Andy: He already has "a backfeeding shuttle does count as an armed shuttle for the purposses of shuttle bay chain reactions". I suspect 0.5 power per shuttle would be the correct scale, allowing the four shuttles on a Fed CA to equal (with much prep time) the impact of the 2 APRs in the "+" refit. I'm not even convinced it would need to be limited to legendary engineers to be balanced.

Honestly, this is also a lot less munchkin-flavored than many proposals.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Sunday, August 28, 2005 - 05:50 pm: Edit

Frank. My concern there was game balance. Gorn players would gladly trade in GAS for Admin to gain this ability; the impact is higher for those races with a higher Admin-to-Size Class ratio.

You could add Leg. Science Officer as well, but I do think it needs that type of limit, even at 0.5 point per shuttle.

Heck, as a Hydran, I would trade the fighters on a Dragoon for Admins for this ability (less BPV and a FAR more effective ship).

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Sunday, August 28, 2005 - 09:09 pm: Edit

Michael John Campbell:

No.

End of discussion.

By David Beeson (Monster) on Monday, August 29, 2005 - 07:40 am: Edit

ooh ooh ooh!

I got it.

Hook admins into the warp drive, each shuttle can add 6 points of warp.


oooooooh!

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, August 29, 2005 - 09:49 pm: Edit

David, the energy that a Admin shuttle produces is probably quite modest (compared to that generated by a starship).

I would not be surprised to find out that the shuttle produces the equal of 1.1 points of power, with a movement cost of 1:12 (or something like it)

That means after paying for the phaser 3 energy (1/2 energy point), life support, fire control and movement, there is little energy capacity left for what MJC is proposing.

(atleast that is what I learned from SPP in the 2 phaser 2 space shuttle thread discussion that we had many weeks ago.)

In any event, this thread is well past the point where discussion should have ended.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - 12:20 am: Edit

I can think think of lots of reasons for not having this system.

• The possibility that some people will demand it be availible for Stinger-Fs (at 2 point of power each or some other damned fool amount)and then the D7H will never need to actually allocate power to the phasers ever again.
• There is the possibility that ships with large numbers of shuttles will get an unfair advantage. Although the loss of the ability to use those shuttles for other task (WW) should be a counter balance.
• There is the possibility that this kind of system would create calls for shuttles to be able to tow starships (or atleast PFs).
• The shuttle as a system aboard the vessel is suppossed to be a system of RISK, that is they are no good to you unless you take a risk that you are not getting them back by sending them outside of your bay ( and hence your shields ). Ph-3 platforms, SP and to a greater extent WWs and SS have a huge chance of not comming back.

I just regret that SPP didn't pick one.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - 10:27 am: Edit

Michael John Campbell:

If the above are obvious to you, why do you need me to waste my time and effort explaining to you what you already know?

Why are you trying so hard to waste my time?

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - 11:16 am: Edit

SPP. (not trying to beat a dead horse) but would limiting this to a single shuttle and requiring a turn of LCE or LSO to set-up make it more palatable? My thought is that either Leg.Officer could have one running, monitoring "part time" (i.e., able to monitor one shuttle while still performing one "legendary action" that turn) or could do two at once as their "full action."

I do understand the balance concerns, but it does strike me as the kind of thing Scotty or Spock would do If carefully limited (as I have tried to do above), that should take care of those balance issues.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - 11:58 am: Edit

Andy Palmer:

And how much addenda do you wish to add to the Legendary Officer Rules?

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - 12:13 pm: Edit

This sounds like the kind of thing that would be a decent idea for a player in an RPG, but as a standard-issue SFB rule it wouldn't work.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - 12:49 pm: Edit

SPP.
[humor on] Its not addenda - these are LEGENDARY officers - they come up with new legendary feats on a regular basis - that's what makes them legendary! [humor off]

On a more serious note, I believe it balanced enough for a SJ rule; I agree with M.Powers that this would likely have more RPG value than SFB value, but it will always be useful to have the SFB equivilant rules in print in such cases.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - 03:35 pm: Edit

I'm having trouble with the engineering here. The shuttlecraft may well have some kind of auxilliary/emergency generator, but this would only supply a very small amount of power, relative to a starship. To get any meaningful level of power, at the SFB level, these shuttlecraft would have to be running their warp engines at a high power level, for a sustained period of time, and be doing so while inside the shuttle bay.

Now it's pretty clear that warp engines, unlike a jet engine for example, can be run at high power without producing thrust. But there will still be factors like waste heat and radiation. I would presume a shuttlecraft is designed to radiate these byproducts into space. Perhaps a shuttlecraft, and the associated facilities in the shuttle bay, could be designed to deal with the waste heat and radiation without harm. But this would necessarily increase the cost and complexity of both the shuttle and the bay itself, and tend to make the shuttlecraft less useful for its actual missions.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - 04:52 pm: Edit

Andy: I am not sure that making a rule no one will use qualifies as balanced. The Legendary Engineer can only perform one function a turn. Trying to squeeze power from the shuttles prevents the Legendary Engineer from doubling 4 engine boxes. So unless the ship has no power to double and the legendary engineer does not need to make any emergency repairs and the ship still has a working shuttle on board (a very unlikely confluence of events), power from shuttles would be an ignored rule.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - 05:21 pm: Edit

RWW. See my post of 11:16 AM.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - 05:24 pm: Edit

Basically, your shuttle bay will usually go before you lose your APRs, so why is not the engineer working on increasing the output of the APRs (unless your ship never had any)?

I do not think the function could be done in a "destroyed" bay, so I would not buy off that even a legendary engineer could take a shuttle from some other ship (or his own ship for that matter) that landed in a bay destroyed by earlier damage to provide power.

And it simply is not something worth the engineer's time to do otherwise when he could be doubling the last four (three, two, or one) points of warp power, or the last four (three, two, or one) points of APR power, or the last four (three, two, or one) points of AWR power, or the last four (three, two, or one) points of impulse power. Trying to get a half point of power out of one shuttle is just a waste of effort if the ship has any other power source available (an Engineer can get one APR to produce two points of power, four times what he could try to get out of the one shuttle), and if it does not have any other power source available, you are not going to have a shuttle to work with any way.

As I said before, end of discussion. There is no need to do this. It is not what shuttles are for, it is not a road we need to go down. If you start down this road, why not just say the bloody shuttle deck is "modular" and allow the players to just stick in one APR in exchange for two shuttles?

Shuttle bays are for SHUTTLES, not POWER SYSTEMS, and Shuttles are SHUTTLES, not "portable auxiliary power systems". There job is cargo and personnel handling when the job is too large or too far for the transporters, or it is simply too expensive to use the transporters. That is their optimum design characteristic.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - 10:05 pm: Edit

SPP:

Although I can see where the problems might occour, I can also see ways to correct the problems except for the area that shuttles must be risked in order to be of use, which seems to be your call on the matter.
I would not have gone on to argue way of correcting the other problems because of your statement, it's just that "Michael John Campbell:
No.
End of discussion." seems a little curt to me, and thus having at least some kind of justification as to why not, would have rested better with me.

As to trying to "trying so hard to waste your time":-
Is that really what what you think for the last few proposals I've made???
If so it would explain why the proposals have been for forbidden further discussion after less than 24 hours.
I'm not trying to waste your time, I'm just engaging in a bit of brainstorming.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - 10:27 pm: Edit

Michael John Cambell:

Have you considered how many proposals you currently have running on the board? How many I have to read and decide to let run or end? You have reached a point where a curt "end of discussion" is about all I have time for looking over your messages. This one was not going anywhere, was not going to happen and needed no more discussion.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - 10:57 pm: Edit

Yes, I have considered that.
But a quick, I'll let this run for another 24 hours before I give my findings/close this down, would have been nice.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, September 01, 2005 - 12:20 pm: Edit

Michael John Campbell:

No you won't. Don't make me have Joe close the topic.

The idea is rejected. No further discussion.

By Joseph Butler (Admin) on Thursday, September 01, 2005 - 03:10 pm: Edit

<SNORT> Close the topic??? <--Holds finger over close button-->

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Thursday, September 01, 2005 - 04:34 pm: Edit

Then let me insert a quick thank-you to SPP for taking time out of his day to assess proposals and give his thoughts.

Even if the ideas are bad.

You don't have to do it, Steve, and we appreciate the fact that you do.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, September 01, 2005 - 05:54 pm: Edit

Let me be clear. I am not trying to have Joe close the topic when it comes to looking at things for shuttles to do. I am saying that there is no further discussion of "Backfeeding". But if Michael John Campbell insists on using the topic to continue discussing his idea, then it may as well be shut down as I am not going to take the time to repeat myself over and over that this is not going to happen. It is past time to move along.

The maximum amount of energy you can draw from shuttles has already been set in (J13.221) (zero, the shuttles can bring a small genertor to arm plasma-Ds). I am not changing that rule to allow shuttles to start arming disruptor bolts (or photon torpedoes, or fusion beams, or hellbores, or plasma-Fs) by linking several shuttle engines together at a casual base. I am not opening the can of worms Michael John Campbell wants to open.

The topic can be used for discussion of ideas, but if an idea is rejected, there is no need to continue beating a dead horse.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, September 01, 2005 - 06:54 pm: Edit

Perhaps we should return the topic to what it origninally was intended to be (by me, anyway!)

A discussion of the abilities of shuttle craft deployed aboard starships, not (as MJC would have it) as special functions of the shuttle bay.

For example, some of the orginal suggestions (that have yet to be 'shot down') include Emergency life boats where survivors could, in extreme circumstances, undertake voyages of extreme range and duration that exceeed (by a large margin) the normal operating characteristics of the Admin Shuttles abilities.

The classic example of that last is the voyage of William Bligh after his ship (the HMS Bounty) was captured by mutineers. Bligh, with a few loyal crewman, sailed an open boat to safety across many hundreds of miles (thousands? I forget the exact milage involved) to safety where he reported the loss of the ship.

Another idea is to send a shuttle (unpiloted) on a ballistic course from a base to the operating station of a starship to provide the cargo points worth of mail, supplies, spare parts fuel andor replacement consumable maaterials (like probes and drones) to a patrol ship (like a POL or frigate) so as to maintain the ships presence on station for as long as possible. (mostly a RPG hook, but might have minor SFB applications in a scenario.

A third idea, not previously considered in this thread, allow multiple shuttle craft working in a coordinated effort to engage in more effective manner than current rules allow.

for example: there is no difference between 1 shuttle at a specific range acting as a lab (see rule J2.212) for four turns and 4 shuttles all at the same range (but possibly on different bearings from the target) for 1 turn. they gather information at the same rate and same effectiveness (based on the range to the target).

What if there were provision for allowing a +1 point of information for each additional shuttle engaged in the mission? (note: This is NOT to mean increasing the number of Labs/lab equilvilents, but rather a bonus of 1 point of data inaddition for each additional shuttle engaged in the mission.

for example, suppose there are 4 shuttles on the mission, and based on the range, each "earns" 4 points of information under the rules. the proposal would change the 4x4=16 points of information earned from 16 total, to say 4x4=16+1+1+1=19 to reflect the enhanced ability of more shuttles to gather data more efficiently than a single shuttle could do in multiple turns of research.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, September 01, 2005 - 07:22 pm: Edit

Jeff Wile:

Your first is alluded to in the fiction story "Ghostlight: Day One" found in Captain's Log #9. See the last page of the story.

The second, I do not think so. If shuttles could operate for such extended periods in a totally automated fashion it would have too many weapons applications. Imagine using them as long range drones for bombardment missions. There is also the simple fact that "circumstances change" and a pilot can more easily adapt to the changed circumstance (new rendezvous point, revised rendezvous time at original point, complete change of mission requiring cargo to simply be dumped in space as shuttle goes to save someone, etc.). Beyond that, long range resupply (albeit limited) is one of the functions shuttles do, and does not really seem to need more discussion.

As to your third idea, I am willing to listen, but think (at this time) that such an added bonus gives too much to races that carry a lot of shuttles and already have a bonus in situations where shuttles can be used as labs simply because they have more shuttles. I do not see the need to add an additional "force multiplier" beyond the raw number that a ship carries. Why should a Gorn CA get an extra benefit over a Klingon D7 in shuttle lab gathering simply because not only does it have three times as many shuttles (and the same number of labs), but gets this added bonus on top of it? Yes, it makes ships with large shuttle bays even more effective in those situations and thus even more likely to win "Captain's Campaigns" than ships with smaller shuttle bays.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, September 01, 2005 - 10:12 pm: Edit

SPP:

As J.T. said, it is good of you to take the time out to reveiw.
I would think perhaps that even if your mind is to end a debate, other's posting for a while ( say 24 hours ) might give you further (and possibly better although that is unlikely ) grounds to end it and that might actually be a good thing.


ALL:

On Bligh, after his voyage to Batavia in the BOUNTY'S long Boat, he then returned to England, by ship and latter still became Govenor of New South Wales and I think would have followed the Tradition as Captain Arthur Phillop had done and captained his vessel to his destination before aquiring the role of govenor.
So I'm not sure that "last voyage" is the correct term...but perhaps it is.


On shuttles gaining a lab bonus via triangulation.
Surely ships should get this first.

I'ld commend a directionally balanced ruled.
Say:-
If the firing arc to shuttles (or secondary ships) from a monster is the same firing arc as the ship collecting information about the monster, then there shall be a +1 die roll modifier for the shuttles acting as labs.
If the firing arc to shuttles (or secondary ships) from a monster is the arc that is most diametrically opposed to the firing arc to the ship that is collecting information about the monster, then there shall be a -1 die roll modifer for the shuttles (or secondary ship ) collecting information.

The most Diamtraically Opposed firing arcs are as follows.
LF <=> RR
L <=> R
RF <=> LR

During the turn, one impulse must be designated as to which impulse shall be the impulse to resolve the locations for the shuttle(s) (or secondary ship(s)) for the calulation of this bonus ( or penalty ) and each ship may only select one impulse.

In this way ships that take a risk and put their shuttles on the far side of the monster from themselves will gain added information and ships that keep their shuttles "under their skirts" shall gain little advantage.

I'm not sure if the long on survivability nature of having a lot of shuttles is exactly counter balanced by the proportional risk increase of sending shuttles on the far side of the monster.


Also on activities in the shuttle bay.
Since sitting a shuttle at the endge of the shuttle bay deck with the shuttle bay doors open (probably with a depressurised shuttle bay) and firing out at targets, doesn't involve the risk of leaving the ship's shields, it should probably also be rejected.