Archive through September 05, 2003
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Prime Directive RPG: NEW KINDS OF RPG PRODUCTS:
GPD Small Craft:
Archive through September 05, 2003
David: Why would you submit it to Gary? He is not in charge of MPA or GPD. I'm head of the GPD department (until I can hire someone to run it for me) and Petrick is the editor of MPA.
Allow me to make it clear. Gary was, at one time, the provisional temporary department head for GPD and the place to submit stuff. This is no longer the case; Gary is now what he wants to be, a WRITER, someone who does his own stuff. He is not in the business of reviewing, accepting, rejecting, or considering the material of any other writer.
Ah, the speed of the plot! Ok, got it now. Yeah, that was what I was working for, I just wanted to give the GM a better reason than, 'Because I am the GM!'.
R
SVC is correct, this got announced at Origins (more or less) so some of you may not have heard.
Past a certain point, I just didn't have any fun doing GPD. Plus I need a full-time job to pay my rent, and GPD doesn't do that. So I decided to back off from running things, which is better done in Amarillo, anyway.
I'll happily review anyones stuff and offer suggestions or criticism, and I probably have a better idea than most people outside Amarillo as to what's going on, but I decided that I don't have enough experience -- nor have the time -- to run a product line like GPD.
Ok, I missed the memo on that one.
SVC, the question about warp speeds and why GPD doesn't match what people expect comes up frequently enough that I think it's worth a couple inches of space in MPA (or a sucessor). I did the writeup above with that in mind. do you want me to do anything to that writeup and submit it formally, do you want to just take what I posted correct any mistakes I made and post it, have someone else do a writeup, or do you want me to forget the idea (or any combination of the above :-)
To justify it in my mind, David, I just looked at what you did and wiggled it some.
(NOTE the words 'IN MY MIND') 
The Constitution class of CAs started service around Y130, just after the early tactical warp period were warp 6 was the top speed. Enterprise, the ship we are all familiar with, was said to (by FJD and so on) top out safely at warp 6. But since it was one of the first standard warp CAs built it got the first standard warp engines with the hold over limitations but the ability to hit warp 7 with a good engineer.
I am sure after the first contract finished, the more advanced standard warp engines that easily hit warp 7 were common.
(At this point, Steve, I suspect you are vibrating.)
I know its pseudo-vulcan tech babble, but at the macro scale that RPGs opperate, its going to happen and be needed and besides, it shows that realistically tech (usually) has no clean start and stop points but transitions.
(And besides, it's all in my head unless you say otherwise. It's a happy place... la la la... life support, naw, I gave it up, all that oxygen stuff.)
Robert
SVC: thank you for clarifying my errors. I really could have sworn that the "warp field interactions" were at some point given as an official explanation for why there were no examples of combat at speeds of 31+ even though ships are capable of it; or why fleets seem to always conveniently begin scenarioes about a map apart. I was clearly on crack, and confused something I or a friend came up with with an ADB publication.
The "extreme vulnerability to weapons fire" is a good explanation, and thank you for making us aware of it -- I, for one, had not seen it before. I think this might still be usefully defined further. With the advent of GPD, people will be trying to do all sort of crazy stuff in their campaigns, and if it doesn't work, they'll want to know why within the game, if possible. So, for example:
1) if a ship is attacking a target KNOWN to be, with a high certainty, at weapon status 0, why should it worry about the heightened vulnerability to weapons fire, and not engage the defenseless target at point-blank?
2) How about a planet defended by planetary fighters -- why not get point blank to it before the fighters can be deployed, or start the scenario at the "extreme weapons range" of the fighters, (say, range 15) instead of the customary map apart?
3) When ships approach a friendly port, do they have to drop to tactical warp? Or can that FedX pop out of High Warp at range 1 to the planet? (for that, I can see an easy answer: all stationary targets have a policy to shoot at ANYTHING that refuses to drop out of high warp and identify itself at long range -- that FedX might be, after all, a suicide bombing mission...) -- and the reverse: do ships leaving a friendly port jump to High Warp only after making sure they are well out of range of even the friendly weapons? (after all, some mad terrorist in control of that ph-3 on the passing inbound freighter could take pot shots at "high-warp weapons vulnerable" capital ships as they depart the Solar system...
I am not trying to be a pest, or inventing problems to annoy you -- but I do intend to run GPD when I get my hands on it, and I anticipate such questions. I would prefer to not have to make up my own half-baked answers about large fragile champagne bubbles.
Piotr: No, warp field interactions were given as the reason there is no RAMMING in sfu.
David Lang: Yes, write up an article on this. Take as much room as you want. Cover the high speed approach thing as well.
Piotr-1: You never know this to an acceptable degree of certainty.
Piotr-2: The weapons on the planet and the combat space patrol will wreck your ship. I guess you enjoy being a POW. We have a lovely buffet in the camp.
Piotr-3: This seems to be irrelevant. If it's not combat, it's not a scenario, and you'll never see it happen. But then again, we do have the gravity well thing to consider, which wouldn't allow it to happen, but that's moot as either the "non-scenario" or "enemy" situations will make it never come up.
RE The Gravity Well.
It's not exactly canon. But a lot of ST fiction mentions the fact that ship's can't go out of or into warp inside a star's gravity well. Because the star would explode.
Frankly that in itself is to good of a "Mission Kill" to be of use. But instead of the star exploding maybe getting to close to a star's gravity well can cause damage to the warp engine's. When going into or out of High warp. Potentially upto and in very rare case's causeing the engines to expode. It would certainly increase the wear and tear on the warp engine's. (Those thing's get expensive.)
Maybe a planet's gravity well could do the same thing with an even smaller chance of having the engine's go "BOOM." But most inhabitable planet's are within the stars G.W. or at least right on the edge of it. Giving an attacking force even more reason to be wary"
In wartime. No sane commander would want to chance having his ship's take themselves out of combat and run the risk of being captured. While in peaceful time's no body want's to cover the expense of repairing or potentially having to replace the engines if not the whole ship entirely.
The simplest thing to do though is cause increased wear and tear on the engine's. The G.W. would probably distort warp space to the point that high warp navigation becomes slightly inaccurate. Meaning it's safer to warp out than to warp in at close range or you might just run into the planet/star.
Ken: Just what is canon? Trek canon is so contradictory and full of holes that it is meaningless. Unless you're buying into the political correctness aspect on the theory that the last thing Paramount said (ignoring all previous statements) must be right (until they change it). Engines do not cause stars or planets to go boom; gravity wells have "a bad effect" on warp engines. Leave it at that. It's just not something that needs defining.
Steve Cannon is what get's rolled out the firing ports and broadsided into your "Man O' War".
I was talking about the old classic "Franz Joseph(?)" design's that Gene R. hated and said that all ship's had to have 2 and only 2 warp engines. Not 3 or heaven forbid 1.
I'm very possibly blind, but does GPD talk about the operating costs of ships/small craft?
in the section on dash speed it talks about costing 10% of the cost of the ship per month of operation, but I haven't found where the cost of ships is given or the normal operating costs.
DL: Something for the future. Aaron is going to have to help us out there.
We threw out a lot of GURPS stuff (like TL15 transporters), and reality faults in the TOS Star Trek universe too numerous to mention, simply because they didn't make any sense and/or were contradictory.
I would expect that some of the Franz Joseph material, while excellent for it's time, isn't 100% applicable now for the same reasons. So I hold the opinion that just because XXX appears in the FJ material, it may not be valid as far as the SFU is concerned.
As for the warp-engine-too-close-to-a-star argument, I'd say forget about it. First, stress affects both ends, so if anything was going to go boom, it would be the warp engines -- long before it affected a star enough to cause it problems.
Second, Trek has already contradicted that itself; slingshot orbits around a star for time travel that didn't detonate the star (several times), and at least one time (on DS9?) when a Klingon ship skimmed a sun close enough to kick up a wake which destroyed the ships pursuing it.
Forget about it.
hmm, without any idea of the operating costs or ship costs we can't figure out a bunch of things, including any sort of transportation costs (if we don't have any idea what the costs are we can't figure out the fares to charge)
this also eliminates a bunch of campaign types. Any campaign type that would have the characters care about the cost of transportation (include shipping costs) can only be played with every GM inventing their own costs.
these costs will have a very significant effect on the game universe (is it cheap to ship people and bulk goods between planets or expensive and therefor fairly rare?).
I will continue to work on the article covering travel times, but without also being able to talk about the cost of such travel it's going to be far from complete.
as an example, the early jet airliners were expected to only have a minor effect on the popularity of air travel, they weren't _that_ much faster then the existing airliners, but what was discovered was that they were far cheaper to operate and larger as well, so the per person cost of air travel plummeted to what you see today.
As another example, look at the concord, it's much faster then normal airliners (significantly more so in relative terms then the early jets were compared to the airliners of the time), but their operating costs are so high that they have made very little difference overall.
I could name quite a few other examples from other fields (and I'm sure other history buffs could come up with several I haven't thought of)
in short I think this is something that is important to get right (and so shouldn't be rushed), but at the same time is going to be critical to non-governement (or big company at best) play.
David: Nothing is eliminated as we'll have that data in further products.
Gary: I already said "does not hurt the star". Nothing in SFU gives any indication it would.
by eliminated I meant elimintated until this data is available. I realize it will be released in a future product (I'm just hopeing that that furure product will be soon), but it's current lack gives some reason to the 'GPD ony supports military campaigns' arguement.
I have a question that is unrelated to the current discussion in here, but relates to small craft -
In GPD, the standard admin shuttle is listed as having shuttle warp engines (6 tons each, 1500 mw output total? warp thrust 30).
For purposes of Space3, where do we find out about atmospheric movement or manuvering abilities?
This also would be important for several other ships (the CR, etc) that can land in an atmosphere.
Did this question ever get answered?
-Francois
francois@purdue.edu
Gary told me to bring this over here, so here it is. SVC or Joe can delete my post in the General Discussions topic.
Gary ... sadly, I think I have lost my GEnie archives someplace along the way in computer upgrades along the many years that have gone by. The quote below is from a WordPerfect file of a story I wrote back in Jan '97.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Several years ago, back in the GEnie days, I sent a short story to SPP for review. He pointed out my many mistakes in graphic detail, as only he can. Although I can claim some fame because it was that story, and the ongoing discussions SPP and I had has part of his review, the promtped ADB to increase the crew size for the Federation Police cutter.
At any rate, I stumbled on the file for that story, opened it up and re-read it. SPP has asked me if I ever intended to update it to "fix" the problems with it ... I have some idea how to do so. But when I got to the end, I was surprise to read the "author's comments" (mine, of course), especially when considering the Modular Cutter from GPD:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
STAR FLEET BATTLES game information on the civilian “freelancer” space-truck/mini-trader described in this story:
SSD: Size Class 5, uses FH/RH (5/3) shields ala pre-PF Interceptors. Internals are, from front to back, BRIDGE, PH-3 (FX), C-Hull, 3xCARGO (25 point size), IMPULSE, 3xC-Warp. Movement rating 1/10. Scanner/Sensor, DAM CON and EX DAM same as Interceptors. Can land on planets under power.
Variations: Upgrade shields to 5/5 or 6/4, upgrade Ph-3 to Ph-2 or 2xPh-3, number of cargo boxes range from one to four. Crew ranges from a single person to maybe seven on the larger ones. Some have been converted to luxury yachts, replace some or all of the CARGO with C-HULL and add up to 15 passengers or so.
Some designs can land via gravity and/or aerodynamics. Few went unarmed, none had “heavy weapons” (ie, no disruptors or photon torpedoes, as the vessel’s hull could not stand the shock of firing such a weapon), a three-shot ADD was rare but not unheard of. At least one was sighted sporting two heavy Type-IV drones strapped to its hull, but it’s unclear whether or not they were operational. Likewise, this class of ship is too small to mount tractor-beams or scout-style special sensors. The yacht variant might have a two-man transporter system (not worth putting on the SSD) or perhaps a mech-linked shuttle craft (unarmed civilian version).
Use in SFB: targets.
Why bother?? Prime Directive. These very simple SSDs will generically describe the craft used by the ubiquitous traveling salesman, ala Cyrano Jones and Harry Mudd.
As far as deck plans go, these could be just about anything from round to triangular shaped or whatever. One adventurous soul even went as far as welding several military-surplus shuttle craft together to earn his fame and fortune among the stars ... and has been seeking the it for over three decades. The ship in this story, the RICHARDS, looks more like a wingless NASA Space Shuttle than anything else. It’s about 27 meters long (about a third the length of a Police Cutter or Privateer), less than ten meters wide and five-and-a-half meters tall (not counting the Warp engine). Even at that small size, there’s plenty of places to hide secret compartments for smuggling stuff.
Why bother with a SSD? For those people that want to use SFB for space combat in Prime Directive. Could make for interesting scenarios, too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Garth L. Getgen
Resurrecting a dead horse (to beat), but I had a thought on this:
Quote:Engines do not cause stars or planets to go boom; gravity wells have "a bad effect" on warp engines. Leave it at that. It's just not something that needs defining.
What about using Lagrange points? Those are pretty common in several Sci-Fi universes are jump points. Essentially, to apply to SFB/GPD, you'd posit that jumping to high warp around the effects of a gravity well would cause damage to the ship (1 warp box destroyed, say). But, since ANY damage at high warp (from weapons or just the interaction of a gravity well at that speed) DESTROYS the ship, starships just don't go to high warp in the effect of a gravity well.
IOW, they'd have to travel to a Lagrange point to make the jump from tactical warp to high warp. (The instability of 3 of the 5 points would be mostly irrelevant - the ship only needs it for a moment, and its onboard computers can easily calculate where the point currently is)
Lagrange points are the point where gravity of two bodies is balanced, not points where gravity is at a given strength. So Lagrange points would not have anything to do with the "safe to go to warp" distance.
The thought would be that it was the interaction of gravity fields within a system that causes the problem at high warp - not necessarily a single gravity field on its own.
Finding a Lagrange point gives you equal gravity pull from all sources you are currently feeling gravity from.
The alternative, of course, is that the ship needs to be of the gravity well of a system PERIOD - but, then, battles would never happen around planets, as the ship would have to go *way* out of the system before high warp would be possible. (Thus, defenders around a planet would have plenty of warning of the arriving ship and have plenty of time to intercept it).
Being able to high warp into/out of Lagrange points at least allows a ship to get closer to a planet without being TOO close.
Just note that the density of material, such as gases and plasma, increases significantly in a star system (i.e. the solar wind is discharged plasma). This, combined with the aggravated "damage" a ship can receive at high warp, makes high warp through a system impossible. The same would be true in a nebula.
By the way, why does this matter? I'm not even sure why I'm offering the above....
I don't really know why we are even discussing it since SFB has ships whizzing right past a planet at warp 3.