Some new Cadet Ships to munch on. (C4 races and others)
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Some new Cadet Ships to munch on. (C4 races and others)
Well, after failing to create the Britannian Police Ship I wanted to make on account of being unable to get my Britannian DN SDD to scan straight, I subsequently found myself inspired by this site...
http://jgray-sfb.com/cadet/cadet.html
I figured, "If I can't make my Britannian Police Ship, why not make some C4 cadet ships instead?" And indeed, mister Grey's old SSDs are proving an absolute pleasure to work with, what with them being so clean, perfectly straight and the lines being solid black instead of the grey colour seen in the C4 SSD book...
Indeed, I only just discovered the site a couple of days ago and already I've completed my first SSD, the Deltan "Heuristics" Cadet Ship.
http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb6/CaptainTrek/DeltanCadetShip.jpg
I have to say, it was NOT easy finding an education-related word that started with H AND still sounded vaguely like something you might name a class of ship... The only other one I could think of was "Headmaster" and I REALLY didn't want to have to use that...
Anyway, I had alot of fun building this ship. I mostly used bits and pieces from Grey's SSDs, except for the solid-colour nose and wing sections as well as the curve used to make the ship's tail-section, which I took from my scan of the Hellhound's SSD and then resized and recoloured accordingly.
As you can see, the ship is, for the most part, a fairly standard cadet ship, except that it takes into account the unique nature of Deltan ships, hence it's turnmode of 2 at all speeds and its use of AWRs instead of APRs to give the ship a higher top speed when arming or holding its photons... It should be a good SSD to introduce cadets to AWRs and indeed the C4 races in general if any cadet happens to express interest in looking at more races prior to moving from cadet to full-size SSDs.
You'll also notice that the on-SSD EAF is only good for seven turns on this SSD instead of the usual ten... This was a symptom of how wide the Deltan Cadet Ship is and couldn't really be helped as I want to keep my Cadet SSDs to a standardised size (specifically the same size as mister Grey's Fed CC and Klink D7C cadet designs).
Well, that's my Deltan Cadet Ship... Further Cadet SSDs for the other C4 races and maybe even a few other designs will follow shortly. In the meantime, though, what do you think of the Heuristics?
I've always felt that the Deltans are incapable of performing their mission, unless you let them reload photons. Jeremy has a nice base for them to attack, so you can prove me wrong.
Beautiful SSD, anyway.
"I've always felt that the Deltans are incapable of performing their mission, unless you let them reload photons. Jeremy has a nice base for them to attack, so you can prove me wrong."
Well, I wouldn't know about that, given that I don't have anybody to play SFB with, but I did just complete "the Sunsnake" to the bronze-standard with the Hellhound (that is, the "salvaged some success from a situation considered hopeless" result)... I got the required info and rolled for what I could destroy it with and, of course, rolled a six and by then I only had enough time to save 16 of the crew units on the planet (curse the Hell's lack of transporters!)... But I really just like the look of the Deltan designs myself. I never really considered whether they were actually good at base-busting or not...
"Beautiful SSD, anyway."
Thankyou very much! 
Well, anyway, here's my next offering, the Britannian Cadet Ship...
http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb6/CaptainTrek/BritannianCadetShip.jpg
Ha! I bet you didn't think you'd ever see a CA-based cadet ship with fourteen weapons, did you? Actually, I think I probably should have only given the ship two phaser-3s instead of four, but I wanted to "fill up" the ship's L and R batteries so they were only just shorter than the main body of the ship because Britannian SSDs just don't look as nice if you don't...
Other than that, another problem I have with this SSD is the turn mode... In the Cadet's Game, Turn class D on a full sized ship translates to 1-6 = 1 and 7-16 = 2, Turn class C to 1-7 = 1 and 8-16 = 2 and B to 1-8 = 1 and 9-16 = 2. However, Grey (as per his F5 and K5R SSDs) has taken taken turn class A as being 1-10 = 1 and 11-16 = 2 instead of 1-9 = 1 and 10-16 = 2 as you might expect... I have retained this on the Britannian Cadet Ship for the sake of consistency, But I personally think it's questionable...
Regardless, I quite like this SSD, though I'm really not convinced that it's balanced, what with it having so many weapons (even with the usual Britannian limitations) and being based on a 155 BPV ship where most Cadet designs are based on ~120 BPV ships...
Once again, I mostly used parts from Grey's SSDs, along with the (cropped, resized, recoloured and slightly altered) nose section from my scan of the Britannian CA SSD. It has the usual array of cadet functions and could also use the Britannian disruptor-holding system (note that I haven't noted this on the SSD because the full-size Britannian SSDs don't note it either).
Overall, I think it isn't bad, but what about you?
Note: I haven't decided which SSD to make next, though the Frax, Qaris and Flivvers are all strong contenders...
John, glad to see somebody having fun with that old project of mine. Looking forward to your next ship.
...Mister Gray! Hah! Wow... it's an honour to meet you, sir! So you're the one who made that ultra-cute Cadet B-10 SSD, huh? I have to say, I got a real kick out of that... It's like a hand-puppet version of Cthulhu, sort of like SFB's ultimate badass monster reduced to a chibi parody of itself, I love it! And indeed, when I get done with the C4 races, you can bet that I'll be making a Cadet K10R!
Not only that, but your appearance in this thread has inspired me to build another SSD before I actually planned to! You said you were looking forward to my next ship, mister Gray? Well wait no longer, because here's the Frax Cadet Cruiser!
http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb6/CaptainTrek/FraxCadetShip.jpg
Oh yeah, I think this one's fantastic! I love how I was able to retain the phaser-3s and the little out-riggers of its larger counterpart while still keeping the design relatively balanced, allowing this ship to retain all of the unique Frax flavour (one could even uprate the phaser-3s to AFDs if one was feeling sassy or sadistic enough)... I also particularly like what I did with the hull boxes...
Originally, I put all six in a two-by-three row down the centreline, but this made the centreline too long, with what I ultimately changed it too perfectly balancing the sides with the centreline AND giving me an excuse to give the ship the usual Frax outriggers (as the PH-3s wouldn't have fitted without them), quite the stroke of brilliance on my part, if I do say so myself...
Once I capped the ship with the (again heavily modified) nose-cone from my scan of the Frax CA, the rest was easy, though I'm not entirely happy with the way my "X" in the word "Frax" turned out...
But that's a minor quibble... Overall, I think this is a great little Cadet Ship, but what about you?
John, try the X from this SSD: http://www.jgray-sfb.com/SSDs/Frax/FxDWT.gif
And call me Jeremy! Only my Sailor's call me Mr. Gray.
If I'm not mistaken, isn't Cadet scale roughly equivalent to Fleet Scale in Federation Commander?
If so, the Frax Ship Cards from CL40 and that issue's Supplemental file might be a useful point of comparison...
...unless, of course, you've already thought of that!
"And call me Jeremy! Only my Sailor's call me Mr. Gray."
Thankyou, Jeremy... That X is nice, but the reason my X is the way it is is that I wanted to create a character of equal width to the other characters... Obviously, the X in that SSD doesn't fit that bill... Ah well, it's not critical...
"If I'm not mistaken, isn't Cadet scale roughly equivalent to Fleet Scale in Federation Commander?
If so, the Frax Ship Cards from CL40 and that issue's Supplemental file might be a useful point of comparison...
...unless, of course, you've already thought of that!"
Actually, no, I don't have those cards... But not having Federation Commander, I wouldn't know about that anyway...
If it helps, CL40 Supplemental is here, and the Ship Card for the BCH is at this link.
(The CA, CW and DD were in CL40 proper, and I think some of the subs are in the new CL41; I'm waiting for both to arrive in the mail, though.)
not exactly, the "fleet scale" were born from the cadet ships but there are several(?) little differences i do believe.(correct me if i'm wrong)
"not exactly, the "fleet scale" were born from the cadet ships but there are several(?) little differences i do believe.(correct me if I'm wrong)"
Well one of the things I do immediately notice is that the "fleet scale" units have a different movement cost to the "squadron scale" (I.E. Identical to SFB) ones, whereas Cadet Cruisers are designed to have a movement cost of one (I.E. The same as the larger ship it represents). Also note that some systems that aren't in the Cadet Game (most notably tractors) are in FedCom's Fleet Scale.
Well, regardless, here it is, Qari T27 Cadet Cruiser...
http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb6/CaptainTrek/QariCadetShip.jpg
Now, this one was a PAIN to put together... I had trouble with laying out the interior part of the SSD (I.E. The part inside the ship's outline), trouble putting the turret together, trouble deciding how I was going to set the weapons up and trouble making up the the Kinetic Cannon's firing table.
Ultimately though, I got what I consider to be a very pleasing result, creating a ship that contains virtually everything that makes the Qari heavy cruiser different from its peers on a cadet-sized SSD... In case your wondering, T-27 was the designation of a class of 1930s Soviet tankette, which I thought would make a perfect class-name for this design.
Naturally, the ship uses the relatively complex Qari turret and turret-armour rules and really, what cadet is going to want to learn to use those before he moves on to full-sized SSDs... But for those who just want to play around with the cadet designs, there she is, and pretty well-balanced from what I can tell, too... She trades having any fixed rear-firing PH-1s for retaining her drone rack, but is otherwise similar to the Qari CA in terms of weapons layout.
Again, this one was a real challenge, but I'm ultimately VERY pleased with the result... Now please, do feel free to tell me what you really think of these designs. If there's something wrong with the way I'm putting these Cadet Ships together, I want to know about it.
Note: You might think the Flivver Cadet Ship would be next up, given that I said that it was one of the ships I was tossing up between the last couple of times, but I'm actually thinking about doing the Sharkhunter Cadet Ship next instead. But we'll see...
Alright, here's my next offering, the Barbarian Cadet Ship...
http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb6/CaptainTrek/BarbarianCadetShip.jpg
Yeah, I know I said I'd do the Sharkhunter one next and I know I keep changing my mind, but hey, I would've had to make the Barbarian one eventually anyway, right?
Regardless, I think that I did very in well putting this design together, but I also think that it is significantly overpowered, having two NWOs in addition to the (relatively) standard Cadet Cruiser array of 6 x hull, 2 x battery, 2 x shuttle, 2 x APR (assuming the Power Option is used for this), 1 x tran, 1 x lab and 1 x bridge for its non-weapon and non-power systems. It also, unless some boxes are voided, has more weapons than most of the cadet ships it could be used to simulate, but my hands were somewhat tied in terms of how I could put this ship together, as I figured a 360 box in the centre was a necessity and the Barbarian option mount rules pretty much necessitate there being and even total number of forward and side boxes.
All this is symptomatic of the way the original Barbarian CA was designed, as not only is it actually a CC, but also represents FULLY REFITTED CC once all its options are filled. This, coupled with the limitations of both Cadet Cruiser design and the Barbarian option rules would (I think) make creating a more balanced Barbarian Cadet Cruiser very difficult indeed.
Still, there it is, and I'm definitely proud of it, even if it doesn't quite work. What do you think of it?
John, you could put some caps on certain weapon types to keep the ship from getting to overpower. What about reducing the number of hull and/or shuttles to keep durability and number of shuttles in line no matter what goes in the NWOs? If a player wants a ship with more "bulk", just put hull in the NWOs. Just throwing ideas out there...
"John, you could put some caps on certain weapon types to keep the ship from getting to overpower."
The Barbarians already have such restrictions built in... Their option boxes work differently from those of the Orions in that only one-half total of the F and L/R boxes can be heavy weapons, 360 boxes can only hold phasers, ESGs (which only take up one box on Bar ships) or drones, phaser-Gs can't be put in any mounts and must instead replace two pre-existing PH-3s, plasma-S can only take up half of the ship's quota of heavy weapons and plasma-R takes two boxes and uses up the ship's quota of plas-S (meaning a regular (non-cadet) CA could mount a plas-R and two plas-F to simulate a KE, or two S and two F to simulate a K7R, but couldn't mount an R and two S or four S).
Also note that the weapon arcs change depending on what weapon is installed:
Opt-F become FA for all weapons, except for plasmas which become FP, though this would likely have to be cut back to FA on the cadet ship anyway, as swivel's aren't in the Cadet's Game.
Opt-L becomes LS for phasers, L + LF for heavy weapons and LP for plasma (again, could be cut back to fixed L + LF arc for cadets).
Opt-R becomes RS for phasers, R + RF for heavies and RP for plasma (see above).
However, this still means that, for instance, if you follow the C4 manual's suggested guidelines for simulating a Fed ship out of a Barbarian ship (by using phots in the nose, phasers in the wings and phasers or drones in the centre), then my Fedified Barbarian Cadet Cruser would have two photons, three PH-1s, two PH-3s and a drone, or two photons, four PH-1s and two PH-3s making it significantly stronger than its Federation counterpart in either case. However, Barbarian ships are designed such that anything less than two nose, two wing and one centre weapon option just wouldn't work properly...
As for your suggestion, the reason I didn't do any of that is because that, even without the NWOs, the regular Barbarian CA isn't short of batteries, shuttles or hull (it is only short of APRs) and I figured I should probably reflect that, though ultimately it is probably the only way to balance the ship a little more, so I may eventually come back to the ship and make some cutbacks...
John, the regular Barbarian CA can mount an R-torp too. That doesn't mean the ship would be at all balanced against the other cadet cruisers if that was carried into the cadet game. LDR ships have 2-4 side gatlings...I'd argue any cadet ship with more than one gatling would be flat broken.
I'd advise using the full size ships as a guide, but don't get slaved to them. Cadet ships need to "play nice" against each other, even if their big brothers are not equal.
It's not that I'm slaved to the Bar CA's design (I'd have no problem with removing a shuttle and a hull box) so much as that I'm pretty much slaved to the way Bar option mounts work... Again, without the mounts layed out the way I have them now, you end up having to play all sorts of funny-buggers in order to simulate anything...
For example, if you remove the centre mount, how do you simulate the Klingon Cadet Battlecruiser with its drone rack? What would you do, only mount one disruptor? And if you removed a forward mount, even if you allowed two out of the three remaining forward and side mounts to be heavy weapons, you'd still have to mount them in Deltan/Orion style L+LF and R+RF mounts, creating (if you used phots and phasers) a ship that looks more like the Headmaster than it does the Federation Cadet Cruser....
As for the gattlings, the Bar cadet ship can, in fact, only mount one as it currently stands because, as I said, Bar option mounts, as per their own rules in module C4, can't mount gattlings and one gattling replaces two already existing PH-3s... I'm not sure if you could mount two more PH-3s in your option mounts and declare them to be another PH-G, but the rules don't seem to imply that you can...
I suppose I have two choices for bringing the ship into line:
1: Remove the side PH-3s and declare that the Bar cadet ship could mount a gattling in its centre option mount (and ONLY in its centre mount), forming an exception to the normal Barbarian option rules.
2: Remove the forward PH-1. I'm actually more fond of this option because I wouldn't then have to form an exception to the usual Barbarian gattling rules...
Both of these would be in addition to removing a shuttle and a hull box in order to balance the ship's total number of non-weapon and non-power boxes.
John, I like option 2.
Well, I may redo the Barbarian Cadet Ship SSD later, but for the moment, here's the Triaxian one...
http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb6/CaptainTrek/TriaxianCadetShip.jpg
This one's a little bit "gimped", I think, because it can't use the swivel-plasma firing arcs (which don't exist within the Cadet's Game) for its phasers and plasmas. I'm also not sure whether it could use HEDCs (I'd imagine that it would depend on whether the Cadet's Game has HETs and I'm not sure whether or not it does) and if it can't, then the ship is pretty much rendered useless. I suppose I could have put PH-3s out beyond the warp engines (in LF + L, RF + R and RA arcs) for balance, but there you are... I've never quite understood the Triaxian fight and I think that shows here...
Oh well, I still enjoyed putting it together. The result isn't entirely aesthetically pleasing either, but I suppose you can't win them all... What do you think?