Empress Marava adapted/converted into Star Trek universe

[Qoltar]

I want to adapt or convert a starship into the Star Trek setting.

How many of you are familiar with the Empress Marava class freighter from TRAVELLER and GURPS: TRAVELLER?

What I want to do is use that ship map in my GURPS STAR TREK campaign - but I need good suggestions as to 'how' it would function in the Trek universe and what the stats might be.

For example - where would a person put a transporter pad or transporter room on that deck plan?

What would be the likely Warp Speed upper and lower range?

That kind of thing.

EDIT: This campaign takes place in the early 2260s - specifically the year 2261.

-Ed C.

[Mark Skarr]

Well, to start with, you'd probably lose the air raft in the front of the ship as that's not really a Star Trek thing. And that would probably be where you'd stick a Transporter Pad system.

Beyond that, as a civilian ship, she probably wouldn't be to terribly fast. Prolly cruise warp 3 and emergency warp 5.

Really, there wouldn't be much use for a ship as small as an Empress Marva. Depending on the era, there are better ships.

Sitting down with the incredibly old FASA Ship Construction Manual, at 200 tons, she's only Class I (handling ships from 0 to 5,000 tons) which severely limits her. To make matters worse, the smallest warp drive she could mount would be tandem FMWA drives (microwarp drives), which comes out to 600 tons. Three times her mass. She could have a FMIA (microimpulse engine), but that would preclude her going to warp. So, obviously, this isn't a good way to go.

But, if we finagle things, and say "sure, she's packing a FMWA Warp Drive" gives her a cruising speed of Warp 2, emergency Warp 3.

The "small" freighter, in the Federation Ship Recognition Manual, the Aakenn-Class freighter (a class VI ship), the Mk II weighs 70,640 tons, and has a cargo capacity of 109,000 tons. Fully-loaded, it's capable of Warp 6/7.

The smallest ship in the book, the Greyhound-class warpshuttle (Class I), weighs 4,210 tons, has 200 tons of cargo space, and can sprint at warp 8/10.
The Mk IV version, the freight hauler version, carries fewer passengers and a total of 800 tons of cargo. No weapons, and over-powered shields that they can't hope to power effectively.

But, that's just the old FASA stuff. The newer Modiphius stuff doesn't allow for custom space frames.

So, she's either a low-mass/utility warp shuttle with limited range and utility, or . . . you'll have to decide.

I would say she falls below the resolution for Star Trek ships and would be her own scale. She might be useful in low-population sectors, but, she wouldn't be relevant when an actual starship came on the scene. Her weapons would be unable to bruise the navigational deflectors of anything we've really seen in Star Trek.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

Sitting down with the incredibly old FASA Ship Construction Manual, at 200 tons, she's only Class I (handling ships from 0 to 5,000 tons) which severely limits her. ].

For the 190,000 ton Constitution-Class starship 170,000 of those tons were phenomenally heavy warp engines. Probably due to hyperdense shielding (not "true" neutronium though). This even made it into an episode of Enterprise.

Oh, and the Impulse engines were heavy too.

The second issue is that "200 tons" is the _volume_ of the Empress Marava class. G:Traveller for 3e gives loaded _mass_ as c. 550 tons.

So if you take that 550 tons and multiply it by 10 or more for heavy engines you get a ST mass of as much as 6000 tons (to pick a round number).

There's no particular reason to convert from LBB Traveller to FASATrek even if you've got the books handy. My FASA stuff isn't handy. Design from the start in whatever system you're using and match the number of cabins. Then give it typical "small freighter" speed.

For the TOS era they might be Warp4/6 as compared to the 1701's 6/8. I find the TNG numbers much harder to deal with. After you get to Warp 9 every decimal makes such a big difference.

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

For...


For the TOS era they might be Warp4/6 as compared to the 1701's 6/8. I find the TNG numbers much harder to deal with. After you get to Warp 9 every decimal makes such a big difference.

I did say the early 2260s - which puts my campaign between "ST: Strange New Worlds" and what we think of as "TOS era".

-Ed C.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

I did say the early 2260s - which puts my campaign between "ST: Strange New Worlds" and what we think of as "TOS era".

-Ed C.

I don't have the book containing the chronology you use and am unfamiliar with its' dates.

[Irish Wolf]

A reasonable speed for a small privately-owned interstellar craft of the era (like, say, the ship Harry Mudd and his, er, ladies were in when they needed rescue) would probably be about warp 4 or 5. The private cargo-haulers of a century earlier, after all, ran at a little over warp 2, while the NX-01's breakthrough engine design could manage warp 5 at top speed, so imagining the cargo ships of the early 2260s as running about what the old NX-class could do in the 2150s isn't unreasonable in my opinion.

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I don't have the book containing the chronology you use and am unfamiliar with its' dates.

You don't need a 'book' - the gist of the timeline is on both Wikipedia and Memory Alpha.

STar Trek: Emterprise = 2151 to 2161

Star Trek Discovery season 1 and 2 = 2256 through 2258

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" = 2259

"Star Trek: The Original Series ('TOS') = 2265 through 2270.
(including the Animated season....)

Its a very easy search.

But yeah, the Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach Chonology book helps a lot when running the Star Trek setting.

- Ed C.

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

I did say the early 2260s - which puts my campaign between "ST: Strange New Worlds" and what we think of as "TOS era".

To be fair--you didn't. Maybe you have that in a different post, but you didn't have it here.

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

To be fair--you didn't. Maybe you have that in a different post, but you didn't have it here.

I just did an edit on the opening post. Really thought I had the fictional year in there.

-Ed C