Lower Tech Ships

[Legate Legion]

Woohoo, the first topic here, I hope you do not mind Steve.

Anyway, I have been looking over Alternaty's<sp> combat source book that WotC put on the net for free, & I was wondering, will SpaceDock have rules for lower-tech ships? In other words ships that use Lasers, Particle Beams, Railguns, Missiles, etc in it, or will it be put out in a suplement?

And, yes, I still don't like WotC, but they are getting some cred with me because of this free book.

~LL

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"Resistance is futile...say baby that is a nice tight skirt you have on." --President Clinton of Borg.

[Steve Long]

SPACEDOCK has some rules for that sort of thing -- like lasers, for example, and chemical rockets. But for the most part I'm saving that sort of info for the Ship Recog Manual: TOS Era. That SRM will really be a mini-SD supplement, since I'll have to rewrite a bunch of rules -- or at least provide lower-tech versions of the SIF types and suchlike.

I've already got the movie era ships I did for FINAL FRONTIER, which I can easily adapt to SD terms once I get those new rules written. But writing 'em is going to take watching all 70-odd episodes of TOS, and that's mighty time-intensive. So, it won't be anytime real soon, but I will get to it.

In the meantime, you'll just have to settle for the SD sidebar on "the Trek Timeframe" to provide quick 'n' dirty guidelines for adapting SD to TOS era ships.

Steve Long

[Fred]

Steve,
Will these lower-tech weapons use the same damage scale of the ones in the core rules. I mean: is a powerful laser the equivalent of a weak phaser? And is a weak laser even in that damage range?
I had to come up with stats for a laser fro an adventure and decided that they did 4 points of damage, but that, for them, the automatic defense rule was in full effect.
Thanks and tchau!


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"As long as you can
laugh, you are not
defeated."

–- Jack Vanc

[Steve Long]

Yes, they're on the same scale -- but of course are weaker. The strongest laser listed does the same damage as a Type V shipboard phaser. I may revisit this table and expand it a bit when I get around to doing TOS ships, but for now it's sufficient, and in any event I'm not going to change the damage scale.

I do, however, provide a scaling factor for handheld vs. ship weapons, and in the DOMINION WAR SOURCEBOOK I also throw ground vehicle weapons into the mix.

Steve Long

[darkwing duck1]

I'd just like to point out (hoping I'm not about to throw a huge monkey wrench into the works) that LASERS cannot even penetrate the NAVIGATIONAL deflectors of 24th century starships (per "The Outrageous Okona").

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Deo Vindice!

[Liquidator Queeg]

Originally posted by darkwing duck1:
I'd just like to point out (hoping I'm not about to throw a huge monkey wrench into the works) that LASERS cannot even penetrate the NAVIGATIONAL deflectors of 24th century starships (per "The Outrageous Okona").

I would suspect that might be the reason Fred chose to use the "Automatic Defense" rule. Lasers would certainly do damage to most (if not all) ships in the TOS era though, considering that phasers were first developed circa 2255-60 (the landing crew in TOS ep. "The Cage"--2254--possessed laser weapons).

LQ

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"No one controls me. I'm uncontrollable. The only one who can control me is me... and that's just barely possible!" -John Lennon

[Steve Long]

Originally posted by darkwing duck1:
I'd just like to point out (hoping I'm not about to throw a huge monkey wrench into the works) that LASERS cannot even penetrate the NAVIGATIONAL deflectors of 24th century starships (per "The Outrageous Okona").

I agree that this is what they said in that episode. But let's examine the premise for a second.

First off, IIRC, they never said that every laser is that weak -- just that the ones involved in that episode were. I think that, to be reasonable, we have to allow for the possibility that some lasers could damage some ships.

Second, the idea of an energy beam not being able to penetrate the navigational deflectors doesn't really make sense. The nav deflector is to deflect physical objects away from the ship's path when it's traveling at warp. There's no mention I can find in the TNGTM or elsewhere of the navigational deflector deflecting energy. Even assuming it could, there was no reason to have the deflector active in the scene in question, since the ship wasn't moving -- again, IIRC.

To me, that bit about navigational deflectors and lasers was a bit of bad writing and/or mistaken technobabble -- they meant to say "deflector shields," not "navigational deflector." (It's a shame they use the same word for both things -- it's dang confusing.)

In fact, a quick scan of the episode's script from my TNG Companion and Script Library on CD-ROM failed to even find that bit of dialogue, so it's possible that it was changed at the last minute by someone who didn't know what he was doing. I even searched for the word "laser," which is only used in five episodes, "Okona" not being one of 'em.

So, I've ignored that little comment for SPACEDOCK purposes. Lasers do damage, and may be subject to the Automatic Defense Rule on that basis. Navigational deflectors do not provide any points of Protection or the like.

Steve Long

[Fred]

Originally posted by Liquidator Queeg:
I would suspect that might be the reason Fred chose to use the "Automatic Defense" rule.

Correct, LQ. That's precisely why I used that rule. But Like Steve, I don't remeber them saying the "navigational deflectors" in the episode. I was pretty sure they had the shields up.
Anyway, everything is clear now. Especially with Spacedock available.


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"As long as you can
laugh, you are not
defeated."

–- Jack Vanc