Now now.......there may have been extenuating circumstances.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 - 01:51 pm: Edit

Yes.

As any viewer of South Park knows, you have to say "It's coming right at us!

By Jonathan McDermott (Caraig) on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 - 04:41 pm: Edit

It was dark out.... =)

Looking over the battle disk idea, though, it strikes me that it might be possible to still mount a disk on a secondary hull, or even the triple nacelles of an NCA since the nacelles attach along the spine at, above and below, the impulse deck. Presumablly, the battle disk is thicker (much like the bubbles on a Gorn DDX.) While it might not be the Fed 'style' to carry concealed weapons (must... resist... joke urge...!) there might be other rather nifty things to do with this. It might be just the thing that an NCA "scout carrier" variant could use.

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 - 04:54 pm: Edit

Well if any Fed ship is going to carry these "Battle Disks" it has to be a Cruiser.

I mean, look at it.

The Battle Disks are in the saucer (of course)

You hold it with your hand at the neck between the Saucer and aft section.

Push the little "bridge button" on top.

And out they shoot.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 - 05:16 pm: Edit

Heres a sick idea. What about a Stardrive that fits two of these together. In battle the disks separate and the Stardrive beats feet. THe Stardrive has no weapons. It has Warp, impulse, bridge, four hull, a transporter and some shields. Also a minimum Sensor/Scanner/DamCon/Excess tracks. This assumes that the BD engines aren't built for long haul travel.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 - 07:09 pm: Edit

Or you could mount them on a center hull like Quari turrets.

Hmmmm...A joint Fed/Gorn development project...

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 - 07:10 pm: Edit

I think the Battle Disk is a full fleged starship. Not designed to be carried by anything.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 - 07:23 pm: Edit

I know that is Roberts intention. But the idea was not that they were carried by anything. More this is a semi-independant secondary hull. All put together you would have something like a Fed CA with two saucers (one on top of the other).

Just a querky idea to toss out there is all.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 - 10:28 pm: Edit

Loren: Are you suggesting a "Battle Rider" Al la Traveler(TM)?

IIRC the Battle rider had 6 or 8 battle ships that only had combat (or manuver) drive systems, the mother ship had the support , barracks and star drive sections so that the battle squadron could go into battle unburdened by the "unnecessary systems"

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 - 10:31 pm: Edit

Actually...(evil grin)...if you put two battle disk(s) on a cruiser mounted on the 2ndary hull under the Jeffrey's tubes beneath the warp nacelles, it would look like a Fed cruiser with training wheels.

(Drop and roll out of the room hoping no one will assign extra booth time!)

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 - 10:33 pm: Edit

Jeff.......

(opens door and expect Jeff to do the right thing)

(secretly hits button for security if he chooses the cowards way out)

By Donovan A Willett (Ravenhull) on Thursday, May 01, 2003 - 06:13 am: Edit

Hey Robert, now that this thread is getting somewhat closer to being on topic, I'm here to divert it once more for just a second. What program are you using for your SSDs? I've been wanting to do my own, but didn't have a good program, and now that I have a copy of Captain's Log 1, I want to update the Jughead SSD.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Thursday, May 01, 2003 - 06:37 am: Edit

He uses regualr old MS Paint

By Donovan A Willett (Ravenhull) on Thursday, May 01, 2003 - 06:47 am: Edit

Got more talent and patience than me then... lol

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, May 01, 2003 - 09:32 am: Edit

Ok...shucks, (kicks carpet sullenly) if I have to, (takes the booth time like a man or Klingon is supposed to)...

You know (is heard from inside the booth, faintly) of you took eight battle disks mounted on the Fed secondary hull four to a side, and could mount some sort of bogy drive you could then put treads on the (ZAP!!!!) mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, Mary had a little lamb...(drops down to faint whisper interupted by sounds of uncontrollable twiches.)

By Marcin Radzikowski (Marcin) on Thursday, May 01, 2003 - 12:58 pm: Edit

I've used SSDPrint written by Donald Miller. His site, http://www.smileylich.com/sfb/index.html, besides having close to 2000 SSDs of his design, has some software for drawing SSDs easily. Keep in mind that this software was designed for DOS...

Marcin

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Thursday, May 01, 2003 - 01:04 pm: Edit

Paint sho prodoes pretty good for me. the big thing is the grid feature that lets you keep things aligned.

By Frank Brooks (Alskdjf) on Thursday, May 01, 2003 - 01:26 pm: Edit

I use LView Pro. It works pretty well.

www.lview.com

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Thursday, May 01, 2003 - 01:45 pm: Edit

I use SSDPrint 8.0 for the basics, and then finish up, and cut/paste from the SSD's I've already gotten. I also found the SSD title font some time back, so that helps with the authentic "look".

By Tim Longacre (Timl) on Thursday, May 01, 2003 - 11:29 pm: Edit

QuickCad for me. It's quick, and easy to use. When I got what I want, the program allows me to save as in either .bmp, or .jpg what is displayed on my screen (.bmp is usually "cleaner"). I can then import to photoshop for touch-up if I need to, and to convert over to .gif. The best thing about doing it that way is that I can do just about any shape I want to very easily, efficiently, and quickly. The bad part is is that I wind up with 3 different copies of each SSD at some point in the generation process.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Friday, May 02, 2003 - 02:04 am: Edit

I like using Paintbrush. It comes with the system, is very easy to use once you get the hang of it, and lets you save as any format you like.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Friday, May 02, 2003 - 07:48 am: Edit

I'm slow at it. But I use SSD8.0, to start with. Then Paint to finish. Now that I've started building up the number of SSD's I can use a lot of cut and paste.

By Robert Cole (Zathras) on Friday, May 02, 2003 - 09:50 am: Edit

Well... I've looked at SSDPrint, and never liked it.

When I started SSDs "back in the day" I originally edited scanned-in ships.
What. A. Mess.

The SSDs provided in the Touney / Star Fleet Times section are truly the greatest asset to SSD drawing. They have everything you need... box size, text type, many of the ship outlines, etc. They formed the core of my SSD collection.

Originally I converted those SSDs to .bmp for editing. About 6 months after starting, I learned that when MS Office was installed, it added filters to Paint to handle .jpg, .gif, etc. While I don't have MS Office, I was able to find the filters online (once I knew what to look for).

So that's all I use now.

P.S.: For those who would like to learn how to install the filters for MS Paint, go here. Item 6 on that page has the filters, and the instructions. Note: The article does have you edit your registry, and I advise you to be very, very careful if you do this.

⁴²

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, May 02, 2003 - 10:00 am: Edit

Just out of curiosity...what would the F&E factors for a battle disk be?

Are we looking at a frigate with Compot of '5'? or is it closer to a wardestroyer with a factor of '6'?

(and would there be a leader version or must they use an actual flag ship of a differnt class?)

By Robert Cole (Zathras) on Friday, May 02, 2003 - 10:00 am: Edit

Back on topic though.

Some mentioned above that a Battle Disk might be mounted on a secondary hull or battle drive or somesuch.

Last night (I had a few free moments) I made up a Fed DND - that is a Fed DNG with a disk mounted on into the saucer.
The ship looked goofy, and (with a little work), I was able to get every DNG saucer system onto the disk except 6 hull boxes.
Personally, I don't the Disk would make a good saucer replacement.
Not only is it slightly "weaker" (less hull means damage hurts more - just ask the Klinks), but this Saucer had 2 photons, 6 AWR, and 2 BATT in the Wings - which means these are not available while flying Turn Mode D. To get full weapons and energy, the DND would have Turn Mode E.
For a line ship, I'd rather have a regular saucer.

⁴²