Post-Apocalyptic Trek Fun

[Dan Stack]

What I would do would be advance the timeline a century after this disaster. Then I'd actually go big and use a butt-kicking ship like the Galaxy or Sovereign... This would work rather well if you kept the crew small. Picture the frustration, much like in Andromeda - you have a ship designed to have a crew of around a thousand or so. Yet there's but ten of you. No way it can do everything it is capable with such a small crew. Do you recruit more crewmembers? If so, how can you trust them - Federation idealists are but a distant memory... Also, if the super-ship is a bit beat up, it lacks all of its abilities. "Yes, these ships used to have holodecks and replicators, but those systems are off-line and beyond our ability to repair".

The first adventure could actually be a salvage team hunting for the ship - perhaps it was lost and the crew has found a clue as to its location...

[John Raynor]

Originally posted by Dan Stack
What I would do would be advance the timeline a century after this disaster. Then I'd actually go big and use a butt-kicking ship like the Galaxy or Sovereign... This would work rather well if you kept the crew small. Picture the frustration, much like in Andromeda - you have a ship designed to have a crew of around a thousand or so. Yet there's but ten of you. No way it can do everything it is capable with such a small crew. Do you recruit more crewmembers? If so, how can you trust them - Federation idealists are but a distant memory... Also, if the super-ship is a bit beat up, it lacks all of its abilities. "Yes, these ships used to have holodecks and replicators, but those systems are off-line and beyond our ability to repair".

Well...setting the campaign a century or so after the nastiness
is the way G. D. W.'s "Traveller: the New Era" handled it.
Personally, I'd put the nano-plague about twenty-five years
before the campaign begins. There are still plenty of people
around who remember the Starfleet and the Federation, but they
are definitely "on the way out," and those who grey up after
disaster moving into positions of importance and responsibility. It
might, for instance, be very hard for aging ex-Starfleet senior
officers to face their mortality and begin promoting junior officers
without "real academy training" (but plenty of bitter experience)
to command positions. This would be a crucial "time of testing"
for the former Federation's ideals. Will a new generation try to
live up to them? Or will interstellar civilization be rebuilt by
rougher, harsher, more coldly pragmatic people?

I like the idea of the super-ship's capabilities being limited by
having only a skeleton crew. Capable spacefarers will be fairly
rare. A disproportionate number of them perished when the
nano-plague left their ships drifting helplessly deep in interstellar
space. There wouldn't be very many centers of "formal"
astronautical training -- most of it would probably be by some
kind of hands-on apprenticeship ("Finish scrubbing out the
deuterium injectors, boy, and then -- maybe -- I'll teach you
about setting the intermix ratio, but not before!"). And, yes,
loyalty would be a big issue, in addition to basic competence...

[TomMarg]

Thank's for the input, but this is just the development stage, i like the idea of placing it some 50 years ahead, there may be pockets of people who remain faithful to the ideals of the federation, however these would be far and few in between.

Other such pockets, will have a much grittier tangent to them, I would imagine these would be located close to 'traditional' borders.

Klingon's: qute fractured and relagated to in house fighting and raiding for what they need. The klingons however could be a major threat as their ship design's are built for ease of construction and no- nonsense capabilities ( durable easy to repair and replace equipment ) IMO.

Romulan's: Difficult to say here, I would imagine they would simply return to their usual isolation, only this time because of the disaster. At least initially most star faring government's would leave them be, not wanting to antagonize them in case they were'nt effected. This would change quikly if the klingons decided to test this...........

Cardassian's : After the devastating war with their dominion allies ( no longer ), they should still be in the rebuilding stage, the nano-virus simply makes a bad situation only worse.

John Raynor: An excelsior is a good idea, this class of ship is very well rounded and certianly can take more punishment if needed than a miranda. As for a crew of ten or twelve, I'm not so sure, a lot of people would have to be lost in the "incident" that brought them there. However the possibilities could be that some of the crew could be dropped off at a 'safe' world to build a supply base and training centre for new crewman.

Dan: I like your plan for the ship, it would be moth balled for a long time after all and the ever present threat of the virus would make it difficult, but not as disastrous an effect.
As for the clue it could be as simple as reconstructing a data base from an abandand starbase. The virus would make it difficult to recover the data, without infecting the Pc's equipment, but could work long enough for a piece of data with a round about location.

[ghosty]

A good/bad story would be that Data's positronic brain survived the nanovirus as it was hardened against such intrusions...so now everyone wants to get their hands on the damn thing as it contains all the information they would need to find the lost cache of Starfleet ships and being Data it would be a full owner's manual for whatever ship they recover.

However before they can find the head, they have to complete a sort of epic quest, with each piece of the puzzle falling into place until they find it on a Pakled ship (hey they scrounge so much junk their ships are probably immune to the nanovirus from plain system incompatability everytime the virus mutates to beat one system, they find another system from a wholly incompatiable system and so on and so forth).

[John Raynor]

Originally posted by TomMarg
Cardassian's : After the devastating war with their dominion allies ( no longer ), they should still be in the rebuilding stage, the nano-virus simply makes a bad situation only worse.

I envisioned the "nano-plague universe" diverging from the
canonical one when the U.S.S. Enterprise was failed to stop
the Borg's first attempt to invade Earth -- in other words,
the "point of divergence" would be in the middle of the "Next
Generation" era, a few years before the opening of the Bajoran
wormhole and the establishment of the Cardassio-Dominion
alliance.

I envision the pre-Dominion Cardassians being a bit like the
Soviet Union. Fundamentally, they weren't particularly powerful
(their economy wasn't very strong, their technology wasn't very
good, and so forth), but they tried really hard, and threw
everything they had into empire-building, and thus mnaged
to seriously threaten the Federation. I'm not sure how well the
Cardassians would do. There would probably be a military coup
as soon as the admirals realized how nasty the situation was,
but Cardassia's resources were spread pretty thin before the
nano-plague, and it's easy to envision a rapid descent into
Balkanization and warlordism, as individual admirals decided to
defy the central government, in order to ensure the security of
their bases and pre-plague industrial facilities. On the other
hand, Cardassians seem to be less individualistic and much more
tolerant of totalitarian abuse than Klingons, so the Balkanization
probably wasn't as severe, and the average post-plague
Cardassian splinter-state would be bigger, far better organized,
and "nano-technologically cleaner" than the average Klingon one
(but without the quasi-Wagnerian neo-barbarian Vikings-in-space
"fun factor").

[John Raynor]

Here's a post-Apocalyptic possibility:

The Vulcan Counter-Reformation
Before Surak, the Vulcans were a passionate, violently emotional
people. The Borg assimilation of the Vulcan homeworld was
probably a severe test of survivors' dedication to Logic
(particularly since the Vulcans probably didn't establish as many
colonies as the human race did, and didn't emigrate from their
homeworld as often). Some of the survivors probably failed this
test. Facing extinction at the hands of an enemy which (in a
twisted and evil way) took their own philosophy of dispassionate
Logic to a grotesque extreme, some of the survivors might have
decided to embrace their emotions (on the grounds that
emotion is one of the things the Borg definitely lack), and live
their lives (as free individuals) to the very fullest. All sorts of
conflict with "Traditional Logical Vulcans" could result. There
might even be some kind of weird convergence between the
"Counter-Reformed Vulcans" and Romulan splinter-groups.
A reunification of sorts, but not quite the one Spock imagined.

[Cybrludite]

Another way to shatter the existing governments might be to drag out the Dominion War. Say, perhaps that thw folks from DS9 failed in their attempt to steal a Breen ship. With no way to counter the Breen energy draining weapon, I see fleet actions proceeding as thus: Alliance fleets would have a Klingon wing to try and kill the Breen ships. They'll stay cloaked & will be protected as much as possible by the other ships until the Breens are commited by the Dominion's forces. Once found, though, the Klingons are going to get dog-piled by the Dominion to protect the Breen ships. Alliance gets driven back, and looses a number of core worlds. Finally, group of Klingon task force gets to the Breen homeworld & major colonies, and pastes them with a genocidal Tricobalt bombardment. Likewise, the Bajoran wormhole gets shut for good, preventing Dominion reenforcement. The dying Founders send the remaining Dominion fleets to paste the major homeworlds of the Alliance, including the Rommies and the Klingons. The Breen fleet elements support this drive as an act of vengance for their homes. The war finally grinds to a halt from mutual exaustion and the destruction of most major fleets units and almost all shipyards. What do y'all think?

[John Raynor]

Originally posted by Cybrludite
Another way to shatter the existing governments might be to drag out the Dominion War. Say, perhaps that thw folks from DS9 failed in their attempt to steal a Breen ship. With no way to counter the Breen energy draining weapon... [much deleted for the sake of brevity] ...The war finally grinds to a halt from mutual exaustion and the destruction of most major fleets units and almost all shipyards. What do y'all think?

I haven't watched a lot of Deep Space 9, so an apocalyptic turn of
events based on that series simply didn't occur to me. There is,
however, a very important difference between this tragedy and
the one I proposed. This is a (basically) intentional apocalypse,
brought about by a series of rather brutal decisions. The
apocalypse which I proposed was accidental. Starfleet's
scientists simply didn't fully understand the the Borg Collective's
internal organization and its adaptive response reflex, and they
made an understandable, but still tragic, mistake. Interstellar
civilization doesn't sink (half-willingly) into barbarism -- it simply
throws the dice, and (through no real fault of its own) rolls very,
very poorly. Bad Things happen to Good People.

Leaving the subtle moral considerations aside, I have to admit
that I'm also fond of the hordes of squabbling Borg "splinter
Collectives," roaming though the rubble, keeping everyone on
their toes...

[calguard66]

Originally posted by ghosty
If the plague is as wide spread as you say and as virulent, you're left with a complete systems failure for the whole Federation then you won't have much of a game considering that every Starfleet ship would be dead in space and if you say the plague mutates, it'll infect the tech of all species, it'll be end of civilization as we know it as all starships would full out of the sky. Your post apocalyptic world would be reduced to planet bound adventures.

One suggestion is that there is one remaining Starfleet vessel which had been modified to withstand the effects of the plague - a sort of ultimate contigency plan - its systems loaded with anti-body type nanoviruses. Its up to the crew to defeat the plague and begin the long process of rebuilding a Brave New World.

The solution would be to take another page from T:TNE and have the majority of the viruses programmed for suicide... with a few mutating the suicide directive out, so the virus will still pop up from time to time.

You coulod even postulate a similar "dark age" where there is little or no star travel... and your crew are among the first of their planet's new explorers. Essentially the T:TNE concept wih a ST history rather than a Traveller history.

[calguard66]

Originally posted by Cybrludite
Another way to shatter the existing governments might be to drag out the Dominion War. Say, perhaps that thw folks from DS9 failed in their attempt to steal a Breen ship. With no way to counter the Breen energy draining weapon, I see fleet actions proceeding as thus: Alliance fleets would have a Klingon wing to try and kill the Breen ships. They'll stay cloaked & will be protected as much as possible by the other ships until the Breens are commited by the Dominion's forces. Once found, though, the Klingons are going to get dog-piled by the Dominion to protect the Breen ships. Alliance gets driven back, and looses a number of core worlds. Finally, group of Klingon task force gets to the Breen homeworld & major colonies, and pastes them with a genocidal Tricobalt bombardment. Likewise, the Bajoran wormhole gets shut for good, preventing Dominion reenforcement. The dying Founders send the remaining Dominion fleets to paste the major homeworlds of the Alliance, including the Rommies and the Klingons. The Breen fleet elements support this drive as an act of vengance for their homes. The war finally grinds to a halt from mutual exaustion and the destruction of most major fleets units and almost all shipyards. What do y'all think?

Sounds similar to the original Twighlight 2000 premise.

[Cybrludite]

Originally posted by calguard66



Sounds similar to the original Twighlight 2000 premise.

Heh. I've actually played quite a bit of that one, way back when. (And even more Gamma World before that...) I figure that the results of this sort of fighting would be apocalyptic for any planets caught in the way. Enough planets get trashed this way, and the governments will break down.