Da PowerzTM" Starship Spotter (yes, the El Crapola book that wished it were of the same quality as 'Starships') and Starship Spotter is based on fan-made material which (you still follow me here?) was in turn based on FASA material. Hence the Klingons having KP-5 torpedoes or the Federation having FSS shield systems.

Well in short this is a thoroughly excellent book.

Oh, it's beautiful....I'm already drooling with anticipation at the chance to revamp my FASA and Spacedock conversions.... :p

And I also got a kick out of the FASA-like systems....made me feel kinda nostalgic.... *sniff* :rolleyes: ;) :D

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Originally posted by Sea Tyger
And I also got a kick out of the FASA-like systems....made me feel kinda nostalgic.... *sniff* :rolleyes: ;) :D

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You mean like the way they named engines, phasers etc.? Yeah, that was nice.

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Originally posted by Snake_Plissken


The book is very expensive; it cost me $56 Canadian bucks (with tax)...

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Wow! Can they lose me as a customer any faster? Well, we'll find out, if they keep this level of pricing up. I really have a problem paying more for a supplement then I did for a Corebook.

I picked up my copy today (Friday) and I'm greatly enjoying the book. It's beautiful!

I do have a couple or three problems, though:

What in heck did the artist think he was drawing when he did the Talon class? At least I already know what one looks like. There's a couple of other art blips as well, but the Talon stands out.

The B'Rel and K'Vort seem woefully underarmed in the torpedo department to go up against Jem'Hadar or Breen ships.

The Akira needs at least one more shuttlebay so that it can carry at least a rump squadron of size 2 fighters. As it is it can carry no where near "30-50" "fast attack fighters".

Guys and gals- these are very minor quibbles. I love this book. This is the one I've been waiting for and well worth the $35 I paid for it here in Louisiana.

Nice book!My only real complaint is the lack of an index but I think I can get over it.The quanity of ship systems,system availability,ship traits,and fleet-specific hardware-great stuff.I am actually looking forward to redesigning the ships I'm using in my series that didn't make it into this book.

And the ship write-ups rock.Haven't read the whole book yet but what I have read all makes perfect sense as far as the mission,features, and backgrounds go.The ship stats are for the most part on target.The Type 6 shuttle, Altair ,B'Rel, and Harmony will all be in my next episode.

Two questions:Is the reference concerning the Borg aqquisition of time travel from the Krenim (Pg 170) a Decipher concoction or did I miss something while watching VOY?
Is it permitted to post my own revision of published Decipher designs on this site( don't want copyright theft)?

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Wow! Can they lose me as a customer any faster? Well, we'll find out, if they keep this level of pricing up. I really have a problem paying more for a supplement then I did for a Corebook.

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well I can't really blame you for thinking that way; what happened was that I walked into my FLGS and the books had just arrived and they were piled on a tabled without the price tag. So I had to ask for the price and when the clerk found out even he was surprised at the steep price. There was a guy standing near me who when he heard the price passed a remark along the lines of it being more expensive than a core book. My first reaction was to let out a loud swear but I was holding a copy in my hands and I was really mesmerized by it. I had perused through it while he was searching for the price and I really thought it looked gorgeous, that there seemed to be a lot of material (it is a thick book) and that there was no obvious stat screw-ups. My guess is that Decipher knew that this might be their best-selling supplement ever and that they could exact a higher premium from us knowing that a lot of people wanted this book badly. Well that's always a gamble, you'll get customers (like me) who know they kinda've been suckered but they'll pay nonetheless (I admit though that above 50-55 CAN$ I would have said 'screw it') and others like you that'll refuse flat-out to buy it. From personal experience I can draw a parallel between my DVD business and a local competitor; we sell some DVD titles that you can't find anywhere else (unless you order them through the net which will cost you a fortune) and we charge a good premium on them- but a reasonnable one because we don'yt want to get a bad reputation and I'd rather lower my mark-up and do repeat sales with a customer. Whereas this competitor of ours will pay 20$ for a DVD that he'll sell for 80$- his clients have no choice but to buy it from him if they want that title but they'll curse at them. Yeah, you're making a load but you leave a wake of dubious customers. Now going back to Starships we have to remember as I said that the book is hardcover, full colour and it is in all respects of very high-quality. The nearest comparison we can make is with the SWRPG Starships of the Galaxy book; that book is softcover, black-and-white and even then there are very few illustrations in it. It has (I think) a much smaller page count also than the Decipher's Starships. Now WOTC' Starships retails at 32 CAN$, so you have to decide if the 20 CAN$ difference between the two is worth it; WOTC's Starships is a no-frills efficient book while Decipher's Starships is also efficient but with a coffee-table book package. I'm not putting down WOTC' Starships as I had the chance to read it and the write-ups seemed very good but I'm just comparing both books' production values.

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What in heck did the artist think he was drawing when he did the Talon class? At least I already know what one looks like. There's a couple of other art blips as well, but the Talon stands out.

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I know, some of the drawings are off- Have you notied the Nova? The side view makes it look like some ugly tanker.

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The B'Rel and K'Vort seem woefully underarmed in the torpedo department to go up against Jem'Hadar or Breen ships.

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I think so too and I'll add that as a whole Klingon ships are way underarmed; just look at the Vor'Cha and the Negh'Var. Since we're talking about Klingons I would have expected them to prioritize weapons over anything else- Whereas in contrast I think that generally the Federation ships are a tad overarmed. I read the whole book thoroughly last night and I spotted a few anomalies (but I suspect they're typos or plain errors of some sort), like the Galor and the Keldon having almost exactly the
same stats or the Jem'Hadar fighter having a -2 helm modifier. Otherwise in general the write-ups are consistant and well-balanced. I especially like the fact that with the new systems and the addition of new reliability ratings there is now a wider range of options which will go a long way in helping create ships that are very different from one another, especially when comparing ships from different eras. For instance the refit Constitution is a tough ship in its era but pitted against a TNG-era cruiser it will have a hard time. It is also really fun to be able to compare the extremes of the scale; just look at the NX-class and then the Sovereign, quite an evolution!

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Originally posted by Cmdr Powers
The Akira needs at least one more shuttlebay so that it can carry at least a rump squadron of size 2 fighters. As it is it can carry no where near "30-50" "fast attack fighters".

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Oh, okay, the limitation on shuttlebays says that you can't have more than half (round down) of the ship's size in bays. This means that the design is right on. All this means to me, however, is that there needs to be a way to carry shuttles as cargo or to have a 'flight deck' system instead of a shuttlecraft bay system to allow for carriers. Admittedly, no 'carriers' have ever been seen on any Star Trek episode or movie...

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Two questions:Is the reference concerning the Borg aqquisition of time travel from the Krenim (Pg 170) a Decipher concoction or did I miss something while watching VOY

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I think that's from the LUG book 'All our Yesterdays' where they speculate that's where the borg got their time-travel tech from - both the Krenim and the Borg being Delta Quadrant species.

If so, it's a nice tip of the hat.

Man, forbidden Planet better get that book in come wednesday...

Mark

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Originally posted by Snake_Plissken

Lastly I couldn't help chuckling at the irony of having the ghost of the FASA STRPG creep up in Starships. IIRC Don was told to use by "Da PowerzTM" Starship Spotter (yes, the El Crapola book that wished it were of the same quality as 'Starships') and Starship Spotter is based on fan-made material which (you still follow me here?) was in turn based on FASA material. Hence the Klingons having KP-5 torpedoes or the Federation having FSS shield systems.

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I noticed this too, but hey, don't diss FASA. I love my old FASA ship manuals. ;)

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I noticed this too, but hey, don't diss FASA. I love my old FASA ship manuals.

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no I'm dissing Starship Spotter, not FASA. The FASA starship combat game was the first wargame I had ever bought (1st wargame ever played was Squad Leader). Man did we play that game to death. I also loved to design ships with the Construction Manual. I once designed a monster that was nothing but FP-4 torpedoes (ya know, the ones at 20 damage points... and yes you may call me Senor Munchkino). I used to run an RPG campaign that where we used the wargame a lot- my players were the crew of a Klingon K-22 (bird-of-prey) scout and havoc did they wreaked!

I have nothing against the FASA way of naming parts per se, it was fine when it was the FASA game- and that was pre-TNG material. But today I prefer the TNG-esque feel of what was established by LUG and Decipher (class 3 sensors, type 3 tractor beams, etc). I any case if they ever make another Starship Spotter book they better use 'Starships' as a source like Don said.

Okay, I was putzing around with the system and tallied some points on the TOS-era ships.

They all looked very nice and well designed, but I have a couple of problems:

1. If the Romulans didn't have a true FTL drive before their 2268 treaty with the Klingons, why is the RWC series available as early as 2221? Are the earlier models supposed to be the "magnetic bottle" FTL drives (I thought those were primarily one-way devices, based on the BoP description)?

2. The K'tinga actually uses less space than its D-7 predecessor, and uses the inferior K-GDM-2 disruptor, when its size and the weapon availability would dictate that the K-GDM-4 should be mounted. Mounting 4 K-GDM-4's also puts the K'tinga's cost equal to the D-7.

Both of these, of course, are relatively minor. Don, if you have any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them. ;)