I was just suggesting a potential variant for the APT, I'm not lobbying for it or anything. Just presenting an idea. I can definitely see SPPs points, as usual. A few things I would throw into this at this point are...

The SFU makes extensive use of freighter conversions for needs like this, and I would imagine that they would have an AUX freighter along these lines. But freighters can't maintain fleet speed. They would be used more by civilians, or assigned locally permanently. I was envisioning such a ship that could keep up with, and move with the fleet.

I think of "Police" as civilian, and separate from the navy/marines. I don't police ships as being with the fleet/marines. I was suggesting a "MASH ship" that is a military asset capable of moving at fleet speed.

Of course, I don't know many of the minute details of SFB lore when it comes to freighters, AUX, and civilian ships. Most of that didn't even exist yet when I was truly up to speed on SFB... so I'm sure SPP will correct me yet again with a lot of stuff I don't know about the SFU;-)

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Saturday, January 06, 2018 - 01:06 pm: Edit

Jeff:

I am not following your example. Why would the police be put in charge of development assistance? If they request it wouldn't the Federation send out investigators to look into the planet and what they can legally request and need in terms of help. Do they want someone like that poking around?

In your example Jersch is an idiot. He is running a slave state and he intentionally seeks police assistance and puts a police cutter in orbit of his egregious violation of the Federation Charter and has police personnel beaming down to help develop his slave colony? Also, Jersch needs some kind of local government. The Federation Council is not going to be okay with a bunch of colonies out there with no political representation run by corporations. It might be a faked government run by the corporation but it will exist.

Police Commander Grafton has a lot of options. He can call his friend in the Federation equivalent of the FBI. He can pass the information on to Jon Murdock, the province commander. He can contact some kind of whistle blowing hotline equivalent. He is police, not military. He might be concerned for his career so he contacts Jon Murdock and says there is something very fishy going on with Jersch's organization. Unless Jon Murdock is very corrupt he starts an investigation.

Grafton could also just contact the press and quietly leak what he has learned. Reporters swarm the planet and Jersch's buddies in high political places quickly turn on him in professed outrage. If the FBI equivalent is involved they might even sniff out the ties to those politicians and they end up in prison.

Jersch might keep this going for a while if he can avoid official scrutiny but the last thing he is going to do is request a lot of traceable and question raising development assistance and he is certainly not going to want law enforcement in orbit. If that works the Federation is so corrupt it deserves to collapse.

This could make a good Prime Directive scenario if Jersch were more discreet and the characters are sent in covertly to try to dig up dirt.

In other Empires it might be different. The Klingons would look into any colony that is not producing for the Empire and would definitely be interested in sniffing out Orion connections. The Klingon Planetary Governor would have to be in on it and would not want the ISF around. The Romulans might pull it off if one or some of the Houses was profiting but other Houses would attempt to expose it to bring it down. The Gorn Hegemony and the ISC would be similar to the Federation. The Kzinti and Lyrans would only survive depending on local politics. The Hydran Guilds would probably kill off something like this as competition. The Tholians would never allow it to happen as all their off world bases contribute directly to the survival of Tholia itself or they do not exist.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, January 06, 2018 - 01:15 pm: Edit

That many of the proposed options amount to "just another target" shouldn't be a surprise.

The APT has long been recognized as the lower limit of small but full function Star ships. It has some serious challenges that SPP pointed out, many of which related to the small crew size. 5 crew units, iirc. One of which is the deck crew for manning/operating the Admin shuttle (variable, perhaps as many as 14 crewmen to as few as 5). Another is the security/boarding parties (again variable 14 as a high number and as low as 5.)

Combined, we could have as many as 28 crewmen or as few as 10 assigned to deck crews and BPs.

That leaves a APT with a "normal" crew of 5 CUs with 54 to a low of 45 crewmen. Which translates to (54-28=26) or (45-28=17) or at minimum levels, (54-10=44) or (45-10=35) or some combination.

The point is, even a lowly APT has to have enough crew to man all of the various duty stations. Others are better at this than I am, but normally you need 5 bridge officers at Weapon Status 3. You need 1 crewman to man the phaser , another to run the transporter, then gods alone know how many to run the impulse engines, the two warp necelles and warp drive, and the 5 APR units. Let's be aggressive and assume one tech at each engineering control station, or a total of 3 crewmen. Even a APT has a sick bay, so let's assume there is one med tech assigned. We haven't completed the list of SSD boxes on a APT, but right now we have required 5+1+1+3+1=11 bodies. If the deck crews need at least 5 bodies and the same with the Boarding Parties you get 11+5+5=21.

This is why (partially) SPP questioned the crew size of the APT hospital ship variant. Same issue is related to many of the proposed variants on the list.

So it's not just a question of how many targets does the game need. It's also can the ships function with the limited crew size of the vanilla APT?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, January 06, 2018 - 01:56 pm: Edit

Jon Murdock: as the game system exists, the only province level government we know about IS the province assigned police force. (Typically a Police commissioner in his police flagship (which conveniently has a battalion of riot police embarked to keep unruly miners under control) plus one police ship assigned to each sector in the province(again, typically between 4 and 7 F&E sized hex sectors).

Hobson's choice. There isn't any one else available to handle the asignment unless there is a civil bureaucracy in place.

Next, there are 1,000 useful places in each hex/sector. The fed registry has knowledge of about 2/3 of the total. Each province provides roughly 2 F&E Econ points towards the military budget f star fleet, but history tells us there are well over 187,000 locations inside the Federation that don't show up in F&E.

Now, as to Jersch's intelligence, you again missed the point. Jersch is claiming he is a tax payer, and has employed his miners legally. You would have to talk to Petrick to determine how he convinced these tech slaves to claim they are employed by Jersch.

As far as legitimate colonies go, who are you to question the legality of Orion sponsored colonies, or the make up, demographics or economic structure? Orion is a recognized major member with representatives on the Federation council, and duly elected senator in the UFP senate.

Also, even if Captain Grafton has friends (an assumption that has yet to be proved in a UFP court!) any referrals, and authorizations must be approved by the Provincial governor one Jon Murdock (if you can catch him between inspections of the Orion EPT (see rule R1.66) as he conducts his quality control checks on the certification of the Orion Slave girls morale specialists.

Also, you are in error, Federation Police are a part of star fleet, not a separate civilian paramilitary organization.

I do wonder if the press would even care about the health and safety at one Orion colony... especially if the Unionist party s generous with the bribe money...

As to the question of just how corrupt the Federation is, check out the printed scenarios where any information needed by the Pirates just happens to appear exactly when needed. May be you should direct that question to provincial governor Jon Murdock. If you can catch him between morale inspections.

As to other empires, different circumstances pertain. This one was set in the Federation.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, January 06, 2018 - 07:12 pm: Edit

Jeff said: you are in error, Federation Police are a part of star fleet, not a separate civilian paramilitary organization

No, Jeff, you are in error. SVC has long said that the Police are N-O-T part of Star Fleet.


Garth L. Getgen

SVC CONFIRMS GARTH IS CORRECT.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Saturday, January 06, 2018 - 08:10 pm: Edit

Jeff:

I admit I am a bit baffled. The idea that there is no civilian government in the Federation above the planetary level until you get to the Federation central government? I don't buy it.

You claim they are slaves brought in to run the mines and next you claim everything is all nice and legal and even the workers will not squeal? I don't deny such a pirate slave run mining operation would exist. I just have a hard time believing it is not only on record with the Federation but it willing to ask for police ships and other assistance to come in and help build it up. That is like a meth lab asking for a federal grant to come by and help them upgrade their facilities while claiming to be something else. Why would they take that risk?

There is no way that a Police Captain can only report to the one provincial governor and is stymied if that does not work. There will be other chains of command to report through.

Published scenarios do have the pirates having intel but published scenarios show unique situations, not the norm. The Orion pirates might subvert a guy in a shipping corporation who can pass on flight plans and manifests and a clerk in the planetary governor's office to report on where the output of the local mine is being kept and a starfleet officer on board the local starbase who can get you the fleet specs and an aide to a Federation Councilor might be able to redirect interest away from a hidden illegal operation. This gets them intel on what is being shipped around, locations of good planetary targets, a little intel on where the fleet is and where to avoid, and maybe some cover for a hidden operation. That makes sense. Your scenario has the Federation riddled with corruption. You have the police provincial commander, the planetary government, and multiple members of the Federation Council all in cahoots willing to risk their careers and their freedom to support a relatively small illegal mining operation. That thing had better be INCREDIBLY profitable to pay off everyone or the Federation would have to be so riddled with corruption that freedom loving Federation citizens should march into the capitol building and Starfleet HQ and kill everyone.

Also, we are way off now. Is commissioning an APH supposed to remedy this situation in some way?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, January 06, 2018 - 08:40 pm: Edit

No, an APH is off the agenda.

By Michael Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, January 07, 2018 - 12:47 am: Edit

Well, all i need is ONE of the "slaves/ servants/ workers" to tell one of my guys that he is being enslaved and I just arrest everyone in management.

IIRC, even Starfleet Captains act when "beings rights" are violated. I am sure there is a TOS episode somewhere...

And I am a POLICE Captain and not some combat knucklehead.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, January 07, 2018 - 12:42 pm: Edit

There are provincial and district (hex) governments in every empire. See the story about the Klingon naval officer sent to semi-retirement as a lieutenant governor running errands and making the rounds in a free trader.