Specifically, in a setting where the orions are a major race, say equal to the Hydrans or Kzinti, what changes would have to be made to their current ship mix?
Most specifically, how well woudl thier ships work in the setting of major fleet actions, as opposed to simple raids.

As another question-- has their ever been a count of how many ships the "orion pirates" have, counting both cartel and independents?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, August 11, 2005 - 12:53 am: Edit

You could have Orion go on the offensive at first contact and control the low third of Fed space. You would then have fighting with the Klingons over the space that becomes the Holdfast. Then both races go up in arms when the Tholians arrive.

Number of Cartels ships? Well, depending on who's report you are reading the number is zero (the pirate view) to thirty (the constablatory view) to three hundred (if you want to read the extremist reports from that dang colony governor that just won't shut up about how his worlds is always about to be wiped out that every sector has.)

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Thursday, August 11, 2005 - 01:01 am: Edit

The Orions seem to have difficulty building ships. Something to do with being outlaws. If your campaign has rules for building based on size class, presumably to make large ships harder to build, subtract one from the size class of each Orion ship. The purpose would be to force the Orions into an historical slower build rate and force them to use SC4 hulls for SC3 missions. Due to the slower build rate the Orions will lose a war of attrition, balancing out their better ships. I've never tried this, but it might help.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Thursday, August 11, 2005 - 01:33 am: Edit

The major changes that would have to be made to the Orions would be the addition of large command ships and bases able to defend themselves. Beyond that, add all needed variants that your campaign rules won't allow Orions with properly configured option mounts to fill.

The number of Orion ships is undefined but numerous. With each cartel having at least 1 ship of size class 3 and move cost 1 plus multiple smaller ships and many more independants, the collective force is much larger than the Tholians or the Hydrans and probably close to the level of the Kzinti. (That is if every cartel and independant ship could be transferred to one location under an unified command. Calculation based on the numbers in F&E. Campaign definitions may differ.)

By Troy J. Latta (Saaur) on Thursday, August 11, 2005 - 08:28 am: Edit

Orions don't have Tugs or Survey ships, do they? Those seem to be the hot items in our campaign right now.

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Thursday, August 11, 2005 - 09:20 am: Edit

I think that R9 has a tug; an Orion Survey Ship shouldn't be too hard to create (One of the SAL carrier variants with special sensors.)

By Andy Vancil (Andy) on Thursday, August 11, 2005 - 11:19 am: Edit

In our old campaign, the Orions were allowed to purchase "scientific equipment", which essentially turned cargo boxes into lab boxes. Throw some special sensors in the option mounts and probe drones in the racks, and you have a survey ship.

How you handle Orion shipbuilding would depend on how "historical" you wanted your campaign to be. You could eliminate their pirate flavor entirely, and they become just another race that has modular weapons and warp-doubling. In this case, you would want their regular bases to have p-4s and regular BPVs. You would want to make the Orion player pick a cartel, and enforce percentages for Home Territory/Operating Zone weapons in option mounts on a fleet-wide basis. In our old campaign, you could create your own cartel by picking one race as your Home Territory and two others as your Operating Zone.

When I played the Orions, I found them capable but not overpowering. Their power in duels doesn't scale that well to squadrons or fleets. Although with the right option package, they can pack a lot of firepower, they don't have much staying power. Even after a clean victory, Orion ships find themselves needing to return to base to repair burned up warp engine.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Thursday, August 11, 2005 - 11:36 am: Edit

Andy Vancil's point about scaling from duels to fleet actions is important. To take one example, engine doubling to "brick" a shield is much less useful in fleet engagements because a close range fleet-salvo against a single ship will still blow through the shield+brick and wreck the ship. And all the other Orion ships that weren't targeted by that volley still damage their engines. I concur that "capable but not overpowering" is a good assessment.

IMO, the Alpha races that are really hard to balance as a major race with conventional goals are the Tholians, Andromedans, and Jindarians (though I must confess I've only played the Tholians out of these three in a campaign setting). All these races have "weird" capabilities (much more weird than the Orions' free ECM and engine doubling and option mounts) that create severe RPS, scaling, or synergy problems that make them extremely difficult to balance. They aren't necessarilly too strong (though the Tholians and the Andros can be depending on the strategic campaign rules). It's more that there can be a knife edge to balance on between too strong and too weak.

(I also note that all these are "invader" races that came to Alpha from somewhere else.)