In the Company Weblog, you discussed an upcoming R1M and I'm curious.

My best WAG is that it will have Empire/Race specific SSDs for things like Stellar Fortresses, Sector Bases, Light Monitors, and the like; units which, in their descriptions, have charts saying what's in various weapon mounts (much like the StarBase, Battlestation, and Base Station, which had Empire/Race specific SSDs in Module R1).

Is this WAG close? If so, I'm looking forward to it already.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, October 19, 2021 - 06:42 pm: Edit

R1 Master Spaceship Book. Like all MSSBs it will not have any SSDs. A book of empire specific base SSDs (or one such book per empire) sounds interesting. I will mention it to Jean and Steve Petrick

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Tuesday, October 19, 2021 - 07:22 pm: Edit

Steve, they do - covering info like the specific weapons used in the numbered mounts by that empire, fighter tables, empire-specific refit info, etc.

To spitball a bit, I'm not sure if there is enough bases to make a book-per-empire viable, unless filled out with some additional things like auxiliaries, a clean collection of fighter squadrons of the major types operated by that empire (which are oft scattered around various products), etc. Though something like that as a counterless product, like say "R1.6 Gorn Bases and Support Units" would be something I'd happily collect.

As for a single book, MB to OPB to BS/BSC to BATS to STB to SB to STF times the nine major F&E powers (those with starbases) is 81 pages right there (including the second page for the SB and STF), even before getting to the empires that only operated up to BATS/STB or X versions of anything.

As such a product is a convenience item, I'd propose also including the SSDs of all the augmentation modules.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, October 19, 2021 - 07:42 pm: Edit

That would be the choice.

Book of base SSDs for all empires
Book of AuxV SSDs for all empires
Book of AuxP SSDs for all empires
Book of AuxG SSDs for all empires
Book of other SSDs for all empires
Etc.

All of the Fed R1 stuff
All of the Klingon R1 Stuff.
All of the Romulan R1 stuff.
Etc.

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Tuesday, October 19, 2021 - 07:47 pm: Edit

Broken down like, that, I'd certainly put my support in the by empire - that way someone who only plays Gorn, for example, just gets the one that has all the material relevant to them, rather than a punch of stuff for every other empire (and I consider this different from modules that include stuff for everyone, as those are new stuff for everyone and thus useful to the Gorn only player as knowledge on their opponents).

I suppose the question may come down to which makes SPP grumble less

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Tuesday, October 19, 2021 - 07:55 pm: Edit

Oh! Master StarShip book for units used by all races!

TOOOTALLY different from my WAG!

(HOWEVER, it too is something that'll find a happy spot on my bookshelves )

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Wednesday, October 20, 2021 - 08:36 am: Edit

I think the SSD books should be by empire.

And yes I'd probably get them all.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, October 20, 2021 - 02:51 pm: Edit

There has to be a name for the syndrome in which someone asks "could you do X?" and we start discussing how to do it until somebody says "Wait, you already did it." As usual, I just assumed that if somebody asked for X, they must have done an exhaustive search to prove that X did not already exist.

The Module R1 SSD book reprinted in 1992 (29 years ago) already has the empire-specific Starbase, Battle Station, and Base station for Feds-thru-ISC.

In theory we could do an SSD book with the empire-specific Stellar Fortress, Sector Base, and Mobile Base for Feds-thru-ISC.

Then we could do a book of empire-specific SSDs for all six bases for R14-R19 (assuming those do not already exist in the books for various modules).

As for empire-specific SSD book for generic units, that runs afoul of the fact that many of those exist in various products. For example, most of the empire-specific aux carriers are in J and have been for decades. We have long since rejected the idea of doing empire-specific books of SSDs that already exist in other books.

So I don't see any there here.

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Wednesday, October 20, 2021 - 03:10 pm: Edit

I'll take the fall for that - Jeff's original post/WAG was specifically about for the newer bases/units added since R1 and explicitly cites the existing empire-specific SB/BTS/BS SSDs in that product. My apologies for glossing over that and getting ahead of things!

That said, his guess of essentially an R1 extension for appropriate units with just generic SSDs published since R1 is of interest to me at least.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, October 20, 2021 - 03:26 pm: Edit

More my fault, Alex. I read his message three times and just misread it every time.

I can see the two books I mentioned (the other three bases for all 19 empires, the three basic bases for the post-ISC ones) but not a complete set of empire-specific generic SSD books due to the policy on not duplicating existing SSDs.

I really do not know how many generic ships (e.g., jumbo auxes) which do not have a full set of empire-specific SSDs and doubt the sale potential of such products.

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Wednesday, October 20, 2021 - 06:19 pm: Edit

Hmmm, if the sector base is combined with the fortress, then the off page could be four hanger modules and two PF modules with the empire fighters and PFs (F111s for the Feds) ...

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Thursday, October 21, 2021 - 12:59 am: Edit

Well, some ships/bases with generic SSDs and a chart detailing the specific weapons include the Stellar Fortress, Sector Base, Light Monitor, Small Auxiliary Cruiser, Large Auxiliary Cruiser, and Heavy Auxiliary Cruiser. Six units per empire.

Also, there're the heavy versions of Auxiliary Carriers, PFTs, and SCSes; the ones with the additional pods that make them the size of ore carriers.

On that subject, while I don't see any real value of them*, were there ever Q-ships built on ore carrier hulls?

(* My opinion**, but I've always imagined ore carriers hauling high volume, low value commodities, such as ores, that pirates would see as too poor of a return for the efforts they'd need to wrangle those behemoths.)

(** I could be wrong... )

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Thursday, October 21, 2021 - 07:13 pm: Edit

Then there's also the X-base version (though only the Hydrans have X-fighters for their BAM page ...

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Sunday, October 24, 2021 - 09:22 am: Edit

That information is in the master starship books for the empires in the General Units section. Those books start with R1.1 and go through R1.95 The general units section contains types of weapons that go into each generic weapon (W-?) slot/position.

Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Kzinti, Gorn, Tholian, Hydran, Lyran and LDR have been published.