Yeah, I know, I know, this one's so unnecessary that it doesn't even count as an "obvious variant", but damnit, I didn't care if ADB already had a dozen of these on file... I WANTED to make a Deltan Dreadnought, so here it is...

http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb6/CaptainTrek/HadesDreadnought.gif

I built this using the SSDs and SSD Toolkits created by Mike West. As you can probably tell, I wanted to use only the weapons already on the Huslter and Hellhound designs, hence the Hades has 4 ADD racks. I did seriously consider adding regular drone racks, but ultimately decided against it.

The design itself, as you can probably tell, is essentially that of a stretched Hustler. I didn't want to change the basic Deltan shape, so I effectively had to choose between either lengthening or widening the Hustler's hull (I did, however, build the Hades completely from scratch, starting by building up what would ultimately become the ship's left wing and going from there, pasting the completed outline onto one of West's dreadnought SSDs and cutting, moving and fiddling around until I was happy with it) and I wound up deciding that it would be better to lengthen as widening would force me to shrink the ship's boxes (ala the B10) in order to make all of the information tables fit.

Aside from that, the Hades has the usual Deltan features, including the unique photon firing arcs, LS/RS phaser-3s (indeed, I may have given the ship too many of those), the uniquely Deltan arrangement of the shuttle and tractor boxes and slightly more warp (48) than a ship it's size would normally have (45, just as the Hustler has 32 warp instead of 30).

Now, I personally consider this SSD to be by far my greatest accomplishment to date as far as SSD design is concerned (I simply love how clean it is, and some of the little details like the way I arranged the four FX phaser-1 boxes never fails to put a smile on my face whenever I look at the SSD again), but there are a couple of things that I wasn't (and am still) unsure about:

1: The breakdown rating: I figured the Hustler's impressive breakdown rating was to compensate for its poor manoeuvrability, and figured I'd duplicate that on the Hades by allowing it to make its first HET with no chance of breaking down, but I'm really not sure whether or not a rating of 4-6 would have been more balanced.

2: The turn mode of "5" at all speeds. This may render the ship's manoeuvrability simply too poor for the ship to be of much use, particularly as some races's dreadnoughts (Fed DNG in particular) are known for having the same turn mode as the respective CA. I definitely think a hypothetical Deltan Battleship (Hyperion?) would want to have a turn mode of "5" at all speeds though.

3: The phaser-3 batteries. Eight may be too many. It might be better to have six and eight on the battleship.

4: The low number of crew units. This was a reflection of the Hustler's low number of crew units when compared with other CAs, but I fear I may have taken it too far.

However, given that I'm still very much a rookie when it comes to SSD design, I think I'll let you guys be the judges...

So, what do you think?

By Jim Pennington (Cutlass) on Sunday, January 23, 2011 - 10:11 am: Edit

Looks good to me, I wouldn't change anything.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Sunday, January 23, 2011 - 06:27 pm: Edit

John Swift:

You might want to look at the power curve a little. I am not certain. I know the Deltan CA and CW had more power than non-Deltan CAs and CWs, but eleven points more than a Klingon C8 might ("might") be a tad much.

In any case, ADB's design for the Deltan Dreadnought was in Module P6. It mounted nine phase-1s, four phaser-3s, and two ADDs (and, yes, had four points less power, but all of the reduction compared to your ship was impulse). We retained the "4" at all speeds turn mode.

By John Swift (Sirbroadsword) on Monday, January 24, 2011 - 06:24 am: Edit

Oh? I didn't know a "Module P6" even existed. Thanks for letting me know...

And yeah, I guess I didn't really think the "eight impulse boxes" thing through all that well, huh?

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, January 24, 2011 - 01:54 pm: Edit

John Swift:

We did playtest modules (Modules P1 through Module P6) in the 1990s. Some went on to be published products, or parts of published products (Module P4 for example became in essence Module M, parts of Module P6 were published in Module Y1 and other parts in Module F2, Module P2 became Module X1, and so on). Module P6 was "The Galactic Smorgasbord", and included ships for the simulator empires, as well as a new simulator empire (the "Hispaniolans", an enemy for the Britanians).

Module P6 was a 64 page book and, as noted, much of it is obsolete. We have a PDF of it, and if you ask Leanna (sales@starfleetgames.com) she may be willing to sell you a part of the book with just the Simulator ships and their rules (about 30 pages, including about 6.5 pages of rules and ship descriptions and 23.5 pages of SSDs).

As to the impulse thing, I was not saying you were wrong or that we were right (maybe the ship does need the extra power), just that there is a lot of thought that goes into a ship design. Part of that is consideration of the opposition. The reality is that no one wants to be in a situation where they will automatically lose, and finding the right balance to make an interesting battle is difficult, and a lot harder than just making an outline and filling it with systems. After all, you gave your version both more power and more weapons, but a poorer turn mode, we had less power and fewer weapons, but retained the turn mode (not just on the larger dreadnought, but we did not improve it on the DW or FF either, which SSDs were also in Module P6).

Remember, as noted, everything in Module P6 at the time it was published was "playtest material", and effectively the Frax (X-ships), Flivver, Britanian, Canadi'en, Deltan, and Hispaniolan ships (and the Hispaniolan rules and Frax X-technology rules) are still in playtest and subject to change.