My SOM has been shipped to me at last and no I have to say that I'm a little bit disappointed about the "ships of the line" section. I would have hoped to see vessels that weren't covered in the superb "Starships" sourcebook. And in the same detailed way as seen there.
I still keep missing designs like the norway or olympic classes for example. I would have loved to see a write-up of my favorite ICON ship design, the Niagara-class fast cruiser. :-)
Any chance we'll be seeing her in the Next Gen Sourcebook?
Now to my question about the saber class.
I was wondering, with it's small size and all if it would be atmospheric capable. Would it have been featured in "Starships" this question would have been answered but SOM stats say nothing about it.
From the feeling of it I would tend to say "yes" to atmospheric capabilities of this class. It would greatly enhance it's tactical possibilities.
But the "Starships" write-up of the Nova-class states that there are so far only three vessel classes in Starfleet that are capable of entering an atmosphere and attempt a landing. All three of them are covered in this book:
Number One: We saw the Intrepid-class Voyager doing it often enough during the course of the series
Number Two: would be the Nova class. As written in "Starships" and I find it reasonable for a ship with it's mission profile.
Number Three: Acording to "Starships"-specs, Defiant-class escorts may land too, but it wasn't established on DS9 if I remember correctly.
So, would you say, that Sabers would be the forth ship class in Starfleet to be capable of atmospheric flight and landing or would you stick to the "only three kind of landing-capable starships" approach?
If you look at the bottom view of the saber the Navigational deflector is on the underside. I don't think there is any way for the ship to land with that big bump on the bottom. Even the side profile (IMO) doesn't seem condusive to having any sort of landing capabilities.
In the end it's your game though, so if you want it too land go ahead.
My crew (or two of them) got themselves on deck of Saber-class ship in last session. Looking at SOM stats I was quite .. disturbed. The ship will not (necessary) play a big role in my campaing but I was disturbed enough to remake Saber-class using Starships.
I didn't want to change too much and tried to be true to ship's description in SOM. I did not read any description from the web (until after creating the ship) but most of that would seem to support my intention.
One factor that disturbed me was it's size. It is listed in SOM as size 4 when it's measurements put it more into size 5 ship (in my opinion). So I made it size 5.
Sensors got upgraded in the process. Class 4a seemed to fit the ship better, after all it is used on scout/survey missions and can perform (limited) research and exploration.
Warp got upgraded to 6/9.6/9.8. (From my memory). 6/8/9.2 was not clearly fast enough for a 'fast' ship. 9.6 seems a bit fast as a maximum cruise but 9.2 as max cruise would do nicely. 9.8 i(or 9.7) would be a good max speed of the ship - to make it fast to make hit and runs.
Tactical data got most of the changes.
I don't know if Type VIII was given out in some technical specs but two collimators in the picture in SOM would indicate type X phasers. Type VIII are almost civilian.
I changed the number of banks to three to get 5/5/4/0/0 penetration since the ship has been said to be powerful for it's size.
As for torpedo launchers I replaced them with Mk80 (I recall) multifunction tubes to get penetration of 5/5/5/5/5. They would seem to fit the ship better and yet would not be of latest technology. with multifunction tubes Saber would be a versatile platform capable of launching Quantum torpedoes and a vast array of probes.
Shields got a bit upgraded as well, being after change 17/4. I think it would be ' a touch little ship' with those shields.
Yet quite inexpensive to build for Starfleet, yet something more than just a quick and dirty approach with 100 years old technology (as it is with SOM description). It would be of latest model but relatively fresh anyway, enough to give a good challenge for it's size.
If I didn't make any calculation errors with space these modifications would be ok due to construction rules.
Meneuver mods were assigned as C+2, H 0, T+2.
How do you think? Are my changes consistent with canon and feel? Or does it have more bigger ships's feel now?
In ship's description was noted that single Saber class ship was responsible of disposing 100 cardassian freighters during the war. Since it must have destroyed more than one freghter per mission it would require some firepower to back it up, and good protection from shield.. I don't think all those freighters were without protection or escort.
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