I've been thinking of ways of applying Spacedock rules to empires for which there aren't already sources. Some of those empires are canon, like the Ferengis, Gorn, and Tholians and others are non-canon like the Kzinti. Even some worlds within established empires have their own navies. On top of that, there are a lot of players like myself who want to crossover empires from non-Star Trek sources or make up their own empires.

I recognize that it would be laborious to write a whole new SD supplement for every possible empire; so, I propose that it would be easier to modify existing rules, and I have a few different ideas to do it. First is by fiat, you can say the empire X uses uses ships based on star empire but limit them to technology X. As an example, I assume the Gorn technology is more like Klingon tech than it is any of the Federation, Romulans, or Cardassians, but I view them as technologically inferior to the Klingons and limit shield, weapon, and warp technology accordingly. Say, if I decide the typical Klingon ship would have Disruptors XIII in my campaign then typical Gorn ships would be limited to Disruptors XII.

But, I don't find that intellectually appealing. That works as a good artificial limitation like say the Federation might want the bureaucratically limit the level of armaments on civilian freighters are by treaty with some client planets, but it really doesn't truly express genuine technological differences since we know that what you get typically is more efficiency in less space with increases in technology. It would make for more since to say that Gorn technology uses 10% more SUs than Klingon technology and uses 10% more power (or, whatever numbers seem most advantageous for your campaign). I think this also works well for dealing time travel campaigns where the crew might run into a ship that is from 100 years in the past one adventure and 100 years in the future in the next.

Another idea is hybridization. For example, in the campaign I am designing, the technology level is right around the movie era; so, I am beefing up some of the TOS ships and nerfing some of the TNG ships by hybridizing the TOS and the TNG supplements, but there is no mechanical reason why you couldn't add Cardassian technology to Klingons. Just because Klingons and Cardassians haven't figured out how to hybridize their technologies does not mean that another species couldn't come up with a technology that utilizes bits of both. This is probably the best way if you are trying to make close facsimiles of ships from crossover sources whose authors didn't design their ships with Star Trek in mind.

Also, I think some there are some ideas that should be established. Like how many SUs and how much energy would be used by all automated or mostly automated ships and facilities? How many SUs do automotons take up relative to living beings? Like, Borg and robots can rest in closets.

I haven't really come up with any numbers, yet. This is still just rolling around my head. Besides, I am more of a sci-fi fan who prefers Star Trek than a true Trekkie. I don't know all of the minutiae of the various Star Trek species. My campaign isn't even an example of purism; so, even if I did have numbers, they aren't likely to be even close to canon.

I would, however, be interested to know if anyone else have had thoughts along these lines and what you did about it. Also, if the idea is new to you but spurs some thoughts, I would love to find out how you would do them.