THE TREATY OF ORIOMBA
There are always discussions of alternative timelines, but none of them generate enough interest to result in a product. Everybody wants us to publish them, but everybody only wants us to publish they idea they had.
Alternative timelines usually stem from a single event. In one case, this was an Klingon decision to not sell warp technology to the Romulans, leaving them sublight only. The Klingons could not conquer them with the Tholians in the way, while the Federation and Gorns were just not interested in conquering anybody.
Enter the Orions, according to Gary Carney. He theorized that the Orions are all about profit, and would be more than willing to sell the Romulans just about anything and let the Federation worry about the resulting war. Orion designs would replace the Kestrels. Gary proposed a number of interesting ship designs blending Orion stealthy ship designs with Romulan Veiling (improved to cloaking) devices, replacing the Hawk-series ships with something entirely different. As interesting as it was, the market for it was very small, and it would take a lot of work to develop the full range of SSDs needed to run the Romulan Empire. There really isn’t any reason not to do an SSD book of this alternative timeline, but it would take the same amount of work as doing SFB Module R13 and would find only 10% as many customers waiting to buy it. If one of you guys who whips up very good SSDs at the drop of a hat wants to create this, we’ll put it on the PDF store and give you (and Gary) a slice of the proceeds.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, June 08, 2009 - 08:38 pm: Edit

Hi.


Over in the New Romulans thread, there's been a general discussion regarding what kind of tactical warp options the Romulan Star Empire might (or might not) go with, in a timeline where the Treaty of Smarba wouldn't happen.


One of the thoughts I offered there recently seemed like something I wanted to try and run over, without tripping over the kind of work that has already been done in that thread - so here it is.


Essentially, one idea I had - the one I wanted to extrapolate upon here - was that perhaps one of the Orion cartels in Imperial space essentially made a similar kind of offer to the Romulans that the Cluster Cartel made with the Usurper's government in the WYN Cluster.

In this case, one idea I had in another idea was that one of the historical Cartels (Cirentus-Ta) owed part of its General War-era name to a House Cirentus - a House which presumably would have seen its fortunes rise and fall, before falling victim to one of the innumerable power plays on Romulus. Its survivors, fleeing to the Orion pirates, would gradually try to build up its power base over time.

While I had other ideas for the historical 'House Cirentus' - ideas I hope to get around to before too long - perhaps in this alternate reality, Cirentus, in the wake of the debacle of Y154, went to make an offer the Praetor couldn't refuse.


Essentially, in exchange for immunity for actions taken within Imperial space, Cirentus would both offer Orion tactical warp technology, as well as the construction of Orion-hull 'OR' vessels for the Empire's use, while essentially operating with 'letters of marque' as privateers in Gorn, Federation and later ISC space.


While this timeline's equivalent of the KD4 might be some upgraded L-versions of some older YCRs, the main type of vessel constructed for the Navy would be a series of WYN-Orion-esque ships (no engine doubling or suicide bomb, but with a cloak) to fill the role that KRs would have done for the historical Empire.

(Indeed, maybe a ship as large as the DN could eventually be commissioned, as a Romulan-Orion substitute for the K9R - even without engine doubling, it would be a powerful unit.)

In this case, the Romulan-Orion hulls would still be limited to phasers and plasma torpedoes for their option mounts - in keeping with their tactical doctrine (in-universe) and to to stop them weapon-sloshing (from a game standpoint).


At the same time, the kind of tactical warp upgrades given to the Eagle series could be given in light of the Orion technology derived from Cirentus.

Rather than the nacelle-mounted weapons on Klingon ships, maybe warp-powered Eagles had wing mounts, or perhaps introduced a greater degree of flexibility in the weapon mounts on the main hull itself?

(There would still be 'a' King Eagle - since the Romulans had plenty of Kingbirds to upgrade... but the ship so called would look quite different to the post-Smarba KE does.)


Eventually, as was seen with the historical Hawk series, the Romulans of this timeline would want to try and move away from refitted armour-clads, and Orion-hull warships, towards a true new-generation range of ships.

So, perhaps the ships these Romulans built were more like the WYN fish ships, in terms of inspiration?


They would not have the Klingon engines, drones or disruptors, or associated systems, and be tailored more towards plasma torpedo operation - so engines aside, would not necessarily look like a fish ship on the outside.

(So long as there was a design which was suitably Romulan while echoing the Orion influence, it would work.)

These ships would then become the foundation of the Star Empire's new navy.


And eventually, X-conversions of all three classes of ships could be worked in, too.


Does any of this sound interesting?

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Sunday, June 14, 2009 - 12:22 am: Edit

I was looking at a few examples of WYN-Orion conversions, and at Orion hulls which, in the historical timeline, never actually got built, but could be theoretically be options for an Orion-influenced Romulan Star Navy.


And as it happens, the Orion CVA and SCS in R7 happen to have Romulan fighters on the SSD already!


How handy.


So, I was thinking of the SCS as a basis for a theoretical experiment.

I'm guessing that conversion-wise, the Romulans might keep the option of taking OAKDISC, for any ships they wished to equip with plasma racks - though would not necessarily be universally-adopted.

The engine doubling would likely go (for all Romulan-Orion ships and gunboats) as would the suicide bomb - but would the Roms bother with adopting NSMs?

The cloaks would stay, of course, as would the stealth coating.


However, I wonder what would happen to those option mounts. I'd still limit the Romulan use of weapons to phasers and plasma torps, so no drones, disruptors or any such 'foreign' weapons.

Even so, would a Romulan-Orion SCS have, say, three Pl-S filling its prow option mounts, or maybe two Pl-S and two Pl-Fs, or maybe one Pl-S, two Pl-F and two more phaser-1s?

Or would it be likely that the Romulans would keep their options open, and keep swapping in and out weapon configurations the way a Sparrowhawk might plug modules in and out?

(Also, what would go in the mounts of Romulan-Orion Buccaneer gunboats?)


And how much of a BPW discount, if any, would/should there be to account for the loss of engine doubling?