"Design the USS Titan" contest.

[First of Two]

As some of you may or may not know, Pocket Books has published the first novel dealing with the "Further Adventures" of Captain Riker and the USS Titan.

Moreover, they are holding a contest for readers to design an image of the ship the ship, which will then be featured on the cover (and credited on the copyright page.)

Now, I'm probably not good enough an artist to win this thing (although I still think I'll try), but I'd wager that some folks here might be, and might be interested. So...

Here are the rules.

Good luck to anyone who tries this. Even though I'll hate you if you win instead of me.

[Tobian]

Yeah i had heard of this contest, and I have no ideas what it should look like. No doubt whatever it looks like it won't meet fan expectations

[PGoodman13]

I do like the description of the class and its mission; I wish all you artisty types luck with the design of the Luna class. (At least it's not the abominable Prometheus class.)

Oh, and First's link is broken. He's got the right URL, but I think he got the syntax of the URL statement messed up.

Here are the rules.

[IceGiant]

Shouldn't an artist be paid for his or her work? Not knocking anyones aspirations but they get to use your likeness in any way they see fit without any compensation. *shrugs* Maybe it's a standard agreement but they get your ship design and use of you name and likeness, seems a bit one sided to me.

[Greg Davis]

Personally, I'm glad to see the USS Titan "series" finally breaking ground. I've thought for some time that building a series of books (or movies, or, I wish, a TV show) around Riker and the Titan would provide some good ground for Trek writers to explore.

I don't know about everyone else here, but back when I had a gaming group, and we played Trek, our last campaign was primarily based around the USS Titan, a ship that we designed ourselves (from conceptual imagining, though no actual art, to deck layouts, to crewing particulars). Like the proposed Titan, our Titan was a long range explorer, and served as a testbed for new propulsion, sensor and defensive systems, though ours had a larger crew and was larger in design, being slightly bigger than the Enterprise-E.

I'm curious to see if they recycle any previous Trek characters for the Titan (other, obviously, than Will Riker and Deanna Troi-Riker). If I recall correctly, Wesley Crusher was supposed to be an Engineer on the Titan (from the Nemesis novelization), but I'm not 100% for certain.

Any speculations? Along those lines, what sorts of characters would you all like to see on the Titan?



Greg

[Owen E Oulton]

Shouldn't an artist be paid for his or her work? Not knocking anyones aspirations but they get to use your likeness in any way they see fit without any compensation. *shrugs* Maybe it's a standard agreement but they get your ship design and use of you name and likeness, seems a bit one sided to me.

These are absolutely standard contest terms. It's not a work for hire, after all, it's a contest. Essentially, the prize is bragging rights. I don't see a problem with it - if you do, your remedy is to simply not enter.

[Cochrane]

I was gonna say it shouldn't be huge, but then I thought about its name. Duh. Really, with a name like that, it should be the biggest class in the fleet ever. I like Spherical Primary Hulls, and something says give it four nacelles. Maybe a slightly squashed sphere. Alternate concept: basically Norway but enlarged just enough to be the biggest. Or pretty much an upside down Constitution. Maybe one of the Nova designs from the tech manual. Maybe it should be painted jet black or blood red. With a Federation emblem taking up half the diameter of the saucer, if there's a saucer.

Riker should not be a captain. He is DUMB. people say Picard's incompetent? Kirk and Sisko aren't in your face about being smart, but they are smart and Riker is not.

The Titan should set out on some incredibly long voyage, like either to the Gamma Quadrant or Delta, using some new advance in propulsion no wormhole or other shortcut. Riker should be 80 by the time the mission ends.

Its about time they had a captain with a wife on board, they should have a few kids.

Maybe Saavik opr Valeris should be some sort of advisor on board, or just Guinan. Whatever happened to Will's evil twin? I know he's a bad guy, but I'm not sure if he died. What about their dad? Wouldn't it be fun to stick them with Lwaxana? Maybe Icheb or Naomi?

But Weasley? returning to life among mortals, wouldn't that constitute a reset button?

Let's have the first Romulan or Cardassian in the fleet, the second Ferengi or Klingon, an important Bolian, a Benzite, a nonhumanoid, maybe a Medusan, maybe a Gorn, a Rigellian, an Aenar, a Suliban, a Denobulan, a Zakdorn or Zaldan, someone from a significantly alternate universe, a Tzenkethi, and/ or someone from the First Federation or the Patriarchy. Maybe an important exocomp or nanite colony. Maybe a dolphin or someone from a ten foot tall humanoid race.

[Dan Gurden]

Tobian: From the looks of it, it will match at least 1 fans expectations.

Greg: You should put your Titan details from your game up, to find an artist to visualise it, then supply a joint entry? Nice bit of retro-fitted canon for your games!

Cochrane: Like it or not, Dumb or not (this was not the TV portrayal, so must just be opinion), Riker is the captain of the Titan, both in the canon line in Nemesis, and in the book series. So our choice is to either accept this and move on, or vote with our feet. After all, nobody makes you buy the books.

On the other hand, Wills evil twin, was last seen in Cardassian custody on his way to a prison planet, and may not have survived the war, after the Dominion slaughtered the Maqius, its likely nthey started with those in custody.

Of course all of these are merely details and conjecture, andall up for alteration within your own respective universes...

[Greg Davis]

I've given some thought as to where my information from the Titan campaign might be (all I've got is my character on my computer, as I was a player, and not the Narrator). We played that game with Coda, though, and came up with, I thought, some fairly innovative things. For instance, we had crew reliability ratings, based not so much on a random number, but an actual average score based on profession skills, with the crew list then broken down by departments (going through officers and crew). Towards the end of the campaign, this (crew performance) became a pretty integral issue, as we would spend our own picks on improving the crew under our command, as well as receiving 'department picks' which we could use to improve NPC's, either by buying skills or general departmental traits.

I think I can also recall the senior staff we had for the Titan, which recycled a few prior series characters, including Ro Laren (our tactical officer), Wesley Crusher (originally an assistant chief engineer who had to work hard and overcome a number of obstacles to become chief engineer, after my character, who was the chief engineer, transferred to become the ops manager), Riker (obviously) and Troi (again, obviously). Other roles were filled by PC's, but I do recall that we had a Ferengi morale officer (just a really fun character, there...organizing team events and such...we even had to come up with rules for golf for a big adventure).

Really, it makes me miss that campaign...it was a lot of fun, and we really put a lot of work into making the Titan as 'real' as any other Trek setting. To me, it was a lot like a mix between the Enterprise D and E (comfort of the D, capability of the E) and the personality of DS9 (like morning coffee, or decorations in an office...the little things that stick with you and round out a series, taking place in between the action scenes).

Of course, that was also the campaign that featured are 1 and only holiday themed adventure, featuring Santa Claus. It may sound corny, but it was the best Trek adventure I ever played in, and 1 of the best overall adventures I ever played in. Someday I should get around to posting it in the Adventure Ideas thread.

All I'll say right now is that it's something when you can get bitter and cynical gamers to shed a tear during a roleplaying session...



Greg

[Cochrane]

Yeah, I realize this is the case in canon and in the relevant book series, and I haven't been buying or reading the novels for a while anyway.

[First of Two]

I was gonna say it shouldn't be huge, but then I thought about its name. Duh. Really, with a name like that, it should be the biggest class in the fleet ever. I like Spherical Primary Hulls, and something says give it four nacelles. Maybe a slightly squashed sphere. Alternate concept: basically Norway but enlarged just enough to be the biggest. Or pretty much an upside down Constitution. Maybe one of the Nova designs from the tech manual. Maybe it should be painted jet black or blood red. With a Federation emblem taking up half the diameter of the saucer, if there's a saucer.

Eww. Clean that fanwank up before someone slips in it.

"Titan" is just the name of a moon. The ship's class is "Luna." Doesn't sound so overwhelmingly huge now, does it?

As for me, right now I'm considering redressing and completing the "Janus" (Janus also coincidentally happens to be the name of a moon of Saturn, just as "Titan" is.)

[Cochrane]

okay, okay, after actually reading the pertinent information about the ship, maybe it should be kind of shaped in general like an Ambassador: Basically the same nacelles and secondary hull, same basic shape but yet modernized, definitely a pretty much circular saucer, but the top of the saucer is very smooth, coming to a fairly sharp point at the perimeter, and a pretty much flat underside for the saucer. And paint the whole thing jet black.

And of course the Luna class needs a USS Phobos and a USS Deimos. Maybe a USS Praxis!

[Tobian]

First of Two - that's just so wrong! I'm still laughing hehe

Guys, here's a top tip - paint it black, blood red, put bird of prey wings on it, and massive cannons all over it if you want to LOSE! Nuf said

it's a slightly misnamed ship.. Titan - smalish? Hmm, still it sounds interesting.. We better make sure it has enough space for Dolphin tanks in there

[PGoodman13]

it's a slightly misnamed ship.. Titan - smalish? Hmm, still it sounds interesting.. We better make sure it has enough space for Dolphin tanks in there

How is it misnamed? It's named for a moon, not as a representation of its size. Titan's not exactly a giant in terms of moons, either.

[Tobian]

Err untill I read the description from the competition rules I didn't know it was named after the Moon Titan. Technically speaking the moons and planets are all mostly named after greek deities and mythological figures.. Titans are pretty big it's all so much retrospective re-writing, presumably from the content of the novel it's from.

Something sad about this is that it speaks that the shows producers never really intend to show the REAL Titan. The chances of them taking fan art and making it real are fairly slim.. Either that or they are really short on ideas !