Federation Commander

cnuzzi · Lieutenant Commander Joined: 10 Jun 2017 Posts: 209

I always felt I missed out on something because I stopped playing SFB before the Early Years modules were released, so I was considering picking up the CL #39 SSD book and Supplemental File to get the FC EY ships. My question is, are there special rules or weapons tables I would need to use them? If so, do those come in the Supplemental File or SSD Book?

Also, I noticed that the EY Hydran CC in Comm #44 has a weapon called an HG. Is that some kind of early Hellbore? Where are the rules for that weapon? They aren't in that issue of Communique.

mjwest · Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2018 6:28 pm Post subject:

Yes, there are special rules. They should be in that Captains Log. I am not sure if they are anywhere else.

The hellgun (HG) is basically a hellbore that has to use the directed fire option and cannot overload.
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cnuzzi · Lieutenant Commander Joined: 10 Jun 2017 Posts: 209

Oh ok, so I can't just get the SSD Book and Supplemental File - I have to get the CL. Ok, thanks, Mike.

mjwest · Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2018 7:40 pm Post subject:

Yes, the rules for Early Years are in both CL#39 and in the Supplemental file for CL#39. The rules in CL#39 cover just the main empires for which ships were published. The rules in Supplemental are for the rest of the empires that didn't get published (paper) ship cards.

The rules for the hellgun are in CL#39. Note that the rules have two oversights, for which I do apologize. Namely, the weapons charts for Lasers and Nova Cannons were missed. I include them below.

Nova Cannon Chart:

cnuzzi · Lieutenant Commander Joined: 10 Jun 2017 Posts: 209

Thank you for taking the time to do that, Mike. Wow - I can see that the Early Years are more different than I thought they would be! I've seen posts where people have said that it's very similar - the ships look the same, they just have less powerful engines and ph-2 instead of ph-1, etc. I can tell that is not the case!

mjwest · Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2018 6:52 pm Post subject:

The basic differences are:
- Ph-2s instead of Ph-1s
- Fewer heavy weapons
- No overloads
- Less power

This means you get ships that look very similar, but fly very differently. Having only 26 power and two photons you can't overload on your Fed YCA is going to fly very differently from even the Middle Years Fed CA that has 34 points of power and four photons it can overload.
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Nerroth · Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 3:26 pm Post subject:

For what it's worth, there are a number of Y-era ships which look different from their "modern" counterparts. For example, the Inter-Stellar Concordium's ships of that era have only two "prongs", as opposed to the three "prongs" on modern ISC ships.

That said, there is a much greater degree of variety among the various W-era (warp-refitted or warp-driven) ships than there is in the Y-era; not least in Federation and ISC space, where each major planet had its own navy prior to the establishment of "unified" star fleets.
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Magnum357 · Lieutenant Commander Joined: 09 Dec 2006 Posts: 223

That is a neat chart! I knew about the W-era mostly from old Romulan Designs during the first war between Starfleet and the Romulan Star empire. SFB says this is suppose to be around Y45 or something. Most of the time I stick around Basic Era and X1.

When I was growing up in the Dynaverse, I encountered up to 22 different factions before they shut down there website to the public. Maybe they deveolped W-era tech too.

Nerroth · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 6:03 pm Post subject:

Technically speaking, Star Fleet did not exist at the time of the First Federation-Romulan War; the various Federation planets still had their own star navies at the time.

Indeed, the "Early Years" technology shown in the three SFB Y-modules did not exist yet either; both the Federation and Romulans fought that war using non-tactical warp ("impulse") drives, and for the most part did not have access to "warp-class" weapons, such as phasers or plasma torpedoes. (The Vulcans were a partial exception, in that they seemingly had ship-mounted phaser-1s and special sensors in that era.)

To put it another way, the "non-tactical warp" era of the First Federation-Romulan War is noted in GURPS Prime Directive as being Tech Level 9; the "warp-refitted" (or "warp-driven") era in which tactical warp drive first appeared is GPD Tech Level 10; the "early warp" era of the Republic-class YCA is GPD TL 11; whereas the "modern" era of the Constitution-class CA is GPD TL 12.
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