Hopes and Dreams for the CODA system

[SIR SIG]

Maps! And lots of them, being of a detailed nature.

Heck I'll even freelance if they want some ideas

Big books on the main races, with lots of info including their capability to make war/defend/respond etc. ie how many ships,starbases,sectors they control etc.

Something like Wizards/TSR Dungeon magazine would be very good with 3-5 adventures in each issue. Say one for each setting, a sidetrack adventure ie. something to link episodes etc.

[Phantom]

Originally posted by SIR SIG
Maps! And lots of them, being of a detailed nature.

Now, there's a surprise.

[Cochrane]

If there's a creature collection, how about divided into what planet they're from, such as Vulcan, Andor, Bajor, Qonos, and Romulus.

[rgilbert]

I would like to see in the new game, a book that focuses purely on the game mechanics. As an experienced Star Trek and RPG fan, I don't need a 40-page history on the Federation and a 10-page history on roleplaying. It took forever to find the pages in the LUG books that actually dealt with the game mechanics because they were all buried between tons of history and reference (in my mind, filler material). I realize players new to ST and RPGs may need this, but those of us who are intimately familiar with the ST universe and with RPGS, and who are so busy with work and other activities and barely have time to get together to play these games, would like a condensed rulebook so we can "cut to the chase." Couldn't they publish this in addition to the regular huge rulebooks? I guess, however, that they can't charge as much for a condensed rulebook...

My .02.

Robbie

[Sho-sa Kurita]

prophetsteve, you voiced my feelings very well. Thx.

I would like to echo the desire for a CODA magazine, more like old-tyme Dragon with mostly source/rules articles plus a single adventure. It could cover LotR as well, and whatever else Decipher ends up publishing. The fact that there are already ST-related mags isn't really important, they're not ST-gaming mags.

-- Daniel

[Lockhart]

I hope there is either a travel time or distance chart in the game similar to the WEG Star Wars, or distances and a simple warp factor calculation. I know it's more a story issue of how long it takes to get from place to place, but I really have little idea how much faster Warp 9.7 is than Warp 9.5, and the Icon chart confused me to no end since it gave benchmarks that I had no way to measure against, not having a distance chart.

I mean, if I have one chart that says Warp Factor 4.0 (TOS) is so many ly/hr and another chart that says from Earth to Andor is X ly I can do my own math and throw the numbers off for detours or other obstacles myself. If you're still writing the Narrator's Guide and have space for an important systems chart that cross references, I sure would love to see something this rudimentary. I don't need Wolf 359, or anything else that detailed, but Earth, Bajor, Cardassia Prime, Qonos, Vulcan, Andor, Edge of the Romulan Neutral Zone or Romulus, etc. would be much appreciated. It always seems that everything in Star Trek is near one of these planets anyway, so just a small chart like that would be a godsend.

And if you can really get from Earth to Qonos in less than a month at TOS warp factor 4 or 5, I'd certainly like a map or two as well. That was the one detail I hated about Enterprise's pilot episode. Why would it be hard for the klingons and humans to wage all-out disruptive war and destroy each other's trade routes among other things if their planets were that close. Oh well, another continuity hiccup or just a poor idea of distance and speed?

Lockhart

[tonyg]

Lockhart,

Travel times in the TREK RPG came from the TV series, and they aren't that complicated.

To detemine how much faster one speed is to the other just compare thier velocities in terms of c. Warp 9.6 (1909c) is about 16% faster than Warp Factor 9.2 (1649c).



TOS has it the easiest. The number of light-years taveled in 1 YEAR is equal to the warp factor cubed (that is Warp Factor ^3, meaning the Warp Factor mupliplied by itself and then mutiplied by itself again). So Warp Factor 6 = 6x6x6= 216 light-years per YEAR. Divide by 365 and you can get Light-years per day (in this case approximately 0.6ly/day or about 4 light-years per week).

The TNG scale is more complicated. TNG Wapr Factors are all slightly faster. TNG uses WARP FACTOR ^(10.3) so Warp Factor 6 is 392 light-years per year, or about 1.07 light-years per day. This means that you can usualy worek out travelt ime tables a WF 6.
The difficulty with the TNG scale is that Warp Factor 10 was set as infinite velocity. THis means that at speeds above Warp 9, the formula breakd down. While many have made attempts at working out a usuable formula for speeds above Warp 9, few actually match up with the speeds listed.

Note that is you use the Warp travel times, it probably takes too long for starships to get anywhere. On TV they sort of bypass this and just have the ships show up where they are needed for story considerations, and only use the Warp Scale when they desire it. (Sort of like how those pyscho-killers in the movies manage to catch up with thier victims even though the victim is running and the killer just shuffles along).

[Lockhart]

For me, the part I didn't have was the distance chart. If Bajor really is ~52 ly away from Earth, that'd be nice information to know. And yeah you're right that even though the starships move something near infinitely fast but the numbers they give in the show never seem to add up. Like in the TOS episode "That Which Survives" which reran yesterday on Sci-Fi. The Enterprise got transported 990.6 lys away, and Spock made a comment about traveling between Warp 8 and Warp 9 and arriving back at the planet in less than 12 hours.

Still, I can easily imagine that they were only thrown 0.9 lys away and the 'memoirs translator' didn't record the right number. However, even with that, it shouldn't be so hard to figure out if it'll take a week or a year for the pc ship to get from point A to point B. I'm just asking for some rough approximations of time or distance between major star systems.

Lockhart

[tonyg]

Problem is that the distances between places isn't consistient on the show. For isntace, according to some early stuff, DS9 was supposed to be over 5,000 light years from Earth. The idea being that the station was in DEEP SPACE and somewhat isolated. Later the distances were somewhat adjusted since travel times to Earth and even Romulus were such to allow ships to get there is a realatively short time.

Stuff like this rarely is an issue on a TC series, since the characters never pick up on stuff like this (not in the scripts), but players in a RPG are a different matter. Since the game designers are trying to be faithful to STAR TREK, they often wind up with haveing to deal with undisrable suituations that they didn't create.

[Lockhart]

Likely it's Paramount's fault for releasing a tech manual or encyclopedia or something with hard numbers for warp factor formula that don't match the series. I mean, if TOS warp factors are supposed to be WF^3 in lys per year, it'd take 5 years to get to DS9 at Warp 10. Worse, that number they give in 'That Which Survives' is terribly off, a ship moving at TNG Warp 9.9999 would take about 33 hours to go that far (according to my Icon DS9 RPG book).

Still, saying it takes 1 year from Earth to Bajor at standard TNG warp speed is just as good for me as giving me a number in lys and a different chart for ly/day by warp factor. My problem is that there was nothing like this before, it'd be nice to have it now. I don't have any star trek encyclopedias, nor a library of tapes or dvds. All I have is the internet and my rpg books. It'd be very convenient if I didn't have to invent numbers myself all the time.

Lockhart

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

Earth to Bajor is (canonically) 50 light years. That would be less than 20 days at warp 10 on the TOS scale.

[Lockhart]

I was just using the 5000 ly number supplied by Tonyg. I have no idea exactly how far Bajor is supposed to be. If it's 50 ly that'd be fine with me, I just don't have a source for this info.

Lockhart

[AslanC]

I want to ask a question, and I am not trolling here. I really want to know.

Why do Star Trek gamers keep asking for stuff that cannot be done?

Since there is no hard fast warp rate at Paramount (and I am talking about movies and TV, not tech manuals) and the TV show (and Movies) locations are adjusted for drama, there can be no really "official map" with accurate distances.

Why not just make your own? Or use Sig's?

I am just asking.

[Dan Gurden]

As AslanC says... The true answer simply cannot be done.

The next best thing is to have the ship move at the speed of plot. If you need your crew/ship to get to X from Y in 6 hours, simply make it the time required at cruising warp speed...

They want to go faster... OK, simply move the timetable forward or give them a side plot with a minor malfunction to keep the engineer happy in the meantime...

its what I do, and I have had no comments or complaints from my players, and it saves me many hours of development and record keeping that I simply do not have available any more.

In the end, players and narrators only want one thing, to play a game. If reality has to be suspended in order for them to assume the roles of members of Starfleet aboard a ftl ship travelling to a distant planet to save the day, then mores the better... After all, it should already be suspended enough...

[Lockhart]

Let me put it this way. I don't keep track of what I say enough to use speed of plot. The old rulebook was crystal clear on the pitfalls of doing that with my gm style. With some of my players, they catch this kind of thing and call me on it.

I don't have Sir Sig's info in my rulebook, I can't find a list of his values on that other board, and beyond that I'm not enough of a treknophile to make up my own values without having real trekkers call me on it. I've got a couple of them in my group too.

It's also not something I think is impossible to ask for. I have no idea how long it takes to get from Coruscant to Tatooine either, but both Star Wars games give me at least a vague number, irrespective of how fast the ship moves. I don't care if the numbers are 100% trekker accurate, but if I send a ship to Bajor and have a major crisis along the Romulan Neutral Zone that they are called back to help at, at least one player is gonna ask me what the ETA is. I might as well roll 2d20 and another for hours, days, and weeks for how well I know the starship map.

Anyway, this is a want list. I didn't write 'nope you'll never see that' on anybody else's posts, and nobody who's responded in the negative or positive to it yet works for Decipher. I'm content to ask and not recieve, but all this debate over whether or not it's even a feasible question is getting me down.

Lockhart