Federation Commander

[Dan Ibekwe]

That is an impressive bit of model engineering.

BTW, how does the Fed CS miniature differ from the CA? To the untutored eye it looks pretty much the same ship.
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We are Hydrans! NO ONE LIKES US!

[Dan Ibekwe]

[The Master]

There are two trains of thought on what a CS is in SFB/FC. the first is the ADB version where you lose the foward P-1 for 2 more photon. this makes a great Fire support/ alpha strike ship but weak in a stand up fight on its own. The other is designed by swodaddy. it is a lighted up CA. the secondary hull is reduced in size and weight thus reducing it's mass allowing it to go faster in theory. the weapons are the same but because of engine placement better rear arc's.


SWO daddy designed a bunch. check out his Ship yard. great stuff to play / test for your self

[SWO_Daddy]

Is the CS different in FC than it is in SFB? The SFB design is based on the one on my website, with the one significant change being a change in rear phaser arcs from FH to RH... an improvement in my opinion, my original CS had those FH phasers in the rear hull and was a little too uber.

In SFB, I've found the CS flys a lot like an NCL and I tend to use the two ships interchangeably in a fight. The big difference is the two ships take damage differently due to the hull arrangement. The CS can take more total internals, but the small rear hull tends to get the APRs and Shuttles blown off quick.
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Check out my website at: http://www.jgray-sfb.com/

[OGOPTIMUS]

The CS also has an extra drone rack, fewer impulse engines (in FC only), and a smaller move cost, which gives it a fair amount of excess power. It's a wonderful (and nearly too powerful) ship to fly in FC.
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O.G. OPTIMUS


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[SWO_Daddy]

The external differences between the CS and the CA are the smaller rear hull and "flat" engine struts on the CS. This is the original drawing I did of the CS before the design was first published in R9:


Here is a miniature comparison.

CA


CS

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[Dan Ibekwe]

That's great, thanks!

I think your design and kitbashes have much more charachter than the official version. The reverse-taper nacelle struts may be a pain to produce, but they do add to the grace and distinctiveness of the miniature.
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[djdood]

Thanks again for the compliments.

Regarding strike cruisers (CS) in the games -

CS as a designation isn't as cut and dry as The Master's description made it out to be. Like so many things in the SFU (and the real world) there are exceptions.

Most of the empires do what he described (remove systems to make way for an exceptional heavy weapon load; the Gorn CS with it's giant type-R plasma torpedo is a perfect example of this).

That's the mold, but several strike cruisers break it.

The Feds (with their Prometheus-class CS) and the Klingons (with the SD7) choose a different path, keeping a roughly CA firepower suite, but reducing the ship's mass to get a better movement cost. In the aviation world I work in, we call this a "shrink" (as-opposed to the much more common "stretch").

As SWO_Daddy points out, the CS was his proposal to ADB and was published with only small changes. OGOPTIMUS also noted some minor changes made to it for FC (I don't have the card in front of me). IIRC, the SFB version had a weird movement cost that would not FC-ize and so it's power was adjusted to capture the same "feel" with a movement cost that did work in FC.

In regards tot he Fed CS mini -

The mini, as mastered by Mike Raper, is pretty much a slightly cut-down BC. The struts are indeed flat and are straight rectangles, as opposed to the BC's slightly flared struts. The engineering hull was shorted slightly. Other than the CS using the new CC-type saucer, the CS and BC are pretty tough to tell apart from any kind of distance. They are very, very similar.

That visual similarity was what inspired me to kitbash mine. I had enough troubles with my main game group (all newbs) not being able to tell the various Klingon ships apart. I didn't need them confused by the Feds too.

I don't know if Jeremy took his inspiration for the Fed CS that he proposed from Todd Guenther's Decatur-class, but I certainly saw a resemblance (especially in the top/plan view) and kicked it up a notch for my kitbashes. The photos were taken to keep a client informed on progress as I went, and also to act as a "cookbook" for if I made more later (which I did, for scoutdad).

I do enjoy the different look. She looks nice up against stock ships like the CA and oCL.


I ended up doing another one for myself, to-be marked as the Daedalus.
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[Wolverin61]

Those are some good looking minis.
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"His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."

[The Master]

I did not mean to imply that things were cut and dry. This is SFB/FC. Things are never as written in stone as they seem. I remember when only the Romulans were to have the mauler. Then there was the Klingon-Tholian incident. Now everybody has one. I just personally like the look of the stubby CS, the other is great fig and I have one in my fleet. But mission wise I would not want to be caught in one on the Romulan border. no where neer enough Phasers. The stubby while not official could fight on any border.

I also like to have the stuff no one else or ADB will never make. Call me a nut ( most have) I love spending days beating and cutting a fig to a ship I want but may never use. Do the same with FOW and BT. Keeps me off the streets!
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Dancing to my own drum beat

[djdood]

No problem Master. I was just clarifying for folks who don't have the history.

I too like kitbashing just for it's own sake. I haven't done enough of it lately.

Right now I have a Fed CVA "done my way" in work (a true DN conversion)
along with the master for the oCA.

I've also been toying with what to do with the front half of an NCL I have (left over from donating its engines to the oCA). I'm giving serious thought to using it to make an SFU/TOS-ified verison of the Reliant from ST:II (like the old Coventry-class).
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[The Master]

Cool
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Dancing to my own drum beat