posted
I've got the Decipher book and titbits such as ship names and registries are starting to appear on my web site. (I think I've got as far as Intrepid class, going alphabetically).
Stats are heavily based on Starship Spotter, which means that the odd pice of FASA or Ships of the Star Fleet stuff appears. Beyond that I can't be bothered to say much about the stats, they're tied to the game system and don't always translate into 'real' numbers (e.g. phasers are classified by they're overall effectiveness rather by the exact number and fire arc).
Each ship has a small photo and larger starboard, dorsal (ventral for the Excelsior!) and fore (aft for the Nebula!) illustrations. The illos are not photo-realistic or CGI renderings, but are a million steps above the LUG Price of Freedom illos.
A few illustrations are very wrong, clearly the artist was not provided with enough reference photos and had to fill in some angles from his imagination. Those that are wrong are - * Talon class (scoutship from Insurrection) * Klngon Raptor class (top view is okay, side and fore views are well off) * Romulan Theta class (the scout/science vessel, though some of the background fluff seems to refer to the warpshuttle instead... In the LUG game the shuttle was Theta class and the scout was Deresus class. Anyway, the illos are only really wrong in that they've added some sort of pod onto the top of the hull) * Cardassian Galor class (Keldon is used instead. Stats for these two ships are also confusing.) * Jem'Hadar Warship (conflates the BC and BB).
There are no new ships, though a wingless version of the Maquis raider (large version) is called a Harmony class Fast Escort of Orion manufacture.
The freighter Timo mentions is called the Altair class, not the Antares class. There is no Antares class (thankfully, the last thing we need is another take on the Antares...).
The Raven is given as an Aerie class Surveyor, and to keep with canon these ships have USS names but NAR registries, but we all know to blame Voyager PTB for that, not Decipher.
It's not the mythical 'Big Book of Starships', it's a book for a game. Buy it if you play the game or if you're a fanatical collector. If you just want some more Names/Registries then visit my site where I'll try to list all the new ones.
-------------------- "My theories appal you, my heresies outrage you, I never answer letters and you don't like my tie." - The Doctor
Registered: Mar 1999
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
quote:Originally posted by Timo: Take a look at the bottom section of the main page of Flare...
what are the UP boys up to these days.. anything they need me to write?
Registered: Sep 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Timo: Take a look at the bottom section of the main page of Flare...
Alternately, I could mail you about 300 pages of shipfic sans pictures, featuring all the canon, Spaceflight Chronology, Ships of the Star Fleet, select FASA/SFB and Trek novel pieces, etc. done not in Jane's format, but in the style of all those Bill Gunston books where a short history is attached to each description of a ship, sub, aircraft or other militaria piece (desk drawer writing becomes expensive after the sixth desk fills up and you have to buy a new room... ). But that wouldn't take you one step closer to the Grail.
Timo Saloniemi
So...you'll PDF the file for me? Just the good stuff, mind you.....I have color printers at my disposal! I just need the refrence for modeling.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Well Timo if you have 300 pages of fanfiction ships, sans pictures, from the sources you describe, please distribute.
I am interested in taking a look at them because like most fan boys I am writing this type of material for my one fan fic ships and I would like to compare. Plus, your fan fiction ships have more history and seem more "realistic" if you can cite examples of previous ships of the type, or the names and registeries of ships that beared the name.
But back to the Decipher book. I thumbed through this book this week end at a local book store and was very unimpressed with its interior design and use of color. The schematics of the starships are for the most part undetailed and rendered in ugly colors, like the silvery blue Sovereignclass illustration if I am remembering correctly. It seems to me that no care was taken in choosing who to hire to draw schematics of the starships and little or no care was taken in choosing which starship publicity photos to print in this book.
You think that they could have hired one of us to help out with this book. Reverend, for example, could have done an exponentially better job at illustrating this book than the artist they hired.
Also, there are hardly any starships in this book. Last Unicorn Games gave us a lot more starships in its Starship Recognition Guide, and made an attempt to document all the models we had seen.
In the Decipher Starships book, where is the description and stats for the Springfield, Challenger, Niagara, Freedom, Curry, New Orleans, Cheyenne, Intrepid-Constitution variant, Centaur, Raging Queen (whatever class she was), three-nacelled Excelsior variant (Medusa?), and the Constitution variant ( Polaris?) classes.
Alas for all those cool FASA designs we lost when FASA lost its role-playing license.
So a new licensee not only has to re-invent the wheel, but they give us less material than what we had before in the old role-playing game license?
So if you are considering a purchase of this book, see if you can locate a copy of it before making the purchase decision. Personally I think that most fans will be disappointed with the low quality of this book and give it a pass, especially at a $34.95 cover price.
But on the plus side, I did find out that quantum torpedoes can be fired only by a Mk 75 or better torpedo launcher, Defiant-class or later, a question that I asked in another thread in this forum.
Registered: Jun 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Triton: But on the plus side, I did find out that quantum torpedoes can be fired only by a Mk 75 or better torpedo launcher, Defiant-class or later, a question that I asked in another thread in this forum.
Which makes no sense at all... they're similar size. All one needs to do different is install less A/M packages into the Q-Torp [a function of software] for propulsion only, instead of for porpulsion and warhead purposes like in the P-Torp.
-------------------- Later, J _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ _ _ The Last Person to post in the late Voyager Forum. Bashing both Voyager, Enterprise, and "The Bun" in one glorious post.
posted
Well my original thinking was that it didn't matter and that torpedo launch systems only differed by their rates of fire and reloading ability, not the size and type of munitions and probes that they could fire/launch.
But there has been debate in other threads, especially when discussing fan fiction starships, whether all ships in the fleet can fire this weapons or if its the exclusive domain of the newest starship classes.
Everyone can give a good reason or generate bullet points to support his/her position on this issue. But having this issue discussed in writing from a licensed, though non-canon, source goes along way toward building a concensus.
Hmmm... if Treknology allows you to turn matter into energy, and then back to matter again, does it really matter which systems are installed in the starship? Why not replicate what you need for a particular mission or battle, use the system for the duration of the mission, and then convert the system to something needed for the next mission. Sorry cannot pick at this thread or the entire treknology canon begins to unravel.
Registered: Jun 2003
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
Because once you repl\cate something, you still have to mount it, wire it, connect it to the power grid, load the software, make sure it all works, etc. Now I don't know about you, but I hate doing that with just my computer. To be a Starfleet officer charged with doing a complete swapout everytime the captain wants to swing by Foodcourtia for some nachoes (extra chili)? Fuck THAT.
As for torpedoes, I've said ti before & I'll say it again until I die: a railgun is a railgun. The only difference is in how fast it can recharge between shots.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
Well, as has been mentioned before when this subject comes up, there could concievably be enough difference between the way quantum and photon torpedoes are armed to necessitate some kind of add on, but there's no way to know.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
For those interested in the pictureless starship guide WIP, it's now at flareupload, shiptext.zip. It's probably more a Creative forum matter, if you want to comment, but I thought it not really worth bringing up there yet.
The text is in two Word files, the first having ships up to TOS, the second having the rest, plus separate chapters for "medium craft" (corvettes, scoutcraft, surveyors, runabi, what-have-you) and auxiliaries (shuttles of various kinds), plus a glossary. And it's VERY much a WIP. Plus of course the whole pre-TOS part has been invalidated by ENT now, and I have only tried some partial corrective measures.
No pics in there. Basically, you can use the www.shipschematics.net material when available. Although I've fiddled with some details as you may read in the text, the designs try to stay faithful to the original pics - a bit more so than some of Reverend's or Masao's work, with all the aesthetic caveats of that fundamentalist approach.
I'd have to say that what you've written is pretty damn close to the Grail! You've just saved me a whole lot of $$$ that I would've dropped on buying a bunch of treknical works. I've only had enough time to take a cursory look at what you've gotten written but so far it's fantastic!
On another note, I noticed in your "thank you's" you mentioned James Dixon whom you listed as net-incommunicado. Just FYI, he's been posting over at the TrekBBS quite frequently as of late.
-------------------- Bender: Well I don't have anything else planned for today, let's get drunk!
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Holy Cow, Timo! That is some piece of work! Very impressive. You should really disseminate this, it certainly deserves wide exposure. You should post at Trek BBS and tell people where to get it.
PS: You shouldn't have chickened out about providing displacements
-------------------- When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum
Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Well, okay, perhaps this could be discussed over at Creative at least. But it's sort of silly to show it around when there are no pics there, and the sources for each entry aren't completely clear. I hate it when I have to be as vague about the references as Dixon, but I'd need to see e.g. the original FASA books to see how much really is "FASA-canon", and how much derives from elsewhere but isn't thus noted in Dixon's (where I get most of this stuff). There's still a lot of work in that.
The displacements are a bit iffy. I tried to "slip in" the idea that the classic Constitution displacement is a typo - the first 1 should be a 7, to go with Scotty's "nearly a million tons". Ditto for all the 1's in SotSF... That would make the thing more consistent with the Sternbach figures, but would wreak havoc with some earlier works. And FASA displacements, of course, are highly illogical wrt each other - and it would be a shame to make that explicit by listing the displacements for each and every ship.
Not to mention that I absolutely refuse to speak of "displacement" here. The displacement of a starship in space is always zero. "Mass" is the correct term to use, even with the relativistic and subspace-field-reduction caveats.
Similarly, I don't use "draught" for height, even though I admit to "beam" for width, as it is more neutral from the physics POV.
There's also some personal silliness I'll have to rethink because of ENT, even if I don't completely abandon the pre-TOS stuff. You'll note in the Constitution entry (IIRC) how I wiggle out of the Four-Year War via time travel trickery. But ENT might give us a human-Klingon war in the 22nd century, which makes it less fruitful to pretend that there never was a full war before "Errand of Mercy".
I'm having a severe writer's block about many TNG-era ships, since there's less material there that I could plagiarize or otherwise rip off. The Akira just plain doesn't inspire me. Also, there's less "fleshing out" material there for secondary ship types or ship families, although I tried to play with the various Andromedas and Zodiacs and whatnot, making some of them "sister classes" of each other, like was done with Saladin/Hermes etc.
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). But that wouldn't take you one step closer to the Grail.![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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I thumbed through this book this week end at a local book store and was very unimpressed with its interior design and use of color. The schematics of the starships are for the most part undetailed and rendered in ugly colors, like the silvery blue Sovereignclass illustration if I am remembering correctly. It seems to me that no care was taken in choosing who to hire to draw schematics of the starships and little or no care was taken in choosing which starship publicity photos to print in this book.![[Mad]](mad.gif)
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