Archive through October 07, 2002
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Prime Directive RPG: NEW KINDS OF RPG PRODUCTS:
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Archive through October 07, 2002
Jessica, notice that in my vision of the Looking Glass Universe, the Peladine also have the Carnivon's as potential enemies.
Note, the realignments I'm suggesting would require a couple of changes:
Lyrans would use Kzinti Fighters, not Klingons.
What would the Gorns do for fighters? Perhaps only one of the Gorn races purchased fighters from the Vulcans and used carriers extensively. The others could have less than cordial realtions and not use carriers at all. Or buy fightes from the Romulans, or the ISC. Just a thought...don't really have any great ideas.
Would the Romulan Republic use standard Romulan fighters, or would they use Klingon export models armed with plasma?
Do the Vulcans use Fed PFs? I think that would definately be cool.
The independant ISC races, modern Carnivons, and modern Paravians are going to need some new SSDs.
As for the rest, I think we can reflect new racial attitudes and priorities by changing the number of ships of each type produced and their YIS dates. Admittedly, doing a new MSC for the Looking Glass would be a bit tedious, it would certainly take less paper than printing new SSDs.
As for the Frax, it's just a hair-brained though. I assumed they would be sort of a Klingon puppet state. But they could easily be removed in favor of more Klingon and/or Vulcan territory.
Count me in as a strong proponant of the VSE using the FED PF(with human crews).
"The independant ISC races, modern Carnivons, and modern Paravians are going to need some new SSDs."
I don't know about the ISC but the others might need those designs anyway in conjectural form for SFB. Some of the Palidine ships are that way now, right?
My I just reiterate that I think the ISC should be a warring group of Systems until united by a Andromidan assault where they do develope their ships. Just make the PPD more rare as that was invented just before their collapse. They flee the area into Romulan, Gorn and VSE. The Paravians destroy them on site. They warn the rest of the Galixy of the comming Darkness. The Alpha quadrent gets slammed with a fully rooted Andromadin invasion. Fights back and eventually liberates the ISC which gets sectioned much like Post WWII Europe. Could even have a Berlin type situation with the VSE holdings. The VSE gets cut off and a war is set off between the VSE and Romulans??
Hmmm.
The Gorns join the battle against the VSE unthreatened by the heavily damaged Paravians (THey didn't listen to the ISC warnings and were the first to get pummled). The Klingons ally with the VSE against the Romulan/Gorns (who are fortified by the ISC and it's resourses. The Romulan factions unite when the Klingons ally with the VSE.
Seeing an oppertunity the Lyran/Kzinti alliance strikes the Klingons soon after. Next the Crown Prince takes this oppertunity to encurage the Carnivons to strike against the Kzinti unraveling their plans. The Crown Prince the makes his move to reclaim his throan with financial support from the Klingons.
There ya go. One General War with the Andromadins striking first instead of comming after.
Oh, the Selts stay neutral, ever growing in number to pose a later threat!
David: the LGU Gorns didn't wipe out the Romulans because they were busy with infighting during that time.
Jeremy: I'd remove the border between the Gorn states and the Paravians; just have the Paravians be another member of the squabbling Gorn Confederation. IIRC, they could replace the Federation as the source for Gorn fighter pilots. Leave the Frax in the simulators, but move the territory that you assigned to them one hex north-eastward and it becomes a perfect site for a Human Democratic Republic. The Lyrans and the Kzinti are still two seperate empires, just closely aligned seperate empires (for one thing, each empire still has its own starship design philosophy). I don't see how more divisions among the Gorns and Romulans would allow an ISC faction to build an analog of the SFU Proper's ISC Fleet; the SFU Proper Gorns and Romulans had no internal divisions to speak of when the ISC built its fleet. It's the squabbling among the ISC factions that I see acting as a barrier to a fleet's development.
Similarly, the WYN Fish Ships carry assumptions about the state of the art in their design; they have to be late-era ships - and some form of the General War needs to occur in order to get ship design technology up to the verge of X-Ships.
Loren: I don't see the ISC factions having _time_ to construct any sort of fleet while being mowed down by the Andromedans; that, and most of their ships are designed for the "gun line" strategy, to which the PPD was integral. The only ISC Proper ships that I can see existing in a LGU with fractured ISC states would be the Survey Cruiser and the Police Flagships. Now, I _could_ see the ISC fleet being built to oppose the Aandromedan invasion; but only if the Invasion struck elsewhere, and the ISC thus had time to sit back and build a fleet while the rest of the galaxy fought for their lives against the Andros.
I also don't see early GW ships being able to hold their own very well against the Andros - thus having the LGU Andros striking near the start of the GW era would likely result in an Andro-dominated galaxy. Then again, GPD is my main interest in terms of SFU, rather than SFB; I could easily be mistaken.
I _do_ see the possibility of a General War occuring in the LGU, with the Lyrans, Kzinti, Vulcans, Romulan Empire, and a Hydran Guild on one side; the Klingons, Romulan Republic, Gorn/Paravians, Carnivons, Peladines, the WYN, and the other Hydran Guild on the other side, and the Vudar, Seltorians, ISC states, and (possibly) a Human Democratic Republic going neutral at various times and for various reasons.
If the VSE is suficiently expansionist an general war would be inevitable. Though if the Vulcans are that expansionist it's hard to envisioning them alowing the Romulans independence.
Actualy that could start a general war early. If the Romulans were refugees from the early VSE the Vulcans might try to forcable reabsorb them when they met again (which might lead to the shift of the VSE eastward of where the Federation is in the main universe). The result might be a series of "Reunification Wars" with VSE atacks on the Roms broken up by periods of military buildup and forging aliances by both sides.
Of course the General War might have more than two sides. Perhaps one Gorn faction and the Parvians against the other two Gorn factions. One of the other Gorns alies with the Rom Empire in an effort to avoid being squezed out of existence between the Parvan/Gorn2 alinace and the VSE. Then Gorn3 alies with the VSE to survive against the other two. Meanwhile the Klingons are alied with one Hydran Guild, the WYN, the Rom Republic and the Carnivorans to protect themselves against VSE expansionism and Kizinti/Lyran agresion. The other Hydran guild is losely alied with the Kizinti/Lyran group and trades with the VSE but is mainly interested in maintaining it's independance. The Kizinti/Lyrans are cobeligerant with the VSE against the Klingons, but will stab them (VSE) in the back at the first oportuity. That's 5 aliances if I counted corectly, and I'm sure I've left lots of people out.
I didn't say they(ISC) were Mowed over by the Andros. The Adromadins appered long before they conducted a full scale invasion. I would say that while the Andromadins were gathering and striking here and there the ISC discovered them building and through paranoia formed a United Colition Against the Dark Enemy. Having just formed their defence fleet and still working on their tactics the Full scale invasion came. The ISC was fully formed and they had just finnished the developement of the PPD when the Hammer fell. Half the Fleet scattered West. The other was destroyed. All of the ISC systems were subjugated by the Andromidans.
In my idea the LGUs general war starts later than the SFB GW. As such all War Cruisers would have a later introduction date. Hmmm, no wait. War Cruisers could have the same date it's just that they were developed during the War of Resistance against the Andomadins.
X-ships would come into being during the LGU general war.
but the X ships (and other ships of their time) are needed to deal with the andros
pre GW ships don't have much of a chance.
Several things occur to me after reading all of this, first being that this as much, if not more so, an alternate rp setting as it is a means to generate oddball sfb battles. Looking at it from the rp side, I see only one 'monster' race (ie one that is found and trounced regularly no questions asked), the seltorans thus far. While the Andromedans might qualify, they dont show up till way late. To this, how about adding a genocidal race of computer driven ships? History behind this would be that at some point Earth has a civil war between AIs and Humanity. Said war pushes into space then the Vulcans arrive to save Humanity. Before the Vulcans manage to destroy the last AI factory though, it manages to send out thousands and thousands of probes with a less efficient than warp form of ftl. Afterwords, the Vulcans do the math, and around that factory, set up a VSE only spheare, so that they have x years to hunt down and destroy every last one of those probes. Thus instead of the 'Explore strange new worlds and seek out new life and new civilizations', it's 'Hunt down the AI probes, purify contaminated worlds, and restore the wreckage of ruined civilizations'. Later one probe finds an Orion, Klingon or Hydran vessel, takes it over, and from there begins a slow process of building a fleet of existing ships with the intent to destroy all the biologicals they can. Eventually some interaction occurs between one of the small AI fleets, and the Andromedans. Said AI fleets would likely view the Seltorans as the worst of the biologicals due to their reproduction rate.
Another idea, rather than just having one type of logic, what if the Vulcans came up with many paths of logic, each based on seperate premises? After the war where unnacceptable paths become verbotten the existing ones that remain are those that encourage cooperation with other logic paths, and those that encourage deception in order to remain undetected.
Yet another idea, Terrans upon finding themselves outmatched and outgunned by the Vulcans turn to subversive organisations like the illumaniti or the yakuza in a long term effort to undermine the Vulcans and ultimately put themselves in control.
Hmm. I don't think the x-ships were developed to deal with the Andromadins. Ya, they helped but they were a natural occurence due to advances in technology. There wasn't that many x-ships anyway. Also, in my idea (and I say "My idea" because I'm only trying to explain what I've been posting and not trying to say that I've speaking on any established "Thing".) the Andromadins don't settle in the Megalanic Cloud. They base in our own galaxy. In ISC space. Also, if given that the Klingons are stronger economicly then it could be established that they have more B-10s and maybe even the B11! I think the Alpha Quadrent would do fine. Also no one is weakend by the ISC War of Pasification. All the Fleets are battle ready because of the more volatile situation that is the general premise of the LGU.
The ISC in the LGU universe could still be united.
Let’s say the ISC formation wars took place as in the SFU. But in the LGU one race with extreme xenophobic ideas won. They locked all the other races to their home worlds, smashed all higher technology, and robotic launching sites to extract resources to orbital facilities. Becoming ISX Inter-Stellar Xenophobes
Now these Xenophobes only have FF's or police ship to maintain control of their subject races. They then discover the other races roaming free in the galaxy and in sheer paranoia, construct the ISX "pacification" fleet.
All interactions with the ISC would be no quarter asked or given.
Then the Andromedans appear and blow their racial psyche to smithereens, as they realize there are Inter-galactic races roaming about. Causing an internal collapse, and a power vacuum that the Adromedans exploit. With the ISX's robotic resource extractors, exactly what the Andromedan need.
After the Andromedans are driven out the native races explode off their worlds forming and Interstellar Federation (IF). Of course that would be a big IF. 
One minor but important point: in any alternate universe where the Paravians do not instantly go to war with the Gorns (or any subset thereof) that one bit of ancient history where they were considered "demons" and exterminated is going to have to be gotten rid of. After all, that's what started the whole mess in the standard SFU Universe.
I.e., "It never happened."
hmmm or perhaps at some point in the jihad, their archeologists found the real 'demons', some long extinct race, leaving only the results of the jihad as reasons to continue fighting.
Or the Sun Snake was killed earlier in another system.
David Lang wrote
Quote: but the X ships (and other ships of their time) are needed to deal with the andros
pre GW ships don't have much of a chance.
I disagee with the first statement and would argue the second one depends on what one defines as pre-GW.
Hot warp ships (CW, DW, BCH--not technically hot warp but use much the same design philosophy) and fast ships (CF, DNL and maybe some new sc4 ship) are capable of defeating Andros--at least in SFB. Note that this is part of the reason war classes are limited in Operation Unity.
PFs and X-ships significantly improve the situation but are not necessary.
There may be strategic issues without X-ships, but a larger production of fast ships (and possibly the introduction of the occasionally mentioned sc4 "DDF" type classes) should cover the gap if necessary.
All races had their fast ships pre-GW and many had some (or most) of their hot warp ships pre-GW. For example, the D5 is pre-GW, as is the Lyran DW, CW, and BC. The Federation NCL and Hydran HR and TR are prior to their respective race's entry into the GW. The Rom third generation is also prior to their GW entry, as are the Gorn BDD and HDD (and for both they are about the same time as the start of the western phase of the GW). The Kzinti are the only ones that have a delayed war cruiser introduction. Overall I'd argue that the hot warp was not an invention of the current General War, it was more one of the technologies that enabled it. Thus an Andro invasion at that time period would be stoppable.
If instead of pre-GW one was referring to the 4 powers war era ships (Y165 or so), then yes I agree that the Andros would be hard to stop. But we can always delay the start of the Andro operation until Y170 (or at least when they finish conquoring the ISC space) and not have to worry about them running over the rest of the races. At this point it wouldn't even require fudging with ship introduction dates--the Roms have their SP, the Gorn their HDD and BDD and the rest will probably have a year or two to increase their production.
I don't see any problem with fudging intoduction dates by a year or two max. If there is sufficiant reason design my indeed be presses into production or the call for them may have been made earlier.
with the exception of the klingons, the hot-warp ships were just barely starting to see service at the beginning of the general war.
X-ships were not designed to fight the andros, but the capabilities of hot-warp ships, fully refitted normal ships, and X ships are nessasary to defeat the andro invasion (not stray andros, but fleets of them)
Fast ships do well, but fast ships have other disadvantages not shown directly in SFB that limited their historical use (higher cost and lower command ratings to start with, but even in F&E there are additional limits to how many can be built)
See this is one reason why I hate the possibility of ONE representation of a mirror universe. Obviouslly the product will have to limit itself more or less to one universe in detail, but there should be enough room to present rough ideas for many other parallell universes, otherwise the product hamstrings itself.
As to the ISC, I hate the idea of breaking them up as well. We have this imperial VSE at the centre of the known universe, and their expansion is largely stopped to the west by klingons and or the Cat Alliance, but to the east, what is to stop them from completely dominating and taking over that area? Nothing!
However, what if there was another major power beyond the broken rom/gorn/paravian kingdoms? One that would take issue with the VSE dominating and conquering them? One that would make pacts with some for space and economic returns for allowing their ships to enter thier space and fight the VSE (like the Rom Republic) or co belligerents versus the Gorn Protectorate (like the Paravian marauders)?
This is how I see the ISC in this universe. A major eastern military player. Otherwise the VSE would just pick off and annex the smaller bits one by one.
I also don't understand the narrow focus on a general war. There is no reason to involve everyone in such a war, but rather limit wars to theatres.
The VSE could ally with the Gorn Protectorate and possibly have neutrality pacts with the CAT alliance. Its enemies would be the ISC/Paravian/Rom Rep triad as well as the Klingon/Rom Empire. The CATs would be busy however dealing with various thorns inthe pelt like the Carnivons and Peladine. The Hydrans meanwhile could hire out their services in various wars across the western sphere for the Klingons and possibly other races.
Why we need a WYN at all I do not know. They are supposed to be rejects from the Klingon/Lyran/Kzin empires. I don't think the VSE and CAT alliance would let the wyn out of their hole if they did exist.
quote"but to the east, what is to stop them from completely dominating and taking over that area? Nothing!"
No, the Klingons to the West. If the VSE makes a major move on the East it must make careful consideration of the powers to the West. Earlier I spoke of continueous border skirmishs in an expanded neutral zone and a Alliance of convenience but never suggested the VSE could act unconcirned about their western border. Of course, that is just my take on things.
Oh ya, I also suggested that there be so space devoted to players creating their own universes and a blank F&E map. They could use this module as a model. I got a "Sounds plausable" response from SVC so I think, in a way Geoff, you may get your wish.
I've been doing something very dangerous ... thinking. And you know what?
Why do we have to limit ourselves to printing just one alternate universe in the hypothetical product we've been discussing? We've got around 96 or 112 pages to play with. I cannot imagine an AU taking up more than half of a book that size!
Loren, I knew someone would bring up the Klingon angle. But remember that the Klingons are a commonwealth now, and have no contact with the eastern powers beyond the RE. Simply put they have no motivation to attack the VSE just because the VSE is having a war with some unknown entity on the other side of known space.
That, and the fact that offensives are REALLY ecnomically expensive. It is always easier to defend, especially if you already match your opponent in power.
Gary, I agree but remember that resources for 3 different games are going into this moduel...SFB, FnE, and GPD.
I never thought of the Klingons as a commonwealth. Somebody else said that. When I first presented the idea of economicly agresive Klingons I never intended for them to be otherwise passive. I expected them to be still Klingons but including economic power as a source of pride as well. Attacking a distracted VSE would reap huge rewards in territory gained and settle years of skirmishes on the ever changing border. Anyway, that's where I was comming from.
Geoff: I tend to agree about potentially hamstringing the product by limiting it overly much; but we've been given some guidelines here (a single, consistent Alternate with few if any new ship designs) - instead of railing against the guidelines, I'd rather find out exactly what can be accomplished within them. As for the ISC:
Note that ISC ships are overall rather advanced designs; I would hesitate to introduce them early on in the LGU, both because I'd have difficulty justifying the ISC's counterparts having that kind of technology that quickly and because giving it to them so soon would generally result in them dominating the galaxy. The ISC should remain squabbling states and/or remain out of sight throughout much of the LGU's equivelent of the GW era. As for your concerns about the VSE gobbling up the eastern states, perhaps they tried; and both the Klingons and the Kzinti took advantage of their attempt, resulting in a more eastward-centered VSE.
Concerning the WYN: Agreed that there's no need to include them. There's also no need to include the ISC, or the Hydrans, or the Carnivons, or the Peladine... But it would be _interesting_ for the WYN to be settled by renegades from the Kzinti/Lyran alliance, acting as a pocket of resistence. That said, my comments about introducing the ISC ships too soon go double for WYN fish ships, at least in terms of plausibility.
One more thought: if the Lyrans have dealings with one of the Hydran Guilds, LDR-style ships (i.e., Lyran ships with Ph-Gs) could appear in small numbers and in later years as a result of those dealings. Most of the LDR designs would remain conjectural in the LGU, though.
Gary: I see no way that the Prime Directive material for a single alternate universe could fit into a 112-page book without glossing over a _lot_ of material; add in SFB and F&E material, and matters get worse.
Loren: the "Commonwealth" bit was my contribution, for good or ill. My thought was much like your own (ethnic Klingons are still aggressive, and still have a strong martial tradition), but I was viewing them as being just a bit more considerate with their "trading partners" (i.e., subject races), leading to fewer internal hostilities.
Regarding the Paravians: I wouldn't mind seeing the LGU completely bypass the whole "Gorns are demons incarnate" idea, perhaps by having an influential leader who calmed her people before the genocide could begin, or maybe by having the Paravians develop a stronger friendship with one or more of the saurian races before the damaging information got revealed - it would be interesting to see an alternate universe where the Paravians never became genocidal enemies of their sauroid neighbors, but instead ended up becoming a core element of the Gorn Alliance, existing as a seperate culture exactly as much as the three sauroid races existed as seperate cultures.
Marc: I see no reason why we need "monster races" at all - and I wouldn't even classify the Seltorians in that category. I like your idea about Terran subversives, though.
Jonathan, the Gorn 'genocide' was never a deliberate act on their part.
what happened was that the Pavarians refused to stop raiding the Gorn, createing no full fledged colonies, just bases for staging raids.
The Gorn responded by destroying these bases and setting up a blockade of the Pavarian homeworld, the objective being to keep them contained and stop the raids before they could be launched.
this worked for a number of years, but then a sun snake dove into the pavarian sun and caused it to go nova, since the pavarians had never attempted to create full fledged colonies and the Gorn had destroyed all the raiding bases this wiped out the entire pavarian race.
The Gorn blamed themselves for this, even though their ships on station had attempted to stop the sun snake.
The result of this is that when the romulans were weak the Gorn didn't take advantage of this to knock them back to their homeworlds becouse they didn't want to risk the same thing happening again. If it wasn't for this guilt complex the Gorn would have been able to raid the romulans extremely effectivly, instead the Gorn took a defensive role, letting the Romulans pick the time and places of the battles, under those conditions the non-tac-warp romulan ships had to be intercepted and dealt with, if the Gorn decided to attack romulan bases the sublight ships would have been hard pressed to stop them
While it is true the ISC has pretty nasty ships, they do become more managable with Pl-Gs instead of Pl-Ss and PPDs, and with none of the rear P-3s and Pl-Fs. The early versions can be introduced earlier, with the refits coming along at the established times. And even if they are a bit more powerful than their opposition, just scale back the fleets some. Their ships work just fine.
Also, I do think that having a fairly strong and aggressive ISC in conflict with a strong and aggressive VSE is a cool idea. Then, the Gorns, Paravians and Romulans can be a loosely organized mess (like I see described above) through which the ISC and VSE fight. This works really well if the VSE is shifted those 6 hexes I mentioned earlier.
And I love the idea of the VSE using Federation PFs! If the VSE gets PFs, they won't need X-ships to hold off the Andros. Their PFs and war-class ships will do the job just fine. (Though X-ships would be a nice addition.)