And only one surgeon and trauma nurse.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, January 04, 2018 - 03:55 pm: Edit

For what it is worth, I do not think an "APH" works in the scale of SFB.

Situation #1 is a planet that is not large enough to have adequate medical care. It would not be cost effective to have enough ships of the proposed type running around to full fill that need. Obviously planets with adequate medical care do not themselves need such a ship.

Situation #2 is a commando cruiser conducting or participating in a raid. Such a ship is by definition designed to handle its casualties. There is no value in further burdening the mission with such a ship as the proposed.

Situation #3 is a large scale planetary assault where the troop ships (troop freighters) are being brought up and extensive ground combat is anticipated. Frankly, if you are bringing up the troop ships, your staffers will have probably also made sure the assault support echelon includes a hospital freighter or two, and again there is no need for this ship as proposed.

Situation #4 is that important political figure who needs to be transported, perhaps along with members of his family. And I am sorry, but a regular ship is more likely to be available and moving the appropriate medical supplies aboard easier than arranging for one of a small handful (at best) of the proposed APH to be called up to the do job.

All of which in turn means the design proposed is quite simply not economical in the game background, and nothing more than a target in the game and you can use a standard APT for that.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Thursday, January 04, 2018 - 07:57 pm: Edit

Jeff: Plus two combat medics. But I will re-visit the issue. Maybe I can cut bodies from Boarding Parties (if SPP will let me) or from Damage Control (if SPP will let me) or from someplace else and open a slot of another nurse or junior doctor. Or you can use Command Points to buy additional crew to make a larger medical staff.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, January 04, 2018 - 11:55 pm: Edit

Garth, good point. Each boarding party should have a combat medic. In an emergency, shouldn't trained personnel be able to assist?

By Michael Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 12:16 am: Edit

I think SPP has it right.

BUT, I think the more likely case is that a PLAGUE hits a world/ station and a response is needed.

Which is why I'd suggest a specialist pod (half space?) for medical labs & vaccine synthesis...

Usually it just sits there moored to a convenient rock (with a small caretaker staff) near a big planet with a medical community (a research medical school in other words). When needed it gets staffed up by the university, grabbed by the next available tug/ freighter and toted to the scene.

So half sized? 5 hull, 1 works/ factory/ whatever, 5 transporter (because you'll have to send the serum to all kinds of places, 1 shuttle and 1 apr (so it can operate without a ship attached). Crew 10?

Alternately, a "double thick" skid. 4 hull, 1 works/factory/ whatever, and a couple transporters.

Hmm?

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 02:11 am: Edit

I would make it a full-sized pod and put in an impulse engine box or two so that it can adjust its orbit as needed.

While it is a neat idea there probably is no need to make up an SSD for it. In a scenario Just use a starliner pod, say it is loaded with fewer crew and more medical equipment in the hull boxes, and call it a day.

That would make sense for the emergency plan. The fleet stores starliner pods at key positions and, if there is an emergency, quickly loads it with whatever specialists are needed with their equipment (plans in place to make this quick), and carts it off. It could handle a medical emergency, be loaded with scientists for some strange planetary phenomena, filled with disaster relief experts for a crisis or whatever for any kind of planetary situation requiring more personnel.

By Michael Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 04:15 am: Edit

OK, but I think SPP & SVC need to opine on HOW MUCH Machinery it takes to synthesize tens/ hundreds/ thousands of doses.

A plague has 3 basic issues:
Determine WHAT is the problem
Determine HOW to cure it
Get the cure Distributed.

So yeah, a legendary doctor can diagnose a plague that has killed off all the adults... But getting the cure to everyone would be hard if the population is dispersed.

And legendary doctors are rare.

And this kind of thing is probably in every empire. A pod or skid equivalent would be the cheapest way. And I would GUESS that engines are pretty expensive to build and maintain.

By wayne douglas power (Wayne) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 06:59 am: Edit

(R1.68K) Medical Skid, or a Hospital Module (R1.32E) perhaps.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 08:48 am: Edit

The Federation proposed to assign FEM destroyer variant at each star base ( not known how many actually built, never more than three active at same time.) is it reasonable that all empires maintain a empire owned Medical Skid and/or Hospital Module at each Star base in the event of an emergency? (Personnel assigned from the crew of same star base the Skid or Module was stored at?)

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 09:39 am: Edit

Garth,

I'd say each boarding party has someone cross-trained as a Combat Lifesaver.

It's what we do today, a rifle platoon only has one actual medic, but each squad is has one or more (if not all) who have gone through the Combat Lifesaver course so they can start IVs, perform CPR, among other stuff. Also everyone has basic first aid skills continually taught.

Same with the damage control personnel. They'd be taught some advanced first aid/first responder level in order to stabilize/triage people they find in damaged areas of the ship.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 10:17 am: Edit

Just a short rebuttal to SPPs point about the proposed APH (hospital ship variant of the APT.)

In the case of the Federation, I have no doubt that SPP is correct. No other empire built hospital ships on warship hulls, relying instead, on freighter hull hospital ships.

The one issue not addressed by SPP was speed of response in special circumstances:

Plague/pandemic: on major or minor worlds, with functioning medical establishments, as noted by SPP would have no need of a specialized APH. Prison worlds, lower technology worlds with high populations, devastated worlds (war time or local catastrophe such as meteor strike or unexpected volcanic or tectonic upheavals could disable or cripple a planets medical capacity) all would require specialized assistance.

Internal threats to public health:religious, political or cultural strife all could totally or partially compromise a cultures ability to administer medical assistance. A.k.a riots. Our own modern world has been afflicted with cases where a group feels oppressed respond with public displays. The watts riots in the 1960's, ferguson mo. Fall of communism in the 1990's. Public order disrupted, to the point that existing public services were disrupted(not just medical, local government fire safety, police etc. we're effected.)

Having the ability to dispatch some help in the form of a small relatively fast ship could be the difference between huge loss of life and a minor inconvenience.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 10:36 am: Edit

I would put engines on the pod in any case. Without them it would have to be carefully placed in orbit and left there. It could not adjust its orbit if needed and if there was an emergency of any sort it would be helpless unless something with a tractor beam shows up.

There is also the question of whether a pod can operate independently without engines. I am guessing not. Empires do not leave carrier pods in place as stationary fighter bases.

It would also need more than one APR. I am not sure if it would get free life support but it would need active fire control to use the transporters plus whatever power you need for the transporters.

If a vaccine or cure were to require a lot of processing to create most likely they would analyze the problem, send the data off to a planet that can take care of creating it, and have it rushed to the scene by whatever fast ship can be diverted.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 11:28 am: Edit

One more issue to consider: what to do in the event of migration of sentint beings. We are in a time when immigrants are leaving their native countries for a host of reasons. (Economic, war, pestilence man made famines etc.)

Star fleet battles could experience that same thing.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 11:41 am: Edit

The major Empires almost certainly encourage migration and colonization already. The infrastructure and equipment is already around to move people around.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 12:31 pm: Edit

Jeff Wile:

Because the size of an APT makes "Speed of Response" irrelevant.

As noted before, it is not cost effective to maintain a bunch of specialized APTs for the mission. Just running the ship NORMALLY without putting undue stress on the crew (who are ship crew, not doctors or nurses or what all). Yes, a minimum crew of one crew unit can operate the ship, but that is putting a lot of stress on that one crew unit to keep everything on THE SHIP operational and is not a big help to the medical personnel if they are collapsing from lack of sleep while trying to keep the ship operational. So you are dividing about five crew units between scientists trying to figure out the "plague" and doctors and nurses trying to render care to the 'infected" all while themselves trying not to become exhausted and ineffective (and worse making a mistake and becoming infected themselves).

In short, and again, the ship is TOO SMALL for the mission you are suggesting.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 01:14 pm: Edit

An APT and an FT are the same speed, and the FT can land, so the FT is a better fit for a flying trauma ward. I have no doubt that the bog standard APT can be used to haul transporter-delivered casualties to some other facility, but then so could any other ship. I have no doubt that it is done both ways (doctors come to event, patients go to doctor) and when an event happens you use whatever is available and maybe both. I had some training for mass casualty events in the military (never saw one for real) and the answer was that you'd use whatever was available. We studied some real mass casualty events and in some cases it was purely random chance if a given patient went to hospital A or hospital B if both were within a few minutes. It was rare that the situation was non-chaotic enough for someone to say "this guy can stand the 45 minute drive so he goes to Hospital A while that guy is really bad and gets the 10 minute ride to hospital B." The point was that the triage guy on the scene would not likely know that Hospital B was overloaded and the patient would get faster help at Hospital A that is farther away. More likely, this would be handled not by the triage guy but by the ambulance dispatch guy who just got a phone call from Hospital B saying 'we have all we can handle'.

As far as the mission which Marc and SPP are debating, SPP is right, it is unlikely that there is a dedicated medical APT just sitting next to a hospital waiting for "the call" at which point it grabs a dozen doctors/nurses and heads for the scene. More likely, a bog standard APT or FT or FedX or POL or whatever picks up some medical people and a pre-positioned pallet of cots and medical supplies. I can see the pallet of cots and medical supplies waiting for the call in a warehouse, not an APT-MED.

And anyway, in game terms, whatever ship you use is just a target with no SSD difference.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 02:18 pm: Edit

APH, hospital ship variant proposal not viable.

Any other suggestions for a APH? We know the type S silo missile rules are not workable so the type S drone option was already discredited.

What ever happened to the "stretched" APT? Is there a proposed "Heavy" APT? Perhaps an unpublished proposal?

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 02:21 pm: Edit

Not that I am aware of, and I am unsure how such a ship would fill any niche not already filled (and better filled) by the Free Trader.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 02:23 pm: Edit

One of the most fun times I had was sitting down with a friend running an Emergency Management course (basically kids looking for FEMA jobs) and coming up with and plotting out scenarios for them to hypothetically deal with both in tests and in a real time simulation. It is amazing how easy it is to create chaos at all levels of leadership.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 02:38 pm: Edit

One idea might be a kind of Q-ship variant designed to deal with a pirate or maybe a small raider.

APTs are hard to catch but the plunder is supposedly worth it so it might work as bait. The question is if the ship is big enough to mount enough hidden weapons to at least bloody the nose of a pirate.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 03:06 pm: Edit

Jon Murdock:

You might see the ship description of the Free Trader Q-ship, a design that essentially failed, for why an APT Q-ship would also fail, but be worse in that (due to its small size) the annoyed pirates would be unlikely to let it survive after it revealed itself.

Basically Q-ships work because they cannot "escape." (That "escape" part means that your typical freighter will be caught by the Orion at close range, where the Q-ship can then unmask its guns at that close range.)


So running at high speed to get away is not an option (small freighter maximum speed is 13 if it uses all warp and its impulse engine, a large freighter tops out at 17 in the same case). But APTs and Free Traders (and Federation Expresses) can all disengage by acceleration, and once they see an Orion are going to start running to do just that. If they do not, then the Orion will know "something is up." It is very hard to convince the Orion that your ship capable of rapid acceleration is not doing so because you just happen to be having engine trouble when the Orion showed up so that he would get close to you.

To work, a Q-ship has to not just look like the ship (harmless merchant) it is pretending to be, it has to act like the ship it is pretending to be. The small size of an APT pretty much means you have just the five cargo boxes to install weapons and the power to use them in terms of volume, and that is not enough to do more than annoy a Light Raider.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 03:16 pm: Edit

I am guessing it was the lack of punch that nixed that design too.

I have got it. A Q-Ship APT with hidden mine racks loaded with NSMs. When it spots a pirate it pretends to run and the pirate pursues and crashes into a few NSMs. You put on a few hidden rear firing weapons to hit the pirate afterwards, hopefully on a downed shield. Then you disengage by acceleration while taunting the
damaged/crippled pirate.

Too silly?

Okay, how about we rig the ship with explosives a la a suicide freighter and crash it into the pirate ship as it surrenders. Have the crew hop in shuttles to escape before impact.

Oh, that leads to another idea. Death-Rider skiffs. For that pre-PF pirate defense. Load the skiffs up as death riders to scare off pirates. Brilliant.....

Also, we could..........

*Xenocide is shot with a tranq dart and is quietly pulled away*

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 03:20 pm: Edit

A reminder.

The problem with Q-ships in the game that most people miss is that if the scenario set up says there is a Q-ship, the Orion (or raider if not Orion) is going to be aware and wary of it (if the Q-ship is not already revealed in the scenario, i.e., is operating openly as an auxiliary in one side's forces).

In reality, any given scenario involving an attack on a convoy should literally simply have some chance that one of the freighters is a Q-ship, and for a large convoy maybe more than one. But typically if there is a "convoy" present, the "convoy player" should take a deck of cards, including the joker, and after shuffling them randomly deal two cards. If one of the cards is the joker, there is a Q-ship, and if the other card is red, it is a small Q-ship, if black, a large Q-ship. The cards are revealed to the Orion/Raider player after the game. The point being that raiding a convoy is a risky business and there should be some uncertainty about whether or not a Q-ship is present.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 03:25 pm: Edit

Jon Murdock:

Having, myself, a little experience with being a pirate, and having during that time encountered "Romulan Q-ships," and having been very, very notorious as the leader of a merchant guild in the 1980s that was infamous for fitting the freighters of his guild with mines, and (long story) basically sitting here today as a result of running into an NSM left my Lyran ship by a Hydran ship, I can assure you that one of the things I learned was to never, ever, directly follow the path of a ship I am pursuing, and to be very, very careful about where I cross such a ship's path when it turns.

That is one of the reasons I lived to be a very old pirate (and to have a large bounty placed upon the head of my merchant guild by the Cartels).

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Friday, January 05, 2018 - 03:30 pm: Edit

I agree and, to some extent, prefer that kind of a scenario. I am toying with running a pirate cartel campaign with a group of players with rules something like that. The problem is that many of the scenarios will end up being pretty dull. Working on solutions for that.

Ideally it should not make too much difference as a cagey pirate would treat every attack as a potential Q-ship but there are some things you would risk if you were unsure that you would not risk if you were sure such as transporting aboard the ship.

Most published scenarios involving Q-ships that I have read either have a random chance for a Q-ship or start the scenario immediately after the Q-ship has revealed itself.