[CODA] "Expanded Starship Operations" sourcebook

[KillerWhale]

Hey guys

Darth: The "length" column (height of the base) is the most important number... As with starships, when you cannot fit exactly the dimensions of your craft, you have to go for a compromise. And when you have a circular facility (hence a diameter), any number, "beam" of "height" can do: use the closest one. The dimensions of the Spacedock-type being 6500/3600, the "length" falls exactly in the middle of Size 14 category, and we're 100 meters short for "beam". That seemed the best compromise for me but the wording in ch1 is maybe still imprecise. I'll have to work on it further.

Capnhayes: Thanks for your input! Frankly, I do prefer a number of structural points - more coherent with the rest of the system. Additionnally, the material chart would work for really primitive vehicles, but what of, for instance, the Argo which would undoubtedly be wiped out by starship weapons? It must be made of treknologic materials, undoubtedly.
I fiddled with the numbers to come up with the right multipliers for the various vehicles. Here's what I came up with: I think we both have the same idea of scale damage. I hope you like it

Scale Shift
The vehicle is so small, frail, primitive or underpowered that it’s absolutely no match for a starship or station. It’s best used against personnel, or other like vehicles.
Effect: The vehicle’s structure and damage is considered to be at the personnel scale. Before applying the flaw, you may exceptionally “sell” structural points one by one. Then multiply the structure and weapon penetrations by 50; these values are only used against personnel or vehicles with Scale Shift. System criticals happen every 25 damage.
Versus starships and stations, consider the vehicle as personnel, not as a vehicle (see “Mixing the combat scales”, p.81). In essence, the vehicle is instantly destroyed if touched by weapon equipped on a starship, station or vehicle without Scale Shift. Versus those, divide the vehicle’s weapon penetration by 50.

[Tobian]

Theoretically I can see the Argo surviving a hit from a low powered starship phaser blast - theoretically - but that would be irrelevant - the occupants would be afforded no protection (unless it had shields) - and most likelly vapourised!

An open topped vehicle is perhaps not the best example of 24th century materials technology!

[Calcoran]

Originally posted by KillerWhale
Scale Shift
The vehicle is so small, frail, primitive or underpowered that it’s absolutely no match for a starship or station. It’s best used against personnel, or other like vehicles.
Effect: The vehicle’s structure and damage is considered to be at the personnel scale. Before applying the flaw, you may exceptionally “sell” structural points one by one. Then multiply the structure and weapon penetrations by 50; these values are only used against personnel or vehicles with Scale Shift. System criticals happen every 25 damage.
Versus starships and stations, consider the vehicle as personnel, not as a vehicle (see “Mixing the combat scales”, p.81). In essence, the vehicle is instantly destroyed if touched by weapon equipped on a starship, station or vehicle without Scale Shift. Versus those, </b>divide the vehicle’s weapon penetration by 50<b>.

If I may, this last sentence seems a bit confusing to me. To sum up, here is how it looks like:

• Scale shifted vehicle vs. personnel : structure and weapon x50.
• Scale shifted vehicle vs. starship : weapon /50.

Which in effect means that this vehicle does 2500 times less damage to a starship than it would to a scale shifted vehicle ...
Of course, my guess is that you meant:

• Scale shifted vehicle vs. starship : (weapon vs. personnel) /50 .... = plain weapon penetration .

Or did I get this wrong? 2500 looks like a real lot to me.

[KillerWhale]

Well... right, it's a bit confusing You got it right: the plain penetration (before adding the flaw) is used against "normal scale" craft. This last "divide by 50" was meant "after applying the flaw"

Thank you very much! I'll clarify this right away.

Edit: Whohoo! 900th post

[Goku000001]

Will there be anything about temporal systems (i.e. shields, sensors, weapons) in ESO? What about abaltive sheild armor from the last ep. voyager?

[Tobian]

OOh that's a thought - Time Travel manouvers !

[capnhayes]

Oh God just when I thought we had figured out vehicles. Now theres Temporal Maneuvers to deal with!!!

AHHHHGGG.................

[Darth Sarcastic]

I'm not a big time travel fan...well I was until my future self convinced me otherwise.

[Tobian]

Having FINALLY grasped what you guys are going on about with scale shift, i still think it's WAY out of scale - 50 x damage is just too much - a shuttlecrafts phasers just aren't THAT much moe powerful than a full strength blast from a compression rifle or a isomagnetic disintergrator. I would say it should only be a 10 -15 x increase (I.e. 1-15 on a phaser will score 1 hit and 16 will score 2)

I would also then look at how combat would work in that context - since a ground target would find it hard to hit a moving shuttle - so add 5-10 to the protection of the shields. Also with that respect you could say that because a shuttle or ship etc is at a different scale - you could just give all 'starship scale' vessels a +5-10 difficulty to hit - I.e it's not that you won't be hitting a large target, it's that you might not affect it's shields.

That way it makes it feasible for someone to get a lucky roll and get past someone's shuttle shields (probably around a 22-23 - which for combat heavy cvharacters is achievable) but most people's hits will basically bounce off the shields without making a scratch.

it adds more to the cinematic feel of it, because like I've said before, it wouldn't make sense for it to be so easy for a ground force to be able to take out a ship easilly, but it should be within the reals of possiblity!

[BouncyCaitian]

Bah. Temporal manuvers are easy. *gets in tall blue police box with light on top*

[Modem]

Yes, they most certainly are (gets in the DeLorean, heads upwards, gets to 44m…GONE!!!)

[Captain Ahnagha]

Hi Guys

my first post here will be for the fan of KillerWhale ESO...

I've converted his sheet into form version... Enjoy!

[Tobian]

Very handy, it's quite tough to write in those wee little boxes!

Well after having played on the sheet and used it, I have (Oh no not again you all say) some suggestions and comments.

The Penetration values would be handy if they had the ranged boxes - I.e. 5 boxes in a row, rather than just a blank space - because i found it hard not to fudge putting numbers and lines!

I.e.

(4)(3)(3)(0)(0)

rather than

( 4 3 3 0 0 )

Since there's alot of space on the 'sensors' bar near the bottom (to just write 'class 5' etc - we could have a (5/4/3/2/1) box for the sensor modifiers... Otherwise people forget there's a range modifier.

I would prefer that the page was laid out with just a few mm to the edges. Acrobat quite nicelly does a 'print to fit' feature - and it would be nice to use the layout right to the edges, because my printer supports borderless printing (people with older printers just use 'print to fit' to print it inside the margins) - It seems like a waste, because, neccissarily, the sheet contains ALOT of data, and wasting 2cm on margins is annoying!

Also - because of the density of the text i would prefer a 'black and white' and 'colour' version - because the colour version is too heavy and dark on my printer, so a lighter colour scheeme for background graphics would make it easier on the eye. That way people with older printers can use a B/W version and those with nice shiny high quality printers can have a nice colour version - plus it uses less ink up!

and yes I know - it's very hard to make it all fit in one sheet!

[KillerWhale]

Hi all

Finally got a bit of time to answer all!

Goku: Nope, no time travel maneuvers are planned - they are more like a plot device than something used commonly in the series. The same remark goes for the Voyager ablative armor - moreover I'm persuaded the DTI would do something about it, so...
You have all the material (almost) so far presented as first drafts in this thread; if it's not in it, it's not planned (so far... )

Tobian: Scale shift is not intended for shuttles (being "starships", scale and rules-wise), only for primitive vehicles like nowadays tanks and such. But I'll have to watch the scales closely Would you by any chance know where the isomag desintegrator table is?
The penalty for passing through shields is good, too. I think I inserted something like it in the relevant chapeter but I'll have to check - thanks for idea!
As for the boxes on the sheet I'll see what I can fit in there. The problem is visual - I can't add the sensor bonuses easily (the word "bonus" would imbalance the thing). I think I wanted to separate penetration values but couldn't - don't remember why, I'll try again.
As for the layout margins, I also want to think of people with older printers who cannot take advantage of the whole paper size. I fiddled with Reader and didn't find this "print to fit" setting; where is it?
Finally, for the B&W version: I designed the color balance so that the sheet prints fairly well in B&W - at least it does so on my laser printer, and it's not very competent for graphism. It's really quite readable - maybe forcing contrast on your printer driver would do the trick? I say that 'cause redesigning a whole sheet with a B&W palette would be a lot of additional work... and I've far from finished the content (actually I wonder how I'll make it to that "end of September" deadline... ), which is the priority for me.

And, Captain Ahnagha: wow, thank you very much for contributing the form to the community! I'm not a big fan of forms but I'm sure lots of people will like it, as such a tool had been asked. Thank you. When the book is done, I could offer it on site with it, crediting you of course - would you agree?

Thanks all for your support and feedback! Gotta get back to work (REAL work alas )

[Tobian]

Hehe well it does indeed look like a fine ballancing act making it all fit in there!

ok, I use the incorrect term when i said 'fit to page'; but it's right there in the print dialogue box - in the page scaling section it has "Shrink large pages" (Version6) Version 5 also does it (slightly differently named, but right there in the print dialogue) - I am sure it also has the same option on version 4? Perhaps you should be upgrading your version of Acrobat viewer!

I understand where you're coming from on being considerate to others, but since acrobat seems to neatly and automatically (by default on my default install) fit pages to print within page margins, then it's not really a problem.

It will take me approximatelly 10 minutes or less to re-colour your entire sheet in Illustrator. So if you want I will make up two versions for you. Or maybe even a black only version too, for those who have even older printers!

Anyway keep up the good work, real or otherwise

NB: The Isomag table was famously left out of the book! it's in an errata page on here somewhere - which I should print out for myself !