Any update on Y4 ever being a reality?

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Thursday, August 27, 2015 - 11:50 am: Edit

Apparently not.

Really, Y1-Y3 have already covered 95% of what most people would want. That means that Y4 will need to either cover a lot of esoterica, or have a ton of brand new stuff. (Which might still be esoterica.) So, Y4 could end up being a long time in coming.

For conquests, the list forgot the Peladine by the Lyrans.

As a general comment, please, no more sublight ships outside the Romulans. I am sure no one wants to deal with a ship that moves one hex a turn while everything else moves 16. We are forced to with Romulans, but it is completely unnecessary for anyone else. Please, no.

(If you are really asking for more W-era ships based on sublight ships, eh, sure. Whatever. Just no actual sublight ships, please.)

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Thursday, August 27, 2015 - 12:02 pm: Edit

Well, the post up-thread on October 5, 2012 really covers the basics for what it could include. Don't think anything has really changed since then. Basically the Vudar, Tellarites, and Borak of races we 'already have' (noting that the Borak don't really have any of their interesting toys in this period) that have Early-era ships not in the game so far. And then a handful of ships 'missing' from many of the races we do have.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Thursday, August 27, 2015 - 12:57 pm: Edit

I'd still wonder if the Martian National Guard might make for an interesting set of hulls, too. Perhaps as an early sign of independent Mars' burgeoning industrial capacity.

(Unless they are simply said to purchase and operate Terran hull types instead. But then, they might wish to at least attempt to build their own hulls instead, if only to highlight their distinctiveness from Earth.)

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Thursday, August 27, 2015 - 01:09 pm: Edit

Yup, I think Mars was in the Oct 5 post. (Myself, I'd like to see a couple W-conversions from their own unique sublight designs, however would also be happy just starting with the same sublight ships that Earth was using and "upgrading them" to W-ships in a different way. Maybe more phasers instead of photon torpedoes or something...)

I think the think I'd most like to see in Y4 fits along those lines - more examples that everyone didn't get everything right, finding the "optimum design" for a particular technology set, the very first try.

IE., things like the (real world) late-pre-Dreadnought attempts at mixing heavy caliber weapons (the Tellarites would be a good place for mixing photon torpedoes and some kind of plasma bolt, for example - imagine a ship with one of each...). The idea of Romulan sublight ships that COULDN'T be refit to W-technology or Y-technology, at all. etc.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Thursday, August 27, 2015 - 01:14 pm: Edit

Considering that the Martians were making some of the Terran ships (i.e. the WDD), I doubt they would have their own hull designs.

Really, having the Vudar, Tellarites, Borak, Peladine, and "missing" ships, is a pretty good start. We probably ought to make sure that isn't too many ships already before making whole new groups of ships that no one thought of before.

(Unless the new ships are awesome. Martian retreads are not awesome. Those are filler. Come up with something awesome for Y4, and I bet it suddenly becomes relevant.)

By Michael Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, August 28, 2015 - 12:47 am: Edit

I'd like to see some of the "really minor empires" in a future module Y4.

So the ships of someone the Kzinti overran or the Klinks.

heck, you could easily have over a dozen minor single planet navies, each with 2 or 3 ships. That got zorked when they met a REAL empire.

For instance: Some implacably aggressive race that was "removed from space" by the early Federation.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, August 28, 2015 - 02:31 am: Edit

Well, there are a few candidates from GURPS Federation which could fit the "protective quarantine" bill - notably at Yeney'vn and Vereb IV.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Friday, August 28, 2015 - 01:00 pm: Edit

I think, at the scale of SFB (who ever thought they'd run into a situations where SFB was too high scale), these guys would be running little more than shuttlecraft.

IE., no worthwhile energy allocation, definitely sublight or very-low-warp, no EW that would stand up to 'modern' sensors, etc. It might make an amusing one-page sheet of a few different configurations of speed-1 through speed-4 "fighters" with a variety of ineffective weapons (WTLs, nuclear missiles, maybe an occasional phased-2 or phased-3 on a heavy unit) for these guys*, and I'd enjoy the R0.0 section that gets written for ideas to use them, but I really can't imagine more effort than that going into the 'REALLY minor' guys.

* IE., like maybe the Vudar took their few Y-tech ships to lead the bulk of their navy (W-tech) and whatever nearby 'VERY minor' stragglers they could find in an effort to confront a 'modern' Klingon fleet. That sort of combination of forces would make sense, indeed almost be required, in the hoped-for 'conquest of a minor power' mini-campaign. 'Asymmetrical warfare' sort of thing.

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Friday, August 28, 2015 - 03:27 pm: Edit

Well, my personal opinion that Y4 could focus on the Tellarites and the "almost-wars" that happened in the early Federation.

Could also focus on the 1st Fed-Kzinti War.

But yeah, for the love of God no more sublight stuff.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Friday, August 28, 2015 - 05:02 pm: Edit

Harrumph! SOME sublight stuff! But, yeah, very little. Two or three Romulan ships of some variety seem inevitable (I like the idea of oddly configured ships that never could not be refitted to warp, ever), a single sheet of general-use sublight freights for the Romulans and Paravians to hunt, and that single-sheet of the sublight-to-low warp 'fighters' representing the navies of the super-minor-powers. So we'd be looking at, say, 4 or 5 pages tops - and most of that Romulans.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Saturday, August 29, 2015 - 01:27 am: Edit

I was more under the impression that the Yeney had large enough ships to maintain their pocket empire - one which would likely be much bigger were the Feds not around to keep tabs on them.

Plus, there has been a suggestion of clandestine Orion dealings with the Yeney, which admittedly has been hampered by the latter's extreme xenophobia. Still, that might offer the potential of a multi-sided scenario; perhaps based around Orion attempts to run the Star Fleet blockade of the Yeney star systems.


As for the Wasp People, my reading was that their starship hulls were dangerous enough to pose an existential threat to a host of Federation colonies in their region of space, and large enough to enable them to cart their victims back to Vereb IV.

(On a side note, I wonder if the Wasp People might make for an interesting "monster" in Star Fleet Marines terms, should that game system ever go into more detail on ground combat in the Early Years. Imagine a Wasp People raiding force swooping down to try and "harvest" a humanoid colony, with a desperate action being held by Marine or militia forces attempting to drive them off...)

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Saturday, August 29, 2015 - 02:40 am: Edit

IMHO, that can be accomplished well enough with 'fighters'. Imagine a general-purpose 'experimental warp swarm' fighter that had:
- 2x LSR
- Speed 3 (Warp 1.5)
- Hull of 6
- Crew of 12 (doesn't really matter for a fighter, though, outside of the R-section notes)

A planet with the equivalent of a million (say) of these XWS fighter would be plenty annoying for the nascent Federation to establish a permanent quarantine around, without ever bothering to risk an invasion. After all, a fighter can only stray so far from its homeworld without a carrier... and even "true" carriers (with no combat capability of their own) are easy to destroy for the major empires of this period.

And that's along the lines of what I'm suggesting for the one-sheet of "fighters" representing the SUPER-minor powers. Heck, you could even field a "super battleship" that way - pride of some banana-Republic dictator - along the lines of...

- 8x Nuclear Missile (rails)
- Speed 1 (Warp 1)
- 3x LSR
- 6x FLSR
- Hull of 12
- Crew of 400

Worthy of a *cough* FLEET FLAGSHIP OF THE REPUBLIC OF LEEBYA! *cough*...

...and, etc. That this is as fragile as a 'fighter' to more developed empires is really not relevant to the capability's of this example of a single-planet system. It's the best they can do, representing their entire planetary GDP for years (that might have been better used feeding their populating instead of rattling their sabers at their neighbors, the terrible EMPIRE OF AYBEEL!!).

A single sheet of some (say, half-dozen) variant designs along those lines would be a great way to represent the options available to the dozens of SUPER minor planetary systems that may have been out there before the major empires fully established their borders defined by their warp-powered navies. It'd be a great way to REALLY fill out the galaxy, every last nook and cranny, with back-story and detail... without calling for hundreds of pages of product.

And, every now and then, they could be interesting as pawns in someone else's power play (Vudar resisting the Klingon... with minor power 'help', Borak resisting the Lyrans...with minor power 'help', etc)

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Saturday, August 29, 2015 - 02:43 am: Edit

"As for the Wasp People, my reading was that their starship hulls were dangerous enough to pose an existential threat to a host of Federation colonies in their region of space, and large enough to enable them to cart their victims back to Vereb IV."

I don't have GPD but the name sorta gives it away. And if the xeno's were raiding Fed colonies, sorry, but I can only see Star Fleet nuking them back to the early Stone Age. To paraphrase, the Prime Directive is many things, but it isn't a suicide pact.
At the very least Star Fleet would interdict their system and make it a Red Zone, to use Traveller terms.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Saturday, August 29, 2015 - 02:54 am: Edit

...sort of continuing my previous post....

I think the hangup some folks have with this 'fighter sheet' idea that I'd floated a few times is that idea that all 'big ships' must have a regular SSD, yet there is really nothing about the system that requires that.

Who says that you can't have a crew of 500, on a 300 meter-long ship... that fills out no EAF, has no labs or tractor beams or transporters or shuttles or shields, only a couple WTLs of both scales, and is destroyed by 10 points of damage?

To the planet that built it, it may well be a majestic super-dreadnought, pride of their planet's might, and surrounding by squadrons of 'cruisers' (crew 200, can take 6 points of damage) and 'destroyers' (crew 50, can take 4 points of damage). Heck, the resulting fleet could even fight interesting (quick, too, if resolved in regular SFB) 'epic battles' with their similarly-equipped neighbors...

...and still, the lot of them, be swatted so easily out of the sky that they hardly warrant their own section in any product.

And since there are almost certainly HUNDREDS of such worlds... I suggest taking advantage of the scale shift down and generalize their ships into a variety of options (that can fit on a single sheet of paper) and just use those.

As noted, it gives miles and miles of value... for very little paper. It's pretty easy, then, to say "The Wasp People used the light 'fighters' of X, Y, and Z type as their gunboats, frigates, and destroyers while never deploying anything larger" while the next paragraph notes "Use the light 'fighters' of Z type for the Yeney corvettes, with the medium 'fighters' of M type as their cruisers, and the A type and B type heavy 'fighters' as their battleships. The Yeney also built a singular super-heavy dreadnought named the 'Dat Sawut' - use single unit 1 for this craft*"

(*throwing two one-off fighter SSDs in the corner for the utterly-super-ridiculously-over-massive banana-republic super-death-ships... of 14 or 16 points or whatever)

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Saturday, August 29, 2015 - 03:11 am: Edit

"Who says that you can't have a crew of 500, on a 300 meter-long ship... that fills out no EAF, has no labs or tractor beams or transporters or shuttles or shields, only a couple WTLs of both scales, and is destroyed by 10 points of damage?"

Sounds ok to me, but Petrick is the guy you have to convince.

I would call the concept Generic Low-Tech Starships, or something like that, and open a new topic thread for it.

Many monsters are a good example for this (Doomsday Machine, Death Probe, etc).

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Saturday, August 29, 2015 - 03:24 am: Edit

Right, exactly, 'generic low-tech starship' is probably the way to go with it. Or, I guess, borrow a page from Franz Joseph and refer to them as 'spaceships' (as I recall, the key distinguishing factor was between a ship designed to 'travel into space' vs 'travel between the stars')? Something along those lines.

And, heck, thinking of how those would appear to bridge officers on a regular navy ship... they'd probably not bother referring to them by the class the source planet identifies them by so much as how much of a threat they are. Possibly just referencing their estimated structural strength.

IE., some 9-box variant identified as "Captain, a Class-9 Spaceship approaching..."

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Saturday, August 29, 2015 - 12:49 pm: Edit

Thinking through some of the implications of there, where it would intersect with other rules...

Presumably, these would need to have a 'size class' and 'move cost' annotated on them for purpose of interactions with other rules where those things matter. No EAF, here, though, so the annotation would really be just for interaction with other units.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Saturday, August 29, 2015 - 06:22 pm: Edit

The Prime Directive, as it exists in the SFU, is primarily focused on planets with "pre-warp" populations. It is not used to direct Federation policy towards independent warp-capable species in UFP space.

Some of those species, like the Korlivilar-esque Bis'en (in hex 2806), are on friendly terms with the Federation, even if they refrain from going so far as to request Federation membership. A recent issue of Captain's Log took a more detailed look at Bisalia - that world's home fleet is effectively comprised of older hulls imported from the Federation.

Other species, such as the red-skinned Dunkar-like Yeney (in hex 3108) and the insectoid Wasp People (in hex 2903), are placed under a separate "Protective Quarantine" category - not to keep them safe from everyone else, but to keep the rest of known space safe from them. (The infamous Talos Star Group was added to this category, after a certain incident took place in Y142.)

The Wasp People had allegedly used their "primitive warp-powered starships" to raid a host nearby colony worlds over the course of several decades, until Star Feet realized what has happening and established an interdiction around their home star system in Y119. While there was no support on the Federation Council for proposals to bombard Vereb IV from orbit, neither has there been the will to try and go in and rescue any humanoids who may yet be kept as livestock there.

As for the Yeney, they possess non-tactical warp drive and have colonized four star systems in the vicinity of their home system. While the Federation has been willing to leave them to the words they have claimed thus far, they continue to bar them from further access to space.

The main difference between these two quarantine cases is that, for whatever reason, the Wasp People cannot be communicated with (so far as the Federation has been aware), whereas the Yeney simply refuse to negotiate with outsiders. (Even the Orions have struggled to deal with the extreme Yeney xenophobia, which in turn has hampered the Yeney's own efforts to advance their own technological base.)

I'd be curious as to what the Klingons and Dunkars might have made of the Yeney, had the Empire succeeded in conquering the Federation. I'd imagine the Deep Space Fleet would have been far more likely to glass Vereb IV at the first sign of trouble, however.

-----

So far as actual starships go, I'd not be too quick to give the Wasp People scaled-down unit types - for one thing, the concept of "fighters-as-frigates" (and "gunboats-as-destroyers") has already been adopted by the bee-like Hivers over in the Omega Octant, whose ship classes are two sizes smaller than "normal" across the board.

(Hiver Barb fighters are mostly treated as fighters in terms of SFB game rules, but list a number of details and exceptions in order to represent their being closer to miniaturized starships in practice.)

It would be interesting to give them only a certain sub-set of W- and/or Y-era technologies for their raiding ships. Perhaps they use transporters but not tractor beams, for example. Or, rather than beaming down from orbit, all of their ships could be designed to land on planets directly, so as to facilitate the scooping up of humanoid "livestock". So rather than having any "line" warships as other empires might consider them, their primary hull types could be more akin to, say, Orion Slavers and Vikings.


Yeney ships might be more "normal" as sublight hulls go, but there are examples where even non-tactical warp ships have been designed in different ways. Perhaps the Yeney use shields but not armour, or have some sort of primitive direct-fire weapon (akin to the "quantum blasters" the Paravians are said to have used prior to adopting the "warp-class" quantum cannon) instead of atomic missiles.

Or perhaps someone at Star Fleet Academy may have conjured up a postulated set of warp-capable Yeney ships, perhaps inspired by the rumours of clandestine Orion contact? For their part, I doubt Star Fleet would be willing to assume that the Yeney would remain at the same technology level forever, even if the latter's intransigence acts to work against them in this matter.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Saturday, August 29, 2015 - 07:33 pm: Edit

I think the aversion many folks have against "more sublight units" is that having to take the time to manage an EAF for a unit only going speed 1...is a bit uninspiring.

Indeed, so uninteresting that it creates a bit of a strong reaction any time the possibility of more sublight units are discussed.

I think that would be one of the advantages of 'scaling them down' a bit to just using fighter rules. Firstly, it makes them just that extra bit more vulnerable to help highlight the difference in capability between these 'spaceships' and 'proper starships'. But it also VASTLY reduces necessary record-keeping for them, allowing far more units on the table, which in turn could make them actually interesting (and not simultaneously tedious) to fly.

IE., I don't think anyone is going to be willing to buy a Module Y4 with even 4 pages of it dedicated to 4 more sublight ships for various Yeney ship classes, so they can play glacially-plotted turn after glacially-plotted turn of a 7 or 8 ships on the map. A single sheet, though, of a half-dozen different types of "generic low technology spaceships", ...that you could easily manage 20 on the table at once and need no recordkeeping to support it... now we're talking. IMHO, anyway, I think that's the only real possibility for these "SUPER minor power" to show up in a way that gets them into the game, flying and fighting in space, but at the same time keeps them as something interesting and different.

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Saturday, August 29, 2015 - 10:14 pm: Edit

I think the problem with sublight ships is not EA management but rather their one-dimensional playstyle. Sublight ships have so few options that scenarios with them tend to be more like puzzles or dice contests.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Saturday, August 29, 2015 - 10:27 pm: Edit

If the "historical" Yeney as currently presented weren't a good fit for a potential Module Y4, and if a "revision of the data tapes" didn't allow them to adopt some form of tactical warp drive at some point (outside of the simulators, at least), that might leave them with two options: to do some conjectural warp-powered Yeney anyway (which may not be all that attractive), or to perhaps bump the concept of the Yeney over to some future "sub-light" system (which might work better in a different game system outright, as opposed to trying to re-do the "Module Q" concept in SFB proper.)


That said, the Wasp People might still make for a viable warp-powered opponent - or perhaps as a "monster" of sorts. Aside from Space Boars, we don't really have a wide range of Early Years monsters. So maybe these bugs could be treated as that sort of "encounter", rather than as a regular faction. (That might tie into a potential Star Fleet Marines scenario, which could take over in the event that the Wasp People make planetfall on a target colony world.)

By Michael Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Saturday, August 29, 2015 - 11:08 pm: Edit

Actually, a set of speed one ships that use a more FC/ Hiver tiny ship/ etc dynamic might be acceptable.

But I was proposing more Early Tqactical Warp "empires/ races" like first terran ships.

So they might be speed 6 in combat, but they'd be lacking in reserves. So the Kzinti just mobilized a dozen hulls and crushed them... Same with the Lyrans/ Klingons/ Hydrans/ etc.

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Sunday, August 30, 2015 - 10:22 am: Edit

If all the ships are sublight, module Q does provide more tacticle options.

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Sunday, August 30, 2015 - 12:09 pm: Edit

But there is no Module Q.