Federation Commander

[Sebastian380]

This is very nice and the deep level of thinking behind the art is very surprising.
http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2013/03/

[bluebirds38]

looks good.

[Nerroth]

When I saw the thread title, I thought it was referring to the "other" Drex...

(On-topic, Doug Drexler's art is quite good, and has shown up in a number of Franchise-related places.)
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FC Omega Discussion (v3)
FC LMC Discussion

[Sebastian380]

This might be a stupid question but who is the the 'other' drex?

I'm really impressed by the art but what really intrigues me is the technical knowledge behind the modeling. I had no idea of the depth of thought and planning that goes into the design of the starship models. It's a shame the SFU world--especially regarding weaponry--doesn't quite match up to the TV/Motion Picture world but I imagine this is a copyright issue.

[Nerroth]

The Drex are a star-nation of intelligent robots over in the Omega Octant, built by the walrus-like Drexari to do the running of a star-faring civilization for them. They are in SFB (where they are quite lethal), but haven't shown up in the FC Omega project as of yet.

Is there anything in particular about weapons in the SFU that you find wanting? (While things might be more limited in Alpha, there are a lot of options in Omega, the LMC, and elsewhere that help add to the overall diversity of the setting.)
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FC Omega Discussion (v3)
FC LMC Discussion

[Sebastian380]

[Nerroth]

The SFU equivalent to the development of successive warp technologies is seen over in the Early Years, which (like Omega) is still mostly in SFB only.

The first Earth ships had impulse-powered non-tactical warp drives, which allowed them to go about nine parsecs a day, but required them to slow to sublight speeds in order to fight. Those kind of ships had primitive lasers and atomic missiles, as suggested in the TOS episode Balance of Terror.

Later on, the first tactical warp drives were built (in the Federation) by Earth, and those allowed ships to be equipped with the first "warp-class" weapons (phasers-2 and non-overloadable photons), as well as the first primitive transporters and suchlike. However, not every sublight ship class transferred well to the new technology; while the old Terran CL was a rugged enough design to handle the strain, the old Terran frigate could only adopt the first generation of tactical warp drives, and had to be retired in place of newer ship types when the time came for starship design technology to progress.

The next stage of development saw the first ships built from the keel up to incorporate tactical warp engines, which in the Federation saw the first saucer-and-nacelle hulls appear. (Unlike in ST: Enterprise, Earth didn't build any saucer-hulls as part of its own planetary navy; for the SFU Feds, saucers are a hallmark of the unified Star Fleet.) But these ships were still less advanced than the "modern" hulls you see in the Middle Years and General War for Federation Commander.

In terms of game play, the only one of those eras which isn't in SFB yet is the sublight (Q) era. The warp-refit (W), early warp (Y), and modern eras are all present and accounted for, but sublight battles haven't been given quite the same treatment as of yet. (Personally, I think it might be an area where the Squadron Strike 3D combat engine might be able to shine, since it has movement options that may not be viable for tactical warp combat but which could be introduced for a re-scaled sublight combat level. But parsec-ages may vary on that account.)
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FC Omega Discussion (v3)
FC LMC Discussion

[Sebastian380]

Thank you for that. Very interesting.

[Mr_Tricorder]

I used to love playing the sublight game (First Romulan War) that was in my dad's old copy of SFB Designer's Edition when I was in my early teens. The whole concept of that war simply fascinated me. It's a shame that conflict hasn't ever been significantly fleshed-out (either in Star Trek canon or in the SFU), although I think there is a series of Enterprise novels that covers it that I should check out sometime. At one point, I started writing a roleplaying campaign for Prime Directive that dealt with that era, but I never finished it. Hopefully I'll feel inspired to pick it up again sometime soon.

[Sgt_G]

Well, those links are four years old, which is about a hundred in Internet years.
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Garth L. Getgen

Master Sgt, US Air Force, Retired -- 1981-2007 -- 1W091A

[mjwest]

It was a spammer. I deleted the post.
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Federation Commander Answer Guy