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The Andromedans and new Aliens Questions.
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Starsuperion
Lieutenant JG


Joined: 06 Sep 2009
Posts: 80

PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 9:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hmmm....

I take it this is generally the part where someone goes nutso and starts complaining, but that makes sense.. and this X thing sounds rather intriguing..

so during the Andro Invasion they use these ships.. is it a particular style or just the Hull materials that are changed??

See Being that my friends and I are in love with the basic classic setting, this new found tech in the future of SFB and FC is new and exciting, however, the loss of more ship classes is kind of a bummer..

the most exciting thing about the SFU is the fact that there are so many ships to choose from that we would have never seen in the original series, and subsequent movies..

I always loved the classic Enterprise class ships more then those of the newer movies and so on.. so the different variations of that one design are just as exciting and amazing to me..

still, with that said, much of the nature of a galaxy and universe is to change, and though the Technology for smaller ships is where it went, I still think that big war ships should have a place in the SFU..

like you said, I could run the design and specs past SVC and see what kind of blessing I could get, and then publish it on my own..for home use..

but it would be pretty sweet to see something like that in the current time lines and such..

in the TOS universe and going forward Starfleet concentrated allot of it's efforts in building larger ships.. the sovereign class, and the Next Generation Galaxy class were massive compared to the original ship.. more so then my design for the SFU currently.. and NOT as a ship that never got to see the light of day..
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OGOPTIMUS
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Joined: 10 Nov 2006
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Starsuperion wrote:
and this X thing sounds rather intriguing..

so during the Andro Invasion they use these ships.. is it a particular style or just the Hull materials that are changed??


It's both. They start off as modifications of existing ships, and at a distance are indistinguishable from their non-X counterparts. However, some of the artwork implies that there are significant visual differences. Check out Adam Turner's artwork here on the board to see what the Fed CX and Klingon DX look like.

http://starfleetgames.com/federation/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1484
http://starfleetgames.com/federation/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2391

You can also check out the X1R cover at the online store.

The Feds and Klingons deploy the more powerful X-cruisers in Y181. This then gets followed by other races cruisers and the technology is applied to destroyers, frigates and some other racially specific ships.

You can read more about this and see the SSDs for the ships in SFB modules X1 and X1R.
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djdood
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Joined: 01 Feb 2007
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Location: Seattle, WA

PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Starsuperion wrote:
...this is generally the part where someone goes nutso and starts complaining, but that makes sense..


I'm glad you are able to take this input in the way it is intended (healthy discourse). Some new folks do indeed get all "huffy" when they can't make SVC and ADB publish their super-munchkin mega-battleship. Come to think of it, some "old" folks get huffy when they can't get what they want too... In the end, SVC has a pretty strong (30 years!) record of knowing his market, growing his game systems, and protecting the integrity of the overall "vision". "Trek" got pretty disjointed and messy. The SFU is remarkably free of contradiction and "retro-active continuity".

Regarding "really big ships", don't take the mini for the Fed BB as the only bellweather for it as a ship in the game.

Minis are always subject to the interpretation of the sculptor and the limitations of the materials. In the case of the Fed BB mini, Mike Raper used the existing old CVA aft hull as the basis for the BB's aft hull and the scale derived from that - given the number of boxes in the aft hull on the SFB SSD and FedCom shipcards it is indeed probably a bit small. However, so are a lot of the minis (and some, like the FedEx I sculpted are too big).

The Fed BB ship in the game is actually a pretty decent match for the other battleships. It's an absolute terror for anything less than a battleship.

If and when you get a chance to read the "fluff" text for one of the battleship modules, you'll see SVC's thoughts on battleships in the SFU. The B-10 was intended to set the "high bar" for size in the SFU.

Starsuperion wrote:
...however, the loss of more ship classes is kind of a bummer..


Not sure what to say in response to that. The SFU has thousands of ships and dozens of hull-types and classes and they all make sense, unlike some of the idiosyncratic stuff that was on TV (Soyuz-class) and downright silly ones (The Franken-fleet kitbashes on DS9).

I know there is always a desire to do the "mega-uber titan-maximum planet crusher" ship, but really, is that Star Trek? It's not the SFU, which is about the "tv ship from the classic series" and other ships about its size and abilities. Kirk didn't need a battleship to defeat the Klingon, steal his lady, and save the day. A player can feel more the hero if he didn't either.

Roddenberry would never have approved something like a "Death Star" on the shows he was involved in. The Galaxy-class from TNG was indeed huge, but it was huge because it was a "hotel in space" full of families raising kids for up to 20 years, not because it was a "battleship". Honestly, it being so big was a detriment a lot of the time (note how the lumbering U.S.S. Odyssey was destroyed by the Jem Hadar attack fighters on DS9).

The Sovereign-class is pretty big, but note how it is much smaller than the 1701-D. The writers realized that the ship had gotten too big and unwieldy and started cranking the size back down. The Voyager pushed the size back down almost to match Kirk's ship from TOS (turns out that's the right size after all, at least for drama). Roughly 200,000 DWT and 400-ish people/beings/things seems to be the magic number for having enough of everything to do all the different jobs, without having so much that nothing is a challenge (which makes for boring TV).

The SFU is built around cruisers (and carriers, if you decide to "go there").

Battleships are like hot sauce. It's there at the taco-stand and you can add them to your game-taco if you want, but you don't have to and if you do, it's best in small doses.

Folks who eat nothing but hot sauce and jalapeno peppers tend to not have much ability to discern fine-tastes anymore - it's the same with starships. You can't enjoy the subtle (but telling) improvement that an F-5W War Destroyer has over its parent F-5 Frigate, if all you ever play is Heavy Dreadnoughts and Battleships.
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OGOPTIMUS
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 11:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

djdood wrote:
You can't enjoy the subtle (but telling) improvement that an F-5W War Destroyer has over its parent F-5 Frigate, if all you ever play is Heavy Dreadnoughts and Battleships.


If that's not a shameless plug for a new mini in the works I don't know what is. Wink

But I agree, cruisers and destroyers are really where I feel at home in the SFU.
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Starsuperion
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Joined: 06 Sep 2009
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 12:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

LOL! Shamelss Plugs aside.. I do like that there are people on this site who take the creation and execution of the overall ship Philosophy in stride..


I suppose that the Fortress class could be reduced in size, and it be just about the same size if not only ever so slightly larger then the Mars class..

I just like the separate functions on the ships.. the main bridge, and a tactical battle bridge, with the undercarriage for troops or shuttles, or drones..

I'm not married to wanting a Death Star..

I'm more conscious of the SFU and TOS then that..(not that I took offense, just saying..)

But I like the whole idea of different classifications of ships, yeah some looked funky.. and silly..

but some were just too cool and should not be retired..Or would not be retired in my game universe..

I suppose that the official universe is what is always going to be, and anyone can take that basis and mold it into what they want.

However, if to leave a better official universe then the one you discovered or became a part of, is the goal that a true and loyal fan wants..

whether anything I submit to SVC is accepted or rejected.. just knowing that I got some thing out there to view is a cool thing to me.

Now as for the Fel fleet I was working on, I have redesigned them, and plan to post them on the Legacy BBS and email to SVC, with ship cards..

but I got a friend on here that is interested in working on those with me, so I need to email him the "stuff" once it is ready..

I like hot sauce on tacos.. but mostly I like them rather plain.. Very Happy
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Tiigo
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Joined: 20 Sep 2009
Posts: 36
Location: Indianapolis, IN

PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 12:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

OGOPTIMUS wrote:
djdood wrote:
You can't enjoy the subtle (but telling) improvement that an F-5W War Destroyer has over its parent F-5 Frigate, if all you ever play is Heavy Dreadnoughts and Battleships.


If that's not a shameless plug for a new mini in the works I don't know what is. Wink

But I agree, cruisers and destroyers are really where I feel at home in the SFU.


I agree. Though, just starting out with the game, I like playing the big ships if only because it takes so much longer to knock out your opponent with them - it gives you more time in a single duel or free-for-all to experiment with different tactics. But I can easily see becoming spoiled by the size and power that you lose the nuance in the smaller ships.
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djdood
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Joined: 01 Feb 2007
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 12:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That was indeed a completely shameless plug for the F-5W. Cool

I'm a cruiser-guy.

To keep battle times within the usual 3-4 hour time slot I have to play in, if we are doing a fleet duel, my main opponent and I tend to prefer smallish 3-4 ship per side battles (often one BC, a smaller cruiser, and a pair of destroyers/frigates). We scale that up or down to match the time-slot.

The one constant is always cruisers. I can't recall ever not having a cruiser, even in a single-ship duel (since we play exclusively at fleet scale, they are already pretty low box-count and easy to "pop").

We've rolled out the big boys for some larger battles with more people around the table and they are a lot of fun, but it does take either more people or more time to really fit them in. All... those... drones...
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Tiigo
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 12:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
All... those... drones...


Drones? What drones?

A friend of mine loves Kzinti's. I love the bug-zapper effect they get when they hit my ESGs...

Or is it more of crunch as it hits my hard candy shell?
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Starsuperion
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 1:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I suppose the appeal to me of a larger ship is that you could basically do battleships on battleships and or do a 1 ship to ship duel.. which is fun..

not to mention the 1 big ship versus lots of little ships for an ultra strategy face off..

drones are cool.. I'm still confused as to how you would use them in battle..

and what is an ESG??
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Mike
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 2:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This discussion has brought up an underlying point that is rather interesting.

Though Federation Commander is touted as being open for all kinds of "non-canon" ships, it gets almost all of its ships from SFB. That's what we'd expect since FC is taken from SFB and the SFU.

The fact that FC has battleships for all empires is amazing in and of itself. However, the line seems to have been drawn in the sand (stardust?) there. Until we see X ships in FC, the battleships will be the biggest boys on the block.

If someone really wanted a BIG ship, (s)he could use a squadron scale DN with fleet scale opponents...
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Scoutdad
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 2:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Starsuperion wrote:


drones are cool.. I'm still confused as to how you would use them in battle..

Therein lies the rub. With speed 24 drones and the ability to pay-as-you-go for movement (i.e., acceleration each impulse), it's quite difficult to score hits with drones... unless you are usign a Kzinti fleetand can just overwhelm your enemies defenses.
More often than not, drones are used as mobile terrain. With practice and experience, you can utilize your drones to "herd" the enemies ships in the direction you want them to go, or you can split one memberof hte fleet away from the pack and pick him off at leisure.


Quote:
and what is an ESG??

Espanding Sphere GEnerators. The proimary anti-drone / anti-Stinger defense of the Lyrans. Think of it as a large bubble of energythat surrounds the ship. As drones / Stingers / ships impact it (or as it impacts them...); the enrgy used to create the sphere causes damage to everything that hits it. I have used them to swat away entire swarms of drones or Stingers before. Cool
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djdood
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 3:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Starsuperion -

Any new ships, empires, etc. that you design will need to take into account any of its potential adversaries (including the furry Lyrans with their ESG's that hurt so bad when run into). The dirty tricks of the Hydrans, Vudar, and all the other "non-tv" empires are just as dangerous as the tv-guys.
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Kang
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 7:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Weighing in with this feels almost like coming back to topic Wink but I have the disadvantage of the Atlantic time delay....

As 'dood got close to mentioning earlier, the X-ships were the 'historical' mainstay of the campaign against the Andros.

Remember that at the time of the Andro Invasion, the empires in the game had just finished a long-drawn-out, gruelling war that left their economies and their fleets in ruins, followed almost immediately by the ISC War of Pacification. Nobody had enough BIG ships left to field.

This then is part of the reason why the X-ships came to be. More power and weapons, better electronics, better protection - more ship for your money, if you will. And - this is also important - the X-ships were firmly based on existing hulls, thus saving costs even more. If I recall correctly, some of the X-ships were actually converted from existing [surviving?] hulls rather than being built as X-ships from the keel up.

This is also partly why the dreadnoughts were left in the dust.

So to build a massive Fortress class would not seem to be economically or historically viable. That said, the FC part of the SF Universe does not necessarily subscribe to the historical timelines or fleet lists. Basically if it's fun, it's in FC - or will be in the future. That seems to be the main thing with FC.

The comments about the B-10 being the 'high bar' I still think are important, though. Sure, all races get a BB in FC where they didn't in SFB. But my own personal opinion is that the BB is the high bar for all races, otherwise you just end up in a war of escalation - which is I think part of what Steve has successfully tried to avoid all these years. It's a bit like placing a ban on Phaser-4's on all mobile ships - we just don't go there!

I once designed a mega-ship for my fleet [the Rigel - looked like an Imperial - class Star Destroyer but without the superstructure] - and that had an FX-mounted battery of six Phaser-4's. I decided to give in to the rules, though, and made it a 'base ship' - kind of a mobile base that has positional stabilisers, so when it had arrived where it was going and was in orbit around a planet, it could be said to have switched on its stabilisers and use its phaser-4's. However, as a mobile combat ship, they became phaser-1's.
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Rich Stokes
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 9:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I got the impression (and I could be wrong) that the timeline/tech goes something like this:

Non-tactical warp lets people travel between planets and stars, but you can't do fancy piloting (it's just, "point at that star, hit the accelerator and then slow down when you get near") or use weapons in warp.

Then Tactical Warp is invented, along with warp weaponry. This is basically where the combat modeled in FC becomes possible. Ships can dash about at FTL speeds and shoot each other.

Ships gradually get bigger during the early era, but quickly settle down to the Cruiser and Destroyer classes being the mainstays (with the various other classes filling their niches) and Dreadnoughts really being the biggest hitters, but there are rare Battleships which are even bigger. Things are pretty static until the General War.

(I'm a bit hazy on where the General War fits in. Not the dates so much as which tech was in use by whom when, so I might have some of this a bit wrong)

At the start of the GW, everyone adopts fighters and carriers as the new "big guns" in their fleets. Carriers are bigger than cruisers, but their designed to deliver and protect their fighters rather than as pure hitters.

Later in the war, X-Tech is developed. It's not magic, so much as just better ways of doing the same stuff that older ships could do. At first, existing ships were re-fitted with X-Tech to improve them. (In real life terms, it seems that the X-refits can be thought of as the movies-era tech and refits, although with different aesthetics) Later in the war, new ships are built which incorporate X-Tech into their designs from the drawing-board. X-ships are not bigger than the older ships: they don't have to be because they pack more of a punch (pound-for-pound) than the older ships. Someone with more experience than me can point to the difference between, say, a fed CA and the X refit of same in SFB?

Towards the end of the war (I think) someone (I don't know who) develops a new, much smaller warp engine which can power and drive a much smaller ship over short, tactical distances. These drives cannot be used strategically: that is, they don't work for long enough to get you between star systems without help. This leads to the development of Fast Patrol vessels, also called Gunboats. The idea here is that you take a relatively small ship and slap as many guns, drones and whatnot as you can to it. They're cheap to build, but need to be escorted (by a "tender") who can do the required dumping of warp-whatever-it-is that builds up in these small, cheap engines. Getting a decent hit on a PF will cripple or destroy it, but hey, you have 5 more for the equivalent of a cruiser, so no biggie. They're sort of half way between a fighter and a corvette I guess. Main problem is that they're attrition units, meaning that any strategy which makes use of them is guaranteed to lose a fair number of them. The Federation, for example, found this unacceptable, regarding assigning crew to a PF flotilla as effectively a death sentence. But pretty much everyone else uses them to great effect in both the Alpha and Omega Octants.

I think the timeline ends there. I imagine that the situation post Andro Invasion leaves the Feds building more X-Cruisers/Destroyers and everyone else building a mix of Xships and PFs.

So, interestingly, if anything the ships get smaller as time goes on!

(Do I have this right?)
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djdood
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 9:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, you can have a mobile ship with phaser-4's. You just have to take the Juggernaut.

Come to think of it, there's a mini coming for that... Wink
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