Aside from Spacedock, are there hard fast rules for Icon ship building?
And if not, should we try and hammer some out?
I don't think so. I assume that Steve's Spacedock would have been the de facto King of the Hill in that regard for LUG.
As for an ICON construction guide I suggest reading the conversion rules in SD and use them. You will just have to look up the compoments mentioned and ignore SIF, IDF etc.
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Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges
"In time of war, the law falls silent"
Admiral Ross to Dr Bashir
But what if you don't like Spacedock or don't use it? I mean why build a ship in Spacedock to then return it to ICON...not trying to be mean or anything, but it seems like going 3 miles one way to go 1 the other.
There must be some sort of guidlines out there for ICON ships?
A shame that there isn't.
Last edited by Captain Zymmer; 10-14-2001 at 07:23 PM.
There isn't.
Spacedock is an excellent resource. It is complex, but then so is ship design in general. Before Spacedock it was all guesswork, now there is a logical framework to use. Myself, I prefer to stay with Spacedock, I like the complexity and just retrofit it back when I need to.
"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Yeah the problem is that my players are not big fans of it and to be honest neither am I...too much detail overwhelms me.
I can see how many wouild liek ti though, I just have never bee a starship-ophile in that way. I prefer the way they look more so than their systems.
But seriously, how hard would it be to make guidelines for ICON?
Shjips of this size usually have X for power systems, etc...
Just guidlines, not a whole construction manual.
I think guidelines for Icon ship construction is a great idea.
Soooo, any idea where to start?
How about a breakdown or chart of some kind of all the ships available, and then do a comparison?
I think the best way to handle this would be a comparison for each class of ship, eg. cruiser, frigate, explorer, etc.Originally posted by Asdeed
How about a breakdown or chart of some kind of all the ships available, and then do a comparison?
From that you could derive a range of stats for each type of ship, telling you something like:
"Science Ship, Weapons - Science ships usualy carry no more than one torpedo launcher (maximum spread=5) and have phasers ranging from Type IV to Type VII", or something along these lines.
That's the way I usualy start designing basic ICON ships, figuring out what kind of ship I want to build and then choosing systems accordingly.
Apart from that you should IMHO seriously think about including the following systems from Spacedock:
- Quarters: how many of what type
- Medical facilities: A rating from 1-10 and a bonus this gives for medical, first aid and life science checks
- Recreation facilities: A simple rating and maybe number of holodecks and lounges
- Autopilot: Flight Control skill and Coordination attribute
- Strength of Communications, Sensors and Transporters
- Rating for Security Systems
- Rating for Science Systems and number of Labs
- Number of Probes carried
- Captain's Yacht: Yes or No
All the above would IMO go a long way to make a difference in a game, without being too complicated to realy require Spacedock construction rules.
And under the basic rules ships built for very different purposes can still look very much the same stat-wise, something easily avoided with inclusion of some (or all) of the above mentioned stats.
Exactly, which is why I rewrote ten federation ships in a series of charts (different classes of the ships so I could do the comparison)Originally posted by Lancer
I think the best way to handle this would be a comparison for each class of ship, eg. cruiser, frigate, explorer, etc.
Of course, I haven't done the comparing part yet, but once that's done i'd definitely like to add in those additional ship systems you were talking about.