Nerroth Fleet Captain
Joined: 08 Oct 2006 Posts: 1744 Location: Ontario, Canada
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Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 7:38 pm Post subject: FC National Guard ships? |
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I mentioned this over in the Early Years discussion thread, but I felt it worth discussing in its own here.
SFB Module R8 introduced the G/L-series of starship hulls. (Most Alpha empires use the "L-" designation for this role, but the Federation uses "G-" in honour of the various National Guards.) These were old Y-era (Tech Level 11) hulls that were upgraded with certain aspects of "modern" (TL 12) technology, such as ship-mounted Phaser-1s and overloadable heavy weapons. However, they were incapable of installing modern (speed-30) warp drives, so were speed-capped at 24 (or technically 25, since SFB allowes an added movement point from one's impulse drive).
While these ships were no longer capable of operating as line ships in the various Alpha Octant star navies, they were still a step above the older W-era hulls which had previously been relegated to the various National Guards in the Federation, or to the equivalent local defence organizations in certain other empires; though the old "warp-driven" pre-ISC ships had more or less been scrapped by the time the unified ISC Navy and Police had moved on to their first "two-prong" Y-era ships.
This gave several of these hull types a new lease of life, albeit one (mostly) away from the front lines. Some ex-Star Fleet YCAs of the old Republic-class would be converted into National Guard GCAs and assigned to Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, and other major member planets. A handful of others would be converted into specific mission variants, to include the National Guard GSR NCC-1011 USS Amerigo Vespucci from Module R11, which would spend most of its renewed service life surveying the region between the Federation capital and the Gorn border. The ISC would take their "two-prong" YCAs and convert some of them to LCAs for use in the local defence forces, as the newer "three-prong" CAs succeeded them in front-line Naval service. And so on and so forth.
My thinking was that, since a number of Y-era ships exist in print already, with a couple soon to be added for the proposed Early Years playtest pack, perhaps some of those could be re-purposed for use as their G/L-era counterparts.
For the most part, the National Guard versions would no longer operate under the Early Years restrictions, though they would still be unable to set a Baseline Speed of 24. This would make them freely available for use with both Middle Years and Main Era ships.
One could even convert the current D4 Ship Card into both the LD4 (which the Klingons used themselves) and the KD4 (as some of the early warp-powered cruisers seen in Romulan service, which would gradually be handed down to the Great Houses where they were more or less used in an equivalent local defence role).
At the very least, this might provide a secondary use for any new Y-era Ship Cards created going forward, at least for those hull types which have G/L-era counterparts available.
So, would the ships of the National Guards be of interest to anyone, or is it better to leave these older-generation hulls back in the Early Years for the purposes of Federation Commander? _________________ FC Omega Discussion (v3)
FC LMC Discussion |
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