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What do Klingons do with their space wreckage, especially if its still carrying weapons? I would think the Klingons would utilize some sort of service/support vessel in the field. Why go to a Klingon starbase, when you can send supplies straight to the front lines?
Am I making sense here?
Has anyone ever designed such a ship? :confused:
I think the old FASA Klingon SRM had some vehicles of this nature, but I'm far from my books right now.
I think Tenders would be part of any fleet of ships - military or not - but a highly miltarized fleet would definitely make use of them. Support vessels of every kind would most likely be behind every advancing war fleet.
Now what they look like, and what their stats are?? Well, to me they are more of a story item and details would need to be minimal, unless of course they are being attacked. Even then, I would probably apply some kind of mook system and make it so that the attackers need only achieve 5 successful hits of Superior Success or more (or something like that), all the while trying to fend off the support vessels' guardians.
Like this? Or this?
Both your links are pointing to the same post on Doug's blog...but I'd forgotten those.... Time to gank them and see if I can figure out a few things.
Looking back at my post, it looks like I wasn't clear enough. I was thinking more like a full-blown Klingon salvage/field repair vessel.
Hm. I suspect Klingon ships (the deep space operations vessels we see most often on the shows) might be outfitted to do a fair amount of that themselves. Klingon battlecruiser crews would definitely be equipped and trained for whole-ship salvage to bring back captured ships.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cdre Bob Wesley
I guess the question is what kind of field repairs would be possible, and with what tools (does it need giant external equipment, or just lots of guys in EVA suits?), what kind of resources those repairs would take (does it need to haul a giant hold of extra hull plating with it? how much is carried by the tender, and how much by the vessel being repaired?), and how much time those repairs would take (i.e. is it faster to just haul it back to a starbase).
The FASA Klingon SRM does feature a pair of tenders and a mobile repair facility, as well as a couple of freighters and a couple of transports. Some of them have even been translated to CODA stats, some of them here on these forums and a couple of them might be on the BTFF site (link in my sig), courtesy of K.G. Carlson. The names of the ships in question to help you go find them:
G3 Baka Re' freighter
G5 Tugboat transport
G6 Catapult transport
G8 Traders Game freighter
S4 Mender tender
S5 Healer tender
S8 Murph mobile repair facility
W2 Koreba warpshuttle
W4 Speedstar warpshuttle
Of these, the one that seems most like what you're looking for is the S8 Murph. Dunno if I've seen that particular one converted to CODA stats yet,
These are all 23rd century ships, as that was what FASA had to work with. Enjoy your hunting. :)
:o They're uh. . .trying to reactivate the planet killer from The Doomsday Machine and gain control of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King
Towing it with standard tractor beams would be a game mechanics violation for a ship of that size, correct? So I'm thinking some invasive service vehicle would be necessary to reactivate it.
I can't believe Kirk and crew just left it there! :rolleyes:
Thanks for the lead Patrick. Appreciated. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by PGoodman13
You could make it work, rules-wise, with multiple ships with multiple tractor beams, I think.
And there's no indication of what Kirk did with the thing afterward. It's not out of the question that he had Starfleet haul the thing away, or at least that Starfleet sent someone on their own after receiving his report. He was a lothario, to be sure, but he wasn't stupid.
You're aware of the FASA adventure A Doomsday Like Any Other that deals with this very notion, aren't you? And that stats for the wee beastie can be found on BTFF? (I don't know that I necessarily agree with those stats, but that's neither here nor there at the moment.)
In that case, I'd suggest a medical relief vessel, carrying a specialist in non-carbon based life...Quote:
Originally Posted by Cdre Bob Wesley
Got it already.Quote:
Originally Posted by PGoodman13
You've been a great help to my campaign group for well over a month now. The character-building guide is glued to the inside back cover of my PG. ;)
You could just rip out the offending pages of the PG and insert the guide instead. In fact, it could even be made to look like the pages themselves... Oh, wait, no, I'm having 'CODA 2.0' flashbacks... aaarrgh...Quote:
Originally Posted by Cdre Bob Wesley
And very skilled in carbon-based psychiatry.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King
Attempting to reactivate that thing is just plain nuts....
The TNG novel Vendetta offers some non-canonical insights into the lunatics who built it in the first place...
I never really pictured it as something having been built...Quote:
Originally Posted by selek
Heh, what 23rd century Klingon wouldn't?Quote:
Originally Posted by selek
This scenario is just begging for a TOS version of Commander Kruge from STIII. He's running on limited info about the thing, and making rash assumptions.
"This Federation terror weapon must be claimed for the Empire!"Quote:
Originally Posted by Cdre Bob Wesley
And when they get it running again...
"What do you mean, it's targeting us?" ZAP!!! :eek:
Commodore B,
I also suggest that you take care that the boarding/inspection/entry process be sufficiently arduous and complex. Make them earn their victory.
Granted the anti-proton beam was the thing's main line of defense, the hull is still made out of cast neutronium (the densest metal known to Trek technology).
That means simply scanning- let along beaming aboard- will be difficult at best, impossible (or suicidal) at worst.
Even knowing WHERE to board the thing should be a challenge.
Finding a way into the hull in the first place should be a cast-iron (or cast-neutronium)... um....witch. The outer hull is designed to operate inside incredibly dense asteroid/debris clouds (the device's primary fuel) and will have few exterior ports of any kind- and those few likely to lead places the crew doesn't want to be anyway (such as fusion chambers and particle emitters).
Since the bore of the beast is both fuel intake and weapon emitter, it, too will be incredibly resilient and built-to-last, and is likely to have very few ports usable by the crew. Residual radiation levels will also be very high, if not fatal.
Once inside, the device should have multiple lines of defense (not necessarily against intruders per se, but against vermin, contaminants, and the like).
Since the device carries no crew, internal passageways will be narrow, cramped, and not designed for human (or Klingon) occupation. Very little of the device's overall volume should be habitable.
Control surfaces in the beast proper would be extremely rare (if not non-existant) and even the ones in the command center/control room/programmer's officer may be out-of-service a/o difficult-to-interpret.
Finally, the device was meant as a weapon of last resort (or if you believe the stories) as a Borg-killer. Its designers would have taken obsessive care that the device NOT be turned against them- and will have layer upon layer of security to prevent unauthorized manipulation of the programming and control matrices.
One thing you must consider- neither the Federation nor the Klingon Empire have the engineering or technical skill to build and program such a device. Despite it's age and antiquated appearance, the Doomsday Device was built by an advanced culture with technologies generations (or more) beyond anything with which the characters will be familiar.
In deciding to attempt to take and control the Doomsday Device, the Klingon Empire has likely bitten off FAR more than they can chew. Unless your characters are very wise and very clever, they should face the consequences of that folly.
Right, like Genesis. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by selek
Oh, agreed 100%. But when I stated, "They," I meant the NPC antagonists; not the PCs. My players are all Federation and must prevent the Klingons from succeeding.Quote:
Unless your characters are very wise and very clever, they should face the consequences of that folly.
I try to stick with canon as much as I can and keep it to the player's POV. That way, it's left as ambiguous as possible.* All they see from their perspective is a couple Klingon specialty field repair vessels parked inside the opening.
Then the players take it from there.
*Unless the Starfleet crew captures a Klingon for interrogation or something, then I'd have some explaining to do. ;)
Well, that nips my next idea in the bud. I was going to suggest a Federation vessel arrive right at the climax of the adventure. Since your people ARE the Feds, that's already built in.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cdre Bob Wesley
In my Gaming Miscellaney section, I have done some replacement deckplans for the Doomsday Machine to replace the ones in the FASA adventure. I decided to do them as if the species had no artificial garvity, so they're designed to be traversed in Vacc suits in Zero-Gee. I've done them to scale so players can envision their characters doing so. The URL is: http://coldnorth.com/owen/game/misce...y/doomsday.htm - Enjoy!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Owen E Oulton
Well, when Mark Okrand was doing the Klingon language, he decided to omit the phrase "to be"- just to be curmudgeonly. (Which backfired badly when they asked him to translate Hamlet).
Why did you assume that a race advanced enough to shape/handle/machine pure neutronium and anti-proton beams would lack artificial gravity?
Perhaps they'd grown past needing it, having adapted to weightlessness aeons ago. Perhaps it was a simple aesthetic choice - they like floating. Perhaps they reasoned that it was necessary in a vessel that, well, wasn't really meant to be manned. I can think of a number of reasons, none of them being that they weren't capable of artificial gravity...they just didn't see a need for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by selek
Same reason you don't put crew quarters inside an ICBM?Quote:
Originally Posted by selek
Uncle!
I wasn't saying Owen was wrong, just curious at his reasoning.
I give! I give!
Just to be curmudgeonly. Or, perhaps they didn't "lack" it, they just didn't need it, or found it too restrictive.
BTW, some upgraded graphics today.
The web reveals something called the G-27 Builder class Construction Ship:
http://www.tacticalstarshipcombat.co...ds/G27_sds.htm
Looks like the construction ship from Armada.Quote:
Originally Posted by Owen E Oulton