Ok David, let's start this conversation over.

There seem to be two separate issues.

1. Drawing program to use. Understand that we must receive deck plans in a form we can edit, correct, change, add to, etc. It's just so complex that there is no other way. Imagine if you will that you did a splendid set of plans, but we noticed a typo. Are we now supposed to go back through all the hoops we had to jump to receive and translate the files to get this fixed, and do that again and again and again whenever somebody spots a line of the wrong weight or a compressed air tank of the wrong color? What if something is spotted literally minutes before we go to press? With a drawing program we can edit, we can fix these things easily. You might think that we could review the plans one time, have everything fixed in one shot, and just print them. It doesn't work that way. We've printed three sets so far, and in all of them we continued to find stuff every time we looked, and every time somebody else looked. A full set of deck plans may have TEN THOUSAND items (doors, tanks, walls, symbols, consoles, chairs) and no amount of checking can find everything in one set of checks.

2. I never saw your plans (although others commented on your artistic creativity and I'd really like to see and admire your work) but you seemed to think others had criticized them. I am not sure what form this criticism took.
If the problem was "total volume" then that is relatively easy to check by counting the boxes on the SSDs of the LR, Free Trader, and Fed Frigate and doing a little math. Shouldn't be that hard to calculate the square meters of deck space involved. If the Frigate and trader have a battery box on the SSD and the battery compartment on the published deck plans is xxx square meters, there you have it, just make yours the same size.
If the problem was missing parts, just add them. If the problem was surplus parts, delete them. Sheesh, this ain't rocket science.

I'm going to skip quickly through the part about your behavior; everybody here told you what you did wrong, that you were wrong to get upset and had no call to become sarcastic when your error was pointed out. Nobody wants to hang around with someone so full of spite and vinegar. When you get over being upset, we can move forward.

I have a lot to do and don't have time to sugar coat every observation and stroke the ego of everyone who might someday do something publishable. I haven't noticed any shortage of people willing to work for me. Everytime somebody stomps off in a huff, five people Email and ask if they could have whatever "job" he just quit.

So, feel free to take a deep breath and send me a jpg or tif or pdf or something of your work and if it is as artistically "wow" as has been said, we can figure out a way to put your skills profitably to use.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 15, 2004 - 11:37 am: Edit

Loren Knight sent me a sample of David's work and it is indeed very "wow" and most impressive.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Friday, April 16, 2004 - 09:41 pm: Edit

David: I have the "Professional" grade version of SMARTDRAW which has a good chance of importing your drawings.

Send one of the pages (ONE -- not all of them!) to me at g.plana@comcast.net Oh, and it's a good idea to zip the file before you try to email it -- attachments often get mangled in transit.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 03:55 pm: Edit

Nick Blank / SVC: Do you happen to have this info handy: what is the diameter of each deck on the Fed FF deck plans (perferable in meters)?? Thanks!!


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 04:46 pm: Edit

Pretty sure there is a scale on the drawings...

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 05:33 pm: Edit

Garth, using a ruler and the scale I got...

Deck 1: 10 Meters
Deck 2: 27.5 Meters long, 15 Meters wide
Deck 3: 62.5 Meters
Deck 4: 90 meters (the Impulse deck extends another 5 meters out from the hull)
Deck 5: 87.5 Meters (the Impulse Deck extends out another 5 meters from the hull)
Deck 6: 42.5 Meters
Deck 7: 32.5 Meters

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 07:33 pm: Edit

Chris, thanks. I just found a ruler, but the marks don't line up. I guess I should have just marked out one on the edge of a sheet of paper.

Just playing around with some ideas here, and I wanted to get a feel for how it compares.

So, using the old PI*R^2 formula (Deck 2 is PI*R1*R2), I come up with roughly 18,095 square meters for the FF.

I have two versions of deck plans for the Fed Police Cutter started, and one for the Orion Light Raider.

One version of the POL has seven decks aft and three decks forward, is 82 meters long by 22 meters wide (body), with approximately 6,250 square meters of deck space (probably 10% - 15% is not usable due to overhead clearance). The cargo bay (two SSD boxes) on this one is 8x16 meters.

The second version is larger, with eight decks aft and four forward, is 100 meters long by 27.5 meters wide, with approximately 11,645 square meters of space. The cargo bay is a nice, round 10x20 meters -- 100 square meters per SSD box.

And the Orion is 91.5 meters by 18 meters (body) with a 58 meter wing span, and has two decks plus a one-meter high bilge deck. This was the smallest that I could make it and still put six shuttles inside (two in the bay, one spare, and three in the cargo holds). The deck space comes out to 2,667 square meters (2,925 counting the bilge.

On one hand, I don't expect a pirate ship to be a luxury liner ... crew berthing in open bunks down the wides of the ship, gang showers and common heads, little entertainment facilities, etc, etc ... but on the other hand, this may be a bit too cramped, even by WW-2 U-boat standards. To try to make room for a third deck, I had to expand the entire ship proportionally: 120 meters long by 24 meters body with 76 meter windspan, with (very rough calculations) somewhere between 7,850 to 8,150 square meters of deck space.


So, I'm looking for some feedback .... do I stay with the smaller POL, with 1/3 the deck area of the FF, or go up in size to the one about 2/3 area??? And same qustion for the LR ... very small and cramped with 1/6 the area of the FF, or should I go up to closer to 1/2 the area??????

Thanks!!


Garth L. Getgen

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 07:51 pm: Edit

Well, if we look at the SSD for the FF and POL, we see that there are about the same number of internals between the two ships...

The FF has about three times the number of crew as a POL...

I would say that the POL would have about 1/2 the deck area of the FF, just because of the cramped design and low number of crew....Deck 4 of the FF is almost entirely devoted to sleeping areas. That is the primary deck of the ship, so scale that area down to 1/3 the deck space.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 08:22 pm: Edit

Cfant;

The one caution I would add is that I don't think number of internals should be taken as more than a rough surrogate for the actual size of the ship. To take an extreme example, an R-torp and an F-torp are both one box on the SSD, but surely the physical mass and volume of the R-torp is much greater. What internal boxes really represent is the amount of damage the ship can take. This does have some relationship to ship size, but it's not linear by any means.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 08:47 pm: Edit

Alan, I agree, but surely the same system will take up a similar amount of space, if not the exact same space.

Take the sytems of both vessels, not counting warp...

FFG vs POL+
2xPhoton v 1xPhoton
3xPh1 v 3xPh1
2xPh3 v 2xPh3
1xG-rack v 1xG-rack

3xImpulse v 2xImpulse
2xBattery v 2xBattery
1xAWR v 1xAWR

2xBridge v 2xBridge
1xAux v 1xAux
1xEmer v 1xEmer

1xProbe v 1xProbe
2xTransporters v 2xTransporters
2xLab v 2xLab
2xTractors v 1xTractor
2xShuttle v 2xShuttle
6xHull v 5xHull and 2xCargo

They both have the same number of Excess damage hits.

One could come to several different conclusions regarding space and such. THe only main difference between the two ships is the number of crew on the FF being three times that of the POL.

Since crew quarters take up about 30 Square feet per cabin and there are 90 of them in the FF, I would think that only needing 30 (or less if more than double bunked) would drastically reduse the area of a ship. Also, since the FF is designed to be out longer on its own, it has several REC areas and lounges.....somehting I do not think would be on a POL, or at least not in number and size.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 09:59 pm: Edit

Chris: FF crew = 160, POL = 100, no?? That's not "three times the number of crew". Perhaps you were thinking of the pre-Y2K reprint, which increased the POL crew from 60 to 100.

I didn't think to count the SSD boxes like that. Okay, I think I'm going to go up to the larger sizes for both the POL and LR.

30 square feet for living quarters???? What is that ... 5' by 6' ... wow, that's tiny. Quick check of the plans ... rouhly 4x5 meters, 20 square meters, which is (pulling out my metric conversion slide-rule) ... 215 square feet.

Thanks!!!


Garth L. Getgen

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Saturday, April 24, 2004 - 01:25 am: Edit

GArth, the SSD I am looking at shows a crew number of 6 Crew units, and yeah it is the old one.

Oops on the Crew quarters.....I was thinking meters and typed feet...(still trying to get mind to think in meters )

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, April 24, 2004 - 06:09 pm: Edit

Chris, Not a problem. And if you wondering why SPP increased the POL crew, it's because of a conversation he and I had after I sent in a story for him to read. He asked me to explain where everyone was (Bridge, AuxCon, etc) during the action. I provided him with the full crew listing, which he edited and sent back.

Rather, he attempted to edit and soon found it didn't work ... 6 crew units minus one each for BP and shuttle bay left only 40 people, give or take a couple, to run everything. They need six for the phasers (two each) and three for the photon. Add in three full bridge crews (Bridge, AuxCon and Emer) of 5 to 7 people each .... already you're using half the crew and you haven't covered Transporters, Tractor, Warp Drive, DamCon, or the Lab. There jsut wasn't enough people to do everything that needed to be done in combat.

When ADB got the re-printed/updated rulebook back from the printers, SPP shot me an e-mail say "By the way, you'll be happy to know we increased the POL crew size". The increase of BP was due to my retorical question "if the POL has 2 BP and the Orion LR has eight ... what do the Cartels do with all the Cutters they capture??


Garth L. Getgen

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Saturday, April 24, 2004 - 09:41 pm: Edit

Nifty cool.....I learned something new today

By Tyler wiltzen (Tybot) on Saturday, June 19, 2004 - 04:00 am: Edit

Hi guys. Just thought I would stop by and say what a wonderful job you've done on the deck plans so far. I await with much glee for the G1 plans so I can use my minis at home,

Thanks again!!!

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Saturday, June 19, 2004 - 12:59 pm: Edit

Gee thanks! Glad you enjoy them.

I should have at Origins the plans intended for Module Prime Beta, a Klingon F5 frigate, for people to look at. Not the final version, but close. I hope to have Steve Cole and other's take a look and make suggestions and so on for the final version, like what we did for the Fed FF at last year's Origins.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Wednesday, June 23, 2004 - 01:22 pm: Edit

The deck plans for the FedEx are in CL29, pages 66-67.

(This message is just so people know where to look.)

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Sunday, June 27, 2004 - 09:03 pm: Edit

Garth: FYI, just got the F-POL floorplans running on my computer.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, June 28, 2004 - 07:41 am: Edit

Cool. As I said, I'd kill to have one-tenth of Nick's ability. And one percent of his speed. I'd be DONE by now.


Garth

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Monday, June 28, 2004 - 02:17 pm: Edit

The Fed Ex deckplans in the latest CL were the first version I sent to Steve to see if he wanted to use them. I actually changed a couple of things, the middle deck, I moved the aft corridor forward, and it now runs between the 4 sets of crew quarters and the 2 sets of passenger quarters.

Also, the aft stairwells and vertical shafts (VS) really don't fit as shown (when you get to the top or bottom of these, decks 1 and 3, they run into the sloping outer hull). I moved them "inward" just enough, which required modifying some of the engineering spaces a bit.

I also added a couple of small rooms on deck 2 directly in front of the warp engine spaces (i.e. between each engine and the stairwell spots). One was a backup life support.

I had hoped Steve could use the newer set, but he didn't have the time (CL going to press soon after I sent in the first batch). Oh well, different variants, and all that, and everybody is going to modify them to their own uses anyway.

If you want to see more deck plans, buy the Klingon G1 plans coming out soon (the ones with cardboard heros in them). Good sales on that will make it possible to publish more.

By William J. Beasley (Agrícola) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 12:50 pm: Edit

I'm wondering if anyone knows if there are any top-down pictuers of Hydran Stinger fighters in any of the SFB stuff. I'm going to page through the R sections tonight, and flag any fighter/shuttle top-downs, just wondering if anyone's already done the work. I've been collecting the few that I've found in MPA, G-Klingons, and GPD, but thus far, that's only about 7 distinct shuttle/fighter types (F18, Admin, HTS, GAS from the Fed Frigate Deckplans; Z-1, Z-D, Z-Y and Z-V from G-Klingons).

I've been scaling them down/up to the same scale (based mainly on the Drone sizes for the Klingon fighters without an established scale), and am considering using them for my conjectural GPD campaign. They'd also be useful for splicing into Deck Plans for variants.

That, and I've been trying to pull out enough equipment from the G1L deckplan to justify putting a fighter inside, or inside my conjectural Thunderbolt PF. (I realize the incongruity, of course.)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 01:37 pm: Edit

Yes, there are.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 01:49 pm: Edit

William, a couple captians Logs back there was a multi-page article about te history of the hydran stingers, including pictures. I don't remember which one, but if you are looking for pictures of anything you should get a full collection of the CL's, pictures tend to appear there of all sorts of things.

a fighter is to large to fit inside a PF, you can dock one to the outside and board through a docking tube (this was done historicly, all leader PF's carried an admin shuttle this way and a few races had PF varients that eliminated heavy weapons to carry fighters)

you can't fix the shuttle/fighter that's mmounted this way

By William J. Beasley (Agrícola) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 02:49 pm: Edit

@SVC: Thanks, I'll go a'digging.

@David: I realize that. This is more for my not-completely-historical campaign, and not out of any attempt to change the system. Just looking through what I can strip out, put in, finagle, etc. from the PF Deckplans I have. This wouldn't be a military ship, and would likely only use the Shuttle and/or fighter for light duty, cargo duty, etc. Just some goofing around, to see what I can make room for.

Thanks for the info, though, much appreciated.

By William J. Beasley (Agrícola) on Wednesday, July 07, 2004 - 04:04 pm: Edit

I'm still unable to find any pictures, top down, of a Hydran Fighter. Any help or page numbers would be much appreciated. So far, I've got the following Top-down's:
General:
Admin
GAS
HTS

Fed:
F-7
F-8
F-18

Cygnan
two fighters from the latest CL, can't recall their names out of hand.

Klingon:
Z-Y
Z-V
Z-D
Z-1

Various Romulan fighters from J and J2

Tholian:
Spider

Kzinti
TAAS (IIRC)

I'm very interested in the Hydran fighters, as that's always been my favorite race.

Thanks.