Subtopic	Posts		Updated
	Ken Kazinski's Scout Charts	14		08/11 11:35pm

#1: Remember the Auto-Reject list for it is Holy.

#2: There is no creativity in taking any given ship and adding a couple of boxes to it.

#3: You don't get to change rules when designing a ship. No armor that only protects engines. No way does the surplus energy from emergency deceleration get sent anywhere but the shields (you cannot use it for a tractor beam to anchor the enemy).

#4: You don't gain any wiggle room by stating that "this was an extremely limited production run".

#5: use standard engines, don't invent new ones.

#6: You cannot change turn mode without major restructuring.

#7: Some things just go with certain things and nothing else.
No big battery packs except on maulers.
No aegis except on dedicated escorts.
No fighter ready racks except on carriers and escorts.
No Gatlings on Fed ships other than carrier escorts.
No minesweeper shields on anything but a minesweeper.

#8: There is nothing wrong in proposing or requesting an "obvious variant" but you won't get designer credit for it.

#9: Certain published ships have strange features which cannot be used as a precedent for strange features on submissions. These include fighters on HDWs and aegis on Klingon D5s.

#10: Ask yourself. If we publish this, will every empire demand to have the same kind of ship? If you aren't happy with that answer, then don't propose the ship.

#11: You cannot just add another engine to a ship and little or nothing else. That won't increase move cost and ships with excess warp explode when leaving the construction dock.

#12: No repair ships on warship hulls.

#13: Do not invent new weapons as part of a ship proposal. Get them approved first.

#14:

#15:

#16: Even if a ship could be built doesn't mean the empire would build it. Or that players would pay money for it. Players tell us they do not want to pay for ships that are just targets, ships that were never built, or ships that were never even designed but just seem obvious.

#17: there is no point in one lab. A ship with no labs is treated as having one lab. Use the spot for something else.

#18: You cannot put admin shuttles on Mech links to clear space for other things. Only the Tholians use external fighter bays. (Partial exception for Fed F111s but not F101s.)

#19: Armor cannot be deleted or added.

#20 It is very dangerous to extrapolate order of battle data (including which ships were and were not built) from Fed Commander, ACTA, or Starmada. Only data from SFB is valid.The fact that ACTA and FC have battleships does not change SFB or SFU history that such things were for the most part never built.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, January 02, 2007 - 02:13 pm: Edit

And by the way, NEVER EVER post ship names and ship histories as part of a proposal. Somebody will copy them into some database and totally confuse everything. If you want to list some example missions, fine, but NEVER EVER list ship names and ship histories.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, August 28, 2010 - 07:48 pm: Edit

Ok, before somebody takes something the wrong way, let me make some things clear. This is a ramble in no particular order.

Petrick is the final authority on SFB. He consults with me, and rarely I will "strongly advise" him to do something, or tell him "this is what it's going to be in FC, so deal with it." He's even been known to overrule me and change one of MY designs, usually after proving to me that my design was ... not well thought through.

Over the years, I have held and stated various opinions on "obvious variants" (defined as a standard variant, e.g., a carrier, of a hull that hasn't had that variant before. In this case, a carrier variant of a KD4R). Sometimes I have said that you should design if it you are submitting it (Petrick will change/fix what he thinks best) and sometimes I have said "In the case of an obvious variant, just convince us that the ship could/should/would exist and we will design it." I am anything but consistent.

I am not sure you all grasp whether Mister Grafton's comment is telling Petrick to design it, or noting that at some future point Petrick might overrule whatever Mister Grafton says today. The second case is certainly what he meant, since Petrick's "current time" is spent designing the ships that Steve Cole tells him to design. If you guys think that Steve Petrick is going to drop working on Y3 (which comes out in 3 weeks) and work on a ship you just happened to propose which may or may not get published in some future book next year or three years later, you have another think coming. Mister Grafton has been around the block and obviously meant the "later review" option, but I don't want anybody thinking that the "Petrick drops everything to respond to random becks and random calls" is the way things work.

As it happens, Petrick did mention this to my while I was eating leftover pizza, and indicated that "those old hulls are really small and I doubt I could get any useful number of fighters into that thing". One might perhaps assume that the Romulans might use such a ship, even with a non-useful number of fighters, for training or perhaps even as a convoy escort, although that hardly makes it a "must print" ship.

Anyway, I just wanted to be sure that you all knew what Mister Grafton was saying ("Petrick may change it if this ship is ever selected") and not "Petrick will surely come by in the next few minutes with a finished and fully tested design." Of course, perhaps Mister Grafton was saying "For now, let's just convince him that the idea is publishable, and in a few months or years, when SVC greenligts putting this into R15 or something, Petrick will do the real design."

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, September 06, 2007 - 01:51 pm: Edit

I recall a recent discussion (within the last year) where SPP commented that replacing fusions with phasers was a no go. I think it was in my Barbarian thread. Maybe it was SVC.

Anyway, I don't think you get a BCH with all fusions replaced by phasers.