ACTD vs Starships

[Uruz]

Hello,

I was reading Starships and I was getting the general feeling that the ships were statted to being too large and having too many decks for their size. ACTD - A Call to Duty (http://techspecs.acalltoduty.com/) has different sizes listed for most ships, with more realistic number of decks, etc.

My question is, what do you think made Decipher come up with different numbers than established in previous sources? (Most ships at ACTD have a small biography at the end)

Thanks,

[Identity Crisis]

Starships takes a lot of basic facts such as dimensions from the "Starsship Spotter" book, which whilst it has some problems is a fairly good source for the basics.

I wouldn't trust that web site too much. A few things leap out at me:

1. Nebula class 318m wide. The Nebula has to be as wide as the Galaxy class (467m wide) because they use the same saucer section.

2. Excelsior class 511m long. This is the incorrect figure from the Deep Space 9 Technical Manual, every other source all the way back to ST III has used 467m (yes, I know, it's a coincidence) as the length.

3. Nova class listed sources are
Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual
Star Trek: First Contact
The Art of Star Trek
all of which pre-date the appearance of the Nova class!

I'm not saying that there are no errors in "Starships" but in general I think the dimensions are sound (allowing for typos such as the Ambassador having its height and width swapped round).

Which ships in particular are you troubled by?

[Capt. Anderson]

Don't forget that Ent-E gained two more decks between First Contact and Nemesis. From 27 to 29. It looks like someone on the Enterprise spent picks on the ship.

[Don Mappin]

Originally posted by Uruz
My question is, what do you think made Decipher come up with different numbers than established in previous sources? (Most ships at ACTD have a small biography at the end)

"Established" by whose standards? Yours or Paramounts? Personally I've never heard of ACTD until now, so obviously their figures didn't get added to my research.

"Spotter" was the defacto source. Beyond that I referenced, on average, about three different sources for vessel sizes. Only rarely did the sources not compute. In some cases I had to make my best judgment call. (At times I literally took out my drafting tools, pictures, and calculated sizes on my own.) I forget the formula used for decks.

Ultimately, it's all guesswork with the exception of a few vessels. It's no exact science but I sure wouldn't sweat 20m or an extra deck.

If anything, "Starships" was viewed by -- and approved -- by Paramount. ACTD should be using our figures as canon. (Note, that was a semi-serious joke.)

[Uruz]

ACTD cites a lot of sources. It states where it gets its information (and in some cases, supposition) from. Starships has no such biography.

I dunno. I have it ingrained in me that if something has citations and a biography, it's "correct."

[Liquidator Queeg]

Unless a roleplaying game book is primarily history-based, you don't find many source bibliographies anymore. It was more common fifteen or twenty years ago.

In my own personal experience, I even offered up bibliographical information (being a history major in university and all ) for an RPG sourcebook I wrote a chapter for, but it was dismissed almost out of hand by the editor. I was not pleased. But, in the end, it's the editors and developers who are the folks that usually decide these things. I know that most writers do the legwork and document it pretty thoroughly. Often, it's just a case of page space and relevance to the overall material, I suppose.

LQ

[Don Mappin]

Originally posted by Uruz
Starships has no such biography.

Considering I crammed text (and went over word count) for chapter one to get the bare essentials in there, I don't see how a bibliography could have been added. *shrug*

Use whatever source you prefer; I'm just providing some insight as to where the figures came from. You did ask.

[Uruz]

Don, I'm not trying to criticize your work, and I apologize if that's how it's coming across. Starships is a great resource. I'm just looking for where you got your numbers from, that's all.

[Identity Crisis]

Which particular numbers are troubling you? It's easier to discuss specific points than to talk in abstracts about the whole research process that went into a book.

I've just flicked through the book and the only ones that look at all troublesome to me are the Defiant (but the 120 vs 170 debate is something of a holy war and best avoided), the D-7/K't'inga and the Galor/Keldon. The rest either look okay or are for ships with very dubious on screen scalings anyway.

[Uruz]

Take the Excelsior for example. Sure, we saw in Generations that the Excelsior supposedly had decks in the 20's, so Starships would be accurate. However, in concordance with ACTD, it seems that there are a number of references that points to a much smaller ship.

[Identity Crisis]

As I've already pointed out ACDT use the wrong dimensions for the Excelsior. They're too large.

And how do they get 17 decks in 87m height? That's an average of 5.1m per deck which is much greater than any other Starfleet vessel. They try to justify this on the site (second to last point in appendix D) but ignore the fact that Constitution (73m high, 23 decks) and the Galaxy class (195m high, 42 decks) have lower average deck heights, and for the Excelsior I'd rather take the lower figure (3.1m) from the Constitution as that's also a 23rd century ship.

OTOH the height in Starships does seem to be too large as well. The length is nearly right (470m vs 467m) but the height is too great. 78m is the more frequently quoted figure (and matches the length:height ratio you can get from measuring a pic of the ship). Which would give about 25 decks (in between the Starships and ACDT figure) which is also consistent with Generations.

[Tar-Palantir]

As far as I can tell, ACTD is no more official than any other source. They perused the books and films and episodes and came up with a set of stats that conformed to what they wanted to use with their online RPG.

What *is* nice about ACTD is that they have uniform presentation of the stats from one ship to another, and they have tried to rationalise the various ships to be consistent with one another - something that the DS9 tech manual has serious flaws in.

But keep in mind this is just someone else's Trek, not some sermon-from-the-mount official thingy. They indicated in several locations that they deviated from canon because they were trying to make sense of inconsistencies with the official Paramount source material itself (IE: Episodes/Films).

[Don Mappin]

Originally posted by Uruz
Don, I'm not trying to criticize your work, and I apologize if that's how it's coming across. Starships is a great resource. I'm just looking for where you got your numbers from, that's all.

Don't worry, I'm not taking it personally. I can't give you a full listing because it was written about 2 years ago. Even if I did, it's something of a moot point; the figures are published in the book and aren't up for debate.

Use 'em or not, it's entirely up to you.