Archive through June 16, 2021
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB General Discussions:
Archive through June 16, 2021
I would be cool if that spreadsheet ALso has a listof all referenes to every ship known in the fiction & scenarios. So something like in service Y 122, fought over adernang... converted.... known to be destroyed...
SVC - One can but dream! 
Patrick - I have no doubt people have done their own (and I’m already brainstorming how I might set up for myself) but a publicly accessible one feels like it crosses the line from “fan created resource that doesn’t tread on ADB’s toes” like expanded ToC pages for the MSSBs to duplicating a lot of the core value of an ADB product (Module G3) - if not outright becoming a copyright concern.
The real root of it is that SFB is very large with a LOT of detailed information, and just about every person (myself included) has their own ideas about what would be the best ways to access, reference, and filter that info.
You can't copyright numbers and page references.
I think that crowdsourcing a reference that people can use to get more value out of their ADB products would be a win for everyone.
Just make SVC or someone else at the company a co-owner of it so they retain control of it.
Which is to say that I wouldn't do a project like this out of copyright concerns but out of 'not being a dick' concerns.
Even without copyright issues if ADB didn't want it done then that would settle it but I think that if it is something that ADB controls then it is a win for everyone
One created by fans for the specific purpose of being an index to the MSSB (i.e., not including all of the MSC data) would not be a concern. We'd made a space for it somewhere on the website.
SVC, is it ok if we start a topic on here for people that want to work on this project to coordinate together on it? Zac and I are getting started with the LDR MSSB first as it is the shortest/easiest, so that will be the best one to hammer out our methodology.
Sure
ALL, I sent a OLD DRAFT version of what I think you are discussing to SVC for his review.
With his permission I can share it further, but I want him to say yeah or nay before I do more.
Basically an excel spreadsheet with a tab for each empire, Categories for each ship class (gosh know how to group them).
Row along the top with years.
So an entry might be
Fed Cruisers.
Agincourt YIS in the relevant box, SH XXX in the relevant box, heavily damaged SH XXX in the relevant box, converted to CD in the relevant box, known to be destroyed in the relevant box...
That's not at all what Zac and I, at least, have been discussing. What we want to see and will do to help that happen is an expanded, detailed Table of Contents for each of the Master Starship Books - on much the same level of an SSD Book TOC where each ship rule number has an entry and page reference.
There's been discussion around that of similar ways to tabulate ships, such as linear YIS sort of all of an empire's ships.
Mike, I read your suggestion as a tongue-in-cheek, playful dig at us talking about the varied ways of sorting an grouping this information. It does make sense in that once fully-done and thence forth updated as things are published, it would be a very useful too. But it would be so much work - essentially a SFB concordance of the ships of SFB. Way beyond the scope of what any of us have been discussing and kicking about, I am sure.
Is this something along the lines that you want?
http://starfleetgames.com/documents/Index_of_FMSSB-D.pdf
Jean, not what I had directly in mind but also a very useful reference to have! We can that format one and make them for the others
Alex, Mike...I shared with you two a google sheet that I made a few years ago. I have no idea if it is useful. But thought you might be amused at least.
I got it. On another tack than what I was doing.
I was more into tracking INDIVIDUAL ships, so you could say, "D7 IKV Kitten Slayer? Yeah that was commissioned in Y 169, Fought in the battle of Sherpa Sherpa (SH 12345) in Y170, converted to a D7C (per CL 62) in Y174, Heavily damaged in Y 178 (SH 3456), recommissioned as a D7L in Y179 and spent the rest of her career as the personal ship of the Ambassador to Lyrtan and the WYN cluster (per CL 78). Last mention is in CL 2546 and SH 4567 as existing until Y181...
Yeah. I did try doing that for a while.
There's a tab in that spreadsheet called "Klingon Construction Schedule" where I tried to track the names of ships and the year they were built.
But it ended up being a LOT of work, and the sheet was just a hobby.
I'd also love a list of all known ships, the year they were launched, what scenarios they were in, and their ultimate fate. These statistics for warships fascinate me when I read them on Wikipedia.
That's one of those that would be a great tool for stuff like "I want to write a class history article" or even just designing historical scenarios to make sure you aren't tripping over ships not yet built or already destroyed or such - but yeah, it would be a MASSIVE undertaking!
*Which is to say that I wouldn't do a project like this out of copyright concerns but out of 'not being a dick' concerns.
Even without copyright issues if ADB didn't want it done then that would settle it but I think that if it is something that ADB controls then it is a win for everyone"
My thoughts exactly. I've got several home brew play aids I use, one of which is extremely in depth. I don't know if it violates copyright or not because I've never bothered to research. It steps on toes regardless of laws. That's not something I'm comfortable doing.
Democratus, exactly. Hopefully SVC will give the idea of having this crowdsourced and open to all. An excel spreadsheet would do the trick on Google Docs.
If nothing else it would making tracking ships a lot easier for the fiction...
This full ship-tracking project sounds like a pay-for product, in fact it sounds like Module MO#3, Captain's Starship Registry.
I like the idea of an electronic document one can zoom in like the Mandelbrot Set; it's the MSSB TOC at the lowest level of detail, at the highest it hyperlinks to Class Histories, if written.
Thinking of paper or PDF-based products, I'd say the minimum would be ordered by Empire and type or variant, include the standard nomenclature, rule number (R module it's in,) standard abbreviation, abbreviation used on the F&E counter, which I believe is sometimes more abbreviated, and class ship or reporting name. In short, any reference someone might run across and say, "the what?" Also include deprecated names such as the Orion Drug Runner. I want to include nicknames sucj as "frignaut" for the F-6 and Federation Battle Frigate, but wonder about "Lollipop" and "Griswold Frying Pan" for the Franz Joseph Destroyer I guess so. Also "Franz Joseph ship" is a descriptor.
The next step in complexity is a fleet builder or scenario builder list, ordered in two ways: by YIS or, as Alendrel says, variant: all the scouts, do you want it built on a destroyer, war cruiser, or heavy cruiser hull? (or take a PFT?) PFTs listed twice, casual carriers separated from true carriers -- useful to pull out the escort info from the ship description? Other useful info: YIS, production status from conjectural to full production, BPV (at the risk of creating another Crawford Box, would this list be a more useful tool with BPV adjustment info, such as number of drones to multiply by speed upgrades, number of fighters, etc?) Command Rating, and that's all I can think of. In the ship list ordered by YIS, the lines of data are occasionally interrupted by notes of the Kzinti C-12 refit, or the Lyran power pack; not quite a repeat of the technology timwline, as it's broken up by empire.
I am all for some kind of index of the MSSB.
These other things (e.g., Grafton's project) seem much more grandiose than that. I am not at all interested in seeing that worked on.
We already have a more than adequate document to track ships for fiction. It's been on line for a decade.
Are R4T and R4J on the store? I'm not seeing them, just the countersheets.
Shawn, they are still “Early Access” PDFs on Warehouse23/Wargame Vault/DriveThru. From SVC’s updates, R4T is pretty close to being finalized for print release but there’s no specific time frame as yet.
The Computer I did those products on died. The new computer that the products has moved to has problems formatting the files. A lot of the graphics are distorted, and the Fighter and Escorts tables for the carriers have screwed up the formatting (no dividing lines for the years, no column lines dividing escorts from fighters), and has put alll of the fighters into a single column with the result that the page count is off (because the fighter table has only one (1) fighter type per entry). There were not that many "fixes" from the original publication (has list of changes is on page #5 of the Tholian book). Module R4T is good to go once we can fix the glitch. The people who sold us the new computer think they can fix the computer to do what we want done. We have tried moving the file from my computer to different computers, but apparently the formatting problem follows the computer files.
Yay technology!
The latest issue of Hailing Frequencies has dropped one of the first things that caught my eye was the FC ship card for the Federation Attack Cruiser. While an FC ship, I am bringing it up here as I figure the SFB side will have the deeper knowledge to draw on - mainly: has there been an SSD for this published somewhere I have overlooked, or is this the first time this ship has appeared anywhere?
It feels like something along the lines of the Rom KillerHawk, super-heavy cruisers for other empires. I’m guessing this will be one of the major new classes featured in R13 - mayhaps as an alternate path to X-technology (entirely spitballing).