Prime Directive...

[Sgt_G]

Am I allowed to brag? I submitted my deck plans for the Federation Police Cutter to ADB, and they are including one deck (of eight) as a teaser in the Captain's Log #47, which is going to print very soon.

I have a couple minor things to clean up on a couple other decks and re-save / re-send the files to ADB, and they'll have the whole ship which will be presented in some future product of some kind. 8)

 

[Iron Domokun]

Steve Cole has posted a snippet of the Police Cutter's deck plans on the starfleetgames.com discus forum. Looks good.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I don't see it. Was this a new post? Or something from a while ago?

 

[Sgt_G]

He just posted it yesterday in this topic:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/38/30965.html?1370308905#POST689567

The direct link to the image is here:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/38/deck_plan_example.pdf

And trust me, because of the conversion he had to do to post it, that image doesn't do it justice.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

He just posted it yesterday in this topic:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/38/30965.html?1370308905#POST689567

The direct link to the image is here:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/38/deck_plan_example.pdf

And trust me, because of the conversion he had to do to post it, that image doesn't do it justice.

I've seen him post in that quality before so others don't get free detailed deck plans from him without buying a book. Over the last 6 months though, I have slowly moved away from using deckplans and minis in my games. I think I have used maybe one deckplan from Mongoose's books ever.

 

[Melkor]

Having owned (but never played) the original Prime Directive, I know it focused on away team missions that didn't necessarily involve the bridge crew.

Are there any plans to include rules for bridge crew in the RPG and how they might be integrated with A Call to Arms in order to facilitate RPG interactions using the tabletop rules in a way similar to what FASA did with their Star Trek RPG and tabletop games?

 

[Sgt_G]

I believe that the second version of PD (under GURPS / D6 / D20 game engines) allows for the bridge crew as player-characters. It makes no sense that the ship's captain and/or first officer would leave the ship as often as we see on TV, but that's what players want to be able to do.

The police cutter has a crew of about a hundred, with about a dozen officers assigned. Ergo, it makes a little bit of sense that the commander or at least exec officer should lead away missions from time to time. There is a twenty-man tactical team (police don't normally have Marines) lead by a junior officer for boarding actions.

 

[Sgt_G]

Okay, I found the document I was looking for (in the wrong folder on my hard drive).

The standard roster for the Police Cutter has a crew of 98 (104 with Plus-refit), with 13 officers and 4 or 5 Chief Petty Officers. Here's the list of officers:

OFFICERS:
1: Commander == LtCmdr
2: Exec Officer == LT
3: Operations Officer == LT
4: Intelligence Officer == LT-jg
5: Science Officer == LT-jg
6: Weapons Officer == LT-jg
7: Chief Engineer == LT
8: Assistant Engineer == LT-jg
9: Ship’s Surgeon == LT
10: Physician’s Assistant / Registered Nurse == LT
11: Chief Shuttlecraft Pilot == LT-jg
12: Shuttlecraft Pilot == LT-jg
13: Tactical-Team Leader == LT-jg

Ensigns (O-1) may fill LT-jg (O-2) billet.

CHIEF PETTY OFFICERS:
1: Bridge Operations (Nav/Helm/Comm/Sensors)
2: Engineering
3: Weapons
4: Shuttle Maintenance
And perhaps one of the following:
5: Ship’s Maintenance / Damage Control
6: Tactical Team
7: Medical / Corpsman
8: Lab Tech

One Chief will be a Senior Chief Petty Officer and be the Chief of the Boat (CoB) in addition to regular duties. All enlisted "issues" go thru the CoB before going to the Exec and/or Captain.

A word about the Tactical Team: police boats do not (normally) carry Marines, but rather have police personnel who are trained in boarding proceedures. They are cross-trained and will rotate every 90 to 120 days between being on the Tac-team and regular crew.

The deck plans have 14 officer suites (two-room quarters), 8 chief lodgings (one-room quarters w/ private lav), and 88 enlisted quarters (44 pair of one-room quarters with a shared lav between them) for a total of 110 beds. There are 40 additional beds (24 in junior enlisted quarters, 16 in barracks) for expanded crew, but some of these compartments are often converted to something else (e.g., extra storage, a hydroponic garden, VIP quarters, etc, etc).

I'm sure there'splenty of ways one could run a Prime Directive game off that list.

 

[dmccoy1693]

I fear that this obsession with deck plans, be it from ADB or Mongoose, is creating an artificial barrier to publication that is unnecessary.

I can definitely agree that it is a definite barrier for publication. I actually had a number of plans for ship books that were scrubbed because of a lack of deck plans. One of the reviews of Mech Tech 'n' bot: Fighters and Small Ships complained about a lack of deck plans. I mean, really? A deck plan when you have one chair for the pilot, maybe a second chair for the copilot and that needs a deck plan? I did have one for a shuttle that was more than than just that, but for the single-seater/twin-seater, I let the deck plan go on that.

But if that is what the customer wants, I can understand that. However it is going to keep the number of ship books from me low.

 

[Sgt_G]

I just may need to order a copy of that book. It looks like it might be pretty cool.

 

[Melkor]

I finally had a chance to read through GURPS PD, and was a bit disappointed by the limited rules describing RPG player characters using Star Fleet Battles.

I would really like to see a bit more detail in the Traveler version of Prime Directive describing how to integrate the RPG characters with games of SFB, Federation Commander, and A Call to Arms. How character skills can work in the tabletop games. How damage to a ship can cause possible damage to a character. Stuff like that.

If the book is nearly done (except for the deck plans), is anything like the above included?

Thanks.

 

[SteeleViper]

Melkor,

I sent you a PM.

 

[Melkor]

Any update on how the deck plans are coming along or any progress/timeline towards completion now that Origins has wrapped up?

 

[Sgt_G]

I don't know about other ships, but the Federatin Police Cutter is done. I finished the Plus Refit (adds drone rack and phaser control) for Deck One a couple days ago. I've been going back thru it with a fine-toothed comb looking for the little details I may have missed. I'll be sending the files to SVC next week. But I also have to write the text that goes with it. That will probably take two to three weeks, assuming "real life" and "work" don't get in the way.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

If the game comes with no ships, or just one, what is a good reference book to get that lists out the ships in the Starfleet Universe and their funtion? Don't need deckplans. Just descriptions of the ships.

 

[Myrm]

The core products describe the ships - so this sort of information is scattered all over the place rather than in one location (until the master ship book comes out for SFB).

YOu can get quite a lot of information trawling through the player resources on the ADB website - including deck plans for a D7 and technical drawings for an F5 - but other things are laid out in Captain's Logs, SSD books, and all over. However what you want, even for one ship, may be scattered over several documents - be that some info in the SITs, some in player resources, some in a Captains Log....its hard work in my experience.

THe historical publishing schedule means that a product comes out and contains sort of everything for a block of material - rules, SSDs for included ships, descriptions. Thats why they were all 3 hole punched and softcover, so you could split them up and bind in order to assmble your own 'master document'.

Start with the master site index for ADB
http://www.starfleetgames.com/masterindex.shtml

THen look within player resources
http://www.starfleetgames.com/playerresources.shtml

The Commander's Circle for Federation Commander may prove useful
http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/Commanders%20Circle/index.shtml

However a lot of this sort of information is restricted to purchase only products as ADB sell this information. SVC made a comment recently on the BBS which made me assume he was not liking free ship info being handed out, as that should be product not freebies. Therein lies a major difference between a miniature led game like many of Mongooses and a rules driven game like SFB and this has an effect on your request here....a lot fo the sort of stuff you are after will be in product...if you have a collection of this stuff you'll find it easier.

If you want to be steered to particular ships, the the ADB discussion board is invaluable to get you to the right place to look for specific things (as are those individuals here who post there as well), but a general query is hard to answer because the answer in general is so scattered.

 

[adm]

In general Myrm has a good description of what it takes to find information about SFU ships. One option he missed is ordering the "R" rules sections from SFB as spare parts, they contain a one, sometimes more, paragraph description of every ship in the game. I will note that those books that do not start with R have more rules than just the R section rules. i.e. R1, R10 etc.

http://store.starfleetstore.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=S&Category_Code=SFB_RB

 

[captainquirk]

There's a text thumbnail sketch of various ships in each of the PD products. Only a paragraph or so, but enough to give an overview of the ship and function.

There are published resources on the ADB site which lists all the Federation ship names.

You wouldn't find deckplans or the ship displays used in Starfleet Battles or Federation Commander. But you'd find a bit of information about a New Heavy Cruiser, for example, and what it was supposed to do. What you wouldn't have is all the details of crew size, weapons fit and so on.

When the Traveller PD project started, a number of us said we wanted to see an RPG combat system similar to the Traveller core rulebook but optimised for the Star Fleet Universe.

I'm one of those who sees the deckplans as a colossal waste of time and energy and an utter waste of pages. I'll never use them, I don't need them in an RPG, and if they delay publication much longer I may not even buy the Traveller PD book anyway. I've been waiting so long for this that the gaming group I was originally going to run the game for has already disbanded so the product is going to have to be really good to make me bother now.

Missing a lot of sales opportunities by allowing this project to drift on and on and on.... It's like the plot of The Deadly Years. We may die of old age before a solution is found!

 

[Myrm]

In general Myrm has a good description of what it takes to find information about SFU ships. One option he missed is ordering the "R" rules sections from SFB as spare parts, they contain a one, sometimes more, paragraph description of every ship in the game. I will note that those books that do not start with R have more rules than just the R section rules.

Actually that's the sort of thing and the expensive/extensive scattering I had in mind when saying purchase only product. The R series is really good example though of what I talking about. Even when buying as parts for rules text only you going to have to get what a dozen items for everything - though how many do people think would cover the core hulls...first five?

 

[Sgt_G]

As someone pointed out, PD already has a few ships listed, and PD-Fed has several more listed.

If you want a list of every variation of every ship from a particular empire, that would take a LOT of work. And a lot of pages. I suspect it would be a stand-alone product, but how well would it sell?