Archive through February 12, 2020
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Prime Directive RPG: DECK PLANS PROJECTS: Deck Plan Protocols & Checklist: Archive through February 12, 2020
By Jack Bohn (Jackbohn) on Saturday, July 13, 2013 - 06:44 am: Edit

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Or the aquatic Koligahr, who have to build their spherical hull sections (and interconnecting lattices) in such a way as to allow enough water to flow from one compartment of the ship to the next. (And possibly also allow for "dry" living quarters on certain ships, in the event that one of the ursine Ka-ma-ty-u needs be be re-located from the Koligahr homeworld; or perhaps to allow for ship-board negotiations, or joint operations with, a "dry" species.)



I should take a look outside the Alpha Octant one of these days. Your phrasing makes it sound like they only need move one Ka-ma-ty-u at a time. Or can only?

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And then there is the Drex, a "species" of robots whose sole reason for even bothering with any kind of life support system is on the odd chance they have to host one of their walrus-like Drexari masters. Fortunately for the latter, the Drex don't seem to be familiar with a certain Earth television program, lest they get one too many ideas about their lot in "life"...



Again with the "one." A cautionary tale? Do Drexari not bother to congregate anymore? If two were on a ship, might they not even notice each other; being too busy texting their BFFs or robots?

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Saturday, July 13, 2013 - 01:28 pm: Edit

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I should take a look outside the Alpha Octant one of these days.



I would certainly agree! (Try either the print or e23 version of the 2011 Omega Master Rulebook. It's a fantastic resource for the setting.)

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Your phrasing makes it sound like they only need move one Ka-ma-ty-u at a time. Or can only?



The Ka-ma-ty-u were a bear-like species who first voyaged to the Koligahr homeworld and discovered the pre-sentient "Ko-li-gahr" when they got there. They found the jellyfish beautiful to behold, so set up a research outpost to study them. One scientist in particular, Kor-an-uv, managed to genetically uplift the Koligahr to full sentience.

However, some sort of plague wiped out all of the Ka-ma-ty-u, except for those who were on the Koligahr home world. The stranded exiles decided to help guide the Koligahr into space, and a relative handful of Ka-ma-ty-u still exist on that world to this day. Those few who remain are greatly revered by the Koligahr.

So, if the worst were to happen and an invader was to assault the home world, the Koligahr might need to work out a means of successfully re-locating the surviving Ka-ma-ty-u to a safer location.

(I don't know if any of the Ka-ma-ty-u would ever volunteer to visit another world in the Solidarity in order to "help out" with a local intractable problem, but they seem to prefer to stay on the home world and let the Koligahr take responsibility for the running of their own civilization.)

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Again with the "one." A cautionary tale? Do Drexari not bother to congregate anymore? If two were on a ship, might they not even notice each other; being too busy texting their BFFs or robots?



It's more like the Drexari are a shower of lazy so-and-sos, with no concept of the trouble their Drex slaves go through on their behalf.

If an idle Drexari decides one day that he wants to go fly somewhere, the Drex have to accommodate him - and keep him in the manner of lifestyle for which he has become accustomed.

But most Drexari are lazy enough to not bother leaving their home worlds (unless the Drex need to tackle the risk of overpopulation by transporting a group of Drexari to a new colony planet). So there probably wouldn't ever be more than one Drexari on any given Drex ship, if at all.


Seriously, the Drexari really better hope the Aurorans don't syndicate a certain old Earth television series for Octant-wide broadcast. It won't be pretty if the Drex ever decide to get their act together as a self-respecting "species".

By Patrick H. Dillman (Patrick) on Monday, September 30, 2013 - 01:06 pm: Edit

I know it has been a while, but I was going though the pdf and was wondering if a list of graphic programs has been compiled? If not, then does anyone know if Adobe's Illustrator (I have the latest) works?

By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Monday, September 30, 2013 - 01:50 pm: Edit

The choice of program to use boils down to what ADB can receive and use.

My understanding is that ADB uses FreeHand for the Mac. I don't know what version, but it's FreeHand, which Adobe bought and killed off to remove the competitor to Illustrator, a long time ago. ADB also runs OS9, which Apple killed off a very long time ago, in lieu of OSX.

It's old, but it works for their purposes. However, that presents some issues for those on other systems and software.

ADB wisely wants the ability to manipulate your drawings to make corrections, if they are needed at the last minute. This especially applies to things like callout texts, etc. That means *you* need to be able to save in a format that they can read. "Back-saving" often doesn't work as-advertised and usually needs some testing and/or adjusting to get results that work on the receiving end.

Personally, I think the ideal is to work as close to their native format as possible. My attempt at this is using FreeHand 9 (2000 vintage). I can back-save as far back as FreeHand 5, if need be. I run MS Windows, so I'm not truly native, but I'm hoping my files will be mostly compatible with their Mac version of FreeHand.

In theory, you should be able to "back-save" files in Illustrator to FreeHand version-something. If those would actually open in ADB's FreeHand version is something to be tested (preferably before spending dozens of hours on a project).

Definitely avoid using advanced features that ADB's FreeHand definitely can't handle. Things like gradients following compound-curved shapes, etc., are probably going to just blow up. Stick to what deck plans need, which is basic black and white line work and shapes. Avoid grouping elements. Talk to them before doing a ton of layering, to make sure it won't just disappear.

The alternative is doing the drawings in the software ya got and exporting high resolution JPG raster art files to send to ADB. This removes the ability for ADB to adjust things though and also ties their hands on scaling the art up or down for publication (raster files look terrible scaled-up and text in raster files becomes illegible if scaled down very much).

I can only assume that would reduce your chances for publication; if you make life harder for the already busy ADB, they can only bend so much.

---

Earlier, there was talk of having someone act as a translation service, taking cross-platform vector files (DWG, DXF, EPS, CGM, SVG) from folks working in what they are comfortable in, and translating/back-saving them into something ADB can read.

I am not able to make the time to work on deckplans right now, due to my commitments to Tenneshington, but it's possible I could do some simple file-translation for other folks, assuming ADB's blessing on that.

By Patrick H. Dillman (Patrick) on Monday, September 30, 2013 - 02:07 pm: Edit

Yeah, figured on most of those restrictions. What is the FreeHand file format? I'll do up a trial deck to test Illustrator CC.

By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Monday, September 30, 2013 - 03:23 pm: Edit

Freehand changed it's format with each version. FreeHand 9 uses FH9, the older ones decrement the number down. Those are the Windows versions. I don't know if the Mac versions changed things (I haven't really done Mac in 25 years).

By Patrick H. Dillman (Patrick) on Tuesday, April 25, 2017 - 08:59 pm: Edit

Thought I'd ask here for the opinion of you folks that make deck plans. Is the sensor/deflector base on the Fed FF square or round? My 2400 metal FF suggest square, but it looks like it is a few generations of copy degeneration so it is hard to tell. My 2500 is one of the last resins and it looks round, but isn't the best example either. From the Deck plans I could also argue either way.

Making a 3d model in Blender to use in a Unity3d game.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, April 25, 2017 - 10:35 pm: Edit

I think it's round, but a case could be made that it depends on when/where the ship was built.


Garth L. Getgen

By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Wednesday, April 26, 2017 - 11:25 am: Edit

I threw my two bits in on the conversation on Facebook.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, April 26, 2017 - 11:38 am: Edit

Whose Facebook page is that discussion on??


Garth L. Getgen

By Patrick H. Dillman (Patrick) on Wednesday, April 26, 2017 - 01:06 pm: Edit

Mine. https://www.facebook.com/patrick.dillman.75

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, February 24, 2018 - 01:00 am: Edit

Received note from someone asking about deck plans: here is the document that should answer all your questions: Deck Plans Checklist


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cain (Stevecain) on Friday, March 15, 2019 - 03:44 pm: Edit

To get a better grasp of the whole process in making the deck plans, I am working off of the FT and S-F (PD1 Adventures). Small Aux Cruiser is the one I currently have questions on.

The front top deck looks to be bridge space. Behind that is a rectangle that appears centerline between .5 and 1.0 deck high turned lengthwise with the "pod" portion. This is part of what I am stumped on. The other is the two bands towards the rear on the top deck.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, July 14, 2019 - 08:05 am: Edit

SVC: Within the SFB universe, do shuttle bays have force fields to hold the air in when the space doors are open, or does it have to be totally de-pressurized to launch / retrieve shuttle-craft??


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, July 14, 2019 - 08:22 am: Edit

Force fields are fine, but used only as needed due to power requirements and reliability issues. Depressurization can also be used as required.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, July 14, 2019 - 02:03 pm: Edit

Okay, cool. Thanks.


Garth L. Getgen

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, October 19, 2019 - 05:56 pm: Edit

In the category of hindsight being 20-20 and lessons learned: Think about your final output format before you begin adding detail to your deck plans.

Umpteen years ago, I created a bunch of really cool CAD icons / symbols for various things. Here are a few I made for control stations. (Yes, I made people, too.) Pretty cool, right? They look great in the native program (Floor Plan Plus v2), of course. It holds together well when I export to large-size (8.5x14 / 11x17) high-DPI (1200+) with a virtual printer to PDF file. I went to OfficeMax to print a set of deck plans on 17x22 paper -- the detail is eye-popping gorgeous.

However, comma, when I export in a medium DPI (600) and at a smaller size (9.5 x 4) and then convert it to TIFF, what SVC needs to publish in Captain's Log format, all those cool features I spent all that time creating turn into pixelated blobs. Don't get me wrong -- it should print out well enough (I hope) and the main features will look perfectly fine. It's just that part of me now wonders if I wasted time making such detailed icons all those years ago.

The moral of the story: If you know ahead of time that your final product will be printed on standard 8.5x11 paper, don't bother with details that simply can't be seen at that scale.


The other thing I have discovered is 25/50/75 percent shading looks great when zoomed in on the screen, but also becomes rather blobbish when zoomed out, and doesn't print well at smaller scales. Make everything hollow or solid. Ditto for cross-hatching. If you want cross-hatching, draw the lines in manually, and check it zoomed out to see if it looks like what you want.


Garth L. Getgen

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