Star Trek Spaceships?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by GodlessRose

I like the look of the Spaceships rules - just enough detail to be convincing, but simple enough not to be distracting.

You shouldn't be scared of doing your own Spaceships designs. It's easy. There were a couple of 1701 clones done up during the playtest but it's probably easier for me to do my own than find them.

First you pick a TL. For the TOS era this is 11^. You're saving 12 for TNG and there is superscience all over the place.

Then you make the crucial decision of how big your ship is going to be. I know that the 1701 is around 1000 ft long. Technically this is the bottom of SM+14 but it's nothing like an efficient shape so I round down to +13.

Then all you have to do is cruise the lsit of components.

Armor is not a huge priority. Armor just doesn't protect much from phasers, but he hull is fairly sturdy when dealing with simple impacts.. We choose 3 units of Metallic Laminate mostly because we don't believe they'd use anything more primitive. Note the stats dDR 70 (regular DR 700) $300 milllion

Cargo Hold? Yes.

Cloaking Device? Usually no. ST cloaking devices are special anyway. Much smaller than the ssytem assumes.

Control Room ? Yes. $600m

Engine Room? Oh yeah, but they're tossed in for free on SM +10 or more.

Enhanced sensors? Yes. $600m

Factory? Yes, it's effectively an Nanofacotory even if you don't see the nanites running around loose.
Replicators are for TNG. $15B Very expensive but we see the 1701 all but rebuild itself in space multiple times.

Force Screen? Yes, Heavy. Another $15B with some of the variant from p.32.

Habitat? Yes, $300m, not all of it as crew cabins. This covers a lot of things like labs and such.

Hangar Bay. Yes. $30m

Power Plant? Antimatter of course. $6B

Reactionless Engine? Yes, Subwarp for $3B. This covers the Impulse drive,

Stardrive? Of course. We'll call the Warp Drive a Super stardrive for $15B

Weapons? One major battery (effectively with turrets) to represent the Phaser banks. These are effectively Disintegrators even though we're technically a TL too early. You have to make adjustments like that sometimes. $1.5B

Then another major battery for the Photon Torpedoes. These are launchers. If you look on p.29 you'll see warp Missile Launchers which sounds perfect. Another S1.5B.

Then we find Tractor Beams under weapons and we need a major battery's worth of those. 1 more $1.5B

That's only 16 systems and we need 20. We'll go back and double the power plant, triple the the force screen and spend another on cargo hold.

Then you just add up all the costs and note the relevant stats and choose locations. It's all simple in principle.

You probably have to things like find a balance between weapon damage and force screen protection, possibly by altering the armor divisor rules. ST force screens probably aren't only 1/10th effective against phasers butt hat's a detail. You've made most of the important decisions.