Federation Commander

Is the Romulan Condor DN/DNH part of the Eagle series or the Hawk series? It has the body of an Eagle, but the forward section looks like something out of the Hawk-series. I'm curious where I should file the ship card!

Condor = Hawk-series.

Vulture = Eagle-series.

Above per the F&E Master Ship Information Table (SIT).

Vulture is the eagle DN

Thank you for clearing that up. I knew the Vulture was an Eagle DN, but I thought that maybe since the Vulture dates from Y50, perhaps the Condor was an updated DN for the Eagle series. Other races have multiple DNs like the Klingon C8, C9, and the Roms have the Demonhawk in the Hawk series, so I wasn't sure.

The design of the Condor borrows liberally from the Vulture, but there is no direct family connection (i.e. there is no refit/upgrade path to turn an old Vulture into a Condor).

The Vulture was the biggest and baddest example of "pre-tactical warp" Romulan naval architecture.

The Condor is its "spiritual successor", lifting some of the basic configuration (for tradition, if-anything), but the Condor is 100% a "post-warp" design and contemporary of the SkyHawk/SparrowHawk/FireHawk.

In SFB, the DemonHawk was a "design competitor" to the Condor which, ultimately, was not historically constructed. (Which would later prove to be unfortunate, since the DMH base hull would have allowed for some interesting anti-Andromedan configurations further down the line. But alas.)

However, FC plays a bit more fast and loose with what SFB would refer to as "unbuilt variants", so there's less to stop anyone from making use of the DMH Ship Card in CL49.


On a side note, the Early Years material in SFB shows some of the "pre-warp" iterations of the Vulture, which show both the evolution of Romulan plasma technology and the forerunners of the "modern-day" cloaking device.

The earliest non-tactical-warp ships in print in SFB are "S-era" hulls, shown after they had been equipped with the ability to track, and to fire at, ships moving at tactical warp speeds. The even earlier "Q-era" hulls - of the kind which fought in the First Federation-Romulan War - were limited to strictly "sub-light" combat only.

Within game history, things line up like this:

Eagle DN -> Vulture.

The Vulture existed from the earliest of the Romulan fleets and was continuously updated over time to adapt to whatever the current Romulan technology was.

Hawk DN -> Condor.
Hawk alternative DN -> Demonhawk.

The Condor had a competition with the Demonhawk and the Condor was the victor. So, the Condor was made and the Demonhawk wasn't. (Don't remember if there was a theoretical one-off or not. I don't think so.) However, the Demonhawk is a cool ship, so there is a FC ship card in a Captain's Log.

However, to fully explain things, it helps to look at things from a meta-game perspective. So, in the history of the game (not the in-game history, but the history of how the game itself developed), the Condor was the first Romulan DN created for the game. It was created even before the Hawk-series ships were even introduced, and way before the Vulture was ever thought of. So, the reason why the Condor doesn't look like it "fits" into the Hawk-series of ships is because it really doesn't. That is not how it was designed or from where it originated. Instead, as the history of the SFU became more formalized, it was retconned into being the Hawk-series DN. That is why it doesn't seem to fit as seamlessly as the other Hawk-series ships.

So, way back when it was original published, it was simply the "Romulan DN". No series, no competition, no predecessor. It was just the Romulan DN.

mjwest wrote:
However, to fully explain things, it helps to look at things from a meta-game perspective.

Thank you for explaning that. Trying to make sense of things in SFB is more like the "Meta concept" you describe. Thats exactly how I look at things for custom campains as well.

The Condor had a competition with the Demonhawk and the Condor was the victor. So, the Condor was made and the Demonhawk wasn't. (Don't remember if there was a theoretical one-off or not. I don't think so.)

Unless something has been published recently that I am unaware of that contradicts me, I am pretty sure that no Demonhawks were built. Construction was started on two of the alternate omni-dreadnought design, the Megahawk. One was scrapped without being completed and the other was finished after the General War, but as the down rated Omnihawk class.