Building the Older Ship

[Cdr Scot]

I've been messing around with SD this weekend, and it's by far the best ship-building rules I've ever come across . Totally spot-on tru to the genre - when you've built a ship and look back at it afterwards it has a real Starfleet 'feel' to it. Can't say better than that Steve .

I do have one question though - is the tech level aimed at building ships from the Galaxy class and later (say 2350s on)? I just wonder because in some areas, e.g. warp nacelles, warp cores, etc, the more powerful they get the bigger they get in SU cost terms. That seems a little out of kilter with regard to the older ships, such as the Excelsior or Ambassador classes, where they might have an old, slow warp drive, but their nacelles and core are as big or bigger than the snazzy new tech replacing them. Same would go for other tech like computer cores, and maybe even weaponry. Not a criticsm, more like an observation - it might help in a later iteration of SD to give some older tech equivalents or limitations (e.g. for every decade before 2360 take away the most efficient type of nacelle such as type 8 or type 7, and add 5 or 10 to the SU cost of the remaining nacelles).

Just curious what the opinion is like about this, and I'm looking forward to see how the older warhorses are treated in the SRM! Can an Ambassador class even have holodecks?

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"No, that's one 't', and no, I can't fix your warp drive!"

[Steve Long]

Commander, check out the sidebar on the lower right hand side of page 15. That should answer your questions, for the most part.

There won't be any "old warhorses" in the first SRM. It's entirely 24th-century ships. Eventually I'll get around to doing a 23rd century SRM (complete with new ship building rules for the older tech), and in the interim I'm sure lots of people will mock up their own versions of the Constitution class and so on.

Glad you're enjoying the book!

Steve Long

[Cdr Scot II]

Thanks Steve - I'd skimmed that page a few weeks back, and it's pretty much the approach that I've taken. It also occurs to me though that as SUs aren't actual physical volume per se, one could simulate tech restrictions in older ships by limiting them to the lower end of the SUs for their class. That would limit space enough to make advanced systems too expensive to implement("Yeah, those optronic cores back in the 2330s took up twice the space for half the processing power").

I'm not so concerned about TOS/Movie era ships, more that I'm interested in filling in the gaps between that time and TNG - the Ambassador class, New Orleans class, etc era. Roll on SRM...

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"...and no, I don't play the bagpipes either!"

[Steve Long]

You'll find the Ambassador, New Orleans, and some other ships from that era (e.g., the Renaissance class) in the SRM, definitely.

Steve Long