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There was an interesting thread I started here about what sort of ship people chose for their groups and why. I'm curious if any people here are running station-based games - I know I've seen AslanC and Styrofoam Man describe their stations. Anyone else?
If you are, where is the station located, what sort of station, etc.? Why'd you choose that?
This time I'll start out by answering my own question. I've had a game on Bridgetown, set on the borders of the Kellinan Reach. (From the LUG DS9 Game)
For my own purposes, I made this roughly close to Bajoran and Cardassian Space. It was on the frontiers of the vast Kellinan Reach, an unexplored region of space.
The station was actually an ancient asteroid, settled and resettled, with thousands of architectures. It was a refuge for pirates and all sorts of other rough lifeforms. I was inspired by Frederick Pohl's Gateway novel for Bridgetown.
As a hook, I also had a primitve Iconian Gateway on Bridgetown, discovered in one of the first adventures. I may actually return to Bridgetown at some point - I rather enjoyed it, but I ran into the problem that I was injecting a little too much continuity from the Dominion War with not everyone intimately familiar with that.
In many ways, my Star Trek: Relic game can be considered a station-based game. Although the PCs are the crew of a Danube class runabout (making it a ship-based campaign as well), the characters are members of the crew complement of Dyson Base - the runabouts are mobile adjuncts to the base. Of course, being inside the Dyson Sphere, it could also be considered a planet-based campaign, the Sphere having more in common with a planet (or rather, a whole bunch of planets) than a station...
Dyson Base (which got thoroughly trashed last session and will be rebuilt and expanded) is a small ground station, serving as the coordination and analysis centre for the exploration of the Dyson Sphere. It has a relatively small crew and is heavy on lab spaces. It has little in the way of recreational facilities- officially, anyway. In fact it is located on an island with a semitropical climate, several excellent beaches and kilometres of wooded areas. It is lightly armed, a decision Starfleet is now regreting after the loss of two runabouts and several crew members during an attack by forces unknown. Up until last session, it was also completely isolated aside from the monthly ship visit - now they can open the portals from the interior, which should dramatically change the dynamics of the game.
Starbase 001 was to be a base that my PC crew from the Eclipse. They were to find it abandoned and when their only way home disappears settle in for a few months until the wormhole reopened.
The actual station did not have a name and the crew nicknamed it Starbase 001 after Sector 001. They had a friendly race that hated the Romulans and were prepared to go to war with them. A few religious extremists closed the wormhole and destroyed the wormhole generator.
The series fizzled out for lack of players.
:(
Deep Space 10.
Was initially the former Empok Nor, and was set in an alternate universe where elements of the Cardassian military were against the Dominion from the get go. Leading to Stafleet and Cardassian forces running the station as Deep Space 10 as the location of the Cardassian Government in Exile.
For a short while it was quite fun, but collapsed as it got too big and complicated too fast.
There was also 'Eden Project' a planetary colony under Starfleet Colonial Command, a game that never actually occured in the end... But was looking fine, from the Starfleet Security Precinct in the old town, to the archeological station on the mountains, the Starfleet Traffic Control orbiting satellite and the Starfleet landing zones at their planetary colony.
It was looking fun and a lot of thought went into it, but it was one of those concept games that never acually followed through.
Oulton that sounds like a great idea. Lots of exploring, inclosed space environment . . . but what of challanges? I'd like to hear more.
Don . . . DS10. That sounded fun as well, but I can see how you said that it was getting big fast.
OK, what had my players do, way back when, was have them fly to the far end of CU and take possession of a outpost on a far flung Agricultural world after the DW, to help the new Democratic government mantain stability there. However, the School year was winding down, and I had to end it. So I sent them to a neighbooring Romulan Protectorate after they recieved some strangle communicas from that systems Cardassian government.
Well they ended up finding a Romulan plot that lead to the end of the series, and the loss of their XO. When they got back from that, the science team figured if they can slingshot back in time using their systems sun, they can go back and save their XO. Well . . . it backfired, and I ended it with them going 25 years into the future.
Anyone interested in the deckplans for a Regula style station?
I would not have mentioned it at this early stage, but this thread makes it apparent that many people might like to see some Stations. Three things: (1) the plans are not altogether done or anything and I'm having a problem finding the time to finish them. Anything I put out now will not have that finished polish I'd prefer myself. (2) The outside is canon, the inside is not. I have not hamonized these plans with the set-pieces of TWoK or anything. If you like, it is a later version (approximate TNG) of the station or something. (3) It is intended to be modular, so there are relatively large areas left blank in the present plans. Given time, I might be able to come up with some sort of "common" variant.
Since there is so much variation in the Regula sizes, with the last (Starbase 375 I think) being like something 70 times the size of its original use as the 'office complex', I opted for a 'do-able' scale and made it approximately the same size as it was seen in TWoK: Main section (mushroom dome down to the tanks, not counting antenna) ~82m height and 100m in width (the modules would make this about 200m in width), 123m height tanks underneath and a top antenna of something like 60m tall. It has about 184 beds/berths, some of which can accomodate more than one person (married housing or whatever) for a total possible 'crew' of 239. The decks are 4.5m tall, which make them plenty big to handle both generous ceiling heights and/or decent jefferies tubes. The Shuttle bay holds 20 size worth of shuttles on one side and it can take on larger craft on the other (about three danubes would be pushing it on the inside, but 2 with plenty of room).
If there is any interest I should be able to get a link up here in about a week.
I definitely am interested in the Regula deckplans! :):D :cool:
I too would be interested in seeing those :)
Are they based on the FASA ones?
Nope, like the Nova-class and the Java-class Cargo hauler these plans (but not the exteriors obviously) are all mine. I actually posted onto a separate thread to see if anyone who had a copy of those FASA plans might like to shed some light on the details (like the little spheres on top of the mushroom and that sort of thing), but I got no nibbles there so I did it all myself. From what I heard the FASA plans weren't all that great, but never having seen them, I don't know personally.Quote:
Originally posted by AslanC
I too would be interested in seeing those :)
Are they based on the FASA ones?
I have the FASA plans. Quite simply, they suck. If you've been foloowing my comments on what makes for bad gaming deckplans over the past couple of years, these qualify in almost every category. They are poorly drawn, badly scaled and abysmally planned. They also claim that the actual profile we've seen as the Orbital Office Complex and Regula One are a defense outpost, and that the administrative and research stations look entirely different. Utter trash.
But Owen they are nothing alike. Anyone can see that the design is flipped by 180 degrees. I am sure in space it doesn't really matter, artificial gravity and all, but Kirk and Scotty were definatly not walking on the ceiling to get into the observation pod... :DQuote:
Originally posted by Owen E Oulton
They also claim that the actual profile we've seen as the Orbital Office Complex and Regula One are a defense outpost, and that the administrative and research stations look entirely different. Utter trash.
Up is down and Down is Up... I get confused at times...
My campaign - Star Trek Haven has had the cast described a couple of times by me, but I don't think I've covered the station itself. It's a bit of a stretch but...
Set during the Dominion War with the Federation/Klingon/Romulan alliance a Ktarian base has been 'purchased' by the Romulans and the Feds in the middle of their neutral zone. They co-own the station as a supply and repair base for their ships and as a sign of trust (even if they don't trust each other at all).
The base itself was originally owned by another race, it is made up of about seven five hundred metre high cubic platforms with incan designs covering them. Then there are false walls built on top of them and turbolifts connecting them. There is a landing pad a couple of miles away with tubes soon to be filled with lifts to connect it to the station. An atmospheric dome covers the station and keeps the rainforest on the bottom regulated. The rest of the planet is a desert with a few mines run by people on the station.
At the moment (episode 1.3) the station is a wreck. The Maquis used it at one point and trashed the place. The chief engineer has not stopped working for a month as the life support works and the lift from the temple district to operations, the rest works from time to time but too many parts are falling off.
All in all, a good laugh. The group have really gotten into it and the engineer's player who is a total trekkie loves rushing around with the LUG technobabble table and fixing things. At some point I might stat it up but there are a lot of strange elements to it.
Enjoy!
Charlie E/N
We're starting a side-game (PBEM) where a small fleet is taking a station "kit" out to a interesting cluster of stars. They'll begin building the station which will eventually become their base of operations.
My group once tried a station-based TNG/DS9 era game. We called it "Outpost Euridia." The station was on a planet near the Romulan NZ and was in a little-explored sector of space. The station had three runabouts assigned to it, much like DS9. We created a lot of plot hooks in the planet itself--specific weather patterns, interesting indigenous species, and the like. The big hook of the series would be that there was a major Iconian artifact on the planet (that the Rommies would have been very interested in). My character was a xeno-archaeologist, so that would have worked nicely.
It lasted three episodes before we got tired of Trek and did something else. (We had just finished a three-year run doing a ship-based Trek game --we were burned out.)
I'd love to revisit the idea someday. We had a lot of cool stuff planned out.
I once had a station which was actually the saucer section of a Galaxy class. Starfleet needed a station in the area quickly, a Galaxy was being decomissioned around the same time so an instant solution.
Yes, absolutely! My own game is based on Starbase 315 (from the LUG Player's Guide,) although I've made the station a bit bigger and given the PCs a Nova-Class starship, the USS Retribution, to play with as well as the Venture-Class (or Taoln, if you use LUG) scout. Outwardly, the station is identical to Regula 1, although it is larger (taking after the precedent of Starbase 173 in Next Gen.) I also made this station a little seedy...something not often found in Trek. Crime (in the form of the Orion Syndicate) is a big part of my story arc for the series, with a regular recurring charcter the PCs have come to like secretly being at the heart of it all.Quote:
Originally posted by Publius
Anyone interested in the deckplans for a Regula style station?
I chose this setting for my series because I really liked some of the episode seeds in the LUG book and knew that I could tweek (or sometimes twist beyond recognition!) those seeds and come up with a good arc the players would all enjoy.
I've been working on plans myself, although they aren't nearly the quality of the stuff I've seen of yours. (In fact, the reason I picked the Nova-Class for their ship was because of your deck plans for that ship!)
Anyway, here's my station:
Command Section
The Command Section of the starbase occupies the top eight decks of the station and houses the Operations Center, Main Briefing Room, and the offices of the station commanding officer, her senior staff, and the office of Sector Commander. This section of the station is off-limits to all non-Starfleet personnel. This section also houses the quarters of all Starfleet personnel currently assigned to the station, although several of the senior officers (including the station commander) have apartments in the Residential Section.
Administrative Section
Just below the Command Section lies the Administrative Section, containing offices of several Federation bureaus and departments, including the Federation Diplomatic Corps, the Federation Cultural Attaché, and the Federation Merchant Marine. This section occupies decks nine through thirteen. The Federation Diplomatic Corps is currently engaged in peace negotiations between the Pinnaar Domain and Kentarr V. The Merchant Marine plies the trade routes the nearby worlds of the Federation and outlying colonies.
Science Section
Like any Starfleet facility, Starbase 315 supports numerous science labs. The stationary nature of a starbase allows scientists to engage in long-term research and observation. The station’s powerful long range sensor array monitors neighboring sectors, while the numerous lateral arrays monitor specific phenomena of interest to scientists. The Science Section occupies decks fourteen through twenty.
Although most research is done from the station, scientists sometimes need a more hands-on approach. In these instances, they may make use of the starbase’s Venture-Class scout ship or one of it’s four Danube-Class runabouts, located in hanger bays in the forward and after sections of Deck 20. These hangers are large enough to dock a Defiant-Class starship, although currently contain only the runabouts and the USS Tau Ceti scout ship.
The Science Section also houses the station’s primary infirmary, located on Deck 20. This five-hundred patient treatment facility has five operating theaters and two main wards. The surrounding laboratories and conference rooms can be easily converted to accommodate an additional five hundred patients in emergency situations.
Residential Section
Occupying decks twenty-one through thirty-one, the Residential Section makes up the largest section of the station. Each deck contains approximately one hundred apartments and staterooms of various sizes. The upper decks contain larger, and thus fewer, apartments than the lower decks of the section. The station commanding officer, senior staff, as well as several Federation officials and Ambassadors from the worlds of the BeTau Sector, maintain apartments on the upper levels of the Residential Section. The station can comfortably support a civilian population of 1500, though most of the time it remains approximately 1100. Most of the station’s 550 crewmembers reside on decks six, seven and eight of the Command Section.
Engineering Section
This section encompasses the connecting dorsal between the Residential and Commercial sections of the station. The station’s power and life-support plants, as well as transporters and industrial replicators, are located on decks forty-five through forty-nine.
Commercial Section
The Commercial Section of the station occupies decks fifty through fifty-four. Decks fifty through fifty-two house the stations docking pylons and commercial landing platforms. The commercial landing platforms are each three decks high, with a domed landing enclosure located on top. Each of these domes is capable of containing five vessels the size of a Danube-Class runabout or one or two large vessels. The landing platforms are designated alphabetically, “A” through “C.”
Landing Platform “C” has been leased entirely to the Terlarite Mining Corporation by Starfleet. Terlarite Mining is a major supplier of raw materials to Starfleet shipyards and donated ship-loads to help with the Dominion War effort. Terlarite Minning's offices are located on Decks 51 and 52, Section C.
Deck 52 also contains the station’s four docking pylons and passenger terminals. These pylons retract and extend to accommodate almost any size starship. Many civilian as well as Starfleet vessels arrive and depart daily at Starbase 315 on their way to the various worlds of the BeTau Sector and the rest of the Federation. The Federation starliner Stellar Dream makes weekly visits to the station on its way between Risa and Alesia, the Federation’s two most popular tourist destinations. The Stellar Cruise Line maintains offices and a small passenger terminal on the station.
The Mall
Decks fifty-three and fifty-four comprise the main commercial district on the station, known as the Mall. The Mall lies below the docking pylons and landing platforms and is two decks high. Massive transparent aluminum windows surround a promenade of shops, restaurants, and the two level Alesian Palace Casino. The Alesian Palace dominates a third of the Mall and is a popular tourist spot for vacationing Federation citizens as well as miners coming to spend their off time, and credits. Dominating the center of the Mall is an arboretum with two large ponds, a rock waterfall, trees and shrubbery from numerous Federation worlds. Stone paths and walkways wind throughout park leading past shops and restaurants.
Cargo and Maintenance Levels
Below the station proper extend four cylindrical cargo levels. Although much of this area is un-pressurized cargo and machinery space, the lowest levels of these sections do have life-support. Maintenance lifts run the length of all four cylinders (76 decks) and connect to a maintenance room located just below the Mall. These habitable sections have gone unused for years by station personnel, although they are far from empty. Drifters and travelers to the station who have lost all their credits in the casino sometimes find their way down to these levels and live in the empty cargo and maintenance areas. “The Pit,” as this section of the station is called in local slang, is one of a few sensor ‘dead zones’ on the starbase. Internal sensors haven’t functioned in this area in years, and the heavy machinery located there make sensor readings of the Pitt erratic and unreliable. Station security makes occasional sweeps of the area, but as soon as it is cleared out it begins to fill again.
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Jim
Narrator
The BeTau Campaign
Just for kicks, here's a model of a small starbase I did a couple of years ago.
http://www.starshipmodeler.com/gallery2/oo_station.htm
Starbase 235 is a basic spindle/mushroom-shaped station 337.5m tall, with a diametre of 135m for the main "body." It has two docking bays each capable of holding a runabout, and 4 docking points for small starships. I've never worked out stats or deckplans for it.