People seem to like these threads such that they pop up from time to time. I'd like to give a little twist to it...
What starship (or other base) are you using in your game? Why? What else did you consider? How is that choice working out for you?
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People seem to like these threads such that they pop up from time to time. I'd like to give a little twist to it...
What starship (or other base) are you using in your game? Why? What else did you consider? How is that choice working out for you?
Startrek: Aurora, Intrepid. I picked the Intrepid here because I wanted to give the players a deep space ship that would be comfortable for long missions. I had three choices here really.
Galaxy, Soveriegn, Intrepid
I did not want them being able to destroy every ship that they came across without a challenge. Or resort to guns in every situation. That rules out the Soveriegn completely. It was between a Galaxy and an Intrepid. I did not want there to be over a thousand NPC's onboards. That's why I went with the Intrepid.
Startrek: Eclipse, Nova class. I wanted a ship that would normally be stationed to a starbase but could go out firther if necessary. This brought me to two conclusions. Defiant or Nova. I wanted the players to be challenged when they have to fight and like the claustrophobic state of the Nova, with a complement of Eighty.
I tried a Defiant in a one episode and the players ended up starting a war with the Ferengi. They were court marshailed(sp?) and this resulted in the game starting over. I again chose a Nova for the same reasons as above.
I've told myself several times that I need to write up an article answering this question. It won't tell you necessarily, per-se what you have to use, but does run the entire gambit of why you might want to use such a vessel. One day I suppose I'll get around to it.
Short answer, for a "current" Trek game, balanced ship for all types of mission profiles: Intrepid. Can't beat it, baby. :D
The USS Venture was always a Galaxy class from the moment it appeared on screen... And the PBEM has been in existance longer than the LUG RPG.
However when the game restarted with a rules based system rather than the Freeform game that had been collapsing previously, I thought about a total refresh (Not realising the sort of outcry last seen over the re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica :D), and part of that was, for a very short time, thoughts of another ship, a new ship.
I did for a short while consider the USS Journeyman an Intrepid class ship. The main reason why I didn't, was simply because there were no stats out for it at the time and I was feeling lazy.
Its worked out well on the whole, and I still have the Journeyman as a backup if a tabletop game ever occurs.
Imperial Starbird T'Virik, T'Rasus-class.
Why? I wanted something that said Romulan in the TNG era, but not something as overwhelmingly powerful as the Warbird. The Starbird classes are the Romulans answer to the Explorer classes the Federation uses.
I've always gone back to the Galaxy-class. With the Tech Manual and the blueprints that were published for it, it's hard to find better source material for any other class ship, save the Constitution refit. Since I run TNG-DS9 era series exclusively, well... :)
If a VOY tech manual ever came out, or if I ever manage to come up with a way to make good deckplans myself, I'll stick with either the Galaxy or come up with a new class.
I tend to do exploration first type of series, so a Galaxy class fits that nicely.
I like having deckplans. Lately I've been leaning towards smaller more intimate ships. Thus, I've got the Friday group on a Defiant class and the Monday group on a Saber class. I had some re-ocurring one-shots on a Nova class.
Since the games I was running collapsed recently (half the players, a married couple, moved out of the area) I don't run a game anymore but the next game I'll run soonish will be set on a Miranda class starship, lost in the Delta Quadrant. I wanted a small starship which isn't all that powerful (ruling out the grossly overpowered Intrepid class) so that the crew may have to think there way out of situation, rather than shooting there way out.
For my Star Trek: TSI campaign, I'm using a 120m-long freighter of my own design. Since the characters are undercover Starfleet Intel agents in 2275, I needed a small, cozy, civilian ship.
If I ever do a TNG campaign, I'm thinking about the Sequoia-class, simply because it's cool. :D
Miranda-class USS Boudicea .
Why? A good all round ship, but nearly powerful enough to go up against any Dominion vessels, thereby making the players think their way around problems.
Of course, now they have a fleet of a dozen starships at their command!
I took a cool picture from Ex Asris Scientia of the Bradbury class, and designed a Coda heavy cruiser to go with it. Crew 280, no families on board, not quite as big as a Sovereign class. I like a ship with no preconceived notions about what it can and can't do.
Originally posted by Dan Stack
I chose the USS Asimov. It is an Intrepid Prototype.Quote:
What starship (or other base) are you using in your game?
I decided to design my own ship to suite my specific GM needs. I like the lines of the Intrepid, but I too think it is a little “too much ship.” What I did was shrink down the Intrepid class to about half its size. I wanted a small ship that I could create the entire NPC list of crewmembers. If the PCs need a Sociologist, they can check the crew roster and see who fits the job best. I also have a small paragraph of background for each of these NPCs, which helps out immensely during our sessions. I guess I just feel that large ships are so impersonal. Plus, on a large ship, you can always find an NPC who would be skilled in any area you could possible need help with. It really helps “PUSH” PC development in that the PCs are trying to fit the bill for any vacancies that may exist do to ineffective staffing (I make the Command PC roll for this). In fact, during our last few sessions, the ship lost about half its crew in a battle. The Command PC requisitioned more crew to replace those lost. We will be roleplaying this during our next session.Quote:
Why?
The USS Asimov was built in 2365 as a “demo” to see if the design would function properly. This was primarily done due to the failed computer modeling experiments under various conditions and stresses. The USS Asimov tested successful and was placed in a learning facility at the Daystrom Institute. She was “re-commissioned” in 2375 as a result of the lack of Federation vessels available due to losses in the Dominion War.
The rational came from my dislike of the “holodecks can simulate most everything” concept. The idea of bio-neural gel packs worked well on paper, but early tests proved ineffective and dangerous. A “privately funded” project was used to build a prototype, in the truest sense of the word, to see if the ship would function. It was built half the scale of the, yet to be built, USS Intrepid so as to be more cost effective.
I thought about using the Oberth or a few of the smaller canon vessels. In the end, it was way more fun to design my own ship. She is small and has few torpedoes, so the PCs will need to be careful.Quote:
What else did you consider?
I love it!!! I would like to have some deckplans, so I think I may switch to the Nova. Publius has made some awesome deckplans that I may just have to borrow???Quote:
How is that choice working out for you?
OR
Maybe he would help me do some deckplans for my own ship!!!
Oh, I am just curious. Is Dan Stack going to answer his own questions for us???
USS Constitution, Galaxy-class. Mostly because everyone knows what the interiors look like & I've got deckplans, etc, if I need them.
Well, for me it was simple ...
I wanted to start the game with something that a junior captain could/would get as her first command.
I like the feeling of realism where both the captain and the crew are earning their way up.
Since I have considered escort vessels to be a station/patrol based I went for the next best thing, a frigate.
So I took the look and feel of defiant, made it bigger (250m) stacked it with a bit more crew (80+10RRT) then added the intelligence sticker to it, to give a little extra freedom of operation and make players feel a bit more special (this of course tied in with the story and was not pulled out of the backside). And this is how USS Courageous (Avatar class Fast Frigate was created). From now on, the sky is the limit. It is really up to the crew and the captain where it will all go from here.
My current game is Klingon mercs.
So one Character has a beatup Bird of Prey D-12 class.
The other has found a 80yr old crashed K'tinga, and will try to restore it over the campaign.
USS Intrepid, name ship of the Intrepid-class.
Why? It's small - small enough for me to detail every single NPC on the ship (well - at least name, rank, species gender and key skills; and yes *sigh*, I am that anally retentive :) ); there's a tonne of source material out about it; I've got the really cool cutaway poster of Voyager; I'm somewhere in the midst of deckplans for it (though I keep having to go back and revise decks...grrr!).
Story reasons are that it's the smallest multimission ship I can think of. Nova is great for science missions, but it falls down when I want to do first contact or combat-oriented stuff, Defiant is good for combat stuff, but falls over regarding exploration stuff.
How's it working out? Terrific! :)
I suppose it is only fair, but I wanted to let discussion go on a little without me first. :DQuote:
Originally posted by Kronok
Originally posted by Dan Stack
Oh, I am just curious. Is Dan Stack going to answer his own questions for us???
I'm a big believer that a ship sets the tone of a game or a television show. So I give such thought a lot of internal debate.
There are a few factors I keep in mind...
Appropriate for the mission?
A small vessel is great for a specific purpose and can, in a pinch, be used for other missions, but realism and believability is stretched quite a bit if you constantly use a vessel for something it is not designed for. For example, the Defiant on DS9 has been used on occasion for exploration (and the Mission Gamma novels have used it for such) but she really isn't optimal for such use. She is really a fighter. It would stretch believability to use one for diplomatic missions - witness DS9 using an Intrepid on a diplomatic mission to Romulus.
Similarly a Nova or Oberth is a great survey vessel but would one be used to defend a sector from a Romulan offensive. Would one be used to open diplomatic relations with a new species.
An Intrepid is a great all-around ship, but with her smaller crew (and a lot of dialogue on Voyager) one gets the feel that she is best suited for short or medium-term missions. However, that is quite often in keeping with an RPG, which is why I suspect she's a popular RPG ship.
The "big ships" of the 24th century - Ambassador, Galaxy, Sovereign, Nebula, Excelsior - to me, those ships, along with the smaller Intrepid, seem to suit the purpose of a "generic" show or RPG. They are designed to do anything - maybe not perfectly suited for everything, but they are all capable of military action, medium to long-term exploration, diplomacy, rescue, escort duty, you name it. If on the other hand you have a very specific sort of campaign in mind, a smaller ship, I find, works quite well.
For example, for my generic games, I've mainly stuck to the Galaxy-class. For the Bridgetown, DS9-style game, the Defiant-class worked well. Similarly, for a ship lost in time, space, and parallel dimensions, where I wanted the characters to lack resources, the Defiant was an ideal choice.
Familiarity?
For me, this is just as important. If I as narrator refer to the main bridge, do the players know what I'm talking about? Not all my players are obsessive tech-heads like me, so saying "it looks just like the bridge of the Prometheus may get a blank state. What does the lounge look like? Engineering? I want the ship to be a given, so that I don't have to expend much narrating energy on making her a character. This, for me, makes the Galaxy and Intrepid classes
Player and Narrator Preference
Sometimes a player or narrator really likes a particular ship or really doesn't like a particular design. (This is where familiarity can be a bad thing).
What Is Your Answer, Dan?
I'm finalizing my decision. And I'll walk you through my thought process. If people have been watching my public mental ramblings on this board, I've been trying to get "back to basics". I love tightly focused games, but they are sometimes a pain to develop - your ability to use a generic adventure is limited. With a six-month old daughter, my free time lis limited, hence my desire to get back to a straight-forward, TNG style game.
If you've seen other posts by me, you'll also note that I've brought characters from the 23rd century into the 24th. This was to allow a more "wild" sort of character while setting the game in the time period that most players instinctively recognize. In the end I also decided to set it after all my other games, so it takes place just after the end of Voyager Season 7 (my Bridgetown game's last adventure was mid-way through Voyager Season 7) - I'm not planning on using a lot of elements from prior games, but I don't want to forbid myself from doing so.
For the 23rd century adventures we ran, we used a Miranda-class vessel - it was the right size - big for its era, able to fulfill multiple roles. It was familar - the interior is quite similar to Enterprise of the film series. And my players liked the design.
For the 24th century component, soon to begin, I'll start with my own personal preference - that is a Sovereign-class vessel. Unlike other people, I don't see them as a "warship" - I see them fulfilling a role quite similar to the Constitution class - designed for deep space exploration - smaller than the Galaxy, but more effective a tactical platform, as it needs to dedicate less resources to a civilian population. I can see one of these in a deep space mission without returning to Earth or other main planets for a while. I also like the idea of a larger crew than the Intrepid - it allows me to introduce a bit more of a social element to the game, something I think I've been a little weak at - I always liked episodes on TNG which had musical performances, gossip on who was dating who, etc. - TNG was more a "community" while Voyager was more a close-knit "family". I like the community aspect a bit better for my game.
The only disadvantage is a large one - while I am quite familar with them, I'm not so sure about my players. One player has only seen First Contact once and didn't see Insurrection. The game group may well see "Nemesis" together, so that may mitigate the unfamiliarity.
However, I need to decide prior to that. My fallback is the dependable Galaxy-class. This has the advantage that I don't need to hold up a "Star Trek: The Magazine" to show a picture of the bridge or explain how engineering looks. This is stuff I want to be instinctive, as some of my adventures, like the tv show, are ship-based. Nothing disrupts an adventure more than explaining - "oh no, I'm sorry, I didn't explain, there's no turbolift there" or "sorry, that's actually a level above". Yes, as narrator it is contingent upon me to explain that to my players, but as narrator it is also my responsibility to plan well enough in advance to mimimize my work. If I expend "narrating energy" making their ship familiar, then I have used energy which could have been better used fleshing out the alien presence taking over their ship.
Whew, that's a long answer. The short answer is most likely I'll be returning my game to the Galaxy-class Icarus, which was the player's ship back in 1998-1999 but has not been used since as a home base since. (It also has the advantage that the player's know the bartender in Ten-Forward (which looks like an Irisb pub), the Reverend Finnegan, a Jesuit minister and grandson of the Finnegan who tormented Kirk at Starfleet Academy). The Icarus was last seen in our Bridgetown game, nearly destroyed by Cardassian terrorists using Iconian weapons. There is a chance, based on player comments we will instead use the Sovereign.
[Edit - Fixed a typo or two]
Like other people have already said, there are plenty of advantages to running a capaign aboard a small ship. But, my group has played Star Wars for a long time and is used to cruising around the galaxy in little tramp freighters. I wanted the Trek game to feel different from that, so I started the characters out on a big ship, an Ambassador class.
That ship has since been reduced to a saucer section, so I'm going to transfer the crew to a Nebula class. What I like about the Nebula is that I can use all the deckplans and interior pictures for the Galaxy class, but it is different enough so that the players won't ever think they're on the Enterprise-D.
(blink blink) Duh. :eek:
Sometimes the most obvious things elude me. Sarge, I never even considered adapting the Galaxy-class plans to a Nebula. Seems so simple when you just come out and say it, but somehow my brain never made the connection.
What a great idea. Time to research the Nebula! :)
You could always use the New Orleans class as a smaller than Nebula and Galaxy but you could just adapt the deckplans a little bit. Snip out a few quarters here and there. Just a thought.
Hey, I like the New Orleans idea myself.;)
In the campaign i am starting this saturday i will be using an Ambassador class, mainly because i have always liked them and i have over used the Galaxy class and Sovereigns in the past
After mentioning my next game was going to be set on a Miranda class in the DQ, I had a sudden attack of common sense and realised that 220 crew isn't going to last long (I don't even want to think how many crew Voyager went through).
That, added to the fact that I watched 'Yesterdays Enterprise' tonight on the BBC had made me change my mind and set the game on a Ambassador Class, the main reason for which being that I like the design and it looks to be big, but not too big.
I'm currently running a DS9, pre Dominion War Game. The crew is onboard a Defiant Class ship, the USS Ares. What ya think?
No matter what ship they start out with, my players end up with a humongous armada some point in the future... Pirate campaigns = hard to balance (I was also a newbie GM at the time)
Don't sweat it--Voyager didn't go through that many. That's one thing (thankfully) the writers kept close track of. I don't have my figures handy with me, but all told they lost maybe a dozen. They also had a nice "pick up" with the crew of the Equinox along the way. :)Quote:
Originally posted by silverthorn
After mentioning my next game was going to be set on a Miranda class in the DQ, I had a sudden attack of common sense and realised that 220 crew isn't going to last long (I don't even want to think how many crew Voyager went through).
BTW, let me know how this game turns out!
I used a Defiant for several reasons:
#1 I like it.
#2 It's got a small crew, which means my players can't delegate major jobs to underlings if they don't know what to do, but can delegate minor tasks.
#3 If I really wanted to, I could detail every crew member (I already have Name, Species, and Position for every crew member on all three shifts) :D
#4 It can land if it has to. My crew have a tendency to crash ships.
#5 It's appropriate for the time period: Mid- Dominion War
#6 Deck plans already exist.
#7 Too lazy to dream up stats and such for the Invictus Class
http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/FirstofTwo/Page2.html
:D :D
Hi All
Hi All
My crew began on the Gamma watch for the USS Biko. The Biko was a SF JAG ship investigating Neutral Zone violations as a largely stock Oberth class. It carried a number of ambassadors who were present for various incidents and to provide both plot tension and, periodically, get out of jail cards. The crew were transfered to a new ship once their Captain, Cox, was promoted. This was a Freedom II class, the USS Deliverance (something that I made up). It had a variety of experimental equipment including layered shields, a "Dual Core Single Nacelle" (DCSN), and a flotilla targeting system for controlling 'command fire' at specific targets. The crew was raised to Beta Bridge Watch and went exploring on the far side of the Cardassian Empire. The PC's were eventually elevated to the Alpha Bridge Watch on a Norway class, the USS Lor'Tan. A mixed species crew though mostly Andorian. The Lor'Tan spent some time fighting in the Dominion War (2370-74), exploring, and making first contacts. The PC's are now getting close to having a player make Captain. The Biko allowed legal and investigative missions without much firepower being involved. (The Oberth can't even make toast with its phasers!) The Deliverance allowed for a lot of engineering and science missions while doing some fighting and exploring. The Lor'Tan has lots of intrigue and politics. Cheers,
Scott MacGregor
First of Two, where did you get the info that Defiants can land? In the episode "Starship Down", Sisko said that she wasn't designed to operate in atmosphere. To me, that pretty much precludes the possibility of landing.
Didn't he say that it wasn't meant to operate in that kind of atmosphere (ie: Jupiter-type)?
The MSD of Defiant has landing legs to the fore and aft of the shuttlebay on deck 4.
http://www.gilsostartrekschematics.c...antcutaway.jpg
It looks like the systems of the room with the firewall on the NSEA Protector to me :D
If those are landing Struts, they must not be able to land on much more than very flat land...
My game is set in the period after Star Trek VI. I used a refitted Saladin Class Destroyer. My game emphasizes the uncertainty following the collapse of the Cold War with the Klingons and the change in balance of power in this part of the Galaxy. It is a time when the old "truths" have ended and new ones are being created on the "ground". For this I wanted a smaller ship, but one big enough to perform multiple roles in a pinch. The ship is in a border area, so a destroyer makes sense. I wanted a powerful ship, but one that could not dominate in most combats without luck and a good crew. I want the characters to have to be resourceful with limited resources. This also give the crew to move up to a larger ship eventually.
In my new campaign I plan to have the characters get used to the Nova with limited resources and can get to know the crew. After the first season or so I think they will get the Sovereign.